Bob Novak is a long-time lackey of Karl Rove: Bush's Bungling Brain & America's Joseph Goebbles ( http://www.tblog.com/template... ). Their unsavory dealings go back to Daddy Bush 41's 1992 campaign ... This is ugly stuff ... but the Justice Department obviously deems the mean-spirited, petty leaks credible and sufficiently damaging, that they are finally conducting an investigation (after the Bush Gang have had month's to clean-up their files, disks, and memos ... hmmm ... )
In Bob Novak's despicable article ( http://www.townhall.com/colum... ) on 14th July 2003, that originally "outed" a CIA operative, Valeria Plame (wife of Ex-Ambassador Wilson, who had the audacity to tell the truth about the Bushies lies & sexed-up crap about Iraq getting uranium yellow-cake from Niger, that idiot Dumbya used in his 2003 State of the Union Address), Novak states: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report." ...
Bob Novak's story seems to change daily now, to protect Herr Rove, Bush's Bungling Brain. Just one amongst many dirty errands the lackey Novak has probably carried out for Herr Rove in exchange for propaganda used to fool the American people.
Tragically, the CIA reports the White House leaks to Novak have indeed damaged our intelligence operations and efforts to maintain a watch on real WMDs dangers to the U.S.A.-- this mean and petty act didn't achieve anything positive, and has shown the White House to be a vengeful, neo-nazi type operation.
"Another big problem with Novak's comments on Crossfire today. Today he said ...
"Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this. In July I was interviewing a senior administration official on Ambassador Wilson's report when he told me the trip was inspired by his wife, a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction.
"But then there's this passage in a July 22nd article in Newsday ...
"Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."
"I'd say the story's changed." ... Sure the story changes daily and probably by the hour, Mr. Marshall, and since 6 reporters were leaked the under-cover CIA operative's identity by White House administration officials (sic ... thugs), according to last Sunday's Washington Post, I'd say "something strange is going-on in the neo-con world of spin-and-destroy" (that usually results in the deaths of many innocent people to enrich and profit the Bushies).
Mr. Marshall continues and publishes the White House Lawyer's notice to White House employees ...
"The Gonzales letter, released early Tuesday ...
"The following notice was sent to all White House employees:
PLEASE READ: Important Message From Counsel's Office:
We were informed last evening by the Department of Justice that it has opened an investigation into possible unauthorized disclosures concerning the identity of an undercover CIA employee.
------------------------- ----------
The Department advised us that it will be sending a letter today instructing us to preserve all materials that might be relevant to its investigation. Its letter will provide more specific instructions on the materials in which it is interested, and we will communicate those instructions directly to you. In the meantime, you must preserve all materials that might in any way be related to the Department's investigation. Any questions concerning this request should be directed to Associate Counsels Ted Ullyot or Raul Yanes in the Counsel to the President's office. The President has directed full cooperation with this investigation.
Alberto R. Gonzales
Counsel to the President
For the White House's defenders in the press, it looks like that 'she wasn't undercover' line is no longer operative ..."
Nope, Bob Novak's neo-con game-playing won't work now ... but it's too bad they didn't commence the investigation months ago ... before sufficient time passed to do what the Nazis did as WW2 ended, and destroy the chain-of-evidence.
Karl Rove: Bush's Brain & America's Joseph Goebbles
Hitler's Minister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbles said "Propaganda has only one object - to conquer the masses. Every means that furthers this aim is good; every means that hinders it is bad." Goebbles supported his ghoulish propaganda campaign with his philosophy indoctrinated into the Nazi mind-set: "If you tell a lie enough times, it becomes accepted as truth, and, the bigger the lie, the more likely it is to be accepted."
Over three months following the vengeful (and illegal) exposure of ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA agent, someone has decided it's time to look into this treasonous act. G. H. W. Bush 41 said in a dedication speech on 16th April, 1999:
"We need more human intelligence. That means we need more protection for the methods we use to gather intelligence and more protection for our sources, particularly our human sources, people that are risking their lives for their country. Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors." - at the naming of the George Bush Center for Intelligence.
It's also a crime to "out" an under-cover CIA operative, because not only is their life at risk, but the lives of their contacts could also be endangered. Moreover, the intelligence gathered by them in order to protect our country is jeopardized. It can take years to build-up trust and sources to aide in uncovering plots designed to harm innocent Americans-- To expose an agent undermines that hard-fought for work and is considered a heinous crime. The sentence for this treason is up to 10 years in prison and $50,000 penalty.
The Bushies are a vengeful lot ... their credo is ignore, punish, coerce, punish, bribe, and punish those who don't genuflect before their corruptions. Although the CIA has finally asked the Justice Department to investigate this matter, it is unclear as to whether the madman and nutcase Asscroft will carry-out his duties, as the Bush Regime holds the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights in contempt, considering themselves above the law.
Ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson was rightly angered at watching his wife placed in danger, and suggested that Karl Rove was behind this sinister and despicable act, although he has admitted that he has no proof. I suspect he is right.
"Sources close to the former president [George H.W. Bush] say Rove was fired from the 1992 Bush presidential campaign after he planted a negative story with columnist Robert Novak about dissatisfaction with campaign fundraising chief and Bush loyalist Robert Mosbacher Jr. It was smoked out, and he was summarily ousted." [Source: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.... , 29/09/03 12:29 AM, "Why Are These Men Laughing?" Ron Suskind, Esquire, January 2003]
Rove is what the British call a "nasty piece of work". Read " Exposing Karl Rove", by Wayne Madsen, on http://www.counterpunch.org/m... . An excerpt:
""If you're not with me, you're against me." Bush's binary view of "good and evil" and "friend and enemy" sits well with the Rove strategy. Georgia's conservative but libertarian-minded Representative Bob Barr found out about this in last August's [2002] primary when his GOP primary opponent John Linder began spreading around stories that Barr was "soft on terrorism." Because Barr was skeptical about a number of aspects of the Bush-Ashcroft USA PATRIOT Act, he became a target for the Rove machine." ... just a little sample of Marsden's terrifying description of how the Rove machine "tears-you-apart-and-spit s-you-out" if you even dare to question Emperor Bush.
"Was Rove really the source of the leak? The investigation held thus far by the State Department’s Internal Security (ISD) has stated that Rove did indeed leak the information out about the Ambassador’s wife, CIA agent Valerie Wilson, to the Washington Post. Apparently they have an affidavit from the reporter he leaked it to.
The way the Bush Regime is trying to quash it is to slow it down by exerting pressure against Pro-Bush Media. Please note that you have not heard one word about this on CNN or MSNBC or Fox News. And not one word about this on ABC, CBS, or NBC." -- The story only broke in the main-stream press this last weekend.
Ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson should probably be thankful that his wife is still alive. The Bush Regime will resort to any means necessary (lies, cover-ups, etc.) to "win" ... Winning at all cost is their modus operandi ... tragically for our American nation, Iraq, and the entire world (as their bloody policies result in the slaughter of innocent of human beings). The horrific game being played by the corrupt Bush Regime and their neo-con "arm-chair" chicken-hawks isn't a football game.
I urge you to follow-up on the progress of WilsonGate on TalkingPointsMemo ( http://www.talkingpointsmemo.... ), as Joshua Micah Marshall has published insightful interviews with ex-Ambassador Wilson, and has his "finger on the pulse" of this horrific crime.
The Bush Regime:-- So Many Crimes & Lies ... So Little Time To Un-Cover Them All!!!
There are so many crimes and lies committed by the corrupt Bush Regime ... Where does one start? There is so little time and space to un-cover them all! However, you might want to visit Bush Lies on http://www.bushlies.com , as the list is too long for any single blog to cover!
Of course, the infamous WMDs lie is the Biggest Lie of them all: none have been found, but the Bushies' are twisting & screwing the spin while they replace "weapons" with "programs" and "imminent danger" with "10 years ago he had 'em" ... Condi Rice made her propaganda tour of the Sunday morning talk shows to regurgitate her transparent lies ( http://www.tblog.com/template... ) Poor dupe Mr. Russert (Meet the Press) seems to have a little crush on Ms. Rice, and doesn't follow-up with obvious questions, such as you all said "imminent threat of mushroom clouds" prior to your bloody guerrilla quagmire & not "he might get 'em 10 years from now"! ...
Now two more scandals appear that wipe the Bushies' Biggest Lie off the radar! So I'll report the TWO MORE BIG LIES exposed, but not widely reported, recently:
Next Big Lie (1):
Firstly, Cheney's lie about his "links" with Halliburton ... Some brain-dead and morally-bankrupt neo-con goons, say "so what?" ... Yup ... so what if men and women die in the thousands to enrich fat Cheney and his ghoulish corporate robber-barons? Forget about the fact that it is a crime involving ethics violations under the law! (These are the same hypocritical neo-con freaks who cry "pro-life" ... but screw and murder life "post-womb"!)
""Since I left Halliburton to become George Bush's vice president, I've severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had, now, for over three years." -- Vice President Cheney on the Sept. 14 showing of "Meet the Press".
Not true, says the Congressional Research Service. According to Cheney's own financial disclosure statements, he continues to collect a yearly Halliburton check in "deferred compensation" -- Cheney spread his last paycheck out over a period of years so he could pay less income tax to those sons-a-$#%@s in Washington like, um, himself. So he'll be pocketing about $150,000 or so a year from Halliburton through 2005. And, Cheney also holds hundreds of thousands of stock options, which gain in value as Halliburton grows fat, and fatter, on those shameless no-bid cost-plus contracts.
* * *
Halliburton, meanwhile, continues to soak the American taxpayer for astounding sums. One contract -- negotiated and awarded in secret -- could ultimately be worth $7 billion if allowed to stand. Already we have shelled out $1.2 billion of that, a sum likely to rise to $2 billion in the near future.
For perspective: There's a state-by-state chart here ( http://www.cbpp.org/12-23-02s... ) that shows the budget shortfalls for the fiscal year 2004. Look how far seven federal billions could go! To take just one randomly-assembled example, it could have covered all shortfalls for Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire, Florida, Virginia and Maryland.
So it's a vast sum of your money to be handing out in secret to a corporation that has the sitting American vice president on its payroll. And two irate Senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Ron Wyden of Oregon, have announced they aren't about to approve the White House's request for billions more for Iraq until they get an explanation of this no-bid Halliburton nonsense. ''The Iraqi contract process looks like Dodge City before the Marshalls showed up,'' says Wyden. ''It just doesn't pass the smell test to have companies not be part of the competitive bidding process.''
* * *
So why aren't there open, competitive bids? On "Meet the Press" two weeks ago we were offered the following illuminating explanation:
TIM RUSSERT: Why is there no bidding?
VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: I have no idea. Go ask the Corps of Engineers.
Talk about not passing the smell test! Billions of federal dollars are being showered on Dick Cheney's old employees, by Dick Cheney's new employees, in a secretive, much-criticized and politically-explosive way. Does Cheney seriously expect us to believe that he's never gotten around to asking why this is so? That's he's just as gee-whiz curious as the rest of us?
Here's the real question journalists should be asking Cheney now: Are you willing to pledge, today, that when you eventually leave behind the Office of the Vice President, that you will not go back to work for Halliburton?
After all, as The Washington Post reports: "The practice of delegating a vast array of [Pentagon] logistics operations to a single contractor dates to the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and a study commissioned by Cheney, then defense secretary, on military outsourcing. The Pentagon chose Brown and Root to carry out the study and subsequently selected the company to implement its own plan. Cheney served as chief executive of Brown and Root's parent company, Halliburton, from 1995 to 2000, when he resigned to run for the vice presidency."
He's in government, and he hires Halliburton to study whether to feed more money to Halliburton. Then, as the Pentagon money rolls into Halliburton, Cheney leaves government to take over as top dog at Halliburton. A few years later, Cheney returns to government -- with a monster severance check from Halliburton -- and lo and behold! his government starts feeding monster contracts to Halliburton. It stinks. We ought to demand the vice president solemnly vow that he will not be returning to that particular trough. If only because the likely slipperiness and indignation of his reply would again speak eloquently about him."
Next Big Lie (2):
Secondly, Joshua Micah Marshall broke this story weeks ago (TalkingPointsMemo on http://www.talkingpointsmemo.... ), and then The Nation's David Corn reported it ( http://www.thenation.com/capi... ), but sadly, the main-stream media controlled by the neo-con corporate whores, hoped it would "go away", "disappear", or be "wiped-off the radar screen":
In "White House grapples with allegation" on http://www.msnbc.com/news/973... , they finally (after weeks of the corrupt Bush White House destroying the career of the wife of a man who exposed their lies), report:
"TWO LAWS AT ISSUE - The department and the FBI now are trying to determine whether there was a violation of the law and, if so, then whether a full criminal investigation is warranted, the official told The AP.
NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell reported Friday that the CIA asked Justice to investigate whether White House officials blew Valerie Plame’s cover in retaliation against former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV. Revealing the identities of covert officials is a violation of two laws, the National Agents’ Identity Act and the Unauthorized Release of Classified Information Act.
The flap began in January when Bush said in his State of the Union address that British intelligence officials had learned that Iraq had attempted to purchase yellowcake uranium in Africa.
The administration has since had to repudiate the claim. CIA Director George Tenet said the 16-word sentence should not have been included in Bush’s Jan. 28 speech and publicly accepted responsibility for allowing it to remain in the president’s text."
Condi Rice, the liar-and-incompetent-extr aordinaire, says she knew nothing about it ... she knew nothing about memos on her desk before 9/11 warning of Al Qaida highjacking airplanes ... she knew nothing of memos on her desk warnings by the CIA that the nuclear weapons in Iraq was a bogus lie ... she knew nothing about the fact that WMDs intelligence was phony .
What are the bungling idiot Bush and the ignorant know-nothing Condi Rice doing all day? Watching football instead of doing their jobs? Hmmm ... one wonders what poor Laura is putting up with!
Fire Rumsfeld and Change Course ... Sign Petition on MoveOn.org
MoveOn is working to bring ordinary people back into politics. With a system that today revolves around big money and big media, most citizens are left out. When it becomes clear that our "representatives" don't represent the public, the foundations of democracy are in peril.
MoveOn is a catalyst for a new kind of grassroots involvement, supporting busy but concerned citizens in finding their political voice. Their international network of more than 2,000,000 online activists is one of the most effective and responsive outlets for democratic participation available today.
Visit the MoveOn web-site ( http://www.moveon.org/ ) and sign the on-line petition to fire Rumsfeld ... MoveOn cites:
"The US occupation in Iraq has left American soldiers unprepared and vulnerable, the country degenerating into chaos, and the Iraqi people embittered and hostile. Now the President is asking Congress for a staggering $87 billion blank check to fund more of the same. Until he takes strong steps to correct this failure, Congress shouldn't give him a cent. President Bush needs to fire the team responsible -- starting with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- and transfer authority to the United Nations." Call on Congress to make a change at : http://www.moveon.org/firerum... .
MoveOn has also mobilized and placed an ad in the New York Times ... You may view their ad (it takes a few minutes to bring up as it is in a .pdf file) on http://www.moveon.org/firerum... .
They quote a father who has sons in peril in Iraq, who said "I'm a patriotic American with three sons in the military, two serving in Iraq ..." -- " ... But the leaders they serve have not acted honorably. They have failed my sons. They have failed all of us. At the very least, Donald Rumsfeld must go." ... Visit their add to read the entire quote on http://www.moveon.org/firerum... .
At the very least, Donald Rumsfeld must go. To bring about justice for the families of those who have died, as well as to reclaim the honor of America, Bush & Cheney should be impeached, and Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz should be fired today.
Animal Farm of Pigs at the American and Iraqi Troughs: Bush, Cheney & Kenny-boy
The wonders of pure, un-regulated capitalism ... the joys of the global corporate empire ... the promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness: An American Animal Farm with Fat Pigs at the Trough like Bush, his buddy Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay, and Cheney, slopping up the war booty, as they loot America and Iraq, while smirking "we're all equal, but some of us are more equal than others"!
As the corrupt Bush Regime and their gang of corporate robber-barons become extravagantly richer, gorging on the blood, sweat and tears of Americans and Iraqis, the gulf between their imperial wealth and power, and the lott of the rest of us poor slobs, has increased to the greatest extremes between the haves-and-the-have-nots (i.e. looters-and-looted), not seen since 1929.
The imperial and neo-dictatorial Bush Gang are living their neo-Belle Epoque, as they perniciously transform America and Iraq into neo-feudal states, with the peoples of these countries turned into neo-serfs (neo-slaves), working at slave labour wages in miserable conditions, in accordance with the Bush Doctrine of "All for Me and Me for Me".
"How fitting that we'd have another Herbert Hoover for president busily destroying jobs at this particular historical moment. It's a moment that's been building for two decades -- as affluent Americans racked up extraordinary gains that left the rest of us far, far behind. That's according to data from the Congressional Budget Office, data quietly leaked late on a Friday before a three-day weekend. Perhaps most interestingly: The CBO data show that -- regardless of the self-serving lies of the tax-cut maniacs -- most Americans have seen their federal tax burden decline over the two decades immediately before George Bush took office.
"It's been apparent for several years that those at the very top of the income scale have pulled away from other Americans, and the new CBO data, which show staggering income gains among the most well-off, confirm that trend," says Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "The very well-off have been big winners on two fronts, as they secured enormous gains in income in both the 1980s and 1990s and then received extremely large tax cuts in 2001 and again this year.""
The Bush Gang has ruthlessly and wantonly destroyed over 3 million jobs (9 million are unemployed), undermined worker's rights, eroded unemployment benefits, and, are attempting to create such desperation that poor hungry people will take any job (no matter how low the wages, including no overtime in Bush's New World Order), to feed their families. This blood-thirsty scheme results in gluttonous profits for the obese "top dogs" and "fat cats to embezzle.
Our poverty line is way out of whack, and under-reports the misery of tens of millions in the richest country in the world ... But tragically our riches are being accumulated by a gang of selfish, greedy, rapacious thieves, like the Bush Family, Cheney, Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay-- who would make Emperors Caligula and Saddam Hussein blush with embarrassment at their corruption and exploitation of their own people.
The neo-con Bush Regime are turning this nation into a Third World Country, where the rulers amasse obscenely gross fortunes, while the peoples of these countries struggle (but neo-fascist Sen. Rick Santorum wants us poor slobs to "struggle"-- but not his own & his cronies). No health care exists for 45 million of us, failing schools due to lack of proper funding, as Americans are asked work harder just to keep afloat-- because the Corporate Executives (whose salaries increased over 571% while worker's only increased at around 37% by comparison) and make over 400 times their workers, "take the money and run". [ http://www.tallahassee.com/ml... ] None of these greedy frauds are worth 400 times that of a worker ... It would be amusing to watch them doing their worker's job for a change and survive on their worker's wages!
The Bushies are perpetrating the same crimes upon Iraq, where already new companies are set-up to privatize and steal Iraqi businesses and resources, without the consent of the Iraqi people. Refer to "Bush Wastes To Time in Stealing, Plundering and Looting Iraq" on http://www.tblog.com/template... , and visit the "New Bridge Strategies LLC - Helping to Build a New Iraq [ya, I'll bet! For Whom?] website" on http://www.newbridgestrategie... .
In Europe, there is greater regulation and social safety nets, that benefit all of the people and results in a more equitable distribution of the resources and services ... Wealth in the hands of a few while the many suffer is a great evil of pure capitalism, as we witness today in the United States of America. The Europeans are too smart to adopt such an uncivilized system, and would revolt if their governments suggested they emulate our callous and cruel neo-fascist doctrines, whereby the rich exploit the people, environment and natural resources. Perhaps, the average and poor American should revolt in 2004, against the insanely corrupt Bush Regime and neo-con fascist state they are creating to impoverish the rest of us.
"The problem is that the official definition of poverty no longer provides an accurate picture of material deprivation. The current measure was created 40 years ago by a government statistician, Mollie Orshansky, and hasn't much changed since. "Anyone who thinks we ought to change it is perfectly right," Ms. Orshansky told an interviewer in 2001.
"The current procedure takes the 1963 poverty thresholds for each given family size devised by Ms. Orshansky and updates them for inflation. For example, if the income of a family of four with two adults and two children fell below $18,244 last year, they were counted as poor by the bureau. Simple, yes, but there are two basic problems."
"WASHINGTON (AP) -- Poverty rose and income levels declined in 2002 for the second straight year as the nation's economy continued struggling after the first recession in a decade, the Census Bureau reported Friday.
The poverty rate was 12.1 percent last year, up from 11.7 percent in 2001. Nearly 34.6 million people lived in poverty, about 1.7 million more than the previous year.
Median household income declined 1.1 percent between 2001 and 2002 to $42,409, after accounting for inflation. That means half of all households earned more than that amount, and half earned less.
The poverty rate rose again after having fallen for nearly a decade to 11.3 percent in 2000, its lowest level in more than 25 years. Income levels increased through most of the 1990s, then were flat in 2000 and fell the last two years.
Bill Spriggs, director of research and public policy at the National Urban League, said the numbers were frightening. ``This may become one of the worst downturns in income in 30 years,'' he said. ``We see that people are digging themselves deeper into poverty because the economy is not generating jobs.''
Experts had predicted that rising unemployment last year and the still shaky economy would increase poverty and lower income for most people, even though the recession officially ended in November 2001.
Bureau statistician Daniel Weinberg said the changes between 2001 and 2002 were consistent with changes following past recessions.
``The highest point in the cycle of poverty and the lowest point in income tend to come in the year after a recession,'' he said at a news conference at bureau headquarters in Suitland, Md.
In 2002, 12.1 million children were in poverty, or 16.7 percent of all kids, up from 11.7 million, or 16.3 percent, the previous year. The Census Bureau said the increase was not statistically significant.
The estimates, calculated annually by the Census Bureau, came from a survey of 78,000 households taken in March. They are the government's official measure of income and poverty.
Comparing poverty rates and income for racial and ethnic groups was more difficult in 2002 because the Census Bureau for the first time allowed survey respondents to report if they were of more than one race.
For instance, the poverty rate for blacks in 2002 ranged from 23.9 percent for those who identified themselves as being black and another race, to 24.1 percent for those who selected only black.
Measured either way, the bureau considered that a significant increase from 2001, when 22.7 percent of blacks lived in poverty.
Poverty rates remained relatively unchanged for non-Hispanic whites, Asians and Hispanics, the bureau said.
Median income fell for blacks and Hispanics, but was relatively unchanged for whites. Income was highest among whites and Asians.
Incomes also declined significantly for foreign-born non-citizens, people living in metropolitan areas and for family households. By region, the Midwest experienced a significant decline, while all other regions were relatively unchanged.
The poverty threshold differs by the size and makeup of a household. For instance, a person under 65 living alone in 2002 was considered in poverty if income was $9,359 or less; for a household of three including one child, it was $14,480.
A separate Census Bureau survey released earlier this month also showed more people living in poverty in 2002, along with a slight increase in median income. However, that survey did not ask as detailed a series of questions on people's financial status.
Even before the data was made public, House Democrats charged the Bush administration was trying to hide bad economic news by releasing the numbers on a Friday when people are paying more attention to the upcoming weekend. In previous years, the estimates were released on a Tuesday or Thursday.
``Sounds like they're trying to bury the numbers where people won't find them,'' said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. ``This is another clear example of political manipulation of data by the Bush administration to avoid the glare of public scrutiny about the country's worsening economy.''
Census Bureau spokesman Larry Neal said the time change wasn't politically motivated. It was originally scheduled to be released this past Tuesday, he said, but was moved to Friday because statisticians asked for more time to process the numbers.
``These are the official estimates of income and poverty in America and every debate on income and poverty for the next year will rehash them,'' Neal said. ``The notion that we should, could or would suppress these numbers doesn't pass the laugh test.''"
Bush Regime Wastes No Time Stealing, Plundering and Looting Iraq
The Bush Regime has wasted no time in stealing, plundering and looting Iraq. Anyone with an iota of brain-matter will observe the ghoulish nature of these vultures feeding on the carcass of a war-torn country and the suckers draining the life-blood of Iraq; all before the Iraqi people have a chance to determine their own future.
The following story is absolutely despicable, and exposes the corrupt and ruthless nature of the Bush Global Corporate Empire, whose purpose of waging an illegal and immoral incursion-turned-bloody-g uerrilla-quagmire, was to create chaos and havoc, reek destruction and mayhem, and rape Iraq while the people are on their knees and helpless. The terrible loss of thousands of human beings tragically massacred by the Bush Regime, in order to enrich these goons, constitutes a Crime Against Humanity.
"New Bridge Strategies, LLC is a unique company that was created specifically with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Its activities will seek to expedite the creation of free and fair markets and new economic growth in Iraq, consistent with the policies of the Bush Administration. The opportunities evolving in Iraq today are of such an unprecedented nature and scope that no other existing firm has the necessary skills and experience to be effective both in Washington, D.C. and on the ground in Iraq."
A 'unique company'? You could say that. Who's the Chairman and Director of New Bridge? That would be Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's longtime right-hand-man and until about six months ago his head of the FEMA. Allbaugh was part of the president's so-called 'Iron Triangle' [ http://www.washingtonpost.com... ] -- the other two being Karl Rove and Karen Hughes. And now Allbaugh's running a company that helps your company get the sweetest contracts in Iraq? That sound right to you?
Visit the site [ http://www.newbridgestrategie... ] to see their "interactive map of Iraq [which] will show areas of opportunity in the post-war rebuilding effort for specific industries."
It sure as hell is "unbelievable" ... The Iraqi people have no voice in the Bush Regime's "privatization" (i.e. theft) of their own country! What kind of sordid and squalid "democracy" is this?!?! It is outrageous!
We know to whom the corrupt Bush Gang keep their obscene "promises" (Leave No Robber-Baron Behind) ... and it "ain't" the American or Iraqi peoples!
Government Review Exposes Cheney's Lies ... Veep is War-Profiteering from Iraq Misery
Cheney seems to be a serial liar ... he has repeatedly told lie after lie after lie, that the lap-dog, cheer-leading, right-winged media and press have either covered-up or buried in the "back pages" behind the story of the "three-legged dog".
A few weeks ago, Cheney claimed on "Meet the Press" that he has "no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had now for over three years." Of course, these are bold-faced lies ... but Cheney is used to getting-away with lying. Cheney lied about phony WMDs posing an "imminent threat" to our safety, and non-existant links between Saddam Hussein and 9/11; in order to conduct an illegal and immoral incursion into Iraq, where his corporate paymasters could recuperate many times over, the blood-money that they paid to the corrupt Veep.
It's time for Cheney to be fired and investigated for criminal activities. "Connect the Dots" and call for Cheney's resignation on http://www.congress.org ... He isn't fit to serve in the U.S. Government, but instead should be in a prison cell along with his corrupt buddies Bush, Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay, Rice, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.
In "Cheney's Ties to Halliburton - Deferred Compensation Package Counts, Report Indicates" by Mike Allen on http://www.washingtonpost.com... , he reports:
"A Congressional Research Service report released yesterday concluded that federal ethics laws treat Vice President Cheney's annual deferred compensation checks and unexercised stock options as continuing financial interests in the Halliburton Co.
Democrats have aggressively challenged Cheney's claim that he has no financial ties to Halliburton, despite those arrangements.
The Houston-based energy conglomerate has been awarded more than $2 billion in contracts for rebuilding Iraq, including one worth $1.22 billion that was awarded on a noncompetitive basis.
The report, from the law division of the congressional research arm of the Library of Congress, said deferred salary or compensation received from a private corporation -- as well as unexercised stock options -- may represent a continuing financial interest as defined by federal ethics laws.
The seven-page report, dated Monday, did not name Cheney or Halliburton, but addressed the general legal question. It was prepared at the request of Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who said Cheney should "stop dodging the issue with legalese, and acknowledge his continued financial ties with Halliburton to the American people."
Cheney, who was Halliburton's chairman and chief executive, has disclosed the payments and the 433,333 options. The report suggests no illegality.
Catherine Martin, Cheney's public affairs director, said: "The vice president has no financial interest in Halliburton. He has no stake in the company. He will in no way benefit from the rise or fall of Halliburton's stock price or the success or failure of the company."
Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sept. 14 that he has "no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had now for over three years." His assertion came during a discussion of Halliburton's contracts in Iraq. Cheney said he had "severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interests."
Democrats disputed that because Cheney received deferred compensation of $147,579 in 2001 and $162,392 in 2002, with payments scheduled to continue for three more years.
In response, Cheney's office said he had purchased an insurance policy so he would be paid even if Halliburton failed. And his office also has announced he has agreed to donate the after-tax proceeds from his stock options to three charities.
However, the congressional report said that neither the insurance policy nor the charity designation would change the public official's disclosure obligation.
The continuing controversy over Cheney's statement puts him in the position of drawing criticism to the White House. In the past, White House officials have considered him a reassuring figure for viewers and voters.
Bush issued what amounted to a correction of another statement Cheney made on "Meet the Press." When asked about the possibility of a connection between former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Cheney said, "We don't know." Three days later, Bush said in response to a question that the government has no evidence of such a link.
The liberal group American Family Voices has spent more than $300,000 to run ads about Halliburton's connection to the administration. The group said the commercials are effective for raising money. The ads -- on cable in Washington and on broadcast television in New Hampshire and battleground states of the Midwest -- began last week and will run for at least another week, the group said."
Dumbya's Trifecta of Foreign Policy Failures in the "War on Terrorism": Osama, Saddam & WMDs
Dumbya has hit the Trifecta of Failure, in his foreign policy in the "War on Terrorism": Osama, Saddam & WMDs. Where are they all?
(The Bushies' track-record on domestic policies represents a Plethora of Failures ... but that's for another blog ... and their track-record on other foreign policy issues is also an abysmal disaster ... but that's also for another blog ... ):
(1) Osama bin Forgotten
Osama bin Laden was responsible for building the Al Qaida network of terrorists, who flew airplanes into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and crashed in Pennsylvania, causing the deaths of over 3000 innocent Americans. [Bush has massacred over 3500 innocent Afghan civilians, between 7346-9146 innocent Iraqis, 17 journalists, and over 350 American & British soldiers.] We still don't know what the Bushies knew in advance of that horrific tragedy, and when they knew it, as they have thwarted investigations into the truth behind 9/11.
Dumbya vowed to "Get 'im Dead or Alive", and not to stop his hunt for Osama bin Laden until he was brought to justice. But Dumbya forgets his promises as soon as he finishes his bumbling rhetoric (kind 'a like O. J. Simpson's promise to find the "real" killers of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson) ... Osama bin Forgotten ...
Meanwhile, the Al Qaida network is growing in size, having successfully defeated Bush, by achieving their goals to : (i) Remove US Troops from Saudi Arabia; (ii) Create Discord and Havoc by Manipulating a Dumb-bunny President to Act like a Dictatorial Emperor; and, (iii) Recruit More Muslims to the Cause of Fighting America, having foreseen the Bushies' hypocritical and incompetent bungling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"There is also some evidence that in Iraq, Islamic radicals are making common cause with the Baath resistance to the American occupation. If so, the invasion of Iraq, which was supposed to prevent an alliance between secular Baathists and Islamic radicals, will have brought one into existence. This alliance won't necessarily threaten commuters in New York, but it will certainly endanger U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and it will make it even less likely that the Bush administration will get its way in that country."
(2) Saddam Hussein is Alive & Kicking
Saddam Hussein was used as a "convenient scape-goat" in a squalid diversionary tactic, by Dumbya, unable to defeat Al Qaida and failing to get Osama "dead or alive", as promised. Saddam Hussein posed no threat to the U.S., our allies, or his own neighbors ... Saddam Hussein hadn't threatened us ... the CIA confirmed that Saddam Hussein had no interest in harming the U.S.A., and was in fact, an enemy of Osama bin Laden. Saddam Hussein was a tyrant, and the Bush Regime ruthlessly figured that they could get away with lying to America ... Karl Rove, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz probably assumed that if the war was successful, their immorality and crimes would be "swept under the carpet".
Saddam Hussein's regime had nothing to do with Al Qaida, or any terrorist group that threatened the U.S.A. The invasion of Iraq (planned well in advance of 9/11) was useful to the PNAC insane vision of U.S. domination of the world, and to the Bush Regime's devotion to their corporate campaign contributors: Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, and Big Oil-- all of whom lust after the 2nd largest oil reserves in the world.
Dumbya invaded Iraq to divert attention from his failed economic policies raping America senseless, and failing to capture Osama bin Forgotten, and to achieve his sordid Business Plan to enrich his corporate cronies. The bungled war-turned-guerrilla-quag mire, has indeed, been the very cause of increasing terrorism and more recruitment of those muslims who don't want to be occupied by the American Corporate President & Robber-barons, who intend to rape Iraq of their businesses and oil.
"In his report, Pilger interviews Ray McGovern, a former senior CIA officer and friend of Bush's father and ex-president, George Bush senior.
McGovern told Pilger that going to war because of weapons of mass destruction "was 95 per cent charade."
Pilger also claims that six hours after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he wanted to "hit" Iraq and allegedly said "Go Massive ... Sweep it all up. Things related and not.", and [Condi] Rice said the US "must move to take advantage of these new opportunities" to attack Iraq and claim control of its oil."
Read "Unilateralism Disgraced - The price we all have to pay for Bush's botched tack" by Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay on http://www.prospect.org/print... .
(3) WMDs ... The Biggest Lie of Them All
Dumbya and his corrupt gang of houligans, for months, lied to America, lied to the U.N., and lied to the entire world. Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz should be fired today, and tried for treason, as it is a crime under the U.S. Constitution to wage war by misleading Congress.
In "The hunt for weapons of mass destruction yields - nothing : Intelligence claims of huge Iraqi stockpiles were wrong, says report", by Julian Borger in Washington, Ewen MacAskill and Patrick Wintour, on http://www.guardian.co.uk/Ira...,2763,1049228,00.html :
"An intensive six-month search of Iraq for weapons of mass destruction has failed to discover a single trace of an illegal arsenal, according to accounts of a report circulating in Washington and London. The interim report, compiled by the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group (ISG) of 1,400 weapons experts and support staff, will instead focus on Saddam Hussein's capacity and intentions to build banned weapons.
A draft of the report has been sent to the White House, the Pentagon and Downing Street, a US intelligence source said. It has caused such disappointment that there is now a debate over whether it should be released to Congress over the next fortnight, as had been widely expected.
"It will mainly be an accounting of programmes and dual-use technologies," said one US intelligence source. "It demonstrates that the main judgments of the national intelligence estimate (NIE) in October 2002, that Saddam had hundreds of tonnes of chemical and biological agents ready, are false."
A BBC report yesterday said that the survey group, which includes British and Australian investigators, had come across no banned weapons, or delivery systems, or laboratories involved in developing such weapons.
According to the BBC, the report will include computer programmes, files, paperwork and pictures suggesting Saddam's regime was developing a WMD programme.
Both Washington and London are likely to focus on documentary evidence that the Saddam regime was capable of producing weapons of mass destruction, and probably intended to once international scrutiny had faded.
But the report will fall far short of proving Iraq was an "imminent threat" even to its neighbours.
According to accounts of the ISG draft, captured Iraqi scientists gave the investigation, led by a former UN inspector, David Kay, an account of how weapons were destroyed, but those accounts refer to the period immediately after the 1991 Gulf war.
The NIE was put together last year by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies, and claimed that the Iraqi leader had chemical and biological stockpiles, and a continuing nuclear programme that could produce a homemade bomb before the end of the decade.
The NIE became a key document in the propaganda war by President Bush in the runup to the invasion of Iraq in March, although intelligence officials warned that many of the nuances and cautionary notes from original reports had been removed from the final documents.
The timing of this disclosure could hardly be worse for Tony Blair, days before the start of the Labour party conference.
Iraq has dogged the prime minister almost continuously for five months. Downing Street had been hoping for respite after Lord Hutton's inquiry, which closes today. Mr Blair put forward Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as the reason for going to war and has repeatedly insisted that the weapons would be found.
He told a sceptical Conservative MP in the Commons on April 30 that he was convinced that Iraq had such weapons and predicted that, when the report was published, "you and others will be eating some of your words".
Although Downing Street last night officially dismissed the leak as speculation, government sources confirmed it was accurate. A No 10 spokesman said: "People should wait. The reports today are speculation about an unfinished draft of an interim re port that has not even been presented yet. And when it comes it will be an interim report. The ISG's work will go on. He added: "Our clear expectation is that this interim report will not reach firm conclusions about Iraq's possession of WMD."
The government defence will be to stress that failure to find WMD does not mean that they do not exist.
Last night's leak will fuel the anti-war sentiment ahead of Saturday's demonstration in London for withdrawal of US and British troops from Iraq. It will also make it harder for Labour conference organisers to resist grassroots pressure for a debate on Iraq. The in terim report is at present pencilled in for publication next week but Labour, anxious to avoid it landing in the middle of its conference, is trying to get that changed.
In Washington, congressional aides said they still expected to hear from Dr Kay next week. He arrived back from Iraq last Wednesday and since then has been working on the report. The nuclear section of the survey group has also finished its work and left Iraq.
After addressing the Senate in July, Dr Kay claimed "solid evidence" was being gathered and warned journalists to expect "surprises". No such surprises appear to be in the draft.
The CIA took the unusual step of playing down expectations of the report yesterday.
"Dr Kay is still receiving information from the field. It will be just the first progress report, and we expect that it will reach no firm conclusions, nor will it rule anything in or out," the chief agency spokesman, Bill Harlow, said.
An intelligence official added yesterday that the timing of the report's release "had yet to be determined".
In London, a Foreign Office spokesman said: "It is David Kay's report. We do not have it. We will comment on it when it is presented. When it comes, it will be an interim report. ISG's work will continue. The reports are speculation about an unfinished draft of an interim report that has not yet even been presented yet."
David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector, said: "It's clear that the US and British governments wildly exaggerated the case for going to war."
But he added that the fact that the survey group had not found concrete evidence of weapons did not mean that the Baghdad regime did not have programmes to quickly reconstitute programmes and weapons at short notice. "I'm not surprised, given how incompetent this search has been. They've had bad relations with the [Iraqi] scientists from the start because they treated them all as criminals."
Many of the Iraqi scientists and officials who surrendered to US forces have been held in detention for months without contact with their families, despite assurances they would be well treated if they cooperated.
But recently the Bush administration, under mounting pressure to justify the invasion, has been trying to improve the incentives for former Saddam loyalists to provide information.
Reuters quoted a senior US official yesterday as saying that the former defence minister, Sultan Hashim Ahmed, had been given "effective" immunity in the hope he would provide information on Saddam's weapons programmes.
The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, at the United Nations general assembly, declined to comment on the report. "If people want evidence, they don't have to wait for Dr Kay's report. What they can do is look at the volumes of reports from the weapons inspectors going back over a dozen years including the final report from Unmovic on March 7 this year, which set out 29 separate areas of unanswered disarmament questions to Iraq," he said. "
Someone should remind the Bush Regime's spin-meisters and liars extraordinaries, that "unanswered disarmament questions" don't equate to "massive armaments of WMDs posing an 'imminent threat'" that could be launched in 45 minutes to wipe us all out!
Does Dumbya and his gang of corrupt and dangerously ignorant buffoons represent the smartest politicos we can dig up? God Help Us!
Condoleezza Rice has cleverly "packaged" herself in collusion with the neo-con global corporate empire (Big Oil - Chevron); insane ideologues with visions of global domination dancing in their pathological heads; neo-con political hacks and court jesters;-- all of whom seek another "useful idiot" (2008 Election) whose superficial "store-front" can bamboozle the ignorant American public, who can't see beyond the surface of appearances, and into the depths of character.
Rice is purposely placed in practically every photo-op with Bush ... and they go everywhere (? I hope not, for Laura's sake?) together, in order to prepare the ignorant populace for her eventual elevation into a position where she can carry-on the insane neo-con agenda on behalf of Corporations and "Project for the New American Century", to the peril of our citizens and the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Initially, their puppet Bush "worked" because in the aftermath of the unknown, ne'er-do-well's installation as Governor of Texas, (where his performance was pathetic), he was well-positioned to be selected and put-in-place as president by his Daddy's buddies on the Supreme Court, even though he lost the election. A lot of Americans were familiar with the name: "George Bush", so they didn't have to do much homework or ask many questions when he was unwillingly thrust upon us.
Condi Rice and the Case of the Big Swindle ... is the story of a corrupt and incompetent official, who deserves to be fired and possibly tried for betraying her oath of office. She is "let of the hook" for a variety of pathetic reasons, that the Bush Regime cynically exploits ... amongst which is her slavish devotion (not to the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law) but to the Bush family and Corporate Oil.
The big swindle by Condi Rice, can be demonstrated in three major areas:
(1) 9/11 happened under Rice's nose, although she was warned in advance of an imminent attack by Al Qaida, and did nothing to protect the American people by advising the airlines or the FAA of imminent dangers. Moreover, she has abused the fear and misery of 9/11, by cynically supporting an attack upon Iraq (... fabricating non-existant links with 9/11 ... lying about WMDs ... and, pretending that Saddam Hussein was linked with Al Qaida), based upon false pretexts.
"Both Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, and Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's closest adviser, made clear before September 11 2001 that Saddam Hussein was no threat - to America, Europe or the Middle East."
"Two months later, [July 2001] Condoleezza Rice also described a weak, divided and militarily defenceless Iraq. "Saddam does not control the northern part of the country," she said. "We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.""
(2) Condi Rice is dangerously ignorant of the problems existing between the Israelis and Palestinians, and her arrogance in believing herself superior to obtaining informed expert advice upon that long-standing conflict, has resulted in major diplomatic gaffs, and foolhardly policies.
Refer to "When ignorance is dangerous: The Case of Condi Rice" on http://www.aljazeerah.info/Op...%20editorials/2003%20Opin ion%20Editorials/Septembe r/24%20o/When%20ignorance %20is%20dangerous%20The%2 0Case%20of%20Condi%20Rice %20Gulf%20News.htm :
"It is said US President George Walker Bush values highly the analyses of National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice. Certainly her academic background leads one to believe that with such qualifications, her advise is worthy. While her tendency towards hawkishness is known, less well-publicised are her thoughts on US-Arab relations, in contrast to that with Israel.
"A senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is at present in Washington, D.C., representing a delegation from that country, doubtless to once again expound the views of the right-wing Israeli government to the already-converted hawkish members of the government and the Republican Party. Following a meeting with the delegation, Ms Rice observed that the construction of a fence between Israel and the West Bank "is inconsistent with US goals in the region". At face value, a perfectly reasonable statement to make, if somewhat soft on the strength of the feelings. However, Ms Rice then went on to say that while recognising the security concerns of the Israelis, it was extremely important that the barrier "not intrude on the lives of Palestinians".
"One wonders whether Ms Rice is just incredibly naïve or attempting some form of macabre humour at the expense of the Palestinians. If neither is true, then it can only be thought that she lacks awareness of just how much disruption the barrier is causing to the Palestinians. The partition of families, the destruction of farms and orchards, the inability of ordinary citizens to travel freely from their home to their place of work - all these and many more such incidents are daily creating havoc for the Palestinians. And yet, it seems, the US National Security Advisor, who has the ear of the president daily, does not know this. Just how frightening can US foreign policy get? "
(3) Rice has shown an arrogant contempt for the rule of law ... Bush's buddy, Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay, has a PhD in Economics, but had no morals and raped employees of their jobs; plundered assets; and, stole pension funds. Rice has a PhD in Political Science, but lacks character, moral fiber, and the wisdom to comprehend that she serves the American People, and not Chevron, and not the Emperor Bush Family.
"One good measure of this Administration's extremism is the steady drumbeat of criticism being leveled against it by leading establishment figures--many not known for being politically outspoken.
"Just the other day, Pulitzer-prize winner James McPherson, one of America's preeminent Civil War historians and the current President of the prestigious American Historical Association (AHA) published a blistering critique of President Bush and his national security adviser Condoleezza Rice in the September AHA newsletter.
"Among other charges, he accuses them of mis-using the term "revisionist historians" to derisively deflect criticism and denigrate a legitimate and essential activity of his profession.
""Neither Bush nor Rice offered a definition of this phrase," McPherson notes, "but their body language and tone of voice appeared to suggest that they wanted listeners to understand 'revisionist history' to be a consciously falsified or distorted interpretation of the past to serve partisan or ideological purposes in the present...The 14,000 members of this Association, however, know that revision is the lifeblood of historical scholarship. History is a continuing dialogue between the present and the past...There is no single, eternal, and immutable 'truth' about past events and their meaning. The unending quest of historians for understanding the past--that is 'revisionism'--is what makes history vital and meaningful."
""Without revisionism," McPherson argues, "we might be stuck with the images of Reconstruction after the American Civil War that were conveyed by D.W. Griffith's ' Birth of a Nation' and Claude Bowers's 'The Tragic Era'."
"Would President Bush and Condoleezza Rice wish to associate themselves with Southern political leaders of the 1950s who condemned Chief Justice Earl Warren and his colleagues as revisionist historians because their decision in Brown v Board of Education struck down the accepted version of history and law laid down by the Court in Plessy v Ferguson?..."
"McPherson reserves his real contempt for the alleged scholar on the Bush team--former Stanford University Provost and political scientist Rice. "The judgmental tone of Rice's derogatory reference to 'revisionist historians,'" McPherson observes, "brings to mind a review of her book The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army, 1948-1983, in the December 1985 issue of the American Historical Review...The reviewer claimed that Rice 'frequently does not sift facts from propaganda and valid information from disinformation or misinformation.' In addition, according to the reviewer, she 'passes judgments and expresses opinions without adequate knowledge of the facts" and her "writing abounds with meaningless phrases.'"
"Sound familiar? It does to McPherson, who concludes: "I am tempted to wonder, in the immortal words of Yogi Berra, whether we are experiencing deja vu all over again."
Condi Rice belongs to a gang of corrupt neo-cons in the Bush Regime, who are all arrogant, dishonest and consider themselves above the rule of law. They've all "packaged" themselves well ... but have been miserable failures who have betrayed our nation, in their corrupt grab for power, glory and wealth. It is time for Rice and her buddies, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz to go!
A Cynical Speech Delivered by a Cynical Regime to a Credulous World
The United States of America is the most powerful nation on this planet, today. Tomorrow may be a different story, as the European Union, China and Russia make plans to position themselves to be a counter-balance to the rogue regime they've witnessed commit the massacre of thousands in Iraq, when a corrupt neo-con cabal led by the "Useful Idiot" Bush assume power.
Bush read a cynical speech delivered by a cynical regime to a credulous world. I was astounded by his arrogance, deceptions, and contempt for all citizens who have a memory and critical faculties.
Bush's bizarre screed contained three major themes:
Firstly, 9/11 ... 9/11 ... 9/11 is cynically evoked in order to permit the U.S. and Israel to commit any atrocity desired by the neo-cons who will label anyone a "terrorist", who refuses to bow down and worship at the altar of the global corporate empire. Oddly, our American Revolutionary fore-fathers were labelled "terrorists" by the British, and condemned for creating chaos. I am sick and tired of the 9/11 tragedy being used and abused over-and-over again, in an insane attempt to justify destroying our U.S. Constitution, and waging illegal and immoral incursions into other countries that pose no threat to the U.S.A.
Having done the dirty deed in Iraq, Bush then demands that other nations step-up and provide cannon-fodder and big-bucks to bail him out of the mess he created. By the way, he rules (unilaterally) that Iraq won't be allowed their independence until He, Emperor Bush, decides it is the right moment; presumably after Halliburton, Carlyle Group, Bechtel, and Bil Oil, have plundered the guerrilla quagmire, for all it's worth.
Bush called Iraq under Saddam Hussein a "squalid, vicious tyranny", that He was right to destroy, because He "works for peaceful change" rather than "those who adopt methods of gangsters". Hmmm ... I haven't quite seen the "peaceful change" concept in the neo-con ideology of "Pre-emptive Warfare". But Bush believes that any regime that wastes its resources on building massive armaments, WMDs, and palaces for its' leaders, instead of on infrastructure, schools and hospitals, is evil. Perhaps the Bush Regime should take a look in the mirror... Ever visit his palace at Crawford, Texas, and then go down and see the crumbling infrastructure, lack of education and health care in Brownsville, Texas?
Meanwhile, the Defence Contractors with a vested interest in a bloated Military Industrial Complex, have provided cushy jobs to ex-Pentagon and ex-Defence Department Officials (e.g. obese George Shultz and a morass of ex-Generals) so they can deliver top-secret contracts bilking the American Taxpayer out of billions per year ($450 Billion, in excess of the next 18 richest nations combined), to enrich these war-profiteers and robber-barons.
Read "Journo claims proof of WMD lies: Pilger has evidence that Rice & Powell said in 2001, that Saddam Hussein Posed No Threat" on http://new.globalfreepress.co... . The invasion of Iraq was devised by the neo-con PNAC gang, comprising Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Perle, et al. long before 9/11, using Bush-the-Useful-Idiot, for the purposes of global domination by installing a neo-fascist corporate empire; enriching corporate cronies; and, enslaving the American and Iraqi people.
Secondly, Bush has the audacity to call for a fight against proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. Is this to apply to all nations of the world, except for the USA? Bush recently persuaded our rubber-stamp Congress to approve squandering billions on mini-nuclear weapons programme and other wasteful boon-doggles that won't protect us, but in fact, pose even greater dangers.
The neo-con psychotic ideologues lusting for global domination (PNAC), want the USA to squander trillions on an insane arms-build-up, to rule the world by force, and they want everyone else to disarm.
Read "Senate approves nuclear spending - Sen. Feinstein predicts Bush's policy will result in 'arms race'", by Ian Hoffman on http://www.oaklandtribune.com...,1413,82~1865~1637866,00.html .
Thirdly, Bush plays the "humanitarian card" ... it's hard to argue with fighting AIDs, disease, hunger, and of course, sex with little children ... Then he played the "slavery card" and condemned the trade in young children, women, and others. "Leave 'em all tearful and begging for more" was Gypsy Rose Lee's mantra.
No one is going to argue with helping the most vulnerable of the world, so like the "Flag, Mother, and Apple Pie" cliches, Bush ends with a crocodile-tear-jerking appeal, that was designed to make all the U.N. representatives give a hearty applause: Headline by Karl Rove: "UN Applaudes Bush" ...
The entire performance was a despicable charade, devised to gain support for a corrupt, bungling, and idiotic Bush Regime, who have used lies, deceit, and falsehoods to corrupt the U.S. Government and wage an illegal and immoral incursion-turned-bloody-g uerrilla-quagmire in Iraq.
Bush's hypocritical credo: "do as I say, not as I do"... as his family and that of the Bush regime are becoming richer and richer, while the rest of us suffer and sacrifice. Doesn't anyone else see the hypocrisy in their condemnation of a regime callous to the needs of their people?
Can Bush's Brain (Gen. Karl Rove & Cheney) fool all of the people all of the time? Nope, because some of us aren't fooled by the Bush Regime ... who are cynical manipulators perpetrating their "bait-and-switch" scam to rape America and Iraq.
Bush ended with "God Bless You All" ... I warn you God Help You All, who don't see past the Bush Regime's corrupt "shell game" of global corporate empire. The Bush Gang are ruthlessly pursuing their neo-con Business Plan, and it isn't going to make the world a better place, unless you're already on the "top of the heap".
The Bloody Consequences of the American and Iraqi Civil Wars ... What Now?
The worst American War was the US Civil War, with nearly 620,000 military dead—360,000 Union, 258,000 Confederate—the total of battle deaths and deaths from other causes, such as disease. More than 15 percent of those who served died in the war. Never again, not even in World War II, did our casualty rate rise to such a level. [Source: "Air Force Association: 'Casualties'" on http://www.afa.org/magazine/j... ]
Out of a total population of 31.4 million (27.5 free and 3.9 slave), over 3 million fought in the US civil war. [Source: "Population of U.S. 1860" on http://www.civilwarhome.com/p... ]
The Union armies had from 2,500,000 to 2,750,000 men. Their losses, by the best estimates:
Battle deaths: 110,070 Disease, etc.: 250,152 Total 360,222
The Confederate strength, known less accurately because of missing records, was from 750,000 to 1,250,000. Its estimated losses:
Battle deaths: 94,000 Disease, etc.: 164,000 Total 258,000
A long list of United States Mass Graves Sites (cemeteries) where the dead are buried or honored may be accessed on http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/cwc/ci... . At Gettysburg National Cemetary 3555 soldiers are buried.
In 1988, Saddam Hussein began the bloody massacre of his own people in his own civil war to prevent the Kurds from becoming independent. He reportedly killed between 50,000 and 100,000 people between that period until the aftermath of the Gulf War in 1991, when G. H. W. Bush 41, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the gang, sat back, did nothing (although they had encouraged the Kurds to rise-up and fight Saddam Hussein) and watched while Saddam Hussein massacred his own people to avoid Iraq breaking apart, with an independent Kurdish state. [Source: "Human Rights Violations in Iraq" on http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki... ]
Saddam Hussein was not noble, he was a tyrant ... Bush is not noble, he is drunk with power and contemptuous of the rule of law ... Kim Jong Il is not "perfect", neither is Mugabe, neither is the Saudi Royal Family ... neither is anyone who wages an illegal and immoral war upon another sovereign nation, for no good purpose. Bush's War on Iraq, was not waged to protect the U.S.A. Saddam Hussein had no intention of attacking anyone, not the U.S.A. and not his neighbors. He imposed his will with an iron-fist, much like Bush, Cheney, Rice, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, are attempting to do in America and Iraq today.
1.97% of Americans died in the bloody U.S. Civil War. 0.4% of Iraqis died in Iraq's Civil War. Our American Civil War was a far more bloody massacre of human life, than was Saddam Hussein's Civil War. When is war noble? When should war be waged? What are the right and proper motives for war? The Bush Regime has shown us the wrong motives, the wrong reasons and the wrong path ... they lied to wage war and this is a criminal act under the U.S. Constitution.
The Bush Gang has publicly visited the mass graves of those killed by Saddam Hussein. Are they as shocked and outraged when they visit the mass graves at Appomattox, Gettysburg, Fredericksburg, or other cemeteries of our own Americans slaughtered to keep the south from becoming an independent state. Are Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz et al. as shocked at the mass graves of over 7,800 Iraqis massacred by Americans since the onslaught of their own bloody war-turned-guerrilla-quag mire in Iraq?
The great lie, is that we are helping the Iraqi people. Wolfy Wolfowitz said this weekend that "The United States waged war for three reasons, he said: the concern over Iraq's drive to obtain chemical, biological and nuclear weapons; Iraq's connections to terrorism; and Mr. Hussein's reign of terror that Mr. Wolfowitz said was responsible for perhaps a million Iraqi deaths.
"It was a human rights nightmare," he [Wolfowitz] said, emphasizing a reason that was not a principal one the administration articulated before the war, but has become so since." [Source: "Wolfowitz Stands Fast Amid the Antiwarriors", by Eric Schmitt on http://www.nytimes.com/2003/0... ]
There is no evidence of a million Iraqi deaths caused by Saddam Hussein's Regime ... another Wolfowitz Big Lie and Deception to lull ignorant Americans into supporting an immoral and illegal war-turned-guerrilla-quag mire in Iraq. The Bush Regime's Big Lie about WMDs didn't pan out ... now they've come-up with humanitarian reasons that are phony as well. Saddam Hussein's Civil War, like our own American Civil War, was a bloody affair, but it is not factual that Saddam Hussein continued to massacre thousands of his citizens once he had surpressed the Kurdish rebellion.
Thus far, the "Mission Accomplished" by the corrupt Bush Regime, is the slaughter of over 300 American Soldieres, over 50 British Soldiers, 17 Journalists and 7798 innocent Iraqi civilians. Thousands of Americans have been injured and maimed, and tens of thousands of Iraqis are injuired and maimed-- all living in misery. [Source: "Iraq Body Count" on http://www.iraqbodycount.net/... and "Casualties in Iraq: The Cost of Occupation" on http://www.antiwar.com/ewens/... ]
Moreover, the Bush Regime lied about the cost to the American Taxpayer, that is now in excess of $74 Billion squandered thus far, and our rubber-stamp Congress about to authorise an additional $87 Billion in blood-money, without demanding the resignations of Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz who lied about the ease with which victory would be achieved, and that oil would pay for the reconstruction costs.
In addition, Bush, Cheney & Rice, have awarded lavish, top-secret (no bid, no audit, no cap) contracts to their corporate paymasters, Halliburton, Carlyle Group, Bechtel, while Chevron & Big Oil are waiting in the wings to grab Iraq's Oil. The war-profiteering by these corrupt war mongers is despicable. The corporations and richest Americans awarded massive tax cuts by this "take-the-money-and-run" Bush Regime aren't being asked to forego any of their gluttonous bonuses & excessive riches. The only Americans asked to make a sacrifice are the poor, low-income, middle-class and fixed-income retirees.
This tragic period we are living through today, will be recorded as one of the most ugly, corrupt and misguided, in the beginning of the end of the history of the American Empire. America is now seen as the rogue regime, by a world of nations and peoples heart-broken and disgusted at the betrayal of the best of our values, by a group of selfish and greedy neo-con crazies with an insane plan (PNAC) for global domination.
General Robert E. Lee described the cost aptly from a vantage point just south of this ridge during the Battle of Fredericksburg, during the US Civil War: "It is well war is so terrible -- we should grow too fond of it." I suspect that Lee, Grant and Lincoln himself, would weep for our nation, as they watched the horrific events perpetrated by the Bush Regime Liars and War-profiteers who are very, very fond of it.
ACT NOW!!! Please Urge Congress That Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz Should Go!!!
I urge you to please contact Congress NOW, to demand that Rumsfeld be asked to resign. Moreover, since you are provided an optional space to add your own comments, please call for the resignations of Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Bolton and Feith, all of whom betrayed their oaths of office by lying to the American People, and, ask Congress to commence impeachment hearings on Bush and his regime's crimes against humanity.
You may also want to demand that Bush's immoral tax cuts for corporations and the richest-of-the-rich be repealed in order to provide for improved infrastructure, health care, education, and other services, that the Bush Regime's Hypocrites call upon for Iraq, but don't believe that we Americans merit.
ACT NOW reports:
"Having elbowed the State Department aside and demanded full authority for overseeing the invasion and reconstruction of Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should be held accountable for the problems facing the US occupation, which include mounting US and Iraqi casualties, an increasingly sophisticated insurgency, rampant street crime and costs exceeding one billion dollars a week.
The Nation said it last April and it's more true than ever before: "The Defense Secretary should resign--now. Although George W. Bush is ultimately responsible for the catastrophe unfolding in Iraq, it is Donald Rumsfeld who is the Cabinet member directly charged with planning and carrying out the nation's wars." And he should take Wolfowitz, Cheney and Perle with him.
As the Washington Post reported last week, Rumsfeld appears to be losing political support most dramatically on Capitol Hill, where many in Congress, even some conservative Republicans, are expressing concern about his handling of Iraq and his continued in-fighting with many in the military establishment. "Winning the peace is a lot different than winning the war," said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.).
A number of public interest groups, including Move.On, Win Without War and True Majority, have banded together to help channel public outrage over Rumsfeld and his policies to the pols in Washington, who may finally be ready to hear this message. Click here: http://www.moveon.org/firerum... , to send a letter to your reps urging them to support calls for Rumsfeld's resignation and to withhold funding Bush's $87 billion blank-check request unless his Iraq policy is dramatically altered. "
Project Censored's Annual List of "Top Ten Censored Stories"
Our media and press in the United States of America, has become a "Useful Idiot" of the government, and does not sufficiently inform the public upon issues that might upset the Global Corporate Empire's Rulers.
"Project Censored", a program in its 27th year that collects under-reported stories from around the country and compiles a list of the top 10 "censored stories" as well as 15 runner-ups. Refer to "US Plan for Global Domination Tops Project Censored's Annual List", by Kari Lydersen on http://www.alternet.org/story... , for more background.
The "Top Ten Censored Stories" followed by the 15 runner-ups:
1. The Neoconservative Plan for Global Dominance
Sources: The Sunday Herald (9/15/02), Harper's Magazine (10/02), Mother Jones (3/03), Pilger.com (12/12/02)
Project Censored has decided that the incredible lack of public knowledge of the US plan for total global domination, represented by the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) represents the media's biggest failure over the past year. The PNAC plans advocated the attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan and other current foreign policy objectives, long before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Chillingly, one document published by the PNAC in 2000 actually describes the need for a "new Pearl Harbor" to persuade the American public to accept the acts of war and aggression the administration wants to carry out. "But most people in the country are totally unaware that the PNAC exists," said Peter Phillips, a professor at Sonoma State and major domo of The Project Censored Project, "and that failure has aided and abetted this disaster in Iraq."
According to Project Censored authors. "In the 1970s, the United States and the Middle East were embroiled in a tug-of-war over oil. At the time, the prospect of seizing control of Arab oil fields by force was considered out of line. Still, the idea of Middle East dominance was very attractive to a group of hard-line Washington insiders that included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, William Kristol and other operatives. During the Clinton years they were active in conservative think tanks like the PNAC. When Bush was elected they came roaring back into power.
In an update for the Project Censored Web site, Mother Jones writer Robert Dreyfuss notes "There was very little examination in the media of the role of oil in American policy towards Iraq and the Persian Gulf, and what coverage did exist tended to pooh-pooh or debunk the idea that the war had anything to do with it."
2. Homeland Security Threatens Civil Liberties
Sources: Global Outlook (Winter 2003), Rense.com (2-11-03 & Global Outlook, Volume 4), Center for Public Integrity (publicintegrity.org) Corporate Media partial coverage: Atlanta Journal-constitution (5/11/03/), The Tampa Tribune (3/28/03), Baltimore Sun (2/21/03)
While the media did cover the Patriot Act, and the so-called Patriot Act II, which was leaked to the press in February 2003, there wasn't sufficient analysis of some of the truly dangerous and precedent-setting components of both acts. This goes especially for the shocking provision in Patriot II that would allow even US citizens to be treated as enemy combatants and held without counsel, simply on suspicion of connections to terrorism.
"Under section 501 a US citizen engaging in lawful activity can be picked off the streets or from home and taken to a secret military tribunal with no access to or notification of a lawyer, the press or family." This would be considered justified if the agent 'inferred from the conduct' suspicious intention.
Fortunately Patriot I is under major duress in Congress as both parties are supporting significant revisions. Yet, President Bush, realizing that he and his unpopular Attorney General John Ashcroft are losing popular support, is threatening a veto, and has aggressively gone on the offense in favor of the repugnant Patriot II. Let's see if the media has learned its lesson from Patriot I. Will it probe the new legislation much more thoroughly than the first round, which received inadequate analysis post 9/11?
3. US Illegally Removes Pages from Iraq UN Report
Source: The Humanist and ArtVoice (March/April 2003), first covered by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!
Story three is the shockingly under-reported fact that the Bush administration removed a whopping 8,000 of 11,800 pages from the report the Iraqi government submitted to the UN Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency. The pages included details on how the US had actually supplied Iraq with chemical and biological weapons and the building blocks for weapons of mass destruction. The pages reportedly implicate not only Reagan and Bush administration officials but also major corporations including Bechtel, Eastman Kodak and Dupont and the US Departments of Energy and Agriculture.
In comments to Project Censored, Michael Niman, author of one of the articles cited, noted that his article was based on secondary sources, mostly from the international press, since the topic received an almost complete blackout in the US press. Referring to his first Project Censored nomination in 1989, in which he went into the bush in Costa Rica, he said, "With such thorough self-censorship in the US press, reading the international press is now akin to going into the remote bush."
4. Rumsfeld's Plan to Provoke Terrorists
Source: CounterPunch (11/1/02)
Moscow Times columnist and CounterPunch contributor Chris Floyd developed this story off a small item in the LA Times in October 2002 about secret armies the Pentagon has been developing around the world. "The Pro-active, Preemptive Operations Group (or "Pee-Twos') will carry out secret missions designed to 'stimulate reactions' among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to 'counterattack' by US forces," Floyd wrote. "The Pee-Twos will thus come in handy whenever the Regime hankers to add a little oil-laden real estate or a new military base to the Empire's burgeoning portfolio. Just find a nest of violent malcontents, stir 'em with a stick, and presto: instant justification for whatever level of intervention-conquest-rap ing that you might desire."
Floyd notes that while the story received considerable play in international and alternative media, it has hardly been mentioned in the mainstream US press.
"At first glance, this decided lack of interest might seem a curious reaction, given the American media's insatiable – and profitable – obsession with terrorism," he told Project Censored. "But the media's equally intense abhorrence of moral ambiguity – especially when it involves possible American complicity in mayhem and murder – makes the silence easier to understand."
5. The Effort to Make Unions Disappear
Sources: Z Magazine, (11/20/02), War Times (10/11 2002), The Progressive (11/03), The American Prospect (3/03)
The war on terrorism has also had the convenient side benefit for conservatives of making it easier for employers and the government to suppress organized labor in the name of national security. For example, in October 2002 Bush was able to force striking International Longshore and Warehouse Union members back to work in the San Francisco Bay Area in the name of national safety.
Chicago journalist Lee Sustar noted that labor coverage is usually woefully inadequate in the mainstream media, even though union membership, while shrinking, still makes up a national constituency 13 million strong.
"Twenty years ago every paper had a beat reporter on labor who knew what was going on," he said. "Today that's not the case. Besides a token story on Labor Day or a human-interest story here and there, you don't see coverage of labor. You only see coverage from the business side." said Sustar, Although Steven Greenhouse, the labor reporter for the New York Times is one obvious exception to Sustar's claim.
Ann Marie Cusac, whose story for The Progressive about the decimation of unions was cited, said she thinks the position of organized labor is worse than it has ever been.
She combed National Labor Relations Board files for egregious examples of the lengths to which employers will go to bust unions. And she found a lot. "They had a woman with carpal tunnel syndrome pulling nails out of boards above her head, because they wanted her to go on disability so she couldn't organize," she said. "But she did it, even knowing she might disable herself. The willingness of people to sacrifice, because they know how important it is to unionize, is a sign of hope."
6. Closing Access to Information Technology
Source: Dollars and Sense (9/02)
The potential closing of access to digital information is a development that could have a harmful effect on the powerful role online media plays in side stepping media gate keepers and keeping people better informed. "The FCC and Congress are currently overturning the public-interest rules that have encouraged the expansion of the Internet up until now," writes Arthur Stamoulis, whose story was published in Dollars and Sense.
The Internet currently provides a buffet of independent and international media sources to counter the mostly homogenous offerings of mainstream US media, especially broadcast.
As the shift to broadband gains momentum, cable companies are trying hard to dominate the market, and eventually control access.
In 2002 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decided to allow cable networks to avoid common carrier requirements. Now the giant phone companies, who offer the competitive DSL services, want the same freedoms to control access to their lines. In the long run, instead of the thousands of small ISP services to choose from, the switch from dial-up to broadband means that users will have less and less choice over who provides their internet access.
While the media finally woke up and gave significant coverage to the recent public rebellion against the FCC, which voted to increase media concentration even further, there has been scant coverage to the problem that the Internet as we now it might be lost.
7. Treaty Busting By the United States
Sources: Connections (6/02), The Nation (4/02), Ashville Global Report (6/20-26/02), Global Outlook (Summer 2002)
"The US is a signatory to nine multilateral treaties that it has either blatantly violated or gradually subverted," says Project Censored. These include the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Treaty Banning Antipersonnel Mines and the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. Just as the Bush administration is crowing about the possibility of Saddam Hussein manufacturing nuclear or chemical weapons, it is violating treaties meant to curb these threats, including the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Commission.
8. US/British Forces Continue Use of Depleted Uranium Weapons Despite Massive Evidence of Negative Health Effects
Sources: The Sunday Herald (3/30/03), Hustler Magazine (6/03), Children of War (3/03)
The eighth story on the list deals with another subject that victims have tried to get into the mainstream media for over a decade – the US's use of depleted uranium in Iraq, in both the recent invasion and in the Gulf War. Depleted uranium (DU) was also used in Afghanistan, Kosovo and Bosnia.
The writers cited, including the hard-core porn magazine Hustler, note that cancer rates have skyrocketed in Iraq since the first Gulf War, most likely because of the massive contamination of the soil with DU from the explosive, armor-piercing munitions. US soldiers are also victims of this travesty, suffering Gulf War syndrome and other ailments that many feel sure are linked to their exposure to DU.
Reese Erlich, a freelance journalist who reported on the topic for a syndicated radio broadcast and related web site report, said that the federal government has dealt with the issue of DU the way the tobacco industry deals with its liability problems. "They'll fog the issue so no one can say for sure what's happening," he said. "They'll commission studies so they can say, 'There are conflicting reports,' 'We need more information.'"
He noted that while the US media is quiet about the issue, it is a hot topic in the international press. "When you get outside the US, the media is much more critical," he said. "They refer to it as a weapon of mass destruction. This will be a legacy the US has left in Iraq. Long after the electricity is repaired and the oil wells are pumping, children will be getting cancer. The US knew this would happen, it can't claim ignorance."
9. In Afghanistan: Poverty, Women's Rights and Civil Disruption Worse then Ever
Sources: The Nation (10/14/02), Left Turn (3-4/03), The Nation (4/29/02), Mother Jones (7-8/02) Mainstream Coverage: Toronto Star (3/2/03)
Though his work isn't cited here, Erlich also reported on the topic of the ninth story on the list, the continuing poverty, civil disruption and repression of women in Afghanistan. While the country has virtually dropped off the radar screen in the US press and public consciousness, it is suffering its worst decade of poverty ever. Warlords and tribal fiefdoms continue to rule the country, and women are as repressed as ever, contrary to the feel-good images of burqa-stripping that have been broadcast in the media here.
"Reporters by and large don't go to Afghanistan to report on what they see," said Erlich, who spent several weeks reporting in the country. "They go to the state department officials, so everything is filtered through these rose-colored glasses, saying things are getting better. But they're not."
10. Africa Faces New Threat of New Colonialism
Source: Left Turn (7-8/02), Briarpatch, Vol. 32, No. 1, Excerpted from The CCPA Monitor, (10/02), New Internationalist (1-2/03)
While Afghanistan is being essentially ignored, the tenth story on the list shows how African countries are getting plenty of attention from the US – but not the kind of attention they need. These stories deal with the formation in June, 2002 of the New Partnership for Africa's Development, or NEPAD, by a group of leaders from the world's eight most powerful countries (the G8) who claim to be carrying out an anti-poverty campaign for the continent. But the group doesn't include the head of a single African nation, and critics charge that the plan is more about opening the continent to international investment and looting its resources than fighting poverty.
"NEPAD is akin to Plan Colombia in its attempt to employ Western development techniques to provide economic opportunities for international investment," says Project Censored.
The Project Censored awards ceremony will take place Oct. 4 in San Rafael, Calif. For tickets or more information, visit the Web site at http://www.projectcensored.or... .
The 15 stories cited as runners-up to the top ten most censored stories of the year are the following:
#11: U.S. Implicated in Taliban Massacre #12: Bush Administration Behind Failed Military Coup in Venezuela #13: Corporate Personhood Challenged #14: Unwanted Refugees a Global Problem #15: U.S. Military's War on the Earth #16: Plan Puebla-Panama and the FTAA #17: Clear Channel Monopoly Draws Criticism #18: Charter Forest Proposal Threatens Access to Public Lands #19: U.S. Dollar vs. the Euro: Another Reason for the Invasion of Iraq #20: Pentagon Increases Private Military Contracts #21: Third World Austerity Policies: Coming Soon to a City Near You #22: Welfare Reform Up For Reauthorization, but Still No Safety Net #23: Argentina Crisis Sparks Cooperative Growth #24: Aid to Israel Fuels Repressive Occupation in Palestine #25: Convicted Corporations Receive Perks Instead of Punishment
The War-Profiteers Card Deck - Shuffle the Deck & Pick Your Favorite Robber-Baron!!!
Know your War-Profiteers Card Deck ... Visit the "Learn About These War-Profiteers and War-Mongers" on the web-site devoted to justice for our planet, by the Ruckus Society, a 501c3 non-profit organization at: http://www.warprofiteers.com/... .
[Learn more about the Ruckus Society, committed to non-violent social change, at their home on the web at : http://ruckus.org/ ]
The War-Profiteers Card Deck, contains each of the 4 suits, representing a category of war profiteers & war mongers:
SPADES: - Oil, gas, and energy companies
* Ace of Spades: WTO, and their King: G. H. W. Bush 41, and the rest of the pack of corrupt corporate robber-barons ...
HEARTS: - US government officials (because they love you)
* Ace of Hearts: Export Credit Agencies, and their King: Veep Dick Cheney, and the rest of the pack of political whores selling-out America to the highest bidder ...
CLUBS: - Military and defense contractors
*Ace of Clubs: International money Fund, and their King: Joe Lopez, and the rest of the pack of bloated military industrial complex fear-mongers & thugs proliferating massive WMDs ...
DIAMONDS: - Heads of industry, finance, media, policy, and hype
* Ace of Diamonds: The World Bank Group, and their King: George Shultz, and the rest of the pack of court-jesters and criminals on the take who profit from death and misery ...
And Who Do You Think is the Joker of the Pack? But Of Course, the Buffoon & Puppet: George W. Bush 43!
I encourage you to visit the web-site on http://www.warprofiteers.com/... , and discover the cast of familiar corporate robber-barons, political hacks & whores, ghoulish thugs in the "bowels" of neo-torture chambers, and blood-lustful neo-cons, raping America and Iraq, in order to enrich their neo-feudal oligarchy and their global corporate empire, written down in their gospel according to PNAC (Project for the New American Century).
Bush Death Toll Climbs to 350+ US & British Soldiers in Today's Ambush Killing More Americans
Bush's Death Toll in Iraq climbs to over 350+ US & British Soldiers, plus 17 Journalists, and between 6131 and 7849+ innocent Iraqi civilians [Source: http://www.antiwar.com/ewens/... ]. The UK Guardian reports that up to 8 American soldiers were killed today in an ambush in the Iraqi town of Khaldiyah, west of the capital Baghdad [Source: "US troops 'killed in Iraq ambush'" on http://www.guardian.co.uk/Ira...,2763,1044840,00.html ].
In addition, over 1478 Americans have officially been injured in Bush's guerrilla quagmire, but there are reports that in fact, many more US Soldiers are casualties of war, than are being disclosed to the public [Source: "America's hidden battlefield toll: New figures reveal the true number of GIs wounded in Iraq" on http://www.occupationwatch.or... , reports "more than 6,000 American servicemen have been evacuated for medical reasons since the beginning of the war, including more than 1,500 American soldiers who have been wounded, many seriously" ...]
The death toll and misery that the greedy, arrogant Bush Regime has brought to Iraq and the entire world, in order to enrich their corporate cronies is surely a Crime Against Humanity. To discover who benefits from the Bushies' illegal and immoral warmongering, read:
(1) "The Price of Freedom in Iraq and Power in Washington", by Ceara Donnelley and William D. Hartung, on http://www.worldpolicy.org/pr... , which outlines the Bushies' corporate cronies, given no-bid, no-cap, and no-audit multi-billion dollar contracts.
(2) "Feith-Based Initiative", by Al Kamen, on http://www.washingtonpost.com... , which reports on the fat, juicy contracts awarded by Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy and head of -- what else? -- reconstruction matters in Iraq, to his own law firm Zell, Goldberg & Co.
(3) "We Stand Our Ground", by William Rivers Pitt, on http://www.tompaine.com/featu... , in which he cites amongst other Bush cronies, Daddy Bush's Carlyle Group, a private investment house, that supplies massive armaments, and is making a fortune.
(4) "Corporations are the Only Victors in Iraq", by Devin Nordberg, on http://www.guerrillanews.com/... , reports that Bush's Executive Order 13303 grants complete legal immunity to transnational oil companies operating in Iraq, and the grab for oil and loot in Iraq.
(5) "The Occupation Runs Out of Gas: It Was the Oil and It Is Like Vietnam", by Stan Goff, on http://www.counterpunch.com/g... , points out the immoral motives behind Bush's Iraqi guerrilla quagmire.
The Bushies are having the time-of-the-lives, relishing the war-booty and loot, that they along with their corrupt corporate cronies, campaign contributors, "top dogs" and "fat cats", have swindled out of America and Iraq. American taxpayers (working class -- not corporations & wealthiest 5% awarded massive tax cuts by the Bushies) are being scammed out of $166 Billion to pay for an unnecessary war, and the Iraqi people are being conned out of their Oil: re-distributed into the pockets of the Bushies & their War-Profiteers. Get your own War-Profiteers Card Deck on http://www.warprofiteers.com/... , to remind yourself who is benefiting from this ugly blood-letting.
Meanwhile, human beings are dying daily in Iraq, and being maimed and injured ... and the misery of occupation can be seen on the faces of those who lose their family members, and are lying in hospital beds with no legs, no arms, in agony ... But we are all comforted in the knowledge that this carnage is waged in the name of "freedom" and that "no price is too high": especially when so many like Bush's Carlyle Group, Cheney's Halliburton, Rice's Chevron, Feith's Law Firm, Rumsfeld's Defence Contractors, Wolfowitz's PNAC & Neo-Fascist AEI, and other Bush Paymasters, Will Be Made So Very Happy and So Very Rich.
We should also be very comforted by the Bush Gang's "compassionate" message of condolence to the families of lost loved ones, and those maimed and injured for life: "Stuff Happens".
Does the Bush Regime Really Support Univeral Health Care? You Bet! But, For Whom?
Does the Bush Regime really support Universal Health Care? You bet! But, For Whom? Ooopppsss, the punch-line is coming-up, folks ...
The Bushies are squandering American Taxpayer Dollars (over $74 Billion thus far, at $4 Billion/Month ... with no end in sight), and Bush has the audacity to demand an additional $87 Billion, while we have pressing needs here at home as our citizens our suffering, from lack of jobs, lack of health care, lack of services, and a deteriorating infrastructure.
The dire needs of American citizens are ignored by the callous and corrupt Bush Regime, who lecture us all on our duty to sacrifice to provide these benefits to the Iraqi people-- ooopppsss ... except that the U.S. corporations and the richest among us aren't supposed to bear any sacrifice-- nope, we can't have the Bushies and their buddies like Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay foregoing their champagne brunches, can we! That is just too cruel to contemplate! It is up to us poor working slobs to struggle, as neo-fascists like Sen. Rick Santorum said recently "Making people struggle a little bit is not necessarily the worst thing" on http://www.workingforchange.c... . When will the obese Bushies and their corporate cronies who embezzle hundreds of millions a year from pension funds, employees & taxpayers, be asked to "struggle a little bit"?.
The combined appropriation of $165 Billion for Bush's unnecessary, bungled war-turned-guerrilla-quag mire in Iraq, would pay for more than the Total Cost Of The First 6 Years Of The Medicare Prescription Drug Proposal [Source: Congressional Budget Office]. The $74 Billion wasted on death and destruction thus far in Iraq, would have paid for 22,845,051 children could be provided with a year of health care. [Source: Cost of War on http://www.costofwar.com/ ]
With 45 Million Americans lacking health care insurance, the total appropriate of $165 Billion demanded by the corrupt Bush Regime to play their insane war-games, would more than ensure that all Americans are able to obtain health care. The repeal of Bush's immoral tax cuts and lavish gifts for corporations and the wealthiest 5% neo-feudal oligarchy, would fund Universal Health Care, into the foreseeable future.
Apparently "no price is too high" when it comes to propping up the Bushies' popularity ratings, through instigating fear, terrorism, bloody wars and mayhem-- but financing decent public education and health care are only good enough for the Iraqi people, while we Americans, according to the Bush Doctrine, don't deserve it!?!?!
This summer, during US Civilian Administrator L. Paul Bremer's mendacious propaganda tour in the USA, he bragged [Charlie Rose Show] that over 200 universities & schools were re-opened for the young to attend school, and hospitals all over Iraq, were operational for Iraqis needing health care services.
Last night, Condi Rice told Ted Koppel on Nightline, that for a country to spend massive amounts on armaments, weaponry, palaces for the rich, and deny their own people by not investing in infrastructure and health care for their citizenry was evil. I thought that Bush would fire her for disloyalty ... but then it became clear she was referring to Saddam Hussein and not her idiot boss.
It is amusing that Americans don't catch the irony of such hypocritical rhetoric spewed by the Bush Liars, such as Bush himself, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Bremer, Powell, Wolfowitz, et al. -- who condemn Saddam Hussein for denying those very services needed by his citizens and instead "taking-the-money-and-run ning", and yet, the Bushies commit identical crimes. (Who said "Beware of choosing your enemies carefully, for you shall become like them?" It sure applies to The Bushies=Saddam Husseins. Of course, I've always thought I prefer a Smart Enemy to a Stupid Friend ... Beware of Bush's Friendship, my fellow Americans!) Visit Bush's Crawford palace, and then take a little trek to Brownsville, TX, and talk to the poor folks lacking proper infrastructure, indoor plumbing, public education, and health care.
Refer to "Universal Health Care - A Reality for Iraqis, but Not Americans?" on http://www.tblog.com/template... . The U.S.A. is funding the re-building and infrastructure costs of Iraq, including public schools, universal health care, and other services, that the Bushies deny America!
The majority of Americans have demanded a Universal Health Care System, even if it means repealing the Bushies' insane "Saddam-Hussein-style" tax cuts for the corporate robber-barons, and richest-of-the-rich "top dogs" and "fat cats". Refer to "Majority of Americans Call for Universal Health Care" on http://www.tblog.com/template... .
Perhaps the United Nations should request that Europe invade the United States to overturn the corrupt Bush Regime, and save our people from the evil of those who over-spend massively on armaments, weaponry, and palaces, in order to provide our citizens with the basic needs required to live decent lives.
The U.S.A. obscenely squanders over $450 Billion/annum on the bloated Military Industrial Complex, more than the next 18 richest countries combined! We are not funding our own infrastructure, public school systems, or universal health care for our citizens.
It sounds like Bremer and Rice would be supportive of such a U.N. Resolution authorising a Regime Change in the U.S.A. to "free" Americans from the evils of the Bush Regime, who squander our resources on themselves, their rich corporate cronies and fat campaign contributors, instead of to better the lives of our citizens!
Bush Regime's "Sexed-Up" Bushit is Supported by Trifecta of "Useful Idiots"
Are the Bush Regime's priorities "sexed-up" or simply "bushit"? Or both? ... They are sadly supported by a trifecta of "useful idiots".
The United Kingdom has been forced to publicly confront the "exaggerations" and "deceptions" by the Blair government run-amok in his zeal to play war-games on the world stage with Bush. Blair was warned in advance, that Saddam Hussein posed no threat to other countries, and should the U.S.A. & U.K. invade Iraq, the war itself would instigate increasing terrorism, making the world less safe.
The Bush Regime and poodle-Blair desperately wanted warfare, for:-- Glory? Their delusions of grandeur made them fantasize themselves as neo-Churchills ... Power? The neo-con ideologues want Pax-Americana & PNAC (Project for the New American Century - neo-hiterlian hegemony) ... Money? Follow the money: Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Lockheed Martin, Chevron, BP, etc. are popping-open the champagne as they celebrate the war-profiteering, war-booty, looting and rape of America and Iraq.
America hasn't had to face the fact that we've been bamboozled, conned & scammed, by Sexed-Up, Bushit propaganda, because the Bush Regime hit the Trifecta of "Useful Idiots":
(1) Ignorant public, with 7 out of 10 Americans actually believing the bogus lie that Saddam Hussein was somehow involved in 9/11 ... One wonders, if Cheney spewed bushit that Clinton & Lewinsky planned the 9/11 attack, whether or not 10 out of 10 would blindly nod like dumb sheep. (Read "Cheney link of Iraq, 9/11 challenged" by Anne E. Kornblut and Bryan Bender on http://www.boston.com/news/na... )
Instead of educating our public, the Bush Regime ruthless exploits their ignorance and plays on their fears, immorally using them to achieve pernicious objectives.
Why don't Americans show true courage and face the truth of the atrocities committed in their name? Where is America's sense of decency?
(2) Compliant and cheer-leading media and press, (intimidated by Herr Fuhrer Rove) who genuflect in front of the big liars, Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Wolfowitz, Bolton, Feith, and the neo-con court jesters. (Read "Amanpour: CNN Practiced Self-Censorship" by Peter Johnson on http://www.commondreams.org/h... )
Instead of respecting the right of the media and press to inform the population, the Bush Regime uses neo-fascist outlets like Rupert Murdoch's Fox Network to pass-along lies and propaganda. They intimidate and coerce other media outlets to act as cheer-leaders, accusing them of aiding and abetting the enemy, if they dare to question the Bush Regime's Sexed-Up Bushit.
Where are the courageous journalists willing to stand in opposition to tyranny? Why don't the new agencies inform the public on the daily horrors in Iraq? (Refer to Robert Fisk's reports from Iraq on http://www.robert-fisk.com )
(3) Cowardly rubber-stamp Congress that bows reverently to the corrupt and immoral Bush Regime's demands to squander lives and treasure to enrich their corporate cronies. Congressional collaborators claim that it's good for people to "struggle": Apparently it's good for poor and working people to live miserable lives in order for the corporate robber-barons and obese "top dogs" and "fat cats" to live like Emperors Tiberius & Caligula rampantly raping and ravaging the populations and natural resources of America and Iraq. (Read "In Britain, accountability on Iraq" by James O. Goldsborough on http://www.signonsandiego.com... )
Instead of investigating into the Bush Regime's lies, deceit, and crimes against humanity, the Congress smiles and nods obediently as we massacre hundreds of U.S. & British Soldiers (343 to-date) and thousands of innocent Iraqis (7800 to-date), and squander over $72 Billion thus far ($4 Billion/Month), with no end in sight, no exit strategy, and no plan except to enrich Bush's corporate cronies: (Discover Bush's War-Profiteers on : http://www.worldpolicy.org/pr... and http://www.juneauempire.com/s... )
Why aren't Congress condemning the Bush Regime's request for an additional $87 Billion (making the costs $166 Billion authorisation), and screaming that their tax-cuts and boon-doggles for corporations and the wealthiest among us, are repealed TODAY?
Why isn't Congress more concerned about the good of America, than protecting the corrupt Bush Regime? Where are the Congressional Patriots willing to fight for the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights?
The Bush Regime's priorities are "sexed-up" as they swindle the American public into thinking that by giving massive tax-cuts and lavish gifts to corporations and the richest-of-the-rich, and starving and killing social programs that aide those in need, forcing them to "struggle"-- that this is a "good for the economy". Read "Handing Out Hardship Is this the Bush administration's idea of fiscal discipline?" by E. J. Dionne Jr., on http://www.washingtonpost.com... .
The Bush Regime's "bushit" philosophy is to impoverish workers by raping the economy, forcing us into desperation, in order to accept whatever measley jobs with no protections, no rights, no overtime-pay, no nothing-- thus, creating bloated profits for swindlers like Bush's buddy, Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay to wantonly embezzle. Moreover, if your kids breathe polluted air and no longer can visit natural wildlife preserves ... too bad, that's the "price of freedom".
Meanwhile, the callous and corrupt Bush Regime are using Iraq as a "shooting-gallery" to attract terrorists (how wonderful for the 25 Million Iraqis who are "liberated"), and the U.S. and British Soldiers who are targets and cannon-fodder-- while the Bushies and their corporate cronies, sleep 'safe-and-sound' at night, since their loved-ones are not in any danger.
The Miserable Failures running the American Regime, have established insane foreign and domestic priorities that are "sexed-up" failures and dangerous "bushit".
But, then again, the Bush Regime are lucky, because they hit the Trifecta of "Useful Idiots"! The Bushies' message to Americans and Iraqis who have lost loved-ones and are living in miserable conditions: "Stuff happens."
Is Veep Cheney Helping O. J. Simpson To Find The "Real" Killers?
Is Veep Cheney helping O. J. Simpson to find the "real" killers of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson? Cheney and O. J. seem like kindred spirits: both spend a lot of time playing golf or hunting (?) ... both are obsessively self-interested, greedy and corrupt ... both seem to be compulsive liars.
Cheney's apperance last Sunday, 14th September 2003, on "Meet the Press" was so laughable, that several times I had to remind myself that it wasn't an old Saturday Night Live farce. It didn't take long to remember that the old Saturday Night Live was edgy and clever, whereas Cheney's pathetic performance was despicable and scary. Tragically, today's compliant and cheer-leading media genuflects to show utter submission in the face of the corrupt Bush Regime, instead of fulfilling their obligation to the public by exposing the Bushies' horrific deceptions and crimes.
"Is there some deadline approaching, after which Bush administration officials have to engage in honest debate? It seems as if there has been a rash of misleading, deceptive, and disingenuous remarks coming from on high in recent days. The gang at "Capital Games" has been working overtime to keep up with the truth-bending of the president, the vice president, the defense secretary, and the deputy defense secretary. (After all, we do have a book coming out in two weeks called The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception.) Here is--we fear--a partial report.
Let's start with Dick Cheney. He appeared on Meet The Press and was asked by host Tim Russert if there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks. He replied, "Of course, we've had the story that's been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack. But we've never been able to develop any more of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don't know." This was a deceptive answer. Shortly after 9/11, Czech intelligence officials did say they had a report from a source--a single source--that Atta had met with this Iraqi intelligence official in April 2001. Subsequent media reports in the United States noted that the source was an Arab student who was not considered particularly reliable. The FBI investigated and found nothing to substantiate the report of the meeting. In fact, the FBI concluded that Atta was most likely in Florida at the time of the supposed meeting, and the CIA questioned the existence of this meeting. (Even if there had been a meeting, one could not tell what it meant unless it was known what was said--and no one, not even Cheney, has claimed to know what might have transpired.)
Moreover, on October 21, 2002, The New York Times reported that Czech President Vaclav Havel "quietly told the White House he has concluded that there is no evidence to confirm earlier reports" of the meeting. And it seemed that Atta had gone to Prague in June 2000, not April 2001. "Now," the paper noted, "some Czech and German officials say that their best explanation of why Mr. Atta came to Prague was to get a cheap airfare to the United States."
For some reason, Cheney did not share with the Meet the Press audience the information about Havel's denial. Nor did he note that U.S. forces had nabbed this Iraqi intelligence official in July and that there has been no word--no leaks--about him confirming the supposed meeting. All in all, the case for the meeting is rather flimsy. But Cheney, as he did a year ago on the same show, pointed to this alleged meeting as a reason to suspect Hussein was in on the 9/11 attacks--which, if true, would justify the U.S. strike against Iraq. Waving the Atta-in-Prague story was an act of mendacious information manipulation, and Russert did not challenge Cheney on it.
Cheney also violated the truth in other exchanges. He declared that two tractor-trailers discovered in northern Iraq were mobile bioweapons labs. That is what the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency have stated. But other experts--including the DIA's own engineering experts--have challenged that conclusion. At best, the purpose of these trucks remains an open question. Cheney refused to acknowledge the case is far from closed.
Cheney claimed that if the U.S. succeeds in Iraq "we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11." Huh? What's the public evidence that any of the 9/11 plotters used Iraq as a "geographic base"? There is none. Afghanistan was the "geographic base" for al Qaeda. Has Cheney forgotten that?
And when Russert asked Cheney about a Congressional Budget Office report that says that the Army "lacks sufficient active-duty forces to maintain its current level of nearly 150,000 troops in Iraq beyond next spring," Cheney ducked this tough issue, replying that "failure's not an option." He did not say whether the Bush administration has an unannounced plan for dealing with this or whether it is simply ignoring the possible crisis ahead.
On the subject of the missing WMD in Iraq, Cheney backpedaled from the administration's former claims that Iraq possessed conventional weapons: "There's no doubt in my mind but that Saddam Hussein had these capabilities." Capabilities? At one point, Bush said Hussein had "massive stockpiles." Was the war waged over "capabilities" or actual weapons? Asked for evidence to back up his prewar claim that Hussein had "reconstituted" his nuclear weapons program, Cheney cited Hussein's before-the-war possession of 500 tons of uranium. But this material was the waste-product of a nuclear reactor and could only become suitable for weapons through a sophisticated enrichment process. And there is no evidence that Iraq possessed such technology (though it had sought this sort of equipment in the past).
Cheney added, "To suggest that there is no evidence there [in Iraq] that [Hussein] had no aspirations to acquire nuclear weapons, I don't think is valid." This is disingenuous. The issue was not Hussein's "aspirations," but what he had in hand, what he was developing. Before the war, Cheney claimed Hussein had revived a nuclear weapons program that had been dismantled previously by inspectors. He did not say back then that Hussein merely was yearning for nuclear weapons. And those who said before the war that there was no evidence of any such reconstitution--including the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency--were not so foolish to argue that Hussein had dropped his interest in nukes.
Discussing the widening deficit, Cheney kept up his assault on truthful discourse. Russert asked if the administration would consider freezing the Bush tax cuts for the top 1 percent of Americans to cover the $87 billion request Bush recently made for operations in Iraq. Cheney answered, "I think it's a serious mistake; the wrong time to raise taxes." No, the issue is not raising existing taxes; it is preventing certain tax cuts from kicking in. Big difference. Cheney, though, purposefully (presumably) miscast the terms of the debate to score political points.
There was more in the Cheney interview that can be dissected, but other Bushies deserve their due. Speaking at a National Press Club luncheon last week, Rumsfeld was asked, "On March 30th you said, referring to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, quote, 'We know where they are.' Do you know where they are now? Will they be found?" He replied, "In that instance, we had been in the country for about 15 seconds; sometimes I overstate for emphasis....What we had...is a long list of suspect sites. And they were sites that the inspectors had been in the process of looking at when they concluded that the inspection process really wasn't working, because of lack of cooperation on the part of Saddam Hussein's regime. And I said, 'We know they're in that area.' I should have said, 'I believe they're in that area.'..And we were being pressed to find them while the war was still in its earliest, earliest days. And it seemed to me a somewhat unrealistic expectation."
Rumsfeld was pegging the needle on the duplicity meter. The UN inspectors never concluded that the inspections process wasn't working. They had identified problems and complained about aspects of the process, presenting mixed reports to the Security Council on their progress and Iraq's cooperation. And their complaints mostly concerned Iraq's reluctance to account for past WMD materials, not the lack of access to suspected sites.
Were there, as Rumsfeld now maintains, unrealistic expectations about finding WMDs? During the first week of the war--before he made the comment quoted in the question at the luncheon--Rumsfeld himself declared, "We're there to eliminate the weapons of mass destruction in that country." Didn't that suggest the U.S. military was hell-bent on finding them ASAP? And when he said on March 30--after a weak of fighting--that the administration knew where to find the WMDs, that was yet another signal from the administration that there was no question about the reason for going to war. Before the war, the administration peddled suspicion as fact. Bush and his aides did not say, we think Hussein has weapons. They repeatedly asserted they knew it for a fact. Rumsfeld's March 30th remark was fully in keeping with the truth-defying rhetoric of the administration, not a verbal slip.
As for his, "sometimes I overstate" remark, that was indeed truthful. Now he tells us. And during the same talk, Rumsfeld said, "I don't believe it's our job to reconstruct that country after 30 years of centralized, Stalinist-like economic controls in that country." Then why is the Bush administration asking U.S. taxpayers for $20 billion for Iraq reconstruction?
Now, we turn to Rumsfeld's second. In an interview with Associated Press on September 12, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz conceded he had not spoken accurately the previous day when he said on ABC's Good Morning America. "We know [Iraq] had a great deal to do with terrorism in general and with al Qaeda in particular, and we know a great many of bin Laden's key lieutenants are now trying to organize in cooperation with old loyalists from the Saddam regime to attack in Iraq." Well, Wolfowitz's many meant one. Speaking to AP, he said he was only referring to a single individual--Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a terrorist whom the Bush administration has linked to al Qaeda. But the Zarqawi connection has not been confirmed, and intelligence officials have been repeatedly quoted noting that Zarqawi perhaps maintained ties with al Qaeda but acted independently of Osama bin Laden's network. In fact, Newsweek reported that Zarqawi might be more of a rival than a partner of al Qaeda.
As for Wolfowitz's larger claim--that the Bush administration knows that Iraq had a "great deal to do" with al Qaeda--the only significant case the administration has put forward in this regard is based on the iffy Zarqawi link. And former deputy CIA director, Richard Kerr, who is conducting a review of the CIA's prewar intelligence, has said that the intelligence before the war did not conclusively connect Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda. So then how could Wolfowitz have known "a great deal" on the unproven collaboration between Hussein and al Qaeda? As AP notes, "The Bush administration has outlined only limited evidence of Iraqi-al Qaeda contacts before the war, and no conclusive evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda plotted joint terror operations." Wolfowitz did retract the "many" in his Good Morning America remark, but he did not retreat on his overall--and misleading--assertion about a Hussein-al Qaeda relationship.
Last, but not least, George W. Bush. September is back-to-school time, and Bush hit the road to promote his education policies. During a speech at a Nashville elementary school, he hailed his education record by noting that "the budget for next year boosts funding for elementary and secondary education to $53.1 billion. That's a 26-percent increase since I took office. In other words, we understand that resources need to flow to help solve the problems." A few things were untrue in these remarks. Bush's proposed elementary and secondary education budget for next year is $34.9 billion, not $53.1 billion, according to his own Department of Education. It's his total proposed education budget that is $53.1 billion. More importantly, there is no next-year "boost" in this budget. Elementary and secondary education received $35.8 billion in 2003. Bush's 2004 budget cuts that back nearly a billion dollars, and the overall education spending in his budget is the same as the 2003 level.
Instead of a "boost," there is the opposite--a decrease. Perhaps like Rumsfeld--and Cheney and Wolfowitz--the president merely was overstating. "
COMING SOON: David Corn's new book, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers, due out September 30). For more information and a sample, check out the book's official website: http://www.bushlies.com .
Apparently the Vice-President of the United States can't help lying to and deceiving the people he was elected to serve.
A harsh charge? Very. But I don't see how the truth of the accusation can be denied after this exchange this morning with Tim Russert on Meet the Press ... " [Read TalkingPoints to discover his revealing critique of Cheney's lies.]
For more information relevant to Cheney's outlandish claim that he isn't doing favours for his corrupt cronies at Halliburton, refer to "My Turn: Bush's unwelcome facts", by Skot Pierson on http://www.juneauempire.com/s... , as he outlines the war-profiteering by these greedy ghouls, and concludes: "Bush and Cheney have indeed turned us into a nation of greedy invaders who are pariahs in the eyes of most of the world now. My God help us all."
Veep Cheney probably mis-spoke [Rumsfeld says Cheney does mis-speak (sic)], as I'm sure he is just a nice guy, helping poor O. J. to find the "real" killers.
Bush's $1 Billion Advertising Campaign Can't Buy Him Love
The majority of people around the world do not dislike Americans, particularly Americans who are decent human beings and behave with sensitivity, compassion, and honor. If an American shows genuine curiousity and respect for another country's culture, language, history, art, and society, they are usually greeted with sincere friendship and warm hospitality abroad. This I know first-hand, as an American expatriate who lived overseas for many years.
Most citizens of the world also have a deep respect and admiration for the best of America: our dream of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness for all citizens, and not exclusively for the powerful and the rich. They admire our principles of government, including our U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the rule of law that in theory treats all people equally: pauper or president. Peoples from other lands risked their lives (and many died trying) to come to the U.S.A. to seek the dream of overcoming ruthless economic exploitation, and/or religious enslavement, and to realize a better life, and practice one's private faith free from persecution.
However, the Bush Regime has betrayed the best of America. They show contempt for our U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the rule of law. The Bushies award their Corporate Cronies, Robber-barons, War-Profiteers, Wealthiest-of-the-wealthy , massive tax cuts and no-bid, no-cap & no-audit, lavish contracts at taxpayer expense. This corrupt cabal undermines the basic rights and protections of working people, to create a class of neo-serfs struggling to survive, ruthlessly exploited by craven and greedy Corporate Masters who live like neo-Emperors.
The Bush Regime employ clever spin-meisters attempting to fool us into thinking that 2+2=anything but 4; as they use lies, deceit, and, falsehoods, to wage unnecessary and bloody wars, and, create economic havoc at home. Moreover, they are attempting to "buy" friendship abroad by squandering massive taxpayer monies on advertising campaigns that don't succeed in bamboozling intelligent and well-educated foreigners, obliged to pay close attention to the Bushies' bizarre and unpredictable behaviour, in order to survive the American hyper-power's whimsical grab for power and wealth abroad, as well as at home.
Bush's $1 Billion Advertising Campaign, however, can't buy him love. The USA Today reports in "$1 billion international image campaign isn't enough to buy U.S. love", by Carl Weiser on http://www.usatoday.com/news/... :
"The Bush administration spends $1 billion a year trying to polish the United States' image around the world, yet polls show anti-Americanism rising to record levels, especially in Muslim and Arab nations where the government is concentrating its efforts.
"Now, a new report from Congress' General Accounting Office explains why the federal government's efforts at "public diplomacy" have been such a failure.
"The report, released Sept. 4, concluded that the State Department's efforts have been scattershot and uncoordinated, foreign service officers charged with promoting the nation's image too often get stuck filling out paperwork, and one in five foreign service officers who are supposed to be helping America's image aren't fluent enough in the language of the country in which they're stationed.
"Most damning, the report said the government isn't even trying to scientifically measure whether its public relations efforts are having any effect on foreign hearts and minds. Instead, it gauges success through anecdotes or even by how many speeches a local ambassador gives."
The increasing dislike of the Bush Regime abroad is further substantiated in "Poll suggests world hostile to US" on http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/am... :
"Nearly two-thirds of respondents to an international poll for the BBC say they have an unfavourable opinion of George W Bush.
"The survey of 11 countries - for the television programme What The World Thinks of America, to be aired this week in the UK - revealed that 57% of the sample had a very unfavourable, or fairly unfavourable attitude towards the American President.
"The figure rose to 60% when discounting the views of the American respondents.
"The survey - conducted for the BBC by ICM and other international pollsters - gauged opinion towards US military, economic, cultural and political influence.
"Over half the sample felt that the US was wrong to invade Iraq - this included 81% of Russian respondents, and 63% of the French response.
"Thirty-seven per cent thought it right to invade - including 54% of the UK response, 74% of the US response and 79% of the Israeli sample.
"Asked who is the more dangerous to world peace and stability, the United States was rated higher than al-Qaeda by respondents in both Jordan (71%) and Indonesia (66%).
"America was also rated more dangerous than two countries considered as "rogue states" by Washington.
"It was rated more dangerous than Iran, by people in Jordan, Indonesia, Russia, South Korea and Brazil, and more dangerous than Syria by respondents all the countries, except for Australia, Israel and the United States.
"Unloved?
"The survey groups were also asked whether they felt that the American military did enough to avoid civilian casualties during conflicts.
"Seventy per cent of the group as a whole thought the US could do more - with the majority in each country bar the United States saying that more could be done, including 73% of respondents in the UK, 74% in France and 57% in Israel.
"However 70% of the American respondents said other countries did not appreciate how much America does to avoid civilian casualties.
"The sample of over 11,000 respondents also showed negative attitudes about American initiatives, such as the war on terrorism and US efforts in the Middle-East.
"Attitudes towards America as a whole, however, were a lot more favourable, with 50% expressing fairly or very favourable views, as opposed to 40% of unfavourable views.
"That figure excludes Americans polled."
"All interviews were carried out during May and June 2003."
Yes, all foreigners do not hate America or Americans ... Many simply dislike the corrupt Bush Regime ... And, although Bush may be used to buying everything else (including elections), he can't buy respect, and he can't buy love.
Liberty Bushwhacked by Authoritarian Neo-Conservative Bush Regime
As the Bush Regime's horrific guerrilla quagmire in Iraq, worsens daily with a rising Death Toll now standing at 358 U.S. & British Troops and Journalists, and between 6125 and 7843 innocent Iraqi civilians (Source: "Casualties in Iraq on http://www.antiwar.com/ewens/... ), the Bushies are out campaigning to obliterate the very freedoms many Americans have fought and died for in past wars. Bush's War in Iraq has nothing to do with "freedom", "terrorism", or "9/11"-- it is simply an obscene power-grab for global hegemony, devised to enrich his corporate cronies (Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Big Oil, etc.). (Read "Project for the New American Century (PNAC) ... Exposed!" on http://www.tblog.com/template... and "Bottom-Line on Bush's War: Death Toll Escalates & Unplanned Costs Skyrocket" on http://www.tblog.com/template... )
"President George W. Bush says the United States has a clear mission in Iraq to fight terrorists and foster democracy there, yet a new poll shows that fewer than half of Americans share his belief."
"A CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll released Friday found that nearly six in 10 Americans, or 59 per cent, said they did not think the administration has a clear plan for handling the situation in Iraq. The poll of 1,025 adults, taken Monday through Thursday after Bush's nationally televised address on Iraq last Sunday, had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points."
Americans are beginning to discover that Bush's Wars do not make us safer, but instead make us more likely to be targeted by "terrorists" angry at the Bush Regime's aggressive invasions into their countries. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, so naturally the Iraqi people and many Arab nations want to see us out. (Read "New Zogby Poll: "Opinion Poll Underlines Iraqi Distrust of America" on http://www.tblog.com/template... )
The Bushies cynically exploit 9/11, WMDs posing an "imminent" threat, and any other bogus-fantasy (dreamt-up by Gen. Karl Rove Inc. & the neo-fascist AEI), as their excuse for illegally and immorally invading Iraq, causing more terrorism around the world ... Now, the Bushies are playing the "terrorism" card to bushwhack our liberties ... The Bushies are cynically manipulating us into handing-over unconstitutional powers to empower themselves to run rough-shod over us, like dictators, tyrants & neo-emperors.
The Bush Regime instigates hatred and terror around the world, as they employ their ghoulish "shell game" of warfare, in order to scare-us-to-death while they grab dictatorial powers at home, that defy the very freedoms enshrined in our U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. In "Snoop Dreams" on http://www.motherjones.com/ne... , Mother Jones reports:
"With no shortage of pomp, or opportunism, Presdent Bush used the second anniversary of the September 11 attacks to demand that Congress "unleash" the hands of law enforcement both at home and abroad.
"In his speech at the FBI's national training facility in Virginia (on what he wants everybody to call "Patriot's Day"), the president commended his audience's efforts in the war on terror and emphasized the need for expanded legal tools at home.
"Bush wants to beef up the Patriot Act, already the largest expansion of snooping powers in American history. Democrats and civil liberties groups (left and right) were already opposed to the law. That goes double now. The legislation, which was passed just six weeks after the September 11 attacks, has been widely criticized for cutting away at key constitutional guarantees. Nearly 160 communities have opposed the legislation.The act has received so much criticism that Attorney General John Ashcroft has been caravaning across the U.S. to drum up support for it."
Now, Bush is pushing for Patriot Act II, that is even more draconian than the un-American Patriot Act I (Refer to "Stop "Patriot II" on http://ga1.org/alert-descript... ):
"(1) The new act would radically diminish personal privacy by removing checks on government power. It would permit, without any connection to anti-terrorism efforts, sensitive personal information about U.S. citizens to be shared with local and state law enforcement. The act would allow for the sampling and cataloguing of innocent Americans' genetic information without court order and without consent. In addition, the government could gain secret access to credit reports without consent and without judicial process.
(2) The new legislation would allow government to spy on First Amendment-protected activities. By applying an overly broad definition of terrorism, organizations using protest tactics such as those used by protesters at Vieques Island, Puerto Rico, or Operation Rescue would become victims of criminal wiretapping and other electronic surveillance, and could be subject to having their citizenship revoked. In addition, the act would terminate court-approved limits on police spying, which were initially put in place to prevent McCarthy-style law enforcement persecution based on political or religious affiliation.
(3) The new bill would increase government secrecy while diminishing public accountability. It would authorize secret arrests in immigration and other cases, such as those involving material witness warrants, where the detained person is not criminally charged. And, incredibly, the act would shelter federal agents engaged in illegal surveillance without a court order from criminal prosecution if they are following orders of high Executive Branch officials."
"PRESIDENT BUSH asked Congress this week to "untie the hands of our law enforcement officials" by passing three new counterterrorism proposals."
"This radical new power is unnecessary as well as dangerous. It's not as though seeking grand jury subpoenas is especially burdensome. Prosecutors don't need to seek a grand jury's approval for each subpoena they issue; rather, they often issue them on behalf of the grand juries. Federal rules allow them to keep signed and sealed blank subpoenas for use when necessary. While it is probably true that getting grand jury subpoenas out the door is more cumbersome in certain jurisdictions than in others, that would at most suggest tinkering with some local rules and practices. Mr. Feeney's bill [Author] would do a lot more than tinker."
"Asked to account for the extraordinary power proposed in the bill, a department spokeswoman initially suggested that Mr. Feeney may have drafted it badly. Only when it was pointed out that similar language had appeared in the so-called "Patriot II" draft bill the Justice Department prepared and leaked early this year did the department even acknowledge that it supports this bill as written. We hope Congress will take a different view. "
We must do more than "hope" that Congress opposes this insane, hiterlian move to eradicate our freedoms. We citizens have an obligation to halt the authoritarian neo-con Bush Regime from bushwhacking our liberties to death. We must not become the Bush Regime's "Useful Idiots"!
Therefore, I urge you to contact Congress immediately on http://www.congress.org , in order to demand that they strongly reject handing-over neo-imperial powers to the bungling Bush Regime. Congress must not be permitted to become a rubber-stamp to a wooden-headed, corrupt Bush monarchy. The "Stop Patriot II" web-site has a sample letter you may access on http://ga1.org/alert-descript... : Use it, modify it, but, for goodness sake, please take action today!
Urgent Plea: Contact Congress to Halt the Abuse of Our U.S. Soldiers & Veterans
Just when one thinks the Bush Regime's most heinous corruptions and callousness have been discovered, a new atrocity arises that shocks any decent person's sensibilities. Are you as disgusted as I am regarding the following report of mistreatment of our U.S. Soldiers and Veterans, who have actually made a sacrifice (unlike the Bushies and/or their off-spring), and are in the hospital? If so, please send an urgent e-mail to Congress to halt these obscene exploitations of our U.S. Military personnel, on http://www.congress.org .
"Our current political leaders have committed so many, well, outrages that it's actually refreshing to come across one that's been around for 22 years [Reagan]. Would you believe that we bill wounded soldiers for their hospital food? We charge $8.10 a day. It's a decades-old practice, and as The St. Petersburg Times reports, if the bill isn't paid within days we throw that soldier to the collection agency wolves. C.W. Bill Young, the House Republican from Florida, has introduced a bill in Congress to end this loathsome practice.
"Meanwhile, medical care for veterans, at least, is still free -- even if the Bush Republicans don't want veterans to know that, and have tried to cut the budget for veteran health care (by an amount less than what's set aside for Halliburton), and also want to cut combat danger pay, and to gut family separation leave, and reduce re-enlistment bonuses, and to strip away education funding for children of military families ... Oh, and they oppose increasing the $6,000 payment to families of soldiers killed in action; and have pretty much stolen money (again, for Halliburton) that American courts say belongs to American POWs who were tortured by the Saddam Hussein regime during the 1991 Gulf War; and they're skimping on everything else imaginable, from basic pay raises to military housing to sensible military-targeted tax relief.
"So when Dick Cheney promises, "Help is on the way!", that an $8.10 a day will buy you a cup of cold hospital coffee."
Perhaps, Dick Cheney, who is being paid $1 Million Per Year by Halliburton to whom the Bushies have awarded obscene no-bid, no-cap, no-audit contracts in Iraq, and other Bush Regime War-Profiteers, Corporate Robber-Barons, and, the richest-of-the-rich, given massive "tax welfare benefits", should pitch in and make some sacrifices along with the rest of us.
Indeed, Dicky-boy is looking a little puffy these days, probably due to too much caviar & champagne, he and his loved ones (who didn't sacrifice in Iraq) have been enjoying. Condi Rice is also putting on the pounds, probably a little too much pizza, pretzels & beer, with Bush-boy, while indulging in their favorite (?hmmm?) pastime watching football together, and ignoring the daily deaths of our U.S. Soldiers in Iraq. And, Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz, have that mean-lean-and-hungry predatory look, albeit, well-rested, coming from squandering other people's lives and savings, on a war, that has given them power. prestige, celebrity and riches-- otherwise, they would have been relegated to the "has-beens" of history where they belong.
The Bush Regime, their corporate paymasters, and neo-con goons amasse hundreds of millions of dollars per year, while the starting salary of our U.S. Military Men & Women in action is between $12,776/year and $15,480/year ... My Goodness, Talk About a Rogue Bush Regime Exploiting Its' People Ruthlessly ... Saddam Hussein Treated His Military Soldiers Better Than That!
Please write to our Congress, as our U.S. Soldiers and Veterans make poor and sub-standard wages at between $1064/month and $1290/month (Read "'Be All You Can Be'...For Minimum Wage?" on http://www.econedlink.org/les... ). These brave men and women who actually do make a sacrifice, aren't raking in the mountains of gold like the Bushies who have spilt oceans of blood for no good purpose. Our military personnel deserve our support. E-mail Congress on http://www.congress.org .
New Zogby Poll: "Opinion Poll Underlines Iraqi Distrust of America"
The United Kingdom's "Financial Times" published the following article, entitled "Opinion poll underlines Iraqi distrust of America", by Guy Dinmore in Washington, published on September 11 2003, on http://news.ft.com/servlet/Co... :
"Braving bullets, arrests and hot pursuit while carrying out the first scientific survey of Iraqi public opinion, pollsters commissioned by a conservative US think-tank have discovered that most Iraqis do not trust Americans and want to be left alone.
John Zogby, president of Zogby International, which completed the poll last month, summed up the findings yesterday, saying that, like most Arabs, Iraqis want to "control their own destiny", without the intervention of outside forces, and are confident in their own ability.
"Now that tyranny is over," he said, "it is time to move forward but not as a colony."
In that sense Iraqis broadly agree, but for different reasons, with the Bush administration's stated goal of handing over power and getting out as soon as possible.
Commissioned by the American Enterprise Institute, the pollsters sought to survey a representative cross-section of Iraqi society by going to four cities: Mosul and Kirkuk in the north, Ramadi in the mostly anti-US Sunni area of central Iraq, and Basra in the Shia south. A total of 600 people were interviewed in public places.
In Ramadi the pollsters were caught in crossfire in an ambush of US forces. One was arrested by Kurds in the north, while others were chased by car. In Basra some were detained for 24 hours.
Asked if the US and UK should help make sure a fair government is set up in Iraq, or if the Iraqis should work this out themselves, 31.5 per cent wanted help while 58.5 per cent did not.
Some 38.2 per cent agreed that democracy could work well in Iraq, while 50.2 per cent agreed with the statement that "democracy is a western way of doing things and it will not work here".
Asked whether in the next five years the US would "help" Iraq, 35.3 per cent said yes while 50 per cent said the US would "hurt" Iraq. Asked the same of the UN, the figures were almost reversed, with 50.2 per cent saying it would help and 18.5 per cent the opposite.
Reguarding US and British troops, some 31 per cent wanted them to leave in six months and a total of 65.5 per cent in a year. Some 25 per cent said they should stay two years or more.
Interviewees were given a list of five countries they would like to model Iraq after.
A total of 36 per cent chose the four Middle Eastern countries listed (16 per cent for Saudi Arabia, 11 per cent for Syria, 6.5 per cent for Egypt and 2.8 per cent for Iran) while 21.5 per cent settled for the US, the only western country listed.
Seven out of 10 Iraqis think their country and their personal lives will be better five years from now."
A better life five years from now? Hmmm ... Over four years after 96.5% of the Iraqis see us out of their country!
September Eleventh Families For Peaceful Tomorrows: "Statement on the 2nd Anniversary of 9/11"
Peaceful Tomorrows is an advocacy organization founded by family members of September 11th victims who have united to turn our grief into action for peace. Our mission is to seek effective, nonviolent solutions to terrorism, and to acknowledge our common experience with all people similarly affected by violence throughout the world. By conscientiously exploring peaceful options in our search for justice, we hope to spare additional families the suffering we have experienced—as well as to break the cycle of violence and retaliation engendered by war. In doing so, we work to create a safer world for the present and future generations.
Our Goals:
* To promote a safe, open dialogue on alternatives to war.
* To provide support and fellowship to others seeking peaceful and just responses to terrorism.
* To educate and raise the consciousness of the public on issues surrounding war and peace.
* To call attention to threats to civil liberties and other freedoms at home as a consequence of war.
* To promote U.S. foreign policy that places a priority on principles of democracy and human rights.
* To encourage a multilateral use of sensible and appropriate means to bring those responsible for the September 11th attacks to justice in accordance with the principles of international law.
* To recognize our fellowship with people of all nationalities afflicted by violence and war, and to extend to them the same compassion that we received from people around the world.
* To demand a full, fair and open investigation into the September 11th attacks that took the lives of our loved ones.
The "September Eleventh Families For Peaceful Tomorrows" made the following Statement on 09/11/2003 (http://www.peacefultomorrows....) :
"Statement on the Second Anniversary of 9/11"
Two years ago today our loved ones were tragically murdered in an act of terror that shook the United States and the world. In the time since their deaths, as we continue our personal paths of grieving, we are comforted by the thoughtful and compassionate response of people all over the world who have offered sympathy and support to the victims of these terrible attacks. But much about the US government’s approach to responding to our loved ones’ deaths stands in stark contrast to the common sense words and comforting actions of ordinary people. On this two-year anniversary, we stop to reflect on the dangerous course of current policies and to call for a new approach to 9/11 that is focused on bringing about true security and justice.
Our loved ones' deaths prompted the US government to attack Afghanistan and overthrow the repressive Taliban government with the objective of catching Osama Bin Laden and other members of Al Queda thought to be responsible for the attack. While military efforts to overthrow the Taliban were initially successful, Bin Laden is still unaccounted for, and recent reports indicate that the Taliban and Al Queda are resurging in Afghanistan even as the central government pleads for more funds for stabilization and rebuilding. Our military campaign in Afghanistan did one thing for certain: it created more bereaved families just like ours. Ordinary Afghans were killed by US bombs, injured by cluster bombs, and displaced by fighting, adding to the suffering of 23 previous years of wars. On our travels to Afghanistan we have met some of these families and hold them in our hearts today as another set of victims created by the tragedy of 9/11.
Shortly after 9/11/01, the US congress passed the USA Patriot act, ostensibly to improve security in the United States, with little time for examination of its consequences. In this climate of fear and panic, the Patriot Act and other measures have eroded basic American civil liberties and threatened our immigrant populations in particular. Today, unnamed people languish in unidentified locations on unknown charges under the guise of American justice. Yet there is no evidence that these measures have made us any safer. At the same time, the administration stalls on efforts to provide an open and honest investigation of the events of 9/11.
Last year at this time, President Bush used the occasion of the one year commemoration of our loved ones' deaths to begin a marketing campaign to sell the war against Iraq. Despite the lack of a link between Saddam Hussein and the events of 9/11, the Bush Administration's insinuations of a connection played upon the public’s fears of 9/11 and led the country into an unnecessary war in Iraq, invoking our loved ones' deaths as justification. While the deceptions behind the stated reasons for going to war are coming to light, ordinary Iraqis and US soldiers in Iraq continue to suffer, with the death toll mounting every day. Today we pause to mourn the Iraqi dead and all the casualties of the war, and to call upon our leaders to bring our troops, who have put their lives on the line, safely home from this misguided mission and to turn control of Iraq’s rebuilding to the authority of the United Nations.
One of our members wrote to the New York Times on Sept 14, 2001 "I pray that this country which has been so deeply hurt not unleash forces that it does not have the power to call back." Have we unleashed these terrible forces? After 9/11 America had the sympathy of the entire world. Since war with Iraq, international sympathy and support has turned to hatred and despair. Anti-American sentiment is on the rise all around the world—what better recruiting tool for terrorist can we provide?
As grieving family members, we know that feelings of fear and anger are a natural part of the healing process. But we have learned that it is not healthy or constructive to act on these emotions. The government’s response to 9/11 has kept us stuck in the fear and panic that we all shared from the shocking events of 9/11. Rather than basing our policies on fear and anger, we call upon the government to act in the best interest of the American public by rejoining the community of nations to work together constructively in solving the issues of worldwide terrorism and war.
While September 11 stands as a unique tragedy in the American experience, the sad reality is that people in other countries have been experiencing their own September 11ths with much less fanfare all the time. Peaceful Tomorrows members have met with other victims of violence around the world who are a guiding light in our efforts to put our grief to work as action for peace. From Israeli and Palestinian parents who lost children to violence, to victims of the US Embassy bombing in Kenya to the mothers of the disappeared in Central and South America to the survivors of the ultimate violence—the atomic weapons dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Peaceful Tomorrows members have found ourselves to be part of a worldwide family of those who have known terror and who have responded with peace. September 11 taught us that human beings have the capacity to commit terrible violence against each other. But it also taught us that the human heart is capable of overcoming fear and hatred to build a world in which there are no more September 11ths anywhere in the world. It is this hope is that we must build upon as individuals and as nations.
On February 15, 2003 a great worldwide shift was made apparent—so obvious in fact that the New York Times reported it on the front page. The millions of people in the streets around the world marching against war in Iraq demonstrated that there are now two superpowers in the world: the Bush Administration and global public opinion. We are honored to stand with our brothers and sisters around the world who know that we the people must find another way to live together on this planet.
So today as we mourn, reflect and remember, we ask that you join with us in pursuit of true peace, security, and justice. We owe it to the dead, we need it for the living and we must do it for the generations to follow. Let us move forward together to build a future of peaceful tomorrows.
Sep 09, 2003
Dumbya Exploits 9/11 Victims & America's Fear - Spoof on Bush's "Speech to the Nation"
Many families of 9/11 victims are angry that their loved ones have been exploited so viciously and cynically by Bush to scare Americans into supporting his insane War in Iraq. They have protested that unnecessary warfare should not be waged in the name of their dead mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers & sisters, used as fodder by the Bush Regime, as Saddam Hussein and Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
Bush has desecrated the memories of those lost on 9/11 by dishonestly fabricating non-existent "links" between Al Qaeda's attack on the World Trade Center and Saddam Hussein, who is (or was before Bush started massacring innocent Iraqis) Osama bin Laden's enemy. Ironically, the Bush Family have close ties to the Saudi Royal Family & Bin Laden Family, who were involved in the attacks on America on 9/11. Scary, huh?
Jon Carroll published a clever and very funny (and not so "far-off-the-mark") spoof of Bush's "speech (sic)" to the nation, in the San Francisco Chronicle. The sad reality is, that as Dumbya actually stumbles through such screed (written by Gen. Karl Rove Inc., Bush's' Brain), there are a lot of neo-con ideologues, corrupt right-winged court-jesters, and, brain-dead American sheep, who defend his indefensible, immoral domestic policies and illegal foreign adventures!
"My fellow Americans: I come before you today to ask for all the money in your wallet, your checking account and your 401(k). And do you have one of those spare change jars on top of the dresser? I'd like that too.
I am planning to spend $100 zillion to fight international terrorism in Iraq -- and all this without raising taxes. I am therefore asking Americans to make a sacrifice. I am asking them to support their aging relatives, because I'm not going to have any money to fund Social Security right now. Or Medicaid.
Why? Because fighting terrorism is job one.
I am not asking you to do anything I would not do. Already I am sending money home to my mother and father every week. I am also supporting an impoverished Chilean general in exile. It's the least I can do.
Because many people do not have elderly relatives, I am today asking for the creation of a new Department of Old People. All Americans will be assigned their very own old person.
In addition, every American will get his or her own veteran. Veterans benefits are so pathetic anyway we might as well just eliminate them. Please remember the great sacrifice these men and women made for their country. Do you have a spare room in your home? A veteran would like to live there.
Will this be difficult for some? Of course it will. But I ask you to remember three important things about freedom: Sept. 11, Sept. 11 and Sept. 11.
The peace in Iraq is going just as we planned. The escalating violence is exactly on schedule. Our friends in Syria and Iran have allowed terrorists to flow freely into Iraq from their nations. Our friends in Saudi Arabia continue to send them money. We knew what we were doing all along, even if we didn't know exactly what we were doing.
I like to think of Iraq as a kind of flypaper. We lure all the internationalist terrorists there, and then we kill them. I have not revealed this plan before, because it would seem that I am using American soldiers as bait.
I am therefore authorizing Secretary Powell, who I believe is still the secretary of state although I have not checked recently, to ask the United Nations for a multilateral force of peacekeepers who can be used as bait. I dream of a world in which people of all nations, Poles and Turks, Pakistanis and Canadians, can be slaughtered by international terrorists in an oil-rich foreign country.
We have always supported the United Nations, even when we pretended to disdain the United Nations in order to fool Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein is on the run, cowering like some sniveling rat in a Iraqi slum that we are about to locate. So our plan worked, and Kofi Annan and I had a good laugh about that just last week.
We will not waver in our commitment to make a house-to-house search for terrorists in a place 19 time zones away. Sure, there will be casualties. I am authorizing all my commanders on the ground to say, with me: Sept. 11, Sept. 11 and Sept. 11.
Our battle for freedom is already paying significant dividends. Halliburton stock, for instance, is just skyrocketing. I urge you all to invest your dividends because, believe you me, we're going to be destroying infrastructure as fast as we can rebuild it. This unprecedented breakthrough in supply-side economics will make America even more prosperous.
Certainly, we have been through some tough times. And let me just say in response to that: Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton and Bill Clinton. And there will be tough times ahead. And let me say in response to that: Sept. 11, Sept. 11 and Sept. 11.
... (pregnant pause) ...
I regret that I cannot tell you how I am going to spend your money. Trust me. "
Bottom-Line on Bush's War: Death Toll Escalates & Unplanned Costs Skyrocket
The Bush Regime's Iraqi Guerrilla Quagmire continues to take a heavy toll on the blood and treasure of the U.S. and Iraq.
Today, another U.S. Soldier was killed, when the U.S. Headquarters was attacked, three Iraqis were killed, and dozens were wounded including six U.S. Defense staff. (Refer to "Suicide Bomber Kills Three People in Iraq" by Scheherezade Faramarzi, on http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/n...%2F20030910%2F054790434.htm&sc=1107&photoid=20030 910XMJ102 , and "Suicide bomber hits north Iraq" on http://www.news24.com/News24/...,,2-10-1460_1414346,00.html )
Bush's Death Toll now escalates to 339 U.S. & British Soldiers, and countless thousands of Iraqi Deaths (over 7700+). This doesn't even factor in the injuries and maiming of thousands of U.S. & British Soldiers, and innocent Iraqi citizens who have lost limbs and are blind and paralyzed for life.
The unplanned costs for this tragic bungled mess have skyrocketed from the $78 Billion authorized only 5 months ago by Congress, to Bush's obscene request for an additional $87 Billion more taxpayer dollars. Daddy Bush 41's Gulf War cost the U.S.A. $9 Billion because he worked with the international community, who paid for the majority of the costs. Sadly, his baby Bush 43 has treated the international community with undeserved contempt and ridicule, and is burdening Working Americans (Not the War-Profiteers & Not the Rich) with $165 Billion costs and no end in sight, as his bungling buffoons, Rummy & Wolfy, haven't come-up with an Exit Strategy!
The Bush Regime lied to us about back-breaking costs, as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz informed Congress 5 months ago that the Iraqi Oil would pay for the costs of their Iraqi adventure. Even Republicans including Sen. John McCain (AZ) and Sen. Lincoln Chafee (RI), amongst others, have condemned Rummy's & Wolfy's imbecilic post-war (sic) planning.
The arrogant, corrupt Bush Regime waged this war to enrich their cronies (Refer to "War-Profiteers & Wealthiest Ought to be Patriotic & Pay for Bush's War Along with the Rest of Us" on http://www.tblog.com/template... ), and, lied to Americans regarding both the motives (phony WMDs posing an "imminent" threat ... and non-existent links between 9/11 & Iraq) and the ease of the so-called "liberation"-turned-"occu pation". They hilariously argued that the Iraqis would pop-open the champagne & throw flowered-garlands in the path of our soldiers ... although Middle-East Experts and State Department Officials had advised them before the war, that Iraqis would not welcome any so-called liberators!
There were no WMDs posing an imminent threat, and indeed, during Rummy Rumsfeld's visit to Iraq earlier in the week, he didn't even ask about progress on finding WMDs (Why waste his time, he knows it was all lies, lies & more lies). Moreover, Saddam Hussein was not involved in 9/11, but instead the Saudi Royal Family and bin Ladens were, but they are bon amis of the Bush Regime who let them escape (Refer to "The Bushies Allowed bin Laden's Family to Escape Post-9/11 While U.S. Air Space was Closed?" on http://www.tblog.com/template... ).
As this nightmare unfolds, most Americans have nothing to show for our sacrifice but the heart-break of slaughtered & maimed sons and daughters; a polluted & ravaged planet; and, squandered taxpayer dollars not used to improve our lives, but to enable the Bushies & their hyper-rich corporate cronies to squander lives and taxpayer dollars to bail them out of their illegal wars abroad, and, immoral economic policies that deprive Americans of jobs, worker's rights & overtime pay, and any improvements to our lives.
Why don't the Bush Regime send their own off-spring to fight and die in Iraq?
Why don't the Bush Regime roll-back taxes for the rich and corporations to recuperate the insane costs of this insane war, and their own record-level deficits?
Why don't the Bush Regime take responsibility for their bungled and incompetent planning, and call for the resignations of the neo-con buffoons like Rummy Rumsfeld & Wolfy Wolfowitz? (Cheney & Rice should also resign for betraying their oaths of office to the American People, and lying to enable Halliburton, Big Oil, and other corporate war-profiteers to rake in gold, off the blood of innocents.)
Aren't the Bush Regime patriotic? Hell no, their motto is "All for Me and Me for Me"!
The Bush Regime are Miserable Failures who insulted the United Nations, our allies, and anyone who dared to question their unnecessary incursion into Iraq. Now, they expect the entire world to bow down and accept sacrificing their sons & daughters, and economic stability, on the altar of failed Bush's Doctrine ... and by the way, don't ask the war-profiteers: Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Big Oil, etc., or the Bushies to share any of the war booty & loot!
Stop Bush Regime Rape of American Workers Overtime Pay Stolen by Corporate Fat Cats
The corrupt Bush Regime is attempting to dismantle any and all worker's rights, including the immoral elimination of overtime pay, by permitting corporate "top dogs" and "fat cats" to reclassify jobs into categories that would not change the work content or work description, but instead eliminate a worker's right to Overtime Pay, demanding longer hours for no pay.
If the Bush Regime's corrupt bill passes, then millions of American Workers in low paying jobs will lose the right of payment for working longer than 40 hours per week!
Overtime Pay is awarded to American Workers in low-paying jobs, but if the corporations can demand that workers be treated as slaves, working 80-90-100 hours week, with no compensation for their back-breaking toil, then greedy Corporate Robber-barons, "Top Dog" & "Fat Cats" who arrive to work late, and leave early, and rake in multi-million dollar salaries, can gorge on even fatter profits. Meanwhile, their low paid workers have no more take-home pay, and no time to spend with their families!
Why should the Bush Regime's callousness surprise you? These thugs will spill blood in Iraq to enrich Halliburton, Carlyle Group, Big Oil, and other war-profiteers, and now, they want to turn our workers into slaves with no compensation and no protections. The Bush Regime dreams of a neo-feudal state where the Neo-Feudal Lords & Ladies live like Neo-Royalty, while the rest of us bear the brunt of miserable lives as Neo-Slaves & Neo-Serfs serving their Masters. (Refer to "Labor Market For Americans Worsens Under the Bush Administration!" on http://www.tblog.com/template... )
Lower Pay, Longer Hours: Resulting in More Profits for the Corporate Robber-barons! How Nice for the Neo-Corporate Rapists Enjoying their Looting Spree under the Reign of the Bushies!
"Lower pay, longer hours and unpredictable work schedules are some of the increased challenges working families will face if the Bush Administration is able to pass its proposed changes to overtime rules in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
Some of the most important employment protections for working families today are part of the FLSA, established in 1938, which sets minimum national standards for wages and overtime. Under the FLSA's overtime rules, some eighty million workers are now paid time-and-a-half when they work more than forty hours a week. Many of them depend on this overtime pay for survival at a time when the minimum wage is far from a living wage in most parts of the US. But the Bush Team seems determined to terminate this hard-fought benefit for millions of workers.
Promoted by the Administration as "family-friendly" measures, the proposed changes, along with five Big Business-backed bills now in Congress, would actually make it much more difficult for working families to stay afloat. As an Economic Policy Institute report released June 26 notes, the main consequence of the changes would be that about eight million police officers, nurses, store supervisors, secretaries and many other workers would face reduced pay because employers who require their workers to labor more than forty hours a week would not be required to pay the time-and-a-half formula.
The AFL-CIO has been working overtime against the changes as have local unions and grassroots groups nationwide. Check the Federation's site for background on the FLSA, to view its powerful new TV ad currently running this week nationally on CNN and in Maine, Ohio and Missouri. (Maine is home to moderate GOP Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. Sens. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, and Christopher Bond, R-Mo., are up for re-election next year.)
Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, one of organized labor's strongest supporters in Congress, has proposed an amendment that would block the new proposed regulations. The Senate debate began this week and a vote is scheduled for WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10. Click here ASAP (http://www.unionvoice.org/cam... ) to tell your Senators to support the Harkin amendment. Tell them their own jobs really might depend on it.
Harkin says that he believes he has three to six Republican votes, which could be decisive in the Senate, where the GOP is in control by a narrow margin. This fight looks like it'll be close so let your reps know how you feel today. "
Bush Tax Cuts Result in the "Death of Manufacturing" & the Highest Loss of Jobs in Over 60 Years
The Bush Regime's immoral tax cuts for Corporations and the Wealthy Oligarchy, have resulted in the "Death of Manufacturing" in America, and the highest jobs losses since the Great Depression. Unemployment stands at 9 Million American People, whom the Bush Cabal callously ignore and pretend do not exist, in their pre-occupation with a ghoulish pursuit of their bizarre "Project for the New American Century (PNAC)" generating horrific wars in Afghanistan and Iraq-- and, it looks like Iran might be next on their blood-thirsty agenda. Refer to "Labor Market For Americans Worsens Under the Bush Administration!" on http://www.tblog.com/template... .
The Bush Regime have destroyed 3 Million American jobs under Emperor Bush's despicable neo-fascist reign. For an informed perspective upon this sorry state of affairs, refer to the following article by conservative columnist Patrick J. Buchanan, in "Death of Manufacturing: The rise of free trade has eroded America’s industrial base and with it our sovereignty." on http://www.amconmag.com/08_11... :
"After Mass at St. Mary’s, a retired FBI agent who had worked as a boy in the great steel plant in Weirton, W.Va., whose father had died in an accident at the mill, handed me the Weirton Daily Times. “Where Do We Go From Here?” read the May 20 banner. The front page was devoted to the bankruptcy filing of Weirton Steel, which had once employed 14,000 workers in a town of 23,000. Mark Glyptis, president of the Independent Steelworkers Union, said it didn’t have to happen. It was a poignant story. When I began my campaign of 2000 at the Weirton mill, Mark and his ISU endorsed me.
That same week, a friend e-mailed me. Timco, a lumber mill where we spent the last day of the New Hampshire campaign of 1996, had shut down. As Weirton Steel had been hammered by subsidized steel dumped in the U.S. market, Timco had to compete with subsidized lumber from Canada.
Across America the story is the same: steel and lumber mills going into bankruptcy; textile plants moving to the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America, and the Far East; auto plants closing and opening overseas; American mines being sealed and farms vanishing. Seven hundred thousand textile workers—many of them minorities and single women—have lost their jobs since NAFTA passed in 1993.
Thirty years have elapsed since our free-trade era began and 30 months since George W. Bush became president. It’s time to measure the promise of global free trade against the performance.
Undeniably, free trade has delivered for consumers. A trip to the mall, where the variety of suits, shoes, shirts, toys, gadgets, games, TVs, and appliances abounds, makes the case. But what has it cost our country?
Every month George Bush has been in office, America has lost manufacturing jobs. One in seven has vanished since his inauguration. In 1950, a third of our labor force was in manufacturing. Now, it is 12.5 percent. U.S. manufacturing is in a death spiral, and it is not a natural death. This is a homicide. Open-borders free trade is killing American manufacturing.
In 2002, we ran a trade deficit in goods of $484 billion. This May, it reached the level of $562 billion, nearly 6 percent of GDP. Evangelists of free trade tell us trade deficits do not matter. Michael Boskin, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Bush I, declared, “It does not make any difference whether a country makes computer chips or potato chips.”
History teaches otherwise. In 1860, Britain abandoned its Britain First trade policy for the free-trade faith of David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, and Richard Cobden. By World War I, Britain, which produced twice what America did in 1860, produced less than half and had been surpassed by a Germany that did not even exist in 1860.
Free trade does to a nation what alcohol does to a man: saps him first of his vitality, then his energy, then his independence, then his life.
America today exhibits the symptoms of a nation passing into late middle age. We spend more than we earn. We consume more than we produce.
Why does it matter where our goods are produced? Because, as I wrote in The Great Betrayal:
Manufacturing is the key to national power. Not only does it pay more than service industries, the rates of productivity growth are higher and the potential of new industries arising is far greater. From radio came television, VCRs, and flat-panel screens. From adding machines came calculators and computers. From the electric typewriter came the word processors. Research and development follow manufacturing.
Alexander Hamilton, the architect of the U.S. economy, knew this. He had served in the Revolution as aide to Washington and lived through the British blockades. He had led the bayonet charge at Yorktown. And he had resolved that never again would his country’s survival depend upon French muskets or French ships.
As first Treasury Secretary, he delivered in 1791 the “Report on Manufactures,” one of America’s great state papers. Reflecting on how close his country had come to losing its liberty, Hamilton wrote,
Not only the wealth, but the independence and security of a country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures. Every nation … ought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of a national supply. These comprise the means of subsistence, habitation, clothing and defense.
Under the Constitution he helped write, a national free-trade zone was created. Hamilton’s idea was to use tariffs to end our dependence on Europe and force British merchants to finance our government and the roads, harbors, and canals that would tie America together with commerce.
Tariffs would give our national government the revenue to operate, while providing our people both privileged access to the fastest growing market on earth and incentives to go into manufacturing. With American manufacturing thus encouraged, we would soon produce ourselves the guns and ships to defend the republic and the necessities of our national life so we could stand alone against the world.
For 12 decades, America followed Hamilton’s vision. On the eve of World War I, the 13 agricultural colonies on the eastern seaboard had become the richest nation on earth with the highest standard of living, a republic that produced 96 percent of all it consumed while exporting 8 percent of its GNP, an industrial colossus that manufactured more than Britain, France, and Germany combined.
The self-sufficiency and industrial power Hamiltonian policies created enabled us to rearm in security, crush the Axis in four years, rebuild Europe and Japan, and outlast the Soviet empire in a Cold War, while meeting all the needs of our people.
But in the Clinton-Bush free-trade era, Alexander Hamilton is derided as a “protectionist.” Woodrow Wilson’s free-trade dogma is gospel. Result: our trade surpluses have vanished, our deficits have exploded, our self-sufficiency has been lost, our sovereignty has been diminished, and an industrial base that was the envy of mankind has been gutted.
And for what? All that junk down at the mall? What do we have now that we did not have before we submitted to this cult of free trade?
The Loss of Independence
Consider the depths of our new dependency. Imports, 4 percent of GDP for the first 70 years of the 20th century, are near 15 percent now, and 30 percent of the manufactures we consume. Pat Choate, author of Agents of Influence, gives the following levels of U.S. dependency on foreign suppliers for critical goods:
Medicines and pharmaceuticals: 72 percent Metalworking machinery: 51 percent Engines and power equipment: 56 percent Computer equipment: 70 percent Communications equipment: 67 percent Semiconductors and electronics: 64 percent In July, the U.S. Business and Industrial Council reported that the Pentagon officials responsible for procuring U.S. weapons had joined with defense industries to oppose legislation requiring 65 percent U.S. content. U.S. missile defense and the Joint Strike Fighter would be imperiled if 65 percent of the components had to be made in the USA.
As Choate writes, Dell Computers of Austin has 4,500 suppliers. Its just-in-time supply line, which stretches across the Atlantic and Pacific, has an inventory of four days. A dock strike on either coast, and Dell begins to close down after 96 hours.
The Loss of Sovereignty
In the lame-duck session of Congress after the GOP triumph of 1994, Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich colluded with Clinton to bring us into a World Trade Organization where we are outvoted 15-1 by the European Union. In its most important ruling, the WTO has held that the foreign sales corporations of U.S. exporters like Microsoft and Boeing, set up to receive tax benefits voted by Congress, violate the rules of free trade.
Europe is now authorized to impose $4 billion in tariff penalties on U.S. exports if Congress fails to rewrite our tax laws to conform to WTO commands.
When America bailed out the world in the Asian crisis of 1997-98, Indonesia, South Korea, Russia, and Brazil devalued their currencies, slashing the dollar price of their exports. To enable them to earn the hard currency to pay back Western banks and the IMF, America agreed to keep her markets open. Soon, steel from Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, Russia, and Brazil was being dumped in the United States, and American mills were reeling.
The recent steel decision is instructive. By 2002, 25 steel companies had gone bankrupt, and the International Trade Commission had identified dumping as the industry killer. Invoking U.S. trade law, President Bush imposed tariffs. The dumpers howled and ran to the WTO, which declared the U.S. tariffs unjustified. Either the Congress removes them or the EU is empowered to impose $2 billion in tariff penalties on U.S. exports.
Consider what submission to the WTO has meant. Our Congress is ordered by foreign bureaucrats to alter U.S. law or our companies face penalties. Presidential decisions to protect vital American industries are declared invalid by Eurocrats. The terms of access to the U.S. market are now to be decided in Geneva by Lilliputians of the New World Order.
Why are we letting this happen?
Libertarians teach that free trade provides a check on government power. By enabling citizens to buy outside their borders, free trade forces governments to reduce regulations and taxes to stay competitive.
A fine theory. Has it worked out? Hardly. History shows that the opposite is true. Bismarck’s Zollverein, or customs union, went hand-in-hand with the rise of the Second Reich. The EU evolved from a free-trade common market into the socialist superstate of today that is the model for the world government under which all nations surrender sovereignty and how we live will be decided by Platonic guardians.
In the protectionist era from 1789 to 1933, U.S. taxes rarely took more than 3 percent of GNP, except in wartime. Government relied on tariffs. Before 1913, except for the Civil-War era and briefly under Cleveland, we had no income tax. But in the free-trade era, U.S. tax rates on incomes, currently 35 percent, have risen as high as 70 percent, and spending has exceeded 20 percent of GDP in peacetime. The free-trade era is the era of Big Government.
As a former Friedmanite free trader, let me say it: free trade is a bright shining lie. Free trade is the Trojan Horse of world government. Free trade is the murderer of manufacturing and the primrose path to the loss of national sovereignty and the end of our independence.
NAFTA: The Big Sting
In 1993, the NAFTA debate gripped the country. Clinton had the backing of the political establishment, the Heritage Foundation, AEI, Brookings, National Review, New Republic, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable. Perot, Buchanan, Nader, and the AFL-CIO were opposed, as were the people. But that did not matter. Before the vote, the bazaar opened, and Congressmen began selling votes to Clinton for whatever they could get. NAFTA won.
Ten years later, returns are in. We were told our trade surplus with Mexico would grow, that NAFTA would create jobs here, that the rising wages in Mexico would end the invasion of illegal aliens.
But, the year after NAFTA passed, Mexico devalued the peso, and the United States began to run a string of trade deficits that has reached $40 billion a year. Drug cartels in South America shifted operations to Mexico. U.S. exports to Mexico are up, but it is not finished goods we send south but parts to be assembled—and factories and jobs as owners shutter plants north of the Rio Grande in search of wages that are 10 to 20 percent of what they have to pay in the United States.
By 2000, a million Mexicans were working in maquiladora plants south of the border at jobs once held by Americans. But now, the creative destruction of globalization has come to Mexico. Factories there are being shut down and moved to America’s new enterprise zone, China.
And the Mexican people? Half of the 100 million are still mired in poverty. Tens of millions are unemployed or underemployed. Real wages are below what they were in 1993. And the migration north continues as 1.5 million are caught each year breaking into the United States. Of those who make it, one-third head for California where their claims on welfare, Medicaid, schools, and prisons have tipped the state toward bankruptcy as the taxpayers have begun a great exodus to Nevada, Idaho, and Colorado.
NAFTA has helped to convert California into Mexifornia and the Golden State into a Third-World country. Ten years after its passage, Mexico’s leading export continues to be Mexicans.
Factory Floor to the World
While Americans are sacrificing the future for the present, China is sacrificing the present for the future.
Beijing’s boom began after it devalued its currency in 1994. While a blow to Chinese consumers, devaluation gave Beijing a competitive edge over the other “Asian tigers.” Beijing then invited Western companies to locate new factories there to tap its pool of low-wage labor. As the price of access, Beijing demanded that Western companies transfer technology to Chinese partners. What the companies do not transfer, the Chinese extort or steal.
By offering excellent workers at $2 a day, guaranteeing no union trouble, allowing levels of pollution we would not tolerate, and ignoring health and safety standards, China has become the factory floor of the Global Economy and surpassed the United States as the world’s first choice for foreign investment.
What analyst Charles McMillion calls “the world’s most unequal trading relationship,” can be seen in the trade statistics. In 2002, the U.S. trade deficit with China was $103 billion. In May, it was running at $120 billion, the largest deficit between two trading nations in history.
It is thus a myth to say President Bush is presiding over a “jobless recovery.” The Bush tax cuts and Bush deficits are creating millions of manufacturing jobs —in China. America buys 14 percent of China’s production and delivers Beijing a trade surplus of 12 percent of its entire GDP. American purchases probably account today for 100 percent of China’s economic growth.
The U.S.-China relationship cannot truly be described as trade. It is rather the looting of America by China and its corporate collaborators in the United States. Beijing understands what economic nationalist Friedrich List wrote long ago: “The power of producing wealth is infinitely more important than the wealth itself.”
China has now amassed $360 billion in reserves from her trade surpluses since 1990. Much of that is invested in U.S. bonds and T-bills, earning Beijing billions in interest from the U.S. Treasury. America may be the most advanced nation on earth, and China a developing country, but you could not tell that from studying the trade statistics.
In 2002, China ran up its largest trade surpluses with us in electrical machinery, computers, toys, games, footwear, furniture, clothing, plastics, articles of iron and steel, vehicles, optical and photographic equipment, and other manufactures. Among the 23 items where we had a surplus with China were soybeans, corn, wheat, animal feeds, meat, cotton, metal ores, scrap, hides and skins, pulp and waste paper, cigarettes, gold, coal, mineral fuels, rice, tobacco, fertilizers, glass. Beijing uses us as George III used his Jamestown colony.
One who has studied how China deals with craven capitalists who come courting is columnist Terry Jeffrey. On inspecting the Web site of Motorola, Jeffrey found this description of how it sees its future:
Motorola is moving toward … taking China as its home and development base. Motorola Chinese Electronics … has increased its investment several times in China without taking away a single dollar. The company reinvested all the profits in China. … Since the very beginning Motorola has brought forward the idea of trying to be a good citizen of China, taking China as its home and thriving with the Chinese people. … The development goal is to become a true Chinese company.
The hilarity of Motorola’s kowtow to the mandarins of the Middle Kingdom aside, this passage reveals a hidden cost of globalization. When U.S. companies go global, they shed their loyalty to America.
Consider Boeing, last surviving U.S. manufacturer of commercial aircraft. Apparently, Boeing has gone beyond building plants in China to make horizontal stabilizers and vertical fins for its fleet. On Jan. 1, this story ran in the New York Times:
The State Department has accused two leading American companies of 123 violations of export laws in connection with the transfer of rocket and satellite data to China during the 1990s. The Boeing company and Hughes Electronics Corporation, a unit of General Motors, were notified of the accusations last week.
Hamilton, Clay, Lincoln, and T.R. would recognize China’s policy for what it is and counter it. But this generation of free traders does not have a clue as to what is going on, or does not care. Either way, the consequences will be the same: de-industrialization of America, decline of the dollar, a deepening dependency on foreign countries for the necessities of our national life, diminished sovereignty, and eventual loss of our independence. If you disbelieve this, look at the once sovereign and independent nations of Europe.
Implosion of the Global Economy
One need not have a Nobel Prize in economics to understand that U.S. trade deficits cannot continue rising indefinitely. As Choate reports,
In the 1970s, [the United States] mounted a decades-long deficit of $75 billion. … In the 1980s, the deficit soared to $843 billion as Japan began to take away our industries. … In the 1990s, that trade deficit doubled to $1.7 trillion. … At this pace, we’re probably going to have a $6 trillion cumulative deficit in this decade—and that’s probably an understated number given the pace we are losing our manufacturing base.
But the world is not going to continue lending Americans $500 or $600 billion a year to indulge our appetite for foreign goods. The U.S. dollar has already lost 25 percent of its value against the Euro, and foreigners have begun to buy up America, purchasing our land, stocks, bonds, and T-bills. Foreigners now claim a lion’s share of the $300 billion we pay in annual interest on the U.S. debt and have liens against all future profits of our Fortune 500 companies.
Consider the altered situation we face today compared with five years ago. When the Asian crisis broke, our economy was booming. We could see budget surpluses out to the horizon. With the IMF, we poured over $200 billion in fresh loans into Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, Russia, Argentina, and Brazil. To enable them to earn the cash to pay back the sums they owed private creditors and international banks, we pledged to keep America’s markets open to their exports.
These, then, are the three pillars of the Global Economy: first, the willingness of America to bail out nations about to default. Second, the willingness and capacity of America to run enormous trade deficits indefinitely. Third, continued wealth transfers to the Third World.
And this is why the Global Economy is in peril. When Argentina declared it could not service its debt, America and the IMF refused to lend new money. Argentina defaulted. A tottering Brazil was bailed out, but the message was clear. The days of automatic bailouts of bankrupt regimes are over.
And with the dollar sinking, the U.S. budget deficit soaring, our merchandise trade deficit at $562 billion and rising, and manufacturing jobs vanishing at the rate of 80,000 a month, America’s willingness and ability to continue sacrificing for the Global Economy are coming to an end.
Perhaps the most inexplicable free traders are the neoconservatives who champion “unilateralism,” talk of a Pax Americana, and cheer the coming American empire of pith helmets and jodhpurs. Do they not understand that trade is not an end in itself but a means to an end: national power? Can they not see that our growing dependence on foreign oil and nations like China for the necessities of national defense imperils our security? Can they not see that these mammoth trade deficits must sink the dollar and that no nation with a falling currency can maintain the troops and subsidies to sustain an empire?
In 1962, Prescott Bush stood with Barry Goldwater and Strom Thurmond to vote no on JFK’s Trade Expansion Act. President Bush rejects the economic patriotism of his grandfather and embraces the Wilsonian faith that free trade will lead to global democracy and world peace. Like his father, he also embraces Wilson’s faith in open borders and moral interventionism. Wilsonism may cost him his presidency. "
The corrupt Bush Regime should be investigated by Congress for their lies, deceptions and, possibly illegal activities that misled the U.S.A. into a War-Turned-Guerrilla-Quag mire in Iraq. Read "Iraqmire: Bush Gets Desperate" by David Corn on "The Nation: Capital Games" on http://www.thenation.com/capi... . An excerpt:
"Bush announced the occupation (and reconstruction in Afghanistan) would cost an extra $87 billion in the coming year--on top of the $79 billion already approved for the war and the occupation through September 30. He offered no explanation of how he would pay for that. He did not say, Sorry, but we're going to have to ask the major beneficiaries of the latest round of tax cuts--millionaires, investors, and the like--to do with a little less. Or, There's going to be less Medicare coverage for our seniors, but that's the price of defending freedom. Bush vowed he would do "whatever is necessary." But that does include asking Americans to make any sacrifices (other than those who serve in the military). Presumably, Bush will just charge it--add the price of the occupation to an already bulging deficit and let someone else worry about it down the road. Once more, this is hardly rising to responsibility.
"Bush is in a fix. He's stuck in his Iraqmire. He did not prepare the country for a long drawn-out endeavor in Iraq, which keeps on claiming the lives of Americans. In fact, before the war, some Bush aides claimed that this would be a no-fuss occupation. Now Bush has little choice but to resort to the usual rah-rah about resolve. He points fingers at the international community and the Iraqis, failing, of course, to acknowledge his own miscalculations."
Dumbya is now saying that his rich corporate robber-barons, war-profiteers, and the wealthiest oligarchy: aren't going to make any sacrifices: Just You Poor Dumb Suckers (Low-Income, Middle-Income, Fixed-Income Retirees & Families Struggling to Make Ends Meet) Who are Average Workers & Those With Kids Dying In Iraq. Read "Bush request scribbled in red ink" by John King, on http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPO... :
"Senior administration officials told reporters there were no plans at the White House to seek "offsets" -- or spending cuts elsewhere in the budget -- to ease the strain of the new war budget request on the Treasury.
"Nor is the White House open to scaling back tax cuts already passed by Congress, these officials said.
"The administration had already projected a record federal budget deficit next year of $475 billion. "
Dumbya's a Miserable Failure who has ravaged Iraq and Afghanistan, and isn't even willing to ask his Corporate Paymasters or Hyper-Rich Campaign Contributors who were awarded immorally lavish Tax-Gifts!
Today, a Ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, US Representative David Obey wisely called for Rummy & Wolfy to resign. Refer to "Ranking Democrat calls for resignations of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz" on http://www.channelnewsasia.co... :
"US Representative David Obey defended on Monday his call for Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and top deputy Paul Wolfowitz to resign, saying the duo have made "a spectacular number of misjudgments about the post-war Iraq situation."
"The issue isn't what happened during the war - everybody knows it went well," Mr Obey said on the MSNBC program "Buchanan and Press."
"The issue is whether or not we're going to be in the best position to win in Iraq now that we are running into a lot of trouble in post-war situations."
"Specifically, Mr Obey said the Defence Department pushed the State Department out of planning for post-war Iraq, and that it had failed to purchase 40,000 Kevlar linings to protect combat troops in Iraq.
"On Friday Mr Obey, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, sent US President George W. Bush a letter urging him to remove Rumsfeld and Deputy Defence Secretary Wolfowitz.
"Mr Obey told reporters that those and other steps were needed to "restore some degree of confidence" in the Bush administration's ability to manage the US role in Iraq. "
Dumbya and his corrupt regime of war-mongers and "corporate-take-all" liars should be called upon to resign for wanton recklessness in spend-spend-spend on the richest-of-the-rich and wars; and, they've ignored the dire needs of the American People:
* Jobs for 9,000,000 unemployed, 3,000,000 of which Dumbya has wiped out.
* Economy that Dumbya is bankrupting by awarding massive tax cuts & loopholes to corporate robber-barons & cronies, leading us into a $455 Billion Deficit in 2003 and increasing dramatically the Staggering National Debt to $6.8 Trillion. God Help Our Nation When the Bill Comes Due For Payment: Where will Dumbya be Then? At His Palace in Crawford: Sounds Like Saddam!
* Universal Health Care to assist the 45,000,000 Americans with no entitlement to obtain care if they fall ill. Dumbya ignores the fact that the majority of Americans want it more than they do his immoral tax cuts for the rich.
* Prescription Drugs for our elderly so that they aren't living in Pain or Eating Dog Food, to pay for the lone-shark prices charged to enrich the pharmaceutical executives obese pay-packets. Dumbya is callous to the needs of the elderly in this nation.
* Educational improvements so that our young people receive the highest quality education in schools that aren't falling apart. Dumbya stupidly chants "Leave No (RICH) Child Behind" and then cuts educational programs and doesn't provide funding for desperately needed teachers and programs.
* Environment protections so that corporate goons can't poison the air we breathe & the water we drink-- and ravage natural parks and protected areas. Dumbya has the worst environmental record of any President in our nation's history.
* Improvements to U.S. old and obsolete infrastructure (like Iraq's?-- remember the Energy Blackout?). Dumbya has ignored the infrastructural requirements of our nation, needed for roads, schools, mass transit, and other projects that could improve the quality of life for all Americans and also provide jobs.
* Corporate reforms on accounting standards needed since corporate rapists can still take-the-money-and-run. Dumbya promised to prosecute corporate wrong-doers, but let his buddy Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay off-the-hook, and no SEC systemic changes have been implemented to keep Corporate Terrorists from raping employees, ravaging pension funds & assets.
* Dumbya got us into an aggressive war-turned-guerrilla-quag mire with Iraq, based upon a web of lies. Dumbya has wasted over $72 Billion thus far (+ on-going costs of $4 Billion/Month), and now has the audacity to ask to squander another $87 Billion! Dumbya doesn't like to read, preferring to watch football games with his "gum-on-shoe" side-kick, Condi "Liar" Rice, and probably hasn't been told that 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq.
Dumbya hypocritically claims to love the Iraqi people so much that he's willing to destroy America? Something Is Wrong With the "Shell-Game" Dumbya Is Pan-Handling! Dumbya's priorities are screwed-up: We Need to Care for Americans, instead of Enriching the Global Corporate Empire in accordance with his regime's ghoulish "Project for the New American Century (PNAC)".
Rummy & Wolfy Should Be Called Upon To Resign! Moreover, Dumbya is a Miserable Failure and Should Be Recalled!
Bush Regime's Lemon Deals for the Iraqi and American People
"Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable." - Voltaire
The Bush Regime's spin-meister extraordinaire has Bush reading off-the-monitor: "Rather than in quantifying numbers, all I want to do is create conditions necessary so that all eligible people can find work," said Bush, the first president with a master's degree in business administration. [So What! Bush's buddy, Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay has a PhD in Economics: 'All the Better to Scam You With' Credentials!] "I'm optimistic that that'll happen. I'm much more optimistic today than I was a year ago." ...
... But then Bush can afford to be optimistic, after all, his family and cronies have made a fortune from their immoral tax cuts and war on Iraq ... It's the rest of us miserable slobs who will be forced to pay-off the extravagant bills from his borrow-and-spend economic policies; tax cuts for corporations & the wealthiest; and, wars to empower & enrich the Global Corporate Empire.
Most Americans will have nothing to show for our sacrifice but slaughtered sons & daughters; a polluted & ravaged planet; and, squandered taxpayer dollars not used to improve our lives, but to enable the Bushies & their hyper-rich corporate cronies live like neo-imperial royalty. Moreover, we'll be left with Bush's bankrupt legacy that has created fear and hatred of the U.S.A. around the world. This is outrageous.
Matt Bivens reports in his terrific column for "The Nation" in "The Daily Outrage", today's entitled "Bush's Jobs Plan" on http://www.thenation.com/outr... :
"In February, the White House Council of Economic Advisers predicted tax cuts would create 5.5 million jobs by the end of this year. Well, the pages of the 2003 calendar are turning, and we continue to hemorrhage employment. According to the Economic Policy Institute, instead of gaining 344,000 jobs in August, we lost 93,000. "Since the recession began 29 months ago in March 2001, 3.3 million private sector jobs have disappeared," EPI notes. "This is the largest sustained loss of jobs since the Great Depression." President Bush is also on a track to be the first president since pre-Depression Herbert Hoover to finish out his first term as a job-destroyer.
"The good news: The Bush Administration is not insensitive. It has committed to digging deep into the US treasury to fund free universal health care for 25 million citizens -- within just one year's time! It's really tremendous news for American families ...
"What?
"Oh.
"My bad. That's health care for 25 million Iraqi citizens. No wonder the president needs more of our money.
* * *
"Such elegant symmetry: Republicans raise money to elect more Republicans, and send more of your jobs abroad; they then hire people abroad to raise more money to elect more Republicans to send more jobs abroad. Lather, rinse, repeat.
"Or maybe not. That story, so beautiful it seems a shame to let a few facts get in the way of it, is now being denied. The Republican Party, sounding very put-upon, is insisting the report that it had outsourced its telephone fund-raising work to a company in India isn't true.
"Time will tell if that's so. But if the original report captured the ire of so many people, that's because it was such a perfect symbol of the Administration's "jobs programs". It was a leading Republican Senator, after all, who not so long ago declared New York city cops and fire fighters ought to be patriotic enough to work for free. And as indignant as Republicans are about the bounce this outsource-to-India story is getting among voters, I don't remember any Republicans stepping up to oppose the argument that patriotic cops and fire fighters don't put in for overtime."
Hopefully, the Iraqi people are too smart to be swindled and conned by the Bush Regime who have successfully bamboozled and scammed the American people. The Bushies may provide some temporary Universal Health Care for the 25 Million Iraqis, in order to "buy friendship" (Bush Regime's Modus Operandi is "Try Force, Intimidation & Coersion First ... When That Fails, Bribe Your Enemies into Becoming Your Bon Amis")-- it will be short-lived, only until the Iraqis become compliant serfs, as Americans are being transformed into compliant slave labor.
The Bush Regime doesn't give a damn about the 45 Million Americans without Health Insurance, although the majority calls for Universal Health Care. (Refer to "Majority of Americans Call for Universal Health Care" on http://www.tblog.com/template... .) They've got Americans over a barrel (unless we oust them in 2004), and will also pull-the-rug-from-underne ath ordinary Iraqis as soon as they gain control of their Oil Fields. (Don't worry about Ahmad Chalabi, Rummy's & Wolfy's corrupt buddy-- he'll make a fortune, perhaps as a neo-C.E.O. of Iraqi Insurance Corporations & HMOs, in tandem with Board Member & Major Stockholder of Privatized Iraqi Oil Fields?!?!)
America is incurring an obscene deficit of over $455 Billion for 2003 (not including costs of War in Iraq that exceeds $72 Billion, with a recurring cost of $4 Billion/Month), contributing to the staggering $6.8 Trillion National Debt.
In the meantime, Bush has the unmitigated gall to ask for $87 Billion for his bungled Guerilla Quamgire in Iraq (and to repair America's rape of Afghanistan whom Bush betrayed by not assisting them earlier as promised), without specifying just how his neo-con foreign adventures on behalf of "Project for the New American Century (PNAC)" are to be funded. Why not ask the corporations, robber-barons, war-profiteers & richest-of-the-rich, awarded immoral tax cuts to make a "little sacrifice" instead of burdening the rest of us?
The only moral and right course of action by Congress, is to revoke all tax cuts & loopholes awarded by the corrupt Bush Regime to corporations and the wealthiest among us. Will Congress act in America's best interest, instead of acting as a "Rubber-Stamp" on behalf of the Global Corporate Empire & the Wealthy Oligarchy? We shall see, and as I'm not as rich as the Bushies, I'm not optimistic.
The Bush Regime are like the vulgar, loud-mouthed Used Car Salesmen who sell "lemon" deals to poor suckers, and as soon as you drive them off the lot, they fall apart! Universal Health Care for the Iraqi People is another "lemon" deal used to "sweeten" Iraqis into having faith in the illusion of Bush's "compassion (sic)". It is unclear as to when, if ever, Americans will acknowledge that we've been hood-winked with "lemon" deals comprising economic and foreign policies that result in heart-breaking massacres & bloodshed, and massive back-breaking debt, record-level deficits & job losses, by our "Lemon" President!
Project for the New American Century (PNAC) ... Exposed!
The "Project for the New American Century (PNAC)" dreamt-up in the 'bowels' of neo-cons' nightmares, by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and, other panderers to the Global Corporate Empire, is coming under increasing scrutiny, as it has dominated the Bush Regime's insane domestic and foreign policies. It is unclear whether Bush comprehends its full implications or is simply their "Useful Idiot".
An article published yesterday in Guardian UK, entitled "This war on terrorism is bogus: The 9/11 attacks gave the US an ideal pretext to use force to secure its global domination", by Michael Meacher, on Saturday, September 6, 2003, on http://www.guardian.co.uk/com...,3604,1036571,00.html , highlights the rationale behind the war on Iraq (and it wasn't phony WMDs posing an "imminent threat" as we were misled to believe by Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc.).
"PNAC.Info-Exposing the Project for the New American Century" is a web-site devoted to "An effort to investigate, analyze, and expose the Project for the New American Century, and its plan for a "unipolar" world." on http://www.pnac.info/ - They provide a link to access the report entitled "Rebuilding Americas Defenses", that will make any rational person's blood run cold.
Interestingly, the official PNAC web-site (http://www.newamericancentury...) has removed this report from their web-site! Its neo-con authors want to keep their ghoulish intentions a secret, in a vain attempt to cover-up their bizarre plan for a Global Corporate Empire that intends to brutally dominate the world's people and assets to enrich a few corporations, robber-barons, and the wealthy oligarchy.
Is our U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights being pre-empted, and our U.S. Government being high-jacked by neo-cons running to their own Business Plan, with no restraints on grabbing power and riches? Are the neo-cons and the Bush Regime above the rule of law? You decide:
"Project for the New American Century (PNAC)" on http://home.earthlink.net/~platter/neo-conservatism /pnac.html:
"This is the new Mein Kampf. Only Hitler did not have nuclear weapons. It's the scariest document I've ever read in my life." -- Dr. Helen Caldicott, referring to the Project for the New American Century report entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century, 28 April 2003. Dr. Caldicott is a Pediatrician, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility and author of The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush's Military-Industrial Complex. (video)
Project for the New American Century (PNAC) is a neo-conservative think-tank that seeks US world domination through military conquest of what it calls "the new American frontier." PNAC's membership includes people such as Richard Perle, who "has given seminars on ways to profit from possible conflicts discussed by defense board he sits on", according to the The Los Angeles Times; Elliot Abrams, who lied to Congress about Nicaragua and denied massacres by US-trained forces in El Salvador; Dick Cheney, who voted against a 1986 resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela from prison and recognition of the African National Congress -- an act cited by Mandela in a September 2002 public denunciation of U.S. policy toward Iraq; Donald Rumsfeld, who advocates the "no evidence required" approach to international relations; Paul Wolfowitz, who has spoken of "ending states" and has been dubbed "velociraptor" by The Economist; and William Kristol, former Chief of Staff for Dan Quayle who said, "We need to err on the side of being strong [...] And if people want to say we're an imperial power, fine."
Many of PNAC's members and associates have been implicated in conflict of interest scandals involving the ways that they profit from the wars and military spending that they promote. For more information, see the special report entitled Investing in war futures: How Richard Perle, James Woolsey, Halliburton, the Carlyle Group and others profit from the business of killing people and destroying property.
In September 2000, Project for the New American Century produced a report for Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, and Lewis Libby. Journalist Neil Mackay wrote about this report in the September 15th, 2002 edition of the Sunday Herald.
According to the Sunday Herald article,
Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP, father of the House of Commons and one of the leading rebel voices against war with Iraq, said: 'This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks -- men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war.
'This is a blueprint for US world domination -- a new world order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world. I am appalled that a British Labour Prime Minister should have got into bed with a crew which has this moral standing.'
The report, an "'American grand strategy'" and "blueprint of world domination" entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century, contained the following goals:
* The U.S. must take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein is in power: "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
* The U.S. must "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars" as a "core mission"
* The U.S. forces are "the cavalry on the new American frontier"
* The report builds upon the 1992 draft document "Defense Planning Guidance," which claimed that the U.S. must "discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role"
* Permanent U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, whether or not Saddam Hussein is in power
* Increasing military pressure on China: "it is time to increase the presence of American forces in southeast Asia" which will lead to "American and allied power providing the spur to the process of democratisation in China"
* "the creation of 'US Space Forces', to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent 'enemies' using the internet against the US"
The report contains ambivalent language toward bioterrorism and genetic warfare: "New methods of attack -- electronic, 'non-lethal', biological -- will be more widely available ... combat likely will take place in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace, and perhaps the world of microbes ... advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool"
Development of "world-wide command-and-control system" to contain dangerous regimes of North Korea, Libya, Syria, and Iran.
Additional resources:
Neil Mackay: Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President (Sunday Herald, 15 September 2002)
Project for the New American Century homepage Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century: Frida Berrigan: Washington High Fashion: High Military Spending (Common Dreams News Center, 24 February 2001)
Bernard Weiner: How We Got Into This Imperial Pickle: A PNAC Primer
William Rivers Pitt: Blood Money
People:
Dick Cheney Donald Rumsfeld Paul Wolfowitz Jeb Bush William Kristol - chairman of Project for the New American Century, editor of Weekly Standard, fmr. chief of staff to VP Dan Quayle Elliott Abrams Bruce Jackson, director of Project for the New American Century, VP of Lockheed-Martin, "heard to brag at a conference last year that he would be in a position to 'write the Republican platform' on foreign policy if they took the White House" Gary Bauer William J. Bennett Eliot A. Cohen Midge Decter Paula Dobriansky Steve Forbes Aaron Friedberg Francis Fukuyama Frank Gaffney Fred C. Ikle Donald Kagan - "National Missile Defense enthusiast and Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan, who described Bush's decision as his "first broken campaign promise," is also on the board. " Zalmay Khalilzad I. Lewis Libby Norman Podhoretz Dan Quayle Peter W. Rodman Stephen P. Rosen Henry S. Rowen Vin Weber George Weigel
The Bush Regime Was Never Serious About Middle-East Peace ... Just the Opposite!
The Bush Regime was never truly serious about Peace in the Middle-East. Indeed, just the opposite: this corrupt cabal wants "Perpetual War for Perpertual Peace!".
The Israeli-Palestinian "roadmap for peace" was no more than a cover that the corrupt Bush Regime ceded to British Prime Minister Tony Blair who needed rationales & justifications to spill British blood, during his campaign to obtain his Parliament's (House of Commons) permission to join the U.S.A. in their illegal and immoral incursion into Iraq.
Warfare in the Middle-East makes a few war-profiteers and corporate robber-barons very, very rich indeed. Read "The Price of Freedom in Iraq and Power in Washington", by Ceara Donnelley and William D. Hartung, that reports the Bushies' Business Plan to reap billions, off the blood spilt by US & British Soldiers, and hard-earned wages swindled from average American Taxpayers (since the corporate "top dogs" and "fat cats" & wealthy oligarchy were obscenely awarded massive tax cuts), on http://www.worldpolicy.org/pr... . Also read "Bad Whiff From a Big Deal" on http://www.latimes.com/news/o...,1,4820164.story?coll=la-news-commen t-editorials ., citing:
"New documents show that Halliburton has been awarded deals in Iraq worth more than $1.7 billion and could make hundreds of millions more under an effectively open-ended contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers." Halliburton is paying Veep Cheney $1 Million per Annum. Can you "connect the dots"? The motives for this obscene occupation-turned-guerril la quagmire are obvious to the dumbest-of-the-dumb! Also, ask Daddy (Carlyle Group) Bush 41 about the profits he's grabbed in this horrific blood-for-oil scheme. (Read "Daddy Bush 41 has Hit the Jackpot from Baby Bush 43 War on Iraq!" on http://www.tblog.com/template... )
The Bushies hit the trifecta, with their shake-down of a (1) Sheepish American Population intimidated into lapping-up the Bush Gang's lies & deceptions, out of fear, (2) Cheerleading, Compliant Media & Press who aren't doing their job, and, (3) Rubber-Stamp Republican Congress that collaborates with the Bush Regime's atrocities.
Tommy-Robespierre-DeLay visited Israel this summer to tell Sharon, that nobody in the U.S.A. takes the "roadmap" seriously ... it was just window-dressing to help "poodle"-Blair. Read "Tom Delay's Pilgrimage: The Bug Exterminator Goes to Jerusalem", by Kurt Nimmo, on http://www.counterpunch.org/n... . An excerpt:
"Tom DeLay, House Majority Leader and former bug exterminator from Sugar Land, Texas, wants you to know he stands "shoulder-to-shoulder" with accused war criminal Ariel Sharon and the Israeli occupation forces ...
""The United States must stand with Israel against Palestinian terror because Israel's fight is our fight," DeLay told the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee on July 23. "Israel's liberation from Palestinian terrorism is an essential component of victory in the war on terror. It's a 'liberation' we're talking about, not a mutually-agreed upon cease-fire." "
"Finally, recall the remark made by Rafael Eitan, former Israeli general and head of the Tromet Party: "We will harass these Palestinians until they move like drunk cockroaches in a bottle."
"No doubt the bug exterminator from Sugar Land, Texas, understands this well"
DeLay's visit was in opposition to the Bush Regime's so-called "roadmap for peace", but weakling Bushy-boy whose only principle is enshrined in the motto : "All for Me and Me for Me", didn't want to risk losing votes by opposing the neo-fascist House Majority Leader. Bush pretends to be a "tough-guy" but is clearly not a leader, as evidenced by the in-fighting within his own administration that he can't control. Read "Bush, the Cowardly Bully Hides Behind Thugs: Methinks He Doth Protest Too Much!" on http://www.tblog.com/template... .
Today, Mahmoud Abbas, the appointed prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, has resigned. Wouldn't you? Your people are being massacred, while the U.S.A. does nothing to put a halt to the blood-shed. Ariel Sharon uses the Bush Doctrine of "call 'em all terrorists-- and wipe 'em all out"! Meanwhile, Yasser Arafat is loathe to concede power and arms, out of a not-totally-irrational mistrust of U.S. and Israeli intentions.
The Bush Regime are not to be trusted? Ask Saddam Hussein who let U.N. Weapons Inspectors back into Iraq, but was still invaded by an aggressive, blood-lustful Bush Regime, who lied about phony WMDs posing a so-called "imminent threat", and have been floundering around ever since seeking rationalizations to support their Crimes Against Humanity! Ask the Europeans who were insulted, coerced, and treated like sh*t for having dared to question Emperor Bush-- and Bush now has the audacity to ask them to shed blood and squander treasure, and not to expect anything in return! Ask Mahmoud Abbas!
In "Abbas Quits in Blow to Mideast Peace Plan", by John Ward Anderson and Molly Moore, Washington Post Foreign Service, on http://www.washingtonpost.com... , they report:
"Abbas told Palestinian legislators in a closed session today that he was quitting because of continuing clashes with Yasser Arafat, the elected leader of the Palestinian Authority, and the failure of the United States and Israel to back his fragile government with substantive efforts to move the peace process forward, according to lawmakers present at the meeting.
"The decision by Abbas to leave the position that President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon hoped would sideline Arafat will make a resurrection of the U.S.-backed peace process, called the "road map," even more difficult after its collapse under the pressure of renewed bloodshed on both sides in recent weeks.
""Things could deteriorate at every level unless there's an initiative to salvage the Palestinian internal system," said Ziad Abu Amr, a cabinet member in Abbas's government. "The Palestinian political system is in crisis."
"Abu Amr said the mood in the legislative chambers as Abbas made a "very personal" speech was one of "sadness and frustration." "
"In the end, analysts say, Arafat has the upper hand because he was elected by the Palestinian people, while Abbas was appointed. A recent public opinion survey put the prime minister's popularity at 1.8 percent. "
The Bush Regime are indeed a "Miserable Failure". Their obsession with Iraq (that experts agree didn't pose a threat as serious as either N. Korea or Iran-- but was an easy target & as Wolfowitz indicated, a trial balloon for the neo-con's nightmarish 'Project for New American Century' adventures), has led to a complete collapse in any peace initiative. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is worse under Bushy-boy than it was under Clinton or even Daddy Bush 41.
Bush's ghoulish neo-con cabal intimidates us all by chanting: "9/11 ... 9/11 ... 9/11 changed everything!" God, For God's Sake, I hope that isn't true! Did it change our sense of decency? Did it change our US Constitution & Bill of Rights, enshrining the principles to ensure life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness for all? Did it change the great idea that No Man is Above the Law? If so, then our very Republic for Which It Stands is being obliterated before our very eyes.
Quagmire? What Quagmire? ... It's Even Worse Than That!
The White House is going back to Congress to request a "supplemental" appropriation for more money, and Republican & Democratic representatives alike, are not happy campers! Already having squandered over $72 Billion on Iraq, with a recurring cost of $4 Billion per Month-- the Bush Regime is burdening the Poor and Average American Taxpayers (but not corporations or the rich, who have profited from immoral Bush tax cuts, cronyism & war-profiteering) are faced with the recurring costs increasing to $5 Billion per Month next year, and even more in subsequent years: It's a Disaster!
On a daily basis, an average of 1-2 Americans are being massacred in Iraq, and 10 Americans are wounded (maimed, injured severely, loss of limbs, etc.). Over 7700+ innocent Iraqi civilians have been slaughtered thus far ... and the Bush Regime have the unmitigated gall to "lectures" us all about mass graves?
The Neo-con Death Cult chants their mind-numbing screed: "We have no choice now. We must spend whatever it takes!". It's Absurd Flim-Flam:
* My goodness, how come we never "have no choice" when it comes to improving the lives of our citizens via Universal Health Care, Educational Programs, Infrastructure, Environmental Protections, etc.?
* Why is it that "we have no choice" but to enrich the Bush Regime's Corrupt Corporate Cronies, but Do Not Have A Choice when it comes to our own welfare?
* Why is it that "we have no choice" and can't use the billions squandered on this insane, imbecilic war (and an obesely fat Military Industrial Complex, outspending the next 18 richest countries combined? i.e. Wasteful, Corrupt & Destructive), and instead use our resources to create Jobs to benefit Americans?
We Americans are being scammed, bamboozled and conned by the Bushies & their thugs, out to enrich themselves from the blood & treasure of working people. We had better reflect upon these problems before we're all bankrupt and relegated to the positions of neo-serfs paying back-breaking tithes and heart-breaking homage to Emperor Bush's 21st Century Neo-Feudal System.
"In the months leading up to the war in Iraq and in its aftermath, Bush administration officials were forced to continually change their rationale for launching the attack to topple Saddam Hussein. Where they have not wavered, and where they have received consistent support from top Pentagon military commanders, is in their insistence that Iraq is not another Vietnam, not a quagmire. The further the US and the world move from the fall of Baghdad on April 9, the more it seems that the administration is correct: Iraq is not a quagmire. It is really a black hole.
A quagmire is defined in the American Heritage Dictionary as (1) "Land with a soft, muddy surface" or (2) "A precarious or difficult situation". In either definition, circumstances are not irreversible. A "soft muddy surface" suggests something more solid somewhere beneath, while "difficult" is not the same as impossible.
But media reports the past week in August have made it very clear that the administration has plunged the US over the lip - what is called the "event horizon" - of the human and financial black hole that is post-war Iraq. The significance of passing the astronomical event horizon is that whatever crosses it, even light, cannot recover or be recovered. It is a one-way trip down a "tunnel" at whose end there is no light, only crushing gravity.
Consider the human costs of the Iraq adventure to date:
The US death toll from all causes since May 1, the date that President George W Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq, now exceeds the death toll from the three weeks required to seize Baghdad (March 20-April 9) and the three weeks thereafter. The 286 US fatalities in the 2003 war is fast approaching the 293 killed in the 1991 Gulf War with Iraq.
The British lost four more soldiers in late August, bringing their post-May 1 losses to 12. This is nearly one-quarter of the UK's total fatalities since March 20 and doubles total UK fatalities in the 1991 Gulf War. And the British are operating in an area the coalition expected to be very receptive to the occupation authorities.
Not routinely reported are the number of US wounded, who total 1,127 as of September 2.
The United Nations' foreign staff lost 16, killed when its Baghdad headquarters was blown up by a vehicular bomb in August. Other relief and humanitarian workers have also been targets, and one Danish soldier has been killed.
Unreported are the Iraqi dead and wounded from encounters with invading and occupation forces and the series of car bombings in August and early September. And then there are the fatalities caused by inadequate or insufficient public services - electric power, clean water, sanitation - as well as lack of basic security brought on by the wholesale dismissal ("cleansing") of the Iraqi police force, army and border guards in May. According to the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, Baghdad has 6,000 policemen, most of whom are in training. Before March 20, the city had 20,000. And today the "army" consists of 1,000 recruits.
The financial aspects of the black hole that is post-war Iraq are astronomical:
The cost of the war itself is estimated at US$48 billion, with the Pentagon's ongoing operations costing another $4 billion a month - and no decrease forecast.
Reconstruction costs for just the post-war part of fiscal year 2003, which ends September 30, have been estimated at $7.3 billion. The administration refuses to estimate costs for 2004, let alone future years. Independent estimates depend on what is included; for example, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences has a range of between $106-$615 billion over 10 years, while estimates by Taxpayers for Common Sense run between $114-$465 billion.
The administration had already signaled it would ask Congress for new, substantial Iraq supplemental appropriations in October. Now it says that it will need a "few billion more" just to get through September.
L Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), acknowledged that rebuilding Iraq would cost "tens of billions" of dollars and that most of this cost would be paid by US taxpayers. Bremer recently set the cost of providing clean water at $16 billion and reliable electric power at $13 billion. He made no estimate about the cost of rebuilding the oil industry, although he did suggest it might cost $100 billion over the next five years to reconstitute Iraq's "national infrastructure."
In March, even before Baghdad fell, a non-competitive contract to rehabilitate Iraq's oil fields, with an upper limit of $7 billion, was awarded to Vice President Dick Cheney's former employer, Halliburton, by the Army Corps of Engineers. (As of the end of August, Halliburton had already been paid $700 million for oil field work, according to information the corps provided the Washington Post.) As recently as June, the CPA had said Iraq's oil production would return to pre-war levels by the end of August. In July this slipped to October; now it has slipped to October 2004. Yet as early as March 27, one week after the war began and well before any evaluation of the condition of the oil infrastructure was possible, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz assured the House Appropriations Committee that oil would be Iraq's self-financing rebuilding engine: "We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."
Facing an ever-growing black hole from failed oil revenues, the CPA unveiled in late August its latest gambit to revive Iraq's economy: opening the country to outside investment. The US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, according to the New York Times, reacted very cautiously. Even though it nominally will have the opportunity to review major investment offers, there is concern that traditional industries, rendered relatively inefficient by 23 years of war, sanctions and under-investment, would quickly be swamped by new factories, throwing more people out of work in a country where unemployment hovers near 60 percent.
Indeed, food and agriculture, services and manufacturing are among major segments of the economy not exempted from foreign investment. What the CPA's scheme does exclude are natural resources (including oil), basic services (electricity, water, and sewage) and areas that would remain under CPA control because of "national security" reasons (eg "retraining" members of Iraq's former intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, to work for the CPA). Moreover, the CPA's proposal omits any requirement for investors to reinvest their profits in Iraq. This sets up conditions similar to those in post-Soviet Russia when billions of dollars were exported and stashed in foreign banks while the economy plunged.
While foreign investment is generally considered a plus for economic growth, the terms of the CPA plan seem to run counter to recommendations of the Pentagon-appointed review group that visited Iraq in late June to assess conditions. Headed by former deputy defense secretary John Hamre, the panel put economic development as the third of seven priorities (behind public safety and greater Iraqi involvement in reconstruction efforts). Specifically, it recommended:
Creating short-term, large-scale public works projects that would absorb sizable numbers of people in the labor pool;
Jump-starting a significant number of state-owned enterprises, even those that would not be competitive, because of the great need to produce more job opportunities;
Initiating a "massive" micro-credit program, similar to those that have been successful in impoverished, war-ravaged countries, that would open new avenues for economic activity to new players, especially women.
Private foreign investment will not be interested in any of these areas as economic returns would be minimal, if any, and not worth the risk given the lack of security in Iraq.
One characteristic of black holes is that they grow in size as they absorb energy from the surrounding cosmos. Iraq has already snuffed out thousands of lives and absorbed tens of billions of dollars. Bush reiterated that a "substantial commitment of time and resources" still lies ahead.
Yes, Iraq is not a quagmire. But at a time when US budget deficits of $401 billion this year and $480 billion for 2004 are forecast, Iraq looms as an ever-expanding funnel into which human lives, human talent and monetary resources are being poured, never to be recovered. That, by any measure, defines a veritable black hole.
Dan Smith (dan@fcnl.org) is a military affairs analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus and a retired US army colonel and senior fellow on military affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation."
Government Report Conclusion: Veep Dick Cheney is a Liar
The right-winged fanatical extremists and neo-con buffoons all are desperately trying to defend the indefensible:
Bushies disastrous economic polices ... (Refer to "Nobel Laureate for Economics reports Bush Regime is Worst Government in US History" on http://www.tblog.com/template... )
Bushies disastrous exploitation of the environment ... (Refer to "Why My Little 4-Year Old Son is Smarter Than Bush" on http://www.tblog.com/template... )
One amongst many, many examples of the Bush Regime's contempt for the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights, is their secret meetings with their Energy Cronies who staged a phony energy shortage in the summer of 2000, used to swindle hundreds of billions from consumers (contributing heavily to the California Debt), and, then proceeded to their next rapacious project to enrich themselves, from the blood & misery of others: the Bush Regime's Illegal & Immoral War on Iraq. (Refer to "Bush's Fiasco So Dire He Turns To "Les Enfants Terrible" & Neo-Relevant U.N." on http://www.tblog.com/template... )
The General Accounting Office Evaluation Report concludes that Vice-President Cheney stonewalled and misled the GAO in an investigation and then misled Congress that he was indeed co-operating which was a lie. This is one amongst the many, many examples of the corruption by the Bush Regime who represent Corporations and the Wealthy Oligarchy.
Read "GAO's Final Energy Task Force Report Reveals that the Vice President Made A False Statement to Congress" by John W. Dean, on http://writ.news.findlaw.com/... :
This month, the General Accounting Office (GAO) - the investigative and auditing arm of Congress - issued a report that contains some startling revelations. Though they are couched in very polite language, they are bombshells nonetheless.
The report - entitled "Energy Task Force: Process Used to Develop the National Energy Policy" - and its accompanying Chronology strongly imply that the Administration has, in effect, been paying off its heavy-hitting energy industry contributors. It also very strongly implies that Vice President Dick Cheney lied to Congress.
The Background: How Cheney Stonewalled GAO
In a sense, this story begins during the close 2000 Presidential election, when energy industry special interests were big-dollar contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign. (In 2004's re-election campaign, they will doubtless be called upon once again.)
After he was elected - and very much beholden to those contributors - Bush put Cheney in charge of developing the National Energy Policy. To do so, Cheney convened an Energy Task Force. (Details about the Task Force can be found in my prior column.)
Cheney's selection alone was ominous: He had headed Halliburton, just the kind of big-dollar Republican energy industry contributor that had helped Bush-Cheney win the election in the first place.
The Energy Task Force might have operated in absolute secrecy, were it not for GAO. GAO is a nonpartisan agency with statutory authority to investigate "all matters related to the receipt, disbursement, and use of public money," so that it can judge the expenditures and effectiveness of public programs, and report to Congress on what it finds.
To fulfill its statutory responsibility, GAO sought documents from Vice-President Cheney relating to Energy Task Force expenditures. But in a literally unprecedented move, the White House said no.
Amazingly, it did so without even bothering to claim that the documents sought were covered by executive privilege. It simply refused.
On August 2, 2001, Vice President Cheney sent a letter - personally signed by him - to Congress demanding, in essence, that it get the Comptroller off his back. In the letter, he claimed that his staff had already provided "documents responsive to the Comptroller General's inquiry concerning the costs associated with the [Energy task force's] work." As I will explain later, this turned out to be a lie.
In the end, GAO had to go to court to try to get the documents to which it plainly was entitled. On December 9, 2002, GAO lost in court - though, as I argued in a prior column, the decision was incorrect.
Then, on February 9, 2003, the Comptroller General announced GAO's decision not to appeal. He said he feared that another adverse decision would cause the agency to lose even more power, more permanently. Several news accounts suggest that it was the Republican leadership of Congress that stopped the appeal.
This August's Report Reveals Cheney Lied About Providing Responsive Documents
Then this August's Report was issued. It was not the thorough, comprehensive Report GAO wanted it to be. (Indeed, GAO's Comptroller General has stressed that "the Vice President's persistent denial of access to" records "precluded GAO from fully achieving our objectives and substantially limited our analysis.") But it is enough to shock, and disturb, the reader.
The Report shows that Cheney's claim to Congress, in the August 2, 2001 letter, that responsive documents were provided to GAO, was plainly false.
According to the Report, Cheney provided GAO with 77 pages of "documents retrieved from the files of the Office of the Vice President responsive to" GAO's inquiry regarding the Energy Task Force's "receipt, disbursement, and use of public funds."
To any lawyer, a mere 77-page document production seems suspiciously slim - especially when it is meant to represent information from a group of people on a fairly broad topic. Surely there were more documents that were not turned over.
Moreover, it turned out, as the Report reveals, that the documents that were turned over were useless: "The materials were virtually impossible to analyze, as they consisted, for example, of pages with dollar amounts but no indication of the nature or purpose of the expenditure." They were further described as "predominantly reimbursement requests, assorted telephone bills and random items, such as the executive director's credit card receipt for pizza."
In sum, the incomplete document production was not only nonresponsive - it was insulting. So the GAO pressed for responsive documents numerous times in different ways: letters, telephone exchanges and meetings.
Perhaps the most pointed of these was a July 18, 2001 letter from the Comptroller to the Vice President. It noted that GAO had "been given 77 pages of miscellaneous records purporting to relate to these direct and indirect costs. Because the relevance of these records is unclear, we continue to request all records responsive to our request, including any records that clarify the nature and purpose of the costs." (Emphasis added.)
Cheney's False Statement About the Responsive Documents Was Plainly Intentional
Despite receiving this letter, Cheney still claimed to Congress, a few weeks later, on August 2, that responsive documents had been produced.
Of course, Cheney is a busy man. Yet there can be no question as to whether he was aware of the July 18, 2001 letter from the Comptroller complaining about the 77 pages of documents' being unresponsive: He even attached it to his own August 2 letter to Congress, as part of a chronology. And again, he personally signed that August 2 letter.
Nor can there be any question that Cheney knows what it means to produce responsive documents - and not to do so. In the same paragraph of the August 2 letter in which he claims he was responsive to the Energy Task Force request, he makes a lesser claim with respect to another GAO request - stating that there, he had merely "provided substantial responses." (Emphasis added.)
Plainly, Cheney knows the difference between being responsive; offering a substantial response; and sending insulting non-responsive materials, featuring unexplained phone bills, columns of unidentified figures, and a pizza receipt.
Thus, Cheney's claim to have produced responsive documents was a false statement and, all evidence suggests, an intentional one. That means it is also a criminal offense - a false statement to Congress. (In a previous column, I discussed the false statements statute and its application.)
GAO's Polite Tone Belies The Shocking Evidence Its Report Offers
The straight arrows at GAO were no doubt horrified that the Vice President of the United States, who is the Constitutional presiding officer of the U.S. Senate, would deliberately mislead the Congress with such blatant misinformation.
Being nonpartisan, they refrained from accusing the Vice President of this crime. But as their Report shows, they included evidence that makes the crime evident for all to see. They also provided evidence of what the motive for the crime was.
The Report quietly - but tellingly - notes that the Vice President's team "solicited input from, or received information and advice from nonfederal energy stakeholders, principally petroleum, coal, nuclear, natural gas, and electricity industry representatives and lobbyists." (Emphasis added.)
In other words, if the Vice President is not trying to cover up the fact that he met with big energy interests - including past contributors - and allowed them a large role in settling our nation's energy policy, why all the secrecy ? That is what other observers have suspected - and what has been rumored from the beginning. Thanks to Cheney's obfuscation, we still can't know for certain. Yet thanks to GAO, we do now know for certain that he lied to Congress to cover up something, and there is little doubt in my mind as to what he is hiding.
The Bushies Allowed bin Laden's Family to Escape Post-9/11 While U.S. Air Space was Closed?
Alarming reports are buried in the News, that the Bushies allowed Osama bin Laden's Family to escape from the U.S.A. to Saudi Arabia, days after the 9/11 attack while U.S. Air Space was closed to air traffic.
The Bush Family business relationships and connections with Osama bin Laden's Family and the Saudi Arabian Royal Family are well-documented. One could be forgiven for wondering if nefarious motives are behind the the Bush Regime's censorship & cover-up to protect the Saudi Arabian Royal Family and the bin Laden Family involvement in the 9/11 attacks on the U.S.A..
Read "U.S. Clamps Secrecy on Warnings Before 9/11", by Marie Cocco, on http://www.truthout.org/docs_... . She cites: "The recent report of the joint congressional committee that probed intelligence failures before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon reveals what the Bush administration doesn't want Americans to know about the American government.
You would not know this from media accounts about this report. They have dwelled on what the Bush administration doesn't want us to know about the Saudi government.
This is the famous 28-page chapter, a series of blank lines across page after page, that the president refuses to declassify despite the pleadings of the bipartisan group of lawmakers and the Saudi government itself."
"When President George W. Bush froze assets connected to Osama bin Laden, he didn't tell the American people that the terrorist mastermind's late brother was an investor in the president's former oil business in Texas. He also hasn't leveled with the American public about his financial connections to a host of shady Saudi characters involved in drug cartels, gun smuggling, and terrorist networks." Check out the Carlyle Group's (Daddy Bush) involvement with the bin Laden & Saudi Royal families.
In a BBC Newsnight Interview entitled "Has someone been sitting on the FBI?" on http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ev... , more is revealed regarding the Bush/bin Laden/Saudi family relationships. An excerpt:
ELSNER: "You have a key relationship between the Saudis and the former President of the US who happens to be the father of the current President of the US. And you have all sorts of questions about where does policy begin and where does good business and good profits for the company, Carlyle, end?
PALAST: "I received a phone call from a high-placed member of a US intelligence agency. He tells me that while there's always been constraints on investigating Saudis, under George Bush it's gotten much worse. After the elections, the agencies were told to "back off" investigating the Bin Ladens and Saudi royals, and that angered agents. I'm told that since September 11th the policy has been reversed. FBI headquarters told us they could not comment on our findings. A spokesman said: "There are lots of things that only the intelligence community knows and that no-one else ought to know."
No wonder Bush and Blair want to destroy the BBC!
The corrupt Bush Regime seems to have protected Osama bin Laden's Family and the Saudi Arabian Royal Family, and instead have dishonestly used Saddam Hussein as their diversionary scape-goat (Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but it didn't hurt that Iraq has the 2nd largest oil reserves in the world!). The Bushies have refused to make public information from the 9/11 investigative committee, that reportedly embarrasses the Saudi Arabian Royal Family (and the bin Laden Family?).
What involvement did the Saudi Arabian Royal Family & bin Laden Family have with the 9/11 attacks on the USA?
What did the Bush Regime know and when did they know it, prior to the 9/11 attacks on the USA?
What are the existing relationships and connections between the Bush Family and the bin Laden Family (& Saudi Arabian Royal Family)? Is the Bush Regime really protecting the culprits of 9/11, and covering-up ulterior business motives behind the war on Iraq?
Why were Osama bin Laden's Family allowed to escape from the U.S.A. to Saudi Arabis, days after the 9/11 attack, while U.S. Air Space was Closed to all air traffice?
Until these questions are answered, those truly responsible for the 9/11 attack upon America, are free and at large. Moreover, the Bush Regime's intelligence failures, and the subsequent lies, deceptions and falsehoods used to divert Americans into taking out their fear and frustrations upon Saddam Hussein (instead of Osama bin Laden), require congressional investigation.
The Bush Regime cant is "9/11 changed everything!" ... my goodness, I hope not, for it would be tragic if true. I hope that 9/11 didn't change America's disgust with their President's criminal acts, and America's commitment that No Man (including the President) is above the rule of law.
"The United States allowed members of Osama bin Laden’s family to jet out of the US in the immediate aftermath of September 11, even as American airspace was closed," writes the Edinburgh Evening News. The Bush administration allowed a plane to land in several cities to pick up passengers before heading home out of the country."
In a news report published in "Edinburgh Evening News" entitled "Bin Laden family's US exit 'approved'" by Bill Andrews on http://www.edinburghnews.com/... :
"THE United States allowed members of Osama bin Laden’s family to jet out of the US in the immediate aftermath of September 11, even as American airspace was closed.
Former White House counter-terrorism tsar Richard Clarke said the Bush administration sanctioned the repatriation of about 140 high-ranking Saudi Arabians, including relatives of the al-Qaida chief.
"Somebody brought to us for approval the decision to let an aeroplane filled with Saudis, including members of the Bin Laden family, leave the country," he said.
Mr Clarke said he checked with FBI officials, who gave the go ahead. "So I said: ‘Fine, let it happen.’"
He first asked the bureau to check that no-one "inappropriate" was leaving.
"I have no idea if they did a good job," he added.
Dale Watson, the FBI’s former head of counter-terrorism, said that, while the bureau identified the Saudis who were on the plane, "they were not subject to serious interrogations".
The plane is believed to have landed in ten US cities picking up passengers, including Los Angeles, Washington DC, Boston and Houston. At the time, access to US airspace was restricted and required special government approval.
Tom Kinton, director of aviation at Boston’s Logan Airport, said: "We were in the midst of the worst terrorist act in history and here we were seeing an evacuation of the Bin Ladens."
But he said it was clear the flight had been sanctioned by federal authorities.
Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the US who is said to have organised the exodus, met President George Bush on September 13, 2001, two days after the terror attacks. It is not known if they discussed the repatriation plan.
The White House has declined to comment on the claims, but sources said the Bush administration was confident no secret flights took place.
Mr Clarke said he did not recall who requested approval for the flights, but believes it was either the FBI or the State Department.
But FBI spokesman John Iannarelli said: "I can say unequivocally that the FBI had no role in facilitating these flights." "
At Current Rate of Spending, War in Iraq is Costing $48 Billion Per Annum!
At the current rate of spending, Bush's insane, illegal & immoral War in Iraq is costing the American Taxpayer: $48 Billion Per Annum (at the $4 Billion/Month Rate), and not the $29 Billion that is projected for someday in the future ONCE THIS BLOODY GUERRILLA QUAGMIRE IS OVER. This does not include the costs-to-date of $72+ Billion, nor does it include the re-construction costs in the tens of billions extra requested by Bremer. (Refer to "Bremer: Costs of Iraq effort will run into the tens of billions" on http://www.usatoday.com/news/... )
The $29 Billion/Year is an estimate by the CBO when the so-called "war" and re-construction effort (i.e. enriching Halliburton, Bechtel, Defense Contractors & Big Oil), is OVER, and excludes: (1) $72+ Billion expenditure to-date, (2) Tens of Billions in re-construction costs, and, (3) $4 Billion/Month on-going costs being squandered NOW! Read "Congress report: Iraq occupation could cost $8 billion to $29 billion a year" on http://www.billingsgazette.co... .
The cost of $48 Billion per Year is the current rate of expenditure (i.e. squandering), unless the Bush Regime can get our allies, "les enfants terribles" & the neo-relevant U.N. to save Bushies' political skins. Neo-con "arm-chair" "chicken-hawks" may say "So What?" to the obscene squandering of tax-payer money in an bloody guerilla quamire costing the lives (335+ US & British soldiers) and health of thousands of American Soldiers (reportedly over 1200 are seriously maimed & injured), as well as the many thousands of (7700+ Iraqi civilians killed & countless injured) innocent Iraqi victims.
How else could our US taxpayer dollars be used? (Americans of low income, middle-class & fixed-income retirees will pay-off Bush's obscene record-level deficits and debts, since corporations & the wealthy were awarded massive tax cuts by the corrupt Bush Regime.)
Just Imagine How $48 Billion/Year (2.4% of USA Budget) Could Benefit America! Consider how the amount of $72+ Billion squandered to-date could benefit our nation:
1) 7,286,698 additional children could attend a year of Head Start, or,
2) 22,091,235 additional children could be provided with a year of health care, or,
3) 981,692 additional school teachers could be hired for one year, or,
4) 1,307,264 additional four-year scholarships at public universities, or,
5) 12,884,726 additional cars could be converted to use natural gas, or,
6) 736,270 additional affordable housing units could be built.
These are but a few examples, of how the lives of our citizens could be improved, instead of the Bush Regime's corrupt focus on improving the lives of Corporate "fat cats" and "top dogs" and the wealthy, off the blood & toil of average Americans. The Bush Regime's behaviour is closer to the old USSR in bankrupting their country and people, while building up the obscenely excessive & grossly obese Military Industrial Complex. The USA currently outspends the next 18 richest industrialized nations combined at an outlandish price of over $450 Billion Per Year!
The Bush Regime's Priorities STINK ... they are designed to benefit their corporate cronies and hyper-rich campaign contributors, while impoverishing and diminishing the rest of America, whom they hold in contempt!
As a smarter Republican President said, who foresaw the danger of the Military Industrial Complex taking over: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." President Dwight D. Eisenhower April 16, 1953
Where are Our Leaders who Speak-Out for the People of the United States of America?
Bush is Headed For Trouble -- So Are We in Store For Another Terrorist Attacks On America?
Scientists, Economists, Researchers & Analysts in almost any field of endeavour, and Politicians, alike all seek to find patterns or trends. To discover the patterns in nature, in mathematics, and in behaviour, is to provide insights and information that experts and observers use to predict or forecast the most probable future events.
Have you noticed a re-occuring pattern associated with the Bush Regime? I have. I've observed that whenever Bush is faced with difficulties, problems, and/or low popularity-- something horrible happens in this country (& the entire world) destroying innocent people, but taking the "heat" off Bushy-boy, and diverting the public's attention onto some unforeseen disaster, such that we are terrified if we don't rally-around him, because otherwise we'll all be wiped out! The Bush Regime have engineered an almost pavlovian reaction of fear in America that intimidates us from revolting against their atrocities.
Bush is currently is headed for trouble, as a sleepy American public awaken to the horrific consequences of his (1) outlandishly obscene tax cuts for the corporations & the rich, causing financial hardship to the many, (2) guerrilla quagmire in Iraq with a heavy death toll and no end in sight, and, (3) callous track-record on health care & the environment. The Bush Regime have dishonestly enacted damaging domestic & foreign policies regarding all of the above, based upon lies, deceptions & outright swindling of the American People (& the World), to enrich their corporate cronies.
So, my question is this: Since Bush is Headed for Trouble, Are We in Store for Another Terrorist Attack on America?
The very idea seems unthinkable ... it certainly is politically incorrect to even raise the question: but reflect upon the pattern: Every time Bush's popularity ratings slump, something horrible happens to the U.S.A.:
(1) In the summer of 2001, Bush was headed back to a Congress that questioned his energy policies, having watched a shockingly phony energy shortage staged by Cheney's buddies, that cost California consumers (& others), scammed out of billions of dollars-- enriching Enron and others ... whose corrupt executives took-the-big-money-and-ra n. Stories were about to break regarding Bushy-boy's best buddy, Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay and other corporate swindlers who stole corporate assets, pension funds & jobs from workers.
Then ... ooopppsss ... 9/11 happened! Bush's luck changed! The Energy Swindle was wiped off the radar ... The Corporate Scams (Bush's Harken Oil) were also wiped off the radar. Bush's ratings soared as a terrified public rallied around Bush-- hell, they would have rallied around Hitler! End of Act 1.
(2) Bush invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, in the hopes (sic) of finding Osama bin Laden, but Osama whose family is linked to the Bush Family & the Saudi Royal Family, wasn't found. Bush had roared about Osama: "We'll get 'im, dead or alive": Well, they didn't. Afghanistan was invaded, countless thousands of innocent Afghan people were massacred. Some sort of bizarre "victory" was declared anyway.
Afghanistan was left with atrocious political and societal wounds, and the lack of support to re-build their government and infrastructure, as had been promised (sic) by the Bush Regime represents a tragic betrayal of a war-torn people. In the aftermath of the US invasion, the Afghan warlords have taken-over the country and are brutalizing the people. Other nations around the world have learnt-the-hard-way, that Bushy-boy's word ain't as good as gold, but is as good as used toilet paper.
Thus, nothing is left in Afghanistan except disaster, poverty, and destruction, thanks to the Bush Regime. Afghanistan is in a shambolic state, a tragic mess that humanitarian groups are desperately trying to clean-up. The Bushies are good at breaking things (yum, yum, "sexy" & easy) ... they are bored by the difficult job of creating things (oh, oh, so many boring details ... you need brains, integrity & wisdom: no wonder they can't do it)... so the Bush Regime moves on. End of Act 2.
(3) For the Bush Regime, the "sexy" time is just prior to the November 2002 mid-term elections: Saddam Hussein, the Monster of the Middle-Eastern World, suddenly rises up ... he must have caused 9/11, he must have WMDs, he must want to destroy us all ... Why would Saddam Hussein want to destroy us? As Bush said: 'Cause we're good & love freedom ... And he's evil & hates freedom. Come on, who but the "dumbest-of-the-dumb" could buy such imbecilic, childish screed? As Karl Rove (Bush's Brain) gambled: Most Americans. Amazingly, Rove was right!
Like Dumb Sheep following the Idiot Sheep off-the-cliff, most Americans were willing to collaborate and support the corrupt Bush Regime, even into an immoral and illegal incursion into Iraq, based upon a dossier of lies. Those who questioned those lies, like the French, Germans, Russians, Chinese, and, indeed, most of the United Nations, were all demonized, insulted, coerced, and, treated in an infamous manner.
So, Big Strong Macho-Men ("arm-chair" "chicken-hawks" who were AWOL during Vietnam), Wage an Illegal & Immoral & Unnecessary Incursion into Iraq in March 2003 ... They all bragged "Mission Accomplished!" after Saddam Hussein was toppled as though a great victory had been achieved (when the USA over-spent Iraq on military by over 400 times each year for over the last 10 years!). There must have been no room in the White House or Pentagon to move, with all those puffed-up peacock chests filling all available space. End of Act 3.
Act 4? Another Terrorist Attack to divert public attention away from the Bush Regime's lies, deceptions and corrupt activities?
Bush's Brains are Spin-Meisters using Goebbles play-book: Lie, lie, lie, and the more you repeat the lie, the more the People will believe you. If you also manage to intimidate the Media & Press into being compliant cheer-leaders, and dominating Congress to carry-out your orders like good soldiers-- You've Hit the Trifecta: Slavish Population, Puppet Media & Press, & Stooge Congress-- Who could ask for more?
It seems that the Attorney General does not allow print reporters into his press conferences (TV only, please) as part of his traveling "We Love the Patriot Act" roadshow. Ten-second sound bytes, of course, do a much better job of selling irrational fear than a 2000-word article.
What is Ashcroft afraid of? (Too many prying eyes, too many probing questions, and, too many quotations (lies) coming back and haunting them in the future.) Who the hell is Ashcroft to deny press access, anyway? The Bush Regime don't own the USA, but are Servants of the People of the United States of America. Why isn't the Media & Press outraged? Why isn't the Congress pursuing an investigation into the Bushies' lies, deceit & criminal behavior?
The Bush Regime will resist inquiry and use intimidation tactics so long as the Media & Press fail to inform the People on the gravity of the mess we're in, and so long as Congress fails to do its duty.
Bush, Cheney & Rice have stonewalled any questions regarding (1) their secret meetings with the Energy goons, who raped the consumers by staging a phony shortage in the summer of 2000, and have gone on to make a fortune in their Iraqi war, (2) Cheney's bizarre, unprecedented visits to the CIA prior to the Iraqi war, in which he allegedly intimidated CIA agents into giving him the answers he wanted (even if they were unfounded lies), and, (3) their knowledge of intelligence leading up to 9/11, and, leading up to their incursion into Iraq.
The entire Bush Regime is seen amongst conscientious and enlightened minds, as a brutish, corrupt, thuggish gang of power-hungry ideologues, lusting for riches and willing to create havoc in their hubris to achieve their ends. Their contempt for the rule of law and truth is reminicent of George Orwell's prediction of a neo-fascist state in his masterpiece "1984".
WITH LABOR DAY 2003, the race to November 2004 is on. Seemingly, President Bush will be seriously on the defensive on the issues, but with a big advantage on the politics. However, voters are likely to be energized in 2004 as they have rarely been in recent years. And voter mobilization will ultimately determine whether Bush gets a second term. First, the issues. Bush's foreign policy is a shambles. The architects of the Iraq war have been proven wrong on every contention they made -- the imminent weapons of mass destruction, the alleged Saddam-Al Qaeda connection, the supposed ease of occupation and reconstruction. Thumbing America's nose at "old Europe" proved a major blunder. Bush now needs the United Nations to clean up his mess, but he is insisting on US control. France and Germany, not to mention Russia and China, aren't exactly lining up to donate money and troops to bail Bush out. The administration line -- that the Iraq mess proves that the place is a magnet for terrorism -- just isn't selling. This is a hornets' nest that Bush's policy stirred up. GIs are still getting killed for a war that the American public is turning against.
Bush's vaunted Israel-Palestine "road map" is a path to nowhere. Colin Powell, the prudent internationalist in the nest of reckless hawks, has been reduced to a pathetic token. Barring some improbable breakthrough, photo ops of Bush in a flak jacket won't divert the spotlight from the real damage.
Then there's the economy. Most economists believe that the recovery will continue to be jobless right through next year. Corporations are in such a profit squeeze that they are cutting jobs faster than they are accumulating orders. Even more seriously, the Bush program of serial tax cuts plus militarism has pushed the deficit into the half-trillion range for the foreseeable future. Not only does that kind of deficit force cuts in public outlays that voters actually value; at some point, it starts pushing up interest rates.
Mortgage rates have already risen more than a point since last spring's lows. The Federal Reserve is largely powerless to set long-term rates, which reflect the market's expectations about future inflation. We have become complacent about living in an inflationless economy, but the spike in gas prices and health insurance costs is a reminder that inflation can suddenly break out. Rising interest rates could snuff out the stock market's tentative return to health.
An ordinary president would be reeling from these setbacks. But while Bush's stratospheric popularity ratings have returned to the normal range, he is no ordinary president.
For starters, he will have almost limitless amounts of money and will massively outspend his opposition thanks to unprecedented business investment in Republican politics and a half-baked campaign finance "reform" that backfired. He also has an incomparable team of political strategists, speechwriters, and spinners. And the press is still cutting him a lot of slack.
Second, the administration retains the capacity to time another "war of choice," as it did with the Iraq war drums on the eve of the 2002 midterm election. Another terrorist attack on American soil would rally patriotic support that Bush could willingly exploit. (At the same time, terrorist attacks overseas do not stir the same outrage and seem to demonstrate the overextension of Bush's policy.) Third, it remains to be seen whether Democrats will have a strong candidate.
Yet this election will rouse the base constituencies of both parties like no election in recent memory. Democrats are in a state of rage about the stolen election of 2000, the gutting of public services, the assault of liberties, the economic damage, the environmental pillaging, and the foreign policy calamity. Republican conservatives, meanwhile, view Bush as Reagan redux, only better.
Recent conventional political wisdom has it that elections are won by appealing to swing voters. But in the great defining elections of American history -- 1932, 1964, 1980 -- the winner rallied his base and then persuaded independent voters that he could be trusted to do the right thing for the country. The 2004 contest, I suspect, will be one of those elections. And here is Bush's greatest potential liability. His actual administration has been so unlike his moderate, conciliatory campaign of 2000 that even with the best campaign machinery, independent voters will be skeptical.
After years of declining turnout and passivity, 2004 will very likely see a reenergized electorate. Ultimately, the election will be a test of democracy itself: mobilized voters debating real substance versus imagery and organized money."
Robert Kuttner's is co-editor of The American Prospect. His column appears regularly in the Globe.
Bush's Fiasco So Dire He Turns To "Les Enfants Terrible" & Neo-Relevant U.N.
The Bush Regime's bloody guerrilla quagmire, turned nightmarish fiasco is so dire, Bush has ordered Colin Powell to seek help from "Les Enfants Terribles" and the neo-"relevant" United Nations, that this arrogant administration spent months demonizing, insulting, and, undermining. (Recent relevent topics: http://www.tblog.com/template... and http://www.tblog.com/template... )
"President Bush on Tuesday directed Secretary of State Colin Powell to open negotiations at the U.N. Security Council on a resolution aimed at getting wider international support for U.S. efforts in Iraq, a senior U.S. official said.
In an afternoon meeting, Bush and Powell discussed ways to convince the council to provide backing for a multinational force under a single command as recommended by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the official said.
``Secretary Powell is going to be working with our colleagues on the Security Council to talk about language that can bring the maximum international resources to bear on the issues in Iraq,'' the official said."
What "language", indeed! Given, that they called our allies "Old Europe", and stupidly changed "french fries" to "freedom fries" ... they'll have to come-up with something more than the Bush Regime's imbecilic request : "Please send your troops to die, to take the heat off of my cock-up, and save my political butt ... and by the way, you get zip, zero, nada, in return!". Ha ha ha ... that buffoonery may work with Americans (who stupidly equate any government programme with "socialism" -- like the firemen (heros of 9/11), police force, public education, military, sewer systems, water systems, regulatory agencies, universal health care, parks, etc.), and yet who are slap-happy to pay taxes (welfare-for-the-rich) to enrich Corporations and the Military Industrial Complex (or squander billions in Iraq to the tune of $71+ Billion & $4 Billion/Month with no end in sight, and nothing to show for it unless you're a corrupt Corporate CEO/War-Profiteer raking in mountains of dough).
Instead "Old Europe" uses its taxpayer monies to provide health care (Don't Hold Your Breath Waiting For the French, U.K., Danes, Swedes, Germans, etc... to call for Privatizing their Health Care-- They Ain't Stupid), education, and services for their people: Perhaps this is why their people live longer and are healthier than are our own.
Instead we are watching the creation of a 21st Century Feudal System, by the Bush Regime, callous to the will of the people, the law, and the planet. The Bush Regime are making the same age old mistakes made by nations in the past causing horrendous misery. Read "Bush's March of Folly in Iraq: Upholding a Long Tradition of Bloodshed & Misery" on http://www.tblog.com/template... .
The Bush Regime's neo-con philosophy is corrupt and bankrupt and not sustainable if all the citizens are to live up to the promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Read "The Bush Regime Denies Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness to Millions of Americans" on http://www.tblog.com/template... .)
A Vision Beneficial to All America Citizens is Needed
Many of our fellow Citizens call for an America with a great vision of a better life for all people, and not only the corporate robber-barons & wealthy oligarchy. It is possible to bring about changes beneficial to all of our people. Under the Bush Regime, our taxpayer money is tragically funnelled into destructive endeavours (warfare) and the corruption of cronyism (welfare for corporations).
We can elect leaders with a mandate to improve those needs affecting our daily lives including: Universal Health Care, Public Education, Environmental Protections, and, improvements to our nation's infrastructures (roads, transportation, schools, parks, etc.). Also, our workers have earned the right to better pay, worker's rights, and protections that the Bushies have undermined. Yet the fruits of worker's labors have been squandered on the "fat cats" & "top dogs" who take-the-money-and-run. (Corporate executives salaries have obscenely ballooned to excessive levels, while workers have lost their jobs, and minimum wage is far too low to support their families. Read "Labor Market Left Behind" on http://www.epinet.org/content... , and "Executive/Worker Pay Gap" on http://www.socialfunds.com/ne... )
The Bush Regime's neo-con right-wing extremists have awarded more rights, priveleges, tax cuts & welfare-for-the-rich, and vast wealth (tax loopholes, subsidies, corrupt contracts, etc.) to corporations and their super-rich cronies, than at any time in modern history.
"We the People" are the citizens of the USA who do not believe that Corporations and Robber-barons should be allowed to highjack our system and exploit our environment and our people, for their greedy & selfish lusts for power & riches. We have the right and the power to take our system back for the benefit and welfare of all citizens, and not just the campaign contributors who prop-up Bush's corrupt regime. Bush has created a $450 Billion deficit in 2003, ($1.9 Trillion by end of 2004!), losing 3 Million Jobs on his watch, and this doesn't include his obscene squandering of $70 Billion thus far in Iraq with no end in sight at $4 Billion per Month: all paid for by the good ole' working class Americans. Corrupt Cheney, for example, rakes in over $327,000 extra big bucks (over & above the $1 Million/Year from Halliburton!) & Bush gets a bonus of extra $44,500 from their unsavory tax cuts to the rich, while the rest of us pay off their Lavish Debts! (Read "Upper-Class Tax Cuts, Working-Class Soldiers" on http://www.alternet.org/story... )
"We the People" are the citizens of the USA who believe that all peoples should be free to practice their faith and religion in their Church and at Home, but may not force their beliefs down the throats of others, or impose them upon civil government, as our Founding Fathers intended a firewall of separation between Church & State (read (1) America's Founding Fathers Intended Separation of Church and State on http://www.tblog.com/template..., (2) USA Constitutional Principle : Separation of Church and State on http://www.tblog.com/template... ).
"We the People" are the citizens of the USA who do not believe that a President should be allowed to commit Crimes Against Humanity, by waging an illegal & immoral incursion upon other countries, having lied (a crime under the US Constitution), massacring hundreds of our Soldiers who died based upon a false pretext, instead of defending our country, and killing thousands of innocent civilians to enrich Corporate Robber-barons. Two more US Soldiers were killed last night, bringing the daily Death Toll to over 315, with over 7000 innocent Iraqi civilians slaughtered to-date.
Recall Bush who has corrupted our systems by fear-mongering, lying to Americans, and raping America and Iraq on behalf of Corporate Robber-barons (refer to "Arms Trade Resource Center, New Numbers: The Price of Freedom in Iraq and Power in Washington", by Ceara Donnelley and William D. Hartung, August 2003, "Introduction: A Privatized Occupation" on http://www.worldpolicy.org/pr... .)
"Republicans claim a recall is so necessary in California because: The state budget went from a big surplus into a major deficit, jobs are leaving the state, teachers are being laid off, energy and health costs are skyrocketing. Well, if the Republicans want to recall incumbents based on this standard, then they should start with their own Chief."
Despite the lack of a constitutional revision for recalling the president, the folks at BushRecall.org are pushing for a vote. Visit http://www.bushrecall.org/pet... , and sign the following petition:
We the undersigned believe that George W. Bush has failed to provide our country with responsible and effective government. The three main pillars of this recall effort are as follows:
1. Projections of a federal budget surplus have been wiped out and replaced by deficit estimates of $455 billion.
2. President Bush has repeatedly made false and misleading statements to the American public on a wide range of issues, from his domestic policies like "No Child Left Behind," to the war in Iraq.
3. The nation's economy is dragging. Almost three million Americans have lost their jobs under the Bush administration. The President is akin to the CEO of the country. He should be held accountable in times of bad performance.
By signing this petition, we are going on record to call for the defeat of President Bush based on his failure as our nation's chief executive.
Sorry, Condi, but postwar Germany was nothing like Iraq. Condi also lied about "mushroom clouds", fabricated uranium sales by Niger to Iraq, and, the WMDs so-called "imminent threat", needed by the Bushies to scare us silly, so they could wage their illegal & immoral incursion, devised to enrich their corporate cronies. But then Condi & Bushy-boy like to watch football games together:-- and that is just what they should stick to, as they're a disaster at foreign policy (ooopppsss ... the Bushies' domestic policy is a fiasco, too!).
Sorry, Rummy, but you ain't no genius either! Rummy bragged and crowed after his so-called "war" (although the USA outspent Iraq on the military industrial complex by over 400 times every year for the last 10+ years-- and annually outspends the next richest 18 industrialized countries combined!), and then badly bungled the "post-war" reconstruction. Now, the USA is faced with a nightmarish guerrilla quagmire, resulting in the deaths of over 330 US & British soldiers and 7000 innocent Iraqi civilians, thus far. Last week, L. Paul Bremer said it will cost US(A) tens of billions of dollars more than the Bushies planned (sic ... what planning?):-- outstripping the $71 billion the Bushies have squandered to-date, and an on-going $4 billion per month, with no end in sight.
Karl Rove's neo-con script written for Condi & Rummy could have been copied right out of the Goebbles handbook: lie, lie, and lie because the more you lie, the more the people will believe you.
"As American post-conflict combat deaths in Iraq overtook the wartime number, the administration counseled patience. "The war on terror is a test of our strength. It is a test of our perseverance, our patience, and our will," President Bush told an American Legion convention.
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice embellished the message with what former White House speechwriters immediately recognize as a greatest-generation pander. "There is an understandable tendency to look back on America's experience in postwar Germany and see only the successes," she told the Veterans of Foreign Wars in San Antonio, Texas, on Aug. 25. "But as some of you here today surely remember, the road we traveled was very difficult. 1945 through 1947 was an especially challenging period. Germany was not immediately stable or prosperous. SS officers—called 'werewolves'—engaged in sabotage and attacked both coalition forces and those locals cooperating with them—much like today's Baathist and Fedayeen remnants."
Speaking to the same group on the same day, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld noted,
One group of those dead-enders was known as "werewolves." They and other Nazi regime remnants targeted Allied soldiers, and they targeted Germans who cooperated with the Allied forces. Mayors were assassinated including the American-appointed mayor of Aachen, the first major German city to be liberated. Children as young as 10 were used as snipers, radio broadcasts, and leaflets warned Germans not to collaborate with the Allies. They plotted sabotage of factories, power plants, rail lines. They blew up police stations and government buildings, and they destroyed stocks of art and antiques that were stored by the Berlin Museum. Does this sound familiar?
Well, no, it doesn't. The Rice-Rumsfeld depiction of the Allied occupation of Germany is a farrago of fiction and a few meager facts.
Werwolf tales have been a favorite of schlock novels, but the reality bore no resemblance to Iraq today. As Antony Beevor observes in The Fall of Berlin 1945, the Nazis began creating Werwolf as a resistance organization in September 1944. "In theory, the training programmes covered sabotage using tins of Heinz oxtail soup packed with plastic explosive and detonated with captured British time pencils," Beevor writes. "… Werwolf recruits were taught to kill sentries with a slip-knotted garrotte about a metre long or a Walther pistol with silencer. …"
In practice, Werwolf amounted to next to nothing. The mayor of Aachen was assassinated on March 25, 1945, on Himmler's orders. This was not a nice thing to do, but it happened before the May 7 Nazi surrender at Reims. It's hardly surprising that Berlin sought to undermine the American occupation before the war was over. And as the U.S. Army's official history, The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany 1944-1946, points out, the killing was "probably the Werwolf's most sensational achievement."
Indeed, the organization merits but two passing mentions in Occupation of Germany, which dwells far more on how docile the Germans were once the Americans rolled in—and fraternization between former enemies was a bigger problem for the military than confrontation. Although Gen. Eisenhower had been worrying about guerrilla warfare as early as August 1944, little materialized. There was no major campaign of sabotage. There was no destruction of water mains or energy plants worth noting. In fact, the far greater problem for the occupying forces was the misbehavior of desperate displaced persons, who accounted for much of the crime in the American zone.
The Army history records that while there were the occasional anti-occupation leaflets and graffiti, the GIs had reason to feel safe. When an officer in Hesse was asked to investigate rumors that troops were being attacked and castrated, he reported back that there had not been a single attack against an American soldier in four months of occupation. As the distinguished German historian Golo Mann summed it up in The History of Germany Since 1789, "The [Germans'] readiness to work with the victors, to carry out their orders, to accept their advice and their help was genuine; of the resistance which the Allies had expected in the way of 'werewolf' units and nocturnal guerrilla activities, there was no sign. …"
Werwolf itself was filled not so much by fearsome SS officers but teenagers too young for the front. Beevor writes:
In the west, the Allies found that Werwolf was a fiasco. Bunkers prepared for Werwolf operations had supplies "for 10-15 days only" and the fanaticism of the Hitler Youth members they captured had entirely disappeared. They were "no more than frightened, unhappy youths." Few resorted to the suicide pills which they had been given "to escape the strain of interrogation and, above all, the inducement to commit treason." Many, when sent off by their controllers to prepare terrorist acts, had sneaked home.
That's not quite the same as the Rumsfeld version, which claimed that "Today the Nazi dead-enders are largely forgotten, cast to the sidelines of history because they comprised a failed resistance and managed to kill our Allied forces in a war that saw millions fight and die."
It's hard to understand exactly what Rumsfeld was saying, but if he meant that the Nazi resisters killed Americans after the surrender, this would be news. According to America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq, a new study by former Ambassador James Dobbins, who had a lead role in the Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo reconstruction efforts, and a team of RAND Corporation researchers, the total number of post-conflict American combat casualties in Germany—and Japan, Haiti, and the two Balkan cases—was zero.
So, how did this fanciful version of the American experience in postwar Germany get into the remarks of a Princeton graduate and former trustee of Stanford's Hoover Institute (Rumsfeld) and the former provost of Stanford and co-author of an acclaimed book on German unification (Rice)? Perhaps the British have some intelligence on the matter that still has not been made public. Of course, as the president himself has noted, there is a lot of revisionist history going around."
Utopian myths about corporate America are taking a heavy toll on the health of the United States. The global corporate empire is a disaster resulting in: (1) the exploitation of workers, (2) the corruption by executives grabbing obscenely gross compensation packages, and (3) the rape of the environment. The Bush Regime's Corporate Feudalism is placing back-breaking debts and higher prices on low-income, middle-class & fixed-income retirees and, heart-breaking quality of life for the many (not rich) who die in wars, or incur diseases & illnesses with little or no health care.
The Bush Regime is the Corporate Regime and it is a flawed and dangerous philosophy. [Refer to "The Fallacy of Bush's Corporate USA Inc." on http://www.tblog.com/template... ]
The United States of America was founded on the principle that all citizens had the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our founding fathers did not intend for corporate robber-barons to take over, install a neo-Feudal System and relegate the rest of us to the positions of serfs living in squalid conditions, in order that a few Feudal Lords & Ladies can enjoy a neo-Belle Epoque. Yet, this is the current state of affairs, by radical changes the arrogant Bushies are making to enable the Global Corporate Empire to ride rough-shod over the entire planet.
(1) Bush Regime's Exploitation of Workers:
Bushies have destroyed 3 million jobs in America and have immorally used Executive Orders to destroy the rights of workers to be paid overtime. Meanwhile the Corporate CEOs pay-packets have sky-rocketed while profits plunge, workers lose jobs, and stock-holders pension funds are raided. Read "Bush issues anti-worker executive orders" on http://www.goiam.org/politics... , citing EO 13201-13204 signed on February 17, 2001, wherein President Bush's appalling and outrageous decision to issue "four mean-spirited, anti-worker executive orders sought by his corporate contributors and by right-wing ideologues . These orders undermine worker rights and dismantle thoughtfully constructed and effective working relationships between labor and management"
Read "Jobs Without Power - Working in America" by Jonathan Tasini on http://www.tompaine.com/featu... . He reports " ... the moment Americans walk through the doors of their workplace, they enter into a world that strips away all their basic rights. Within the walls of the workplace, the whim of the corporation is more powerful than the U.S. Constitution."
Our workers should have the right to bargain, the right to a fair & decent wages, the right to safe working conditions, the right of decent working hours & vacations, the right of health care and social security, and, the right to "blow-the-whistle" upon observing corporate malfeasance, dishonesty, or abuses by those entrusted to manage the institutions properly. The USA is the only 1st-tier country with their citizens (45 million) with no health care insurance-- you won't see France, U.K., Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, etc. calling to privatize their National Health Care Systems!
The majority of Americans (72%) according to a PEW Research Center Survey, say "Scrap Tax Cuts for Health Insurance" on http://people-press.org/repor... , reports:
"Fully 72% of Americans agree that the government should provide universal health care, even if it means repealing most tax cuts passed since Bush took office. Democrats overwhelmingly favor this proposal (86%-11%) and independents largely agree (78%-19%). Even a narrow majority of Republicans (51%) favor providing health insurance for all even if it means canceling the tax cuts, while 44% disagree."
We can afford a Universal Health Care System, in the USA, the richest country in the world (but with the highest disparity of incomes between the haves-and-have-nots), if the corporations and wealthiest would pay their fair share. To permit 45 million citizens to live without health care insurance is a scandal. [Refer to "Majority of Americans Call for Universal Health Care" on http://www.tblog.com/template... ]
(2) Bush Regime's Corruption by Executives Grabbing Obscenely Gross Compensation Packages:
Bushies have themselves used immoral (and possibly illegal) means to obtain funds from corporations (Harken Oil, Halliburton, Chevron, etc.), and then subsequently awarded their cronies massive contracts, from their illegal and immoral war in Iraq. These crooks are war-profiteers getting rich from blood-money. Read "The Price of Freedom in Iraq and Power in Washington - A Privatized Occuption" by Ceara Donnelley and William D. Hartung, http://www.worldpolicy.org/pr... .
In "Statistics on CEO salary show opposite of `pay for performance'" by Diane Stafford, Kansas City Star, on http://www.siliconvalley.com/... , she reports:
"The chief executives at 23 corporations under investigation for improper accounting pocketed $1.4 billion, or an average of $62 million each, in the last three years.
Meanwhile, their companies' stock values plunged $530 billion, or about 73 percent of their total value, and their companies laid off a total of 162,000 workers."
Furthermore: "The ratio of big-company CEO pay and average worker pay has mushroomed to 411-to-1.
If the minimum wage, which stood at $3.80 an hour in 1990, had grown at the same rate as CEO pay, it would have been $21.41 an hour in 2001, rather than the current $5.15 an hour,'' the report said."
"If average pay for production workers had grown at the same rate, instead of barely outpacing inflation, their 1999 annual earnings would have been $114,035 instead of $23,753, and minimum wage would now be $24.13 an hour, instead of $5.15. " Instead, the corporate robber-barons compensation packages balloon and the workers are losing jobs, take-home pay diminishes (due to higher local & state taxes to make-up for federal gifts to the corporations and the richest-of-the-rich), and rights, health care, and social security. Read "Report Highlights Executive/Worker Pay Gap" on http://www.socialfunds.com/ne... .
No corporate executive is worth the multi-millions these robber-barons are greedily awarding themselves, with the possible exception of some who start their own businesses (e.g. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, etc. & even they are opposed to Bush's squandering of the economy to enrich his cronies. Even Gates & Buffet should be subject to regulations protecting workers, consumers, the environment and shareholders.). Most of these executives are MBA hacks who frankly aren't that brilliant-- and many are simply crooks-in-suits (empty suits?) who "take-the-money-and-run".
(3) Bush Regime's Rape of the Environment:
Many have called Bush the "worst president for the environment in America's history": a gross under-statement. Bush is a disaster, pandering to his corporate campaign contributors who effectively throw trash & poisons into our natural world, and greedily ravage the planet's resources.
The Bush White House lied about pollutants in NY's air post 9/11 and their damaging effects upon citizen's health (Read "Dust and Deception" by Paul Krugman on http://www.nytimes.com/2003/0...%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%2 0and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd% 2fColumnists%2fPaul%20Kru gman ).
The Bush White House is allowing their corrupt energy cronies to dump poisons into the air we breathe. What did Cheney & Energy buddies collude-on in their secret meetings of 2000-2001? Did they plan their rape of Iraqi oil fields during these meetings? (Read "Bush's Pollution Charter" on http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa...,12271,1028090,00.html )
The Bushies covered-up an EPA Reports warning of the damage to the atmosphere by pollutants, and their effects on global warming. (Read "Secretive administration doesn't serve the people" on http://www.heraldtribune.com/... )
If you think things are bad in Iraq at this moment, just wait until the Iraqi people discover the Bushies intention to let their corporate cronies take-over & gorge themselves silly on the Iraqi oil fields! Ahmad Chalabi is their criminal collaborator willing to betray his own people to line his own pockets with gold-- there are traitors to be found in every country, including our own American war-profiteers who are getting rich from Bush's foreign nightmares. [Refer to "Bush's Chalabi Should Be in Prison" on http://www.tblog.com/template... ]
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The Bush Regime is indeed, the Corporate Regime. What is Good for Corporations is Not Good for America, without strong regulation and oversight. Frankly, some industries, services and institutions should be under government control: Our police force, military, fire services, water systems, sewage systems, education, health care, regulatory agencies, and other services needed for all people (and not just the rich) to live safe & decent lives, should be under local, state and/or federal control.
We do not want to return to the days described by John Steinbeck in his great American classic, "The Grapes of Wrath" where the corporate goons paid slave labour wages to desperate people in a severe depression, glad to take whatever these poor souls could get, irrespective of the appalling working conditions, starvation wages, and, rape of their families by the "fat cats" and "top dogs".
We can no longer afford to believe in the fanciful utopian and dangerously stupid myth that government is BAD and corporations are GOOD. Before our very eyes, we observe stark evidence to the contrary. Services that are required to ensure all citizens are able to live decently, and the vulnerable are cared for, need to be managed by the government. Corporations need oversight to ensure they don't cravenly exploit workers, harm consumers, rape corporate assets, and, poison & ravage the environment.
Whether an institution is run by the government or by the private sector, laws, procedures, guidelines and rules must be established to ensure that working practices, safety, health and accounting standards are followed. Independent audits are then required by agencies that have no vested interested to be gained by falsifying their analyses.
No president, elected official, corporate executive, banker, baker or candlestick-maker should be exempt from the rule of laws either in government, in corporations, or in the private sector.
The occupation of Iraq is not going well ... indeed, we are embroiled in a disastrous and bloody guerrilla quagmire taking a heavy toll on American Military lives (3 more soldiers killed today, bringing the death toll to 286 Americans, 148 of whom lost their lives since Bush foolishly barked "Mission Accomplished!" on 1st May), and over 7700 innocent Iraqi civilians massacred. [Ref. "Member of Iraqi governing council member demands end to U.S. occupation" on http://www.cjad.com/content/c... ]
The Iraqi governing council is a puppet-committee, used for window-dressing by the Bush Regime. The Iraqis are unable to make any decisions affecting their own lives, resources and freedoms, without risk of unilateral veto by Bremer (Rummy & Wolfy). In other words, the American Government is able to dictate orders with impunity. It is Occupation American-Style (Or in Corporate USA-Style), and Iraqi Leaders want us out!
Even Iraqi citizens who hated Saddam Hussein, are saying life was better under the brutal dictator, than under the brutal American Occupation. Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rummy, Wolfy & Bremer, are spending massive bucks like drunken-sailors, having squandered over $71 billion thus far, and an additional $4 billion per month, with no end in sight and nothing to show for it, but hatred of our bungling and callous disregard for the lives of Iraqi civilians (not to mention, our own US Military Soldiers.)
What I find astonishing is that anyone is surprised by the horrific state-of-affairs in Iraq, given that the only thing the Bush Regime comprehends is Brute Power:
Firstly, Bush & Cheney, the neo-CEOs declared that they would run the USA like a Corporation (Having apparently plundered corporations they were responsible for safe-guarding : Harken Oil & Halliburton, who could fail to foresee that they would handsomely profit from allowing their corrupt campaign contributors to exploit the Iraqi oil fields?). Moreover, their callous disregard for the welfare of Iraqis mirrors their callous disregard for American Workers who are treated like Slave-Labor Fodder ... (while our US Military Men/Women & Iraqis are treated like Cannon Fodder!).
Secondly, Bush & Cheney appointed their attack-dogs, arrogant neo-con ideologues, like Rummy, Wolfy, Bolton & the Gang willing to do anything (and I mean anything) for power, wealth and, in the service of the almighty Military Industrial Complex. Defense Contractors & Big Oil will ensure these guys retire in the style of neo-Kings. (Refer to "The Price of Freedom in Iraq & Power in Washington" on http://www.worldpolicy.org/pr... ) The Bush Regime doesn't give a damn about the heart-breaking blood spilt, and the back-breaking debt to be incurred by those of low income, middle-class and fixed-income retirees.
Thirdly, the Bushies needed war to divert attention away from (a) what they knew & when they knew it, regarding advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, (b) "shock-and-awe" of Americans while the "bait-and-switch" tax cuts for the corporations & rich were awarded, creating massive deficits burdening most Americans, while corporate robber-barons, war-profiteers & the wealthy make out like bandits, and, (c) allowing the Energy Corporations (Bush, Cheney & Rice Paymasters) to rape consumers and pollute the environment in order to reap ever-greater profits for the corporate "top dogs" and "fat cats".
Ergo, having ignored sound advice from Republican & Democratic Congressmen, Middle-East Experts, and State Department officials-- the disastrous results were entirely predictable. Of course, the Bush Regime are pursuing their own private Business Plan using the people, assets, and resources of the U.S.A & Iraq, as if these all belong to them. The Bush Regime and their Corporate Cronies are doing quite nicely, thank you very much.
"Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim blamed the United States for the death of his brother, the recently slain Shiite leader, Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim. Speaking at the funeral, he said, "The occupation force is primarily responsible for the pure blood that was spilled in holy Najaf, the blood of al-Hakim and the faithful group that was present near the mosque."
"Iraq must not remain occupied and the occupation must leave so that we can build Iraq as God wants us to do," he added. Abdel al-Hakim's statements represent an about-turn for a man who was until the killing a member of the Iraqi governing council appointed by the Bremer administration. "
A must-read is "Democracy Dismissed" by Medea Benjamin on http://www.tompaine.com/featu... , in which he describes the shock of watching American Occupiers disregard the will of the Iraqi people and treat them with unbridled contempt and condescension.
In "Fears of political anarchy loom large in Iraq" by Mustapha Karkouti, on http://www.aljazeerah.info/Op...%20editorials/2003%20Opin ion%20Editorials/Septembe r/2%20o/Fears%20of%20poli tical%20anarchy%20loom%20 large%20in%20Iraq%20Musta pha%20Karkouti.htm , he states:
"The killing last Friday of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr Al Hakim in the holy city of Najaf, Iraq, is a dangerous development which might speed the process of creating a state of political anarchy with unforeseen consequences. But it also presents the United States' representative in Iraq, Paul Bremer, with his toughest challenge yet.
Since U.S. President George W. Bush declared military operations over in Iraq, not only have more American soldiers been killed than in the actual war itself, but a number of atrocities have also taken place, including the bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad and the latest criminal killing of Ayatollah Al Hakim.
Regardless of who is behind these murderous acts, it still remains that security in Iraq is the responsibility of the occupying powers. Friday's murder in Najaf has removed one of the most important Shiite Muslim leaders who, though critical, advocated engagement with the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
This is not a call to bring back tyranny to Iraq, but it is time for the Bush administration to stop and think. A question needs to be asked: What is going wrong and what needs to be done?
Three things come to mind. First, speed up the process to hand over Iraq's affairs to the Iraqis. Iraq has the best brains in the Arab world and Iraqis, given the opportunities, are capable of establishing a functioning democracy which will have sufficient tools to quickly rebuild the country's economy. But the chance that this will be achieved is remote, even if the country can be pacified.
Second, the U.S. administration has to deal with the regional powers, including its ally, Turkey, as well as much disliked countries such as Iran, Syria and others, to achieve two aims. In the short term, to has to secure Iraq's borders, and to stabilise the country in the longer term. Thirdly, the UN has to be invited in one form or another - even if it is American led - and internationalise Iraq's problems."
Congress should be called upon to investigate into the Bush Regime's (1) lies & deceptions leading the USA to invade Iraq, (2) corrupt deals made with Corporations who are obscenely profitting from the deaths and misery of US Military and Iraqi people, and, (3) malfeasance in massive over-spending that doesn't bring about any positive outcomes or deliverables for the American and Iraqi Peoples, but instead massive, long-term debt to be borne by low-income, middle-class (if there are any left), and, fixed-income retirees. Contact Congress on http://www.congress.org .
Case Wide Open: Dr. Kelly Reported Blair Government Deceived Public!
Dr. Kelly's wife told the Hutton inquiry that he had felt let down by the Ministry of Defense who exposed him so cruelly to the media. Dr. Kelly indeed reported that the government's dossier was based upon exaggerations. He was a gentle man who could not take the scrutiny and ridicule of the public spot-light that the Blair Regime so viciously exposed him to-- and he apparently committed suicide.
As Lord Michael Heseltine, who was deputy prime minister, 1995-97, and defence minister, 1983-86, said in "Kelly's death was Blair's lifeline : Hutton's report will be used to avert a much-needed judicial inquiry" on http://www.guardian.co.uk/com...,3604,1032954,00.html :
"Weeks have become months since victory has been claimed. No evidence has been unearthed to substantiate the basis upon which the invasion had been justified."
"I vividly remember listening to the news of David Kelly's death. I also remember the coincidental announcement of a judicial inquiry and my reaction to it. The squeamish will not like what I now say but the squeamish do not last long in politics or understand the ruthless survival instinct of politicians under pressure. Dr Kelly's death gave a new urgency to the demand for an inquiry but it also provided a lifeline. The government could concede the case for an inquiry, but one with narrow terms of reference that precluded any investigation of the major matters now of growing concern. Of all modern governments this was the one pre-eminent in steering the news and controlling the agenda. Of course there were downsides. There could be uncomfortable revelations. But all this would be as nothing to the dangers that could arise from the alternative and far-reaching inquiry that the government was so determined to avoid."
"There is a saying that for evil to triumph it is only necessary for good men to stay silent."
"In one of London's most prestigious dining rooms on November 13 2002 I listened, along with some 200 of the "great and the good", to a very senior American politician close to the Bush administration tell us that it did not matter what happened in the UN or what the weapons inspectors said. The decision to invade had already been taken. I was appalled. But I was appalled by the idea without being convinced that what we had just been told was true."
"Where then does duty lie? We are engaged in a battle for the hearts and minds of a constituency far wider than our domestic electorates, important though they are. Sane and moderate Muslim opinion is a vital factor in the unfolding history of our times. In the absence of the evidence that could give credibility to our actions this government can restore trust only by opening the record for the public scrutiny of a judicial inquiry."
Read "Timeline: genesis of MoD's press statement on David Kelly" on http://media.guardian.co.uk/b...,7493,1021223,00.html , for a ghoulish description of how the Blair Regime threw Dr. Kelly to the wolves: "A meeting takes place between Ms Teare, Mr Hoon, Mr Campbell and Mr Kelly. It is decided to either send another letter or to put Dr Kelly's name to the BBC."
Of course, "poodle" Blair's ruthless Spin-Meister & Liar Extraordinaire Alistair Campbell (No. 10 Downing Street, Communications Chief) was forced to resign. Hopefully, only the 1st resignation amongst many who deserve the axe ... after all, both Hoon & Blair should also resign for misleading their people into an immoral & illegal incursion into Iraq. Many more despicable lies, deceptions & cover-ups lie behind this tragic story, as Lord Heseltine opines.
Many British are calling for another inquiry into the Blair Deceptions (only 22% of Brits believe Blair was telling the truth). Americans should be clammering for an inquiry into the Bush Regime's lies, deceptions & cover-ups, as their "sexed-up" so-called "intelligence (sic)" has resulted in the massacre of over 330 US & British Troops and over 7700+ innocent Iraqi civilians, with no end in sight!
