[b]Conservative Republican Senator John McCain (R-AZ)[/b] criticizes the [i]spend-thrift for the richest-of-the-rich[/i] Republican Congress run amok and their "useful idiot" whore Bush, for massive big-government squandering of taxpayer dollars:-- all for corporations, wealthy plutocrats & campagin contributors ... There isn't anything that the [i]corporate robber-barons [/i][b]want[/b] that this corrupt Bush regime and his compliant Republican [i]lap-dogs [/i]won't award their pimps. The traitorous Bushies and their [i]corporate-owned [/i]Republicans are willing to jeopardize our financial stability, the health of this nation and needs of our people, in order to funnel hundreds of billions to their sordid and squalid paymasters.
[b]Tragically, we're currently saddled with the most obscene, callous, corrupt and arrogant neo-fascist regime, that this nation has ever had the mis-fortune to have thrust ([i]unwillingly[/i]) upon us ... Let's throw these dangerous neo-con crooks, swindlers & murderers out in 2004![/b]
"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Leading Republican Sen. John McCain on Sunday berated fellow lawmakers for "spending money like a drunken sailor" and said President Bush was also to blame for pushing the nation toward higher interest rates and inflation.
On the "Fox News Sunday" program, McCain lamented the closing actions of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives before recessing for the year, most notably passage of a massive overhaul of the Medicare insurance program for the elderly.
He also decried a $31 billion national energy bill, still pending until at least next year, much of which would fund industry tax breaks.
"The numbers are astonishing," said McCain, an Arizona Republican. "Congress is now spending money like a drunken sailor. And I've never known a sailor drunk or sober with the imagination that this Congress has."
It was a rare admonition from a member of Bush's own political party, which hopes to benefit from a series of wins this year in the U.S. Congress -- which in addition to the first-ever Medicare prescription drug benefit, included more tax relief, funds to rebuild Iraq and a law to restrict abortion.
Bush is hoping the record will help him and fellow Republicans keep control of the White House and Congress in next November's election. Democrats, however, have bemoaned the rising price tags, a sentiment shared on Sunday by McCain, a member of the Senate's Armed Services Committee.
[i]EXCEEDING CAPS[/i]
McCain said Bush, who has never vetoed a spending bill, was in large part responsible for this year's spending levels exceeding prescribed caps of 4 percent growth, at a whopping 8 percent.
"The president cannot say, as he has many times, that I am going to tell Congress to enforce some spending discipline and then not veto bills," McCain said.
"We are laying a burden of debt on future generations of Americans. ... Any economist will tell you, you cannot have this level of debt, of increasing deficits without eventually it affecting interest rates and inflation," he added.
McCain, who challenged Bush for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, took particular issue with the massive energy bill, which in beginning stages cost $8 billion, a total that rocketed up with dozens of provisions inserted to benefit the districts of individual lawmakers to win their support.
"There was no policy initiatives in the energy policy. It was just one pork barrel project larded onto another," he said. "... And the administration is still saying it is one of its highest priorities, I don't know how you rationalize that."
Despite the bills that were passed, however, lawmakers recessed last week without passing a roughly $375 billion year-end federal spending bill.
The failure will not shut down the government, which can operate under stopgap funding until Jan. 31. But it was a setback for Republicans, who had vowed to get the budget process back on track this year. "
Bush's Family Is Shamelessly Profiteering From Their Neo-Fascist Wars ... Blood-For-OIL ...
[b]Bush's corrupt family is shamelessly profiteering [/b]from their insane neo-fascist wars turned bloody guerrilla quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq. [b]November is the bloodiest month of Bush's Death March in Iraq, thus far (81 U.S. Soldiers slaughetered)[/b], as [b]2 more U.S. Soldiers were killed today[/b] in Iraq: making[b] Bush's Death Toll rise to 438 U.S. Soldiers, 85 Coalition Troops, 21,000-55,000 Iraqis-- with 10,000 U.S. Casualties ... and countless misery, mayhem and carnage that goes unrecorded[/b].
While the [i]arm-chair chicken-hawk [/i]neo-con Bush/Cheney Inc. thugs & goons continue their massacre of troops, diplomats, and innocent civilians-- in an insane neo-fascist grab for Middle East OIL, Iraqi businesses and obese contracts-- a "[i]bait-and-switch[/i]" scam is underway by the rapacious Bushies & their corporate cronies to ruthlessly embezzle & swindle Americans out of hundreds of billions, and Iraqis out of their OIL & businesses-- (Apparently we're funding the anti-christian Bush regime's theft of massive riches ... with our blood and treasury-- while their [i]corporate-take-all [/i]cronies, rich plutocrats & campaign contributors are awarded immoral (& possibly illegal) massive "[i]welfare for the rich[/i]" boondoggles, tax loopholes & tax cuts ... ).
There is no[i] end-in-sight [/i]to their anti-christian, neo-nazi fiasco of carnage in Iraq ... Are we supposed to accept our U.S. Soldiers & Iraqi People being used as [i]cannon-fodder [/i]([i]turned into mercenaries[/i]) to enrich the criminals in the Bush regime? ... Are we supposed to accept our U.S. Treasury being looted & plundered to enrich these corrupt thugs & goons in the Bush regime? ... Are we supposed to remain silent in the face of the Bush regime's [i]Crimes Against Humanity[/i]?
Meanwhile, as the insane blood-letting and theft continues-- creating untold misery at home & in the Middle East-- the [b]Bush Family [/b]has [b]HIT THE JACKPOT[/b]! Daddy Bush's holdings in the Carlyle Group are, by now, ([i]in[/i])famous ... and his war-profits have not been disclosed to the public ... Cheney has made tens of millions from Halliburton, in return for the largest no-bid, no-audit, no-accountability "contracts" raping Americans & the Iraqi people senseless ... Now,[i] Joshua Micah Marshall [/i]reveals in his excellent [i]TalkingPointsMemo[/i] on http://www.talkingpointsmemo.... , one of the [i]swindler brothers[/i],[b] Neil Bush's ([i]'Savings-and-Loans' stole millions from elderly pensioners robbing them of their life savings[/i]), shady (illegal) dealings in grabbing Iraqi OIL & businesses[/b]:
[b]"If you're involved in all sorts of iffy financial transactions, don't get into a messy divorce[/b].
Someone didn't mention this sage advice to [b]Neil Bush[/b]. [[i]Bush's corrupt brother -- none of the drunken party-boys, Bush brothers ever served in battle or went to war, when it was their turn to serve our nation-- better men died while these congenital creeps were AWOL partying[/i].]
Now it turns out that[i] Bush [/i]is not-too-distantly connected to New Bridge Strategies, [i]the outfit President Bush's right-hand-man Joe Allbaugh set up to play Iraqi contracts games[/i]. [ http://www.talkingpointsmemo.... ]
[i]Here's the run-down[/i].
It turns out [i]Neil[/i] is Co-Chairman of something called Crest Investment Corporation. Whatever it is Crest does, it pays 60 grand a year to get a few hours a week of advice from the President's ne'er-do-well brother on how to do it.
The other "co-chairman and principal of Crest," reports the Financial Times, "is Jamal Daniel, a Syrian-American who is an advisory board member of New Bridge Strategies ..." [ http://www.newbridgestrategie... ]
The New Bridge website says that before Daniel started up Crest he was in the international real estate biz and also "has extensive experience in structuring investing in energy and oil and gas projects throughout the U.S., Europe and the Middle East.
The[i][b] Bushies [/b][/i]are a corrupt, sordid & squalid "[i]family[/i]":[i][b] Daddy Bush [/b][/i]reaps billions of obscene profits from horrific war-mongerings ...[i][b] Jeb [/b][/i]rigs elections & scams the public with neo-con fascist propaganda and diatribes ... [i][b]Neil[/b][/i] steals the life savings of the elderly and swindles America & Iraq of their treasure ... and, [i][b]the Mad King George[/b][/i] massacres tens of thousands in his insane neo-fascist wars of aggression to enrich himself, his "[i]family[/i]", and his rich cronies.
[b]The Bushies & their corrupt "[i]administration[/i]" are traitors to this country and should be impeached for [i]Crimes Against the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights[/i]-- for lying and misleading us into bloody wars based on false pretexts ... Their betrayal is the worst form of immorality and corruption known to mankind because it has resulted in the unnecessary death and destruction of tens of thousands of innocent human beings.[/b]
"GI death toll sets monthly record: 81 Iraq guerrillas refine tactics, step up attacks" http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/art... ( ... Article published before 2 More Deaths this morning)
"Meet The Carlyle Group - Former World Leaders and Washington Insiders Making Billions in the War on Terrorism" (How will President George W. Bush personally make millions (if not billions) from the War on Terror and Iraq?) on http://www.hereinreality.com/...
" ‘Frauds-R-Us’ - The Bush Family Saga: The Bush-Carlyle Connection - There’s no business like war business" on http://www.informationclearin...
"Savings and Loan Scandal: Neil Bush, George Bush's son, never servered time in jail for his part in running an S&L into the ground [and swindling elderly pensioners out of their life savings.]" on http://www.inthe80s.com/sandl...
[b]The Bush Regime's Hypocrisy Regarding Iraqi "[i]Freedom[/i]"[/b]
[b]Russell Mokhiber[/b]: Scott, Ambassador (Paul) Bremer said yesterday that U.S. troops will remain on the ground in Iraq even after the government is elected there. What if the (Iraqi) government asks the U.S. to get out. Would we get out? ...
[b]Hmmm ...[/b]
[b]Source[/b]: [i]"Scottie & Me" (formerly known as Ari & I)[/i], White House Press Briefing with Scott McClellan, Monday, November 17, 2003 - 12:15 PM, by [i]Russell Mokhiber[/i] on http://www.commondreams.org/s...
Bush's Insane Bloody Guerrilla Quagmire & Occupation of Iraq for OIL is Hated by the Iraqis
It is becoming [i]clearer and clearer [/i]to even the "[i]dumbest-of-the-dumb[/ i]" that all of the phony excuses, [i]post facto [/i]rationalizations, and fabricated pretenses perpetrated upon the American people and the world, by the corrupt [b]Bush regime[/b], for their [i]casus belli [/i]to invade & occupy Iraq, are outright[b] lies, deceptions and falsehoods[/b].
The[i] phony WMDs posing an imminent threat [/i][b]excuse[/b] of nuclear "mushroom clouds" and tons of vials of chemical & biological weapons that were about to be used to wipe millions of us out-- has turned out to be a squalid, un-funny joke that only either imbecilic buffoons or corrupt liars still believe in ... The [b][i]post facto [/i]rationalization [/b]that we eliminated a tyrannical dictator, Saddam Hussein, who was stealing Iraq's treasure from the Iraqi people, is a sordid, un-funny joke as we watch the hypocritical Bushies & their corrupt [i]corporate-take-all [/i]cronies steal all of America's treasure from the American people ... Now, the most bizarre and sickening neo-con joke of all is the sudden [b]fabricated pretense [/b]of "[i]love of freedom[/i]" vomitted by the neo-fascist Bushies' attack-dogs & court-jesters-- in the face of neo-nazi "[i]Patriot[/i] (sic)" Acts here at home-- that concretely demonstrates the Bush regime's disdain of the American people and a contempt for the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights!
The Bushies don't give a [i]rat's ass [/i]about the Iraqi people and their so-called "[i]freedom[/i] (sic)". Hell, the [b]Bushies have massacred between 21,000-55,000 Iraqis[/b]! Is that a sign or display of their so-called christian concept of "[i]love[/i] (sic)"?
As far as the insane Bush regime's neo-con[i] idea [/i]of "[i]freedom[/i] (sic)" is concerned, the corrupt Bush regime wants to install their own puppet, the neo-fascist embezzler & thief, Ahmed Chalabi, as a new military dictator in Iraq, whom the Iraqi people can't stand. Ahmed Chalabi is already raping Iraq economically with the help of the American war-profiteers in the Bush regime: illegally grabbing Iraqi OIL & businesses in collaboration with the Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta's [/i]corporate pimps & whores-- without the voice or consent of the Iraqi people.
Meanwhile, the incompetent, rapacious & mendacious Bush goons & thugs have [i]screwed-up [/i]this fiasco of daily carnage so badly, that their immoral & illegal bloody, guerrilla quagmire is spreading to parts of Iraq that [b]we were told were "friendly" and everybody was "tickled pink": another Bush LIE[/b].
Apparently, [b]the Iraqi people don't buy the corrupt Bushies' [i]flim-flam [/i]... [/b]They can [i]see with their own eyes [/i]that the Bushies are there to RAPE Iraq for OIL & corporate interests:-- Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Chevron, et al. and the other anti-christian robber-barons are making out [i]big-time[/i], off the blood and treasure of the American and Iraqi peoples. It is time that we see these war-profiteers and[i] corporate-take-all [/i]swindlers, embezzlers, thieves and rapists for the insane, neo-con, neo-feudal imperial tyrants that they represent: [i][b]The Iraqis have woken-up ... Why don't we?[/b][/i]
[b]November Deadliest Month in Iraq [/b]
[i]More U.S. troops have died in Iraq in November than in any month since the war began in March, according to Defense Department figures.
With November nearly over, the official death count yesterday stood at 79, surpassing March (65) and April (73), when the invasion was underway and fighting was most intense and widespread.
The surge has reflected an increase in the effectiveness and the frequency of guerrilla attacks.[/i]
In "[b]Guerrilla War in Iraq Spreading - US Says Attacks on Rise Outside Sunni Triangle[/b]" on http://www.commondreams.org/h... , [i]Bryan Bender [/i]reports:
"WASHINGTON -- The guerrilla war in Iraq has moved steadily beyond the so-called Sunni Triangle and into areas of the country once considered peaceful, a potentially ominous development for security forces trying to restore order in the country.
Since the end of major combat operations on May 1, nearly 40 percent of attacks on US and coalition targets have been outside the Sunni Triangle, home to many remnants of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's regime, according to internal Defense Department reports obtained by the Globe.
The monthly breakdown is classified, but Defense Department officials confirmed that the number of attacks occurring in the far north, south, and far western Iraq -- areas outside the Sunni Triangle, which is immediately north and west of the capital of Baghdad -- has increased in recent months.
This week alone, two US soldiers were shot, dragged, and hit with rocks in the northern city of Mosul and another was killed there yesterday in a rocket attack, adding to growing violence in what had been considered a relatively stable city.
"We have seen an increase," General Richard B. Myers, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, said on Tuesday, referring to the attacks outside the triangle, though he described the increase as modest and insisted that those attacks were probably due to remnants of Saddam Hussein's government.
US forces have stepped up patrols inside the triangle in recent days, hoping to knock out leaders of the insurgency. Myers said military leaders are still examining the rate and location of the attacks outside the triangle to determine how best to contain them.
"We're still looking at what this means in terms of the strategy of the former regime elements that we're up against. How they're tied regionally within Iraq and how they're tied nationwide is to be determined," Myers said. "We don't have as much insight there as we need, and we're working on that insight."
But US intelligence officials said the widening range of attacks could have serious implications for US efforts to quell the guerrilla war, turning citizens from peaceful areas against the coalition forces if it is unable to provide security.
"What I worry about is broader support [among Iraqis] for the insurgent guerrilla activity," said a senior US intelligence official who asked not to be identified. The official added that most of Iraq so far appears to be supportive, or at least tolerant, of the US operation. But "only time will tell."
The Sunni Triangle is home to most of the country's Sunni Muslims, members of Hussein's ethnic group. Southern Iraq, home to the country's majority Shi'ite Muslims, and the Kurdish-dominated north have been more receptive to the US occupation, but guerrilla attacks in those areas have been increasing.
Since May, when major combat operations were declared over, a total of 2,227 guerrilla attacks took place in the Sunni Triangle, according to figures as of the end of last week. The rest of the country has had 1,416 attacks, most of them against occupation forces.
The attacks outside the triangle have included the use of small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades, and improvised explosive devices, military officials said. They have targeted US and coalition troops, but also Iraqi security forces and civilians, as well as public infrastructure, such as electrical grids and pipelines.
Military analysts said the widening of the location of attacks is characteristic of a classic guerrilla campaign, in which insurgents seek to destabilize areas of the country that are considered peaceful, slowly expanding the war zone until most of the country fears for its security.
The number of attacks in the southeast sector of the country, where the Shi'ite Muslim and relatively pro-US city of Basra is located, has doubled since August, according to the military's statistics. The exact number of those attacks per month is classified, according to a military official.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, speaking with reporters on Tuesday, downplayed the significance of the recent spike in attacks in Shi'ite areas."
Dubya Likes "Gotch-Ya" Photo-Op STUNTS ... Too Bad He's Such A Lousy Prez
Dubya smirked the same tired ole' cliche-ridden lies, deceptions & falsehoods, at his "[i]gotch-ya[/i]" [b]Thanksgiving stunt [/b]yesterday, in a cynical, shameless exploitation of better U.S. service men and women, [i]who[/i] the buffoon Bush isn't fit to lead-- [i]who[/i] die in his insane, illegal & immoral neo-con, neo-nazi wars -- [i]who[/i] risk their precious lives, while he abuses them for a [i][b]Campaign 2004 Photo-Op[/b][/i].
Since the "Mission Accomplished" has deteriorated into a bloody fiasco, carnage & slaughter, and the only "Mission" ([i]It's the OIL, STUPID[/i]!) "Accomplished" ([i]Bloody Guerrilla Quagmire, massacring 434 U.S. Soldiers, 77 Coalition Troops & 21,000-55,000 Iraqis[/i]) is a rising Death Toll:-- the corrupt Bush regime figures it can't possibly use [i]that[/i] embarrassing bombastic buffoonery on 1st May, aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln.
[b]Presto[/b]: Another obscene abuse of our men & women in the military-- [i]shocked[/i] naturally, [i]surprised[/i] naturally, and, probably desperately [i]want to believe [/i]([i]remember Santa Claus[/i]?) that the Bushies "[i]care[/i] (sic)" -- when in fact, the Cheney-Rice-Rove spin-meisters lurking in the "[i]bowels[/i]" of their neo-con, neo-hitlerian spin-factory churning out mendacious propaganda, wrongly hope that this neo-orwellian [i][b]circus-act [/b][/i]will wipe-out their [b]Crimes Against Humanity[/b]!
[i][b]It doesn't[/b][/i]! The anti-christian Bush and his neo-fascist regime are the same callous thugs & goons they've always been: Bush is a coward, AWOL in a drunken-stupor, when it was his time to serve, during Vietnam-- and his [i]comrades-in-arms[/i] lost their lives in the tens of thousands, while he swilled gin & partied. [i]Popping-into [/i]Baghdad for a QUICKY ... a 2-hour secret visit ... and, then [i]popping-out [/i]again, doesn't change his lifetime track-record of grabbing all for himself, and avoiding service and sacrifice.
The Mad King George, the "useful idiot" of the neo-con war-mongers, will mercilessly keep on massacring these boys & girls, and innocent Iraqis, in order to enrich Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Chevron-- and his other greedy, corrupt pimps, the war-profiteers, corporate robber-barons & gluttonous campagin contributors: all those to whom he gave massive immoral (& possibly illegal) "welfare-for-the-rich" boondoggles, tax-loopholes & tax cuts-- while giving the rest of us the largest DEBTS in our nation's history. Too bad he's such a lousy prez.
While we "[i]shed a tear[/i]" and are "[i]touched[/i]" ([i]yuck, yuck, yuck[/i]!) by his [b]Thanksgiving-day-chara de[/b], the Bushies are [i]laughing all the way to the bank[/i]!
Rummy Rumsfeld smirks "Finding Saddam is like looking for a needle in a haystack"
The arrogant and incompetent buffoon and liar, Rummy Rumsfeld smirks "[i]Finding Saddam is like looking for a needle in a haystack[/i]". [ http://wireservice.wired.com/... ]
Uh-huh, so [i][b]where [/b][/i]are the WMDs posing an imminent threat to our nation's security (Bush's [i]casus belli [/i]for waging their insane war turned bloody guerrilla quagmire in Iraq!)? Hey, Rummy, where are the tons of nukes, biological and chemical weapons that were going to be the cause of "mushroom clouds" and other nightmarish attacks on us, wiping out millions of us?[b] Are those WMDS also "[i]like looking for a needle in a haystack[/i]"?[/b]
That's not what the mendacious Rummy said prior to his immoral neo-con neo-nazi aggression into Iraq-- opposed by the vast majority of nations & citizens throughout the world! Rummy said back-then ([i]in the scare-mongering days ... before these ugly arm-chair chicken-hawks misled us into their war-mongering days ... [/i]): "[i][b]We know where they are[/b][/i]," Rumsfeld said. "[b]They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad[/b]." ...
In fact, the neo-fascist Bush goons & thugs demonized and trashed Hans Blix & his team of approximately 200 United Nations inspectors, after failing to find WMDs after only a few weeks of searching in Iraq. David ([i]Defense Contractor Slut[/i]) Kay, the Bushies lap-dog, has over 1400 inspectors and has been searching for over 5-6 months with the full support of the U.S. Military and almost $1 Billion taxpayer dollars, and has apparently been "[i]rolling around in haystacks[/i]" ... or most certainly "[i]rolling around in dough[/i]" ... as they've come-up with[i][b] zip, zero, nada[/b][/i]!
[b]What do we have to show for the Bush regime's [i]illegal anti-christian Crimes Against Humanity [/i]"[i]crusade[/i]" ([i]the Mad King George's word, not mine [/i]...) in Iraq?[/b]
* Hatred of the U.S. around the world, as the Bushies have squandered the good-will of other nations in the aftermath of 9/11;
* Highest deficits & debts in our nation's history, as over $166 Billion is squandered on their bloody guerrilla quagmire in Iraq (over $87 Billion to-date); as Bush has awarded his sordid & squalid war-profiteers, corporations & wealthy plutocrats and campaign contributors, massive "welfare for the rich" boondoggles, tax loopholes & tax cuts;
* No Thanksgiving supper for 434 U.S. Soldiers massacred in Iraq ... and, 77 Coalition Troops & 21,000-55,000 Iraqis have also been slaughtered to enrich Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Chevron, and other gluttonous, murderous Bush pimps.
Meanwhile, the Bush/Cheney Inc.'s[i] junta [/i]are stuffing their piggish neo-hitlerian faces with gobs of rich food as they swill gallons of fine wines, this Thanksgiving, while better men and women are dying, wounded, maimed or injured for life, on a daily basis with no end in sight ... Despite their desperate panic-stricken, neo-orwellian, neo-nazi rhetoric, the Bush regime's phony "rationalizations" are reminiscent of the squealings of the Nazi regime in the 1930s: [i]unjustifiable lies, deceptions and falsehoods[/i].
The Bush regime's sycophantic attack-dogs and court-jesters have been absurdly smirking and crowing recently at his "so-called" victories ([i]i.e. victories for corporate-take-all crooks, war-profiteers, and the wealthy plutocracy ... and disastrous defeats for the vast majority of American people who are ruthlessly conned and swindled[/i]).
Bush, Cheney and Rove were apparently [i]turning cart-wheels in the Oval Office,[/i] in the aftermath of the tragic vote for the Corporateering Medicare Bill: ... A farcical scam and give-away to the pharmaceutical, insurance, HMO and other profiteering industries, who drafted the damn thing in collaboration with Republican whores to pay homage to their gluttonous corporate pimps.
[b]Has Bush simply "won" another [i]pyhrric[/i] victory-- that will haunt their corrupt regime's prospective [i]banana republican coup d'etat[/i] in 2004?[/b]
[b]Forget The Vote - Dems Are Winning The Medicare Fight[/b]
[b]Yesterday was a day that Dubya and Karl Rove had dreamed of for a long time[/b], the day that they stole the Medicare issue from the Dems, like Clinton did welfare reform.
[b]But instead of getting ready to take a victory lap, they’re about to take a damage control lap[/b].
Some readers may be frustrated that Dems didn’t successfully filibuster the bill, [b]but this wasn’t anything remotely like a cave-in.[/b]
In fact, the job the Dems did to get the truth out about the bill, and to neutralize the AARP endorsement ([i]Sunday notwithstanding[/i]), has been excellent.
And it has put Bush in a[b] worse political position[/b].
The big proof: check the results of the recent Annenberg poll ( http://www.appcpenn.org/03_po... ) asking “[i][b]Should Congress pass this bill or not[/b][/i][b]?[/b]”
[b][i]All Adults[/i][/b]:
Yes – 40% No – 42%
[b][i]Registered Voters[/i][/b]:
Yes – 39% No – 44%
[i][b]65 and over[/b][/i]:
Yes – 33% No – 49%
And the initial broadcast media coverage, which is usually heavily slanted to the victors, instead gave a fair amount of time to Dems and the underbelly of the bill.
[i]ABC World News Tonight [/i]zeroed in on the role of private companies ([i]which still makes seniors nervous[/i]):
The most controversial part… is the [b]$12 billion set aside to give to private health firms which will administer drug coverage[/b].
Opponents say that money should be used to lower the monthly premiums…
[i]ABC[/i] also played up concerns about drug costs:
…The bill’s supporters say, “don’t worry, drug costs will go down.” But even some of them say they aren’t really sure.
[i]NBC Nightly News [/i]also gave Dems decent face time, airing clips of Sens. Tom Daschle and Dick Durbin, while reporting:
The political debate is far from over as leading Democrats continue to call this bill a sell-out.
And [i]NBC’s[/i] characterization of the bill?
It’s a complicated piece of legislation and those whose lives will be touched by the Medicare bill have a lot of questions.
[b]That’s not quite the spin the GOP was looking for[/b].
Such coverage doesn’t happen when the opposition caves, only when the opposition actively opposes and gets its message out.
And so, while the Bushies are putting on a triumphant face, they have also indicated they know they’re in a hole.
The[i] W. Post [/i]reported Monday:
[[i]Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy[/i]] [i]Thompson [/i]acknowledged the legislation is not perfect and committed to a massive public education campaign if it is enacted.
You don’t do a “massive public education campaign” if everyone loves the bill already.
And yesterday on [i]CNN[/i], John King reported that Dubya will be “talking about it, and talking about it, and talking about, especially in key states.”
King also delivered the Rove line that “the White House believes this is a very big deal that can help the president considerably,” but Thompson’s comment belies that.
But King’s reporting also shows the Dems cannot treat this like the fight is over. Dems are currently winning the argument, but it is not won.
Bush’s “talking about it” means he’s going to spin this as hard as possible all throughout the next year.
He has an [b]uphill battle[/b], but he does have the bully pulpit.
So Dems need to do all they can to stay in Bush’s face every step of the way.
Daschle has set the right tone, already introducing legislation to repeal parts of the bill.
But the prez candidates need to play the lead role, as they are commanding more and more of the media spotlight.
Simply criticizing won’t make much news now.
[b]They need to take it to the next level: offering their own plans on how they will fix the law to provide a real benefit that dumps the insidious privatization and doesn’t screw the poor[/b].
"Bush's Insane Energy & Medicare Bills: Another Big Swindle for Bush's Top Campaign Contributors" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
"GOP Medicare and Energy Bills Repeat Privatization Failures In Both Health Care & Energy Industries, Consumer Advocate Says" on http://www.consumerwatchdog.o...
The Bushies' pimps made out big-time in this Medicare SCAM & SWINDLE-- that the [i]corporate-take-all [/i]industries drafted in collaboration with their Republican whores: ... that effectively derails Medicare and is a neo-con con-game. The elderly are swindled ([i]as anti-free-enterprise prohibitions are enacted to stop any negotiation of lower prices for pharmaceutical drugs as we continue to be price-gouged over 100-1000 times in costs more than Canada, EU, Mexico, etc. - moreover reduction in prices of medicine only in 1st year ... in subsquent years, elderly are swindled as prices increase again[/i]!) by corrupt corporate robber-barons & thieves: i.e. Bush's Criminal Campaign Contributors: [ http://www.tblog.com/template... ]
[b]The Corporateering of the Year Award Goes to the Medicare Bill Profiteers: ... Corporate Pimps & Profiteers Raping America ...[/b]:
"SANTA MONICA, Calif. - November 25 - The vote by the U.S. Senate to approve a Medicare prescription drug benefit that prevents government bulk purchasing of drugs, "is the most outrageous example of corporations' interests being prioritized over society's this year," according to Jamie Court, author of Corporateering: How Corporate Power Steals Your Personal Freedom And What You Can Do About It http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob... (Tarcher/Putnam). "Corporateering," a term coined by Court in his book which charts the prioritization of corporations' commercial interests during the last twenty-five years, describes when large corporations prioritize their gain over the individual's and society's. In addition to pharmaceutical companies, health insurers, HMOs and hospitals will receive a significant financial boost under the new program. See the analysis below for an overview of the legislation's special interest hand-outs and campaign contributions from pharmaceutical companies, HMOs, health insurers and hospitals.
As a result of current bulk purchasing strategies, U.S. made prescription drugs are sold at one third of their price in Canada and are available at a huge discount to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. However, a provision in the Medicare legislation prohibits the federal government from utilizing its potential bulk-purchasing clout to negotiate deep prescription drug discounts for Medicare recipients.
"Not allowing the government to use its bulk purchasing power to get the cheapest price for prescription drugs is a Congressional and Presidential blank check to the pharmaceutical industry to charge as much as they like, " said Court. "This corporateering eclipses even Enron, Worldcom, and Tyco because it is the biggest public giveaway on Capitol Hill since the S&L bailout. Congress and the President have socialized costs and privatized gain for industries that are the most prolific campaign givers on the hill."
The new Medicare prescription drug legislation, which will provide $400 billion over 10 years, will cover less than 1/4 of expected drug costs. Consumer advocates have argued that by allowing the federal government to negotiate bulk purchasing discounts under the new Medicare prescription drug benefit, as it currently does for veterans, seniors would pay less for their medications. Pharmaceutical companies, which have heavily lobbied for the bill, stand to gain a huge financial windfall under the proposed plan that prohibits such price negotiations.
"Any prescription plan that ties the hands of the federal government from using its market clout to negotiate cheaper drugs is absolutely unacceptable. This is bill is a thanksgiving feast for the nation's most powerful special interests: the pharmaceutical industry, health insurers and hospitals," said Jerry Flanagan of FTCR. "Seniors will likely pay more for prescriptions under the new plan, not less."
The House of Representatives passed the legislation on Saturday 220-215. The measure will now be sent to President Bush for final action.
[i][b]Analysis of special interest giveaways and campaign contributions[/b][/i]:
-- [b]Pharmaceutical Companies [/b]--
The legislation removes the federal government's ability to negotiate better prices for pharmaceuticals under the Medicare program. For decades the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) has used its significant bulk-purchasing clout to negotiate lower cost drugs for its 39 million members.
An analysis of the House of Representative vote by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) shows that pharmaceutical manufacturers contributed an average of $28,504 to the 204 Republicans who supported the bill, but just $8,112 to the 25 Republicans who opposed it.
The 16 Democrats who voted "yes" on the bill have raised an average of $16,296 from pharmaceutical manufacturers, while the 189 Democrats who voted "no" have raised an average of $11,791.
--[b] HMOs & Health Insurers [/b]--
The Medicare overhaul bill takes the first steps toward privatizing the system by establishing a "competitive" pilot program between health insurers and traditional Medicare programs. The bill provides subsidies for health plans to give them an advantage over the more efficient Medicare system.
The legislation does contain any cost-controls necessary to ensure that health care dollars are spent on medical care; not HMO profits. Between 2001 and 2003 the nation's six largest HMOs increased their earnings and profitability while dramatically decreasing spending on medical care.
The CRP analyses shows that health insurers gave House Democrats who supported the bill far more, on average ($22,376), than Democrats who opposed the measure ($9,692). House Republicans who supported the bill received an average of $19,286 from health insurers, while Republicans who voted against the industry have raised an average of $13,828.
HMOs gave Democrats who supported the bill an average of $11,654 and Republicans who voted for it an average of $11,576. Democrats who opposed the bill have raised an average of $6,840 from HMOs, as compared to the average $5,286 raised by Republicans who voted against it.
--[b] Hospitals [/b]--
A total of $26.6 billion was awarded to hospitals:
-- $25 Billion for rural hospitals and providers;
-- $1 Billion for Emergency Rooms that treat large numbers of illegal immigrants;
-- $600 Million in extra payments to hospitals for technology.
Senate President Bill Frist's family founded the hospital chain Columbia/HCA, which the government prosecuted for massive billing fraud. USA Today reported that U.S. Senate disclosure statements show he owned as much as $25 million in company stock. His wife has more than $1 million in stock. In total, the company, now called HCA, will pay more than $1.7 billion in civil and criminal penalties -- the largest amount ever in a health-care fraud case.
According CRP, hospitals have contributed $3,102,958 to the House and Senate since 2002 -- 38 percent to Democrats, 62 percent to Republicans.
[b]Bush hasn't brought civility and integrity to Washington D.C.: [/b]The corrupt Bush regime's criminal legacy will be ([b]i[/b]) mendacious attacks and smear campaigns; ([b]ii[/b]) destruction of "[i]enemies[/i]" ([i]i.e. anyone who doesn't support their neo-fascist agenda[/i]); ([b]iii[/b]) felony outing of a CIA operative whose husband dared to tell the truth about Bush's WMD lies to America; ([b]iv[/b]) intimidation of the neo-con [i]corporate-bought-and-p aid-for[/i] media and press into collaborating in their crimes; ([b]v[/b]) unleashing the F.B.I. onto protestors while hypocritically smirking about "[i]freedom[/i]"; ([b]vi[/b]) a long, ugly track-record of lies, deceptions & falsehoods (& hypocrisy) on insane foreign issues ([i]resulting in wars turned guerrilla quagmires & the massacre of thousands[/i]), and on rapacious "corporate-take-all" domestic policies ([i]resulting in largest debts in our nation's history, highest job losses since the Great Depression, skyrocketing poverty, etc.[/i]), and, ([b]vii[/b]) now, [b]encouraging dirty tricks and criminal break-ins of the opposing party's computers [/b]([i]reminiscent of Nixon's Watergate break-in and cover-up[/i]).
However, since this is the "corporate" presidency ([i]according to the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. junta[/i]), these goons and thugs are not arrested and tried for their crimes ... like their embezzlers & thieves, Bush's buddies, Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay, Ahmed Chalabi, etc. their [i]Birds-of-a-Feather Vultures Fly Away & Escape from the Coup [/i]... -- The Bushies and their criminals-in-arms get away with breaking the law. In the [i]Doctrine According to the Mad King George Bush[/i]: [b]Only Those Who Disagree With Me Are Accountable ... Apparently, the Imperial Bushies & Their Neo-Con Attack-Dogs & Court-Jesters are Above The Rule of Law?!?!?[/b]
Where are the hypocritical neo-con right-wing media who screamed and shouted about Clinton's wrong-doings ([i]and even made-up wrong-doings to crow about[/i])? [b]Where is their "[i]outrage[/i]" now?[/b]
[b]Caught red-handed[/b]. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch has placed one of his committee staffers on administrative leave for what the media reports are agreeing to call, with some delicacy, "[i]improperly obtaining data from the secure computer networks of two Democratic senators[/i]."
([i]Reminds me of my pals who used to get kicks by improperly obtaining Snickers bars from the local drug store when we were in grade school[/i].)
Keep in mind, Democratic Senators raised questions about how an unsent memo from the Democratic staff on the Intel Committee ended up in the hands of radio chatmeister Sean Hannity three weeks ago.
[b]Now that it seems the Judiciary Committee memo was in fact stolen, the Democrats' demands that the other incident be investigated sounds a lot more compelling. Was that one 'improperly obtained' too?[/b]
Following is a selection of Hatch's press conference late Tuesday ...
Because of the serious nature of the concerns raised, I also initiated a preliminary inquiry to determine whether anyone on the majority full committee staff had information pertaining to this matter. That inquiry is almost completed.
At my direction, two experienced federal prosecutors assigned to the committee conducted interviews of approximately 50 persons. I emphasized to them that their inquiry was to be full and impartial, letting the chips fall where they may, and that all information would be turned over to the sergeant at arms.
It is with deep regret that I must report today that the interviews conducted to date have revealed that at least one current member of Judiciary Committee majority staff had improperly accessed some of the documents referenced in the media reports and which have been posted on the Internet.
While this individual denies responsibility for releasing the documents to the press, it is now clear that some of the committee files, as Senators Durbin, Leahy and Kennedy feared, were compromised, and worse, by a member of the Senate Judiciary majority staff.
In addition, preliminary interviews suggest that a former majority committee staff member may also have been involved. I was shocked to learn this may have occurred. I am mortified that this improper, unethical and simply unacceptable breach of confidential files may have occurred on my watch.
Each senator has an expectation of receiving confidential, candid advice from his or her staff members. There is no excuse that can justify these improper actions.
I have placed one individual on administrative leave with pay, pending the outcome of the full investigation being conducted by the Senate Sergeant at Arms William Pickle.
It is my understanding that this individual is cooperating and providing information to the investigators.
[i]HATCH[/i]: I continue to urge each and every member of the Judiciary Committee, majority staff, to provide whatever information that will prove helpful in getting to the truth of this matter.
Once this individual provided the information to the staff conducting the inquiry, I contacted the Senate sergeant at arms and Capitol Police in order to take immediate steps to seize that person's computer and safeguard any retrievable data.
The sergeant at arms has been kept informed of each step we've taken. And we will continue to give whatever information we obtain immediately to Mr. Pickle and his investigators.
To summarize, the data have been preserved. An independent forensic investigation is under way. One individual has expressed knowledge which indicates the security of the committee's computer system was compromised. That individual has been placed on an administrative leave with pay.
The sergeant at arms investigation is under way, and we will continue to cooperate with that investigation in every way. And everybody on my staff has been directed to do so.
I will be conferring with Senator Leahy -- I tried to call him before coming over here, but was unable to connect.
But I will be conferring with Senator Leahy to take all appropriate measures to ensure the committee's computer system is secure and that its integrity, including development of training materials for all staff consistent with Senate rules and ethical standards, will be maintained.
In closing, I am making available today copies of relevant correspondence.
I will take a few questions, but as you can understand, due to the nature of this matter, I will not be able to comment on many further details. I think I've commented on all that really I can.
So I'll take a few questions if you have any.
Yes sir?
[i]QUESTION[/i]: Have any charges been made? Or is there any charges filed against this individual?
[i]HATCH[/i]: Well, accusations have been made, but no charges have been filed against anybody, to my knowledge.
[i]QUESTION[/i]: (Off-Mike)
[i]HATCH[/i]: I can't comment on that, because I don't know that a crime has been committed, nor do I know that there's any criminal law that has been breached.
But I do feel that the ethics of this body have been breached.
[i]QUESTION[/i]: The person put on administrative leave and the former staff who may also have had knowledge of the incident, are they Republicans or Democrats?
[i]HATCH[/i]: I honestly don't know, but they're working for majority staff, or they did -- the one is on administrative leave, the other was a former staffer on our side.
[i]QUESTION[/i]: What are their names?
[i]HATCH[/i]: That, we're not going to -- that's not my prerogative to give.
[i]QUESTION[/i]: Generally speaking, can you explain how it was possible that they were able to gain access to those files? Did they have to do something that -- did they have to hack into the system or...
[i]HATCH[/i]: I honestly don't know. And that's one of the questions that the sergeant at arms and the independent forensic experts will have to answer. I have some comments on that, made by the one person. But I think the best thing I can say is I honestly don't know the answer.
[i]QUESTION[/i]: Current members, this year, of your staff?
[i]HATCH[/i]: Yes. On current administrative leave with pay.
[i]QUESTION[/i]: Are any other staffers of the United States Senate or Congress involved, as far as you can tell?
[i]HATCH[/i]: Not that I know of at this point, but that's, again, something that the sergeant at arms is going to have to look at.
We've interviewed 50 staffers. And virtually all that I think should be interviewed, although there may be some others. So we're not quite complete with the inquiry that we're making.
[i]QUESTION[/i]: Are you looking at just who got the information from Democrats, or are you also looking at who then dispersed it to the media?
[i]HATCH[/i]: Well, we first want to find out if anybody on our staff had anything to do with this, and, like I say, I'm mortified to say that at least one member that I know of has compromised the computer system -- not the system, but has had access to these materials.
I really can't comment much beyond that, other than the sergeant at arms is going to have to follow up.
And I understand this staffer is cooperating with the sergeant at arms.
The [b]corrupt Bushies [/b]have dramatically increased their [i][b]corporate-paid-for [/b][/i][b]propaganda war full of lies, deceptions and falsehoods[/b]-- [i][b]waged in order to mislead the American public[/b][/i]. The rest of the world see the corrupt Bush regime full of thugs and goons, as the liars that they in fact are ... But, Karl ([i]Bush's Brain & America's Joseph Goebbles[/i]) Rove is convinced that he can[i] fool enough of the people, enough of the time[/i]-- to re-gain another 4 years of power & riches. And [b]the Global Corporate Empire who have been paid back in vast riches, by Bush/Cheney Inc.'s [i]junta[/i], are going to make damn certain that their whores and puppets are re-instated in the White House:-- To HELL With the Will of the People[/b].
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - "As U.S. forces battle a deepening guerrilla insurgency on the ground in Iraq, they are also waging a major media offensive to try to cast the contested occupation in a more positive light.
The media blitz coincides with a sharp rise in attacks by guerrillas against American interests and comes amid signs that both U.S. troops and the American-led civilian administration are losing the battle for the hearts and minds of Iraqis.
Last week, the military unveiled a new spokesman for U.S. forces in the country, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, a higher-ranking officer with more media experience than those who have until now been the public face of the occupation.
That followed a redesigning of the podium from which news conferences are held, with two large flat-screen monitors now installed to carry slick Powerpoint presentations the military is using to show off operations and tout successes.
A large, deep-blue seal representing the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority now hangs prominently behind the podium, right in front of TV cameras, with the words "Justice, Freedom, Liberty, Security" written around its border.
"There's definitely a feel of the White House about all this," said a veteran correspondent for a Washington newspaper after Kimmitt held his first news conference with the coalition's civilian spokesman last week."
[b]As the corrupt Bush goons & thugs, who trample on the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights, hypocritically smirk words such as "Justice, Freedom, Liberty, Security" -- that they don't respect or even comprehend; instead, they are shredding and treading on [i]justice, freedom, liberty [/i]and where the hell is [i]security[/i] in Iraq?[/b]
For example, in "[i]Iraqi leaders ban Arab TV network: Iraq's US-appointed interim leadership has banned an Arabic television station, accusing it of inciting violence against the coalition[/i]." on http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/mi... :
The Iraq's US appointed interim leadership cannot take any actions without L. Paul Bremer's ([i]White House's lap-dog[/i]) orders and explicit approval.
- [i]Excerpt[/i] -
"The media rules were criticised by Western-based media watchdogs but praised by the US Government.
Last week, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld described al-Arabiya and al-Jazeera as "violently anti-coalition"."
[b]Apparently [i]Freedom[/i] in the Doctrine According to Bush, is the [i]Freedom to Agree with their Crimes Against Humanity[/i].[/b]
[b]Beware of all those mendacious advertisements and deceptive articles written by the dishonest neo-con con-artists, attack-dogs & court-jesters, who are selling [i]snake-oil & swamp land [/i]... Don't buy their garbage![/b]
Corrupt Neo-Con Buffoons CROW About Economy: The Corporate WHORES Benefit, NOT YOU!
It might be hilarious, [i]if it wasn't so tragic[/i], to watch the Bush/Cheney Inc.'s hypocritical neo-con, neo-fascist buffoons who CROW about the growth in the GDP, in the 3rd quarter of this year ... Instead, it's the corrupt [i]corporate-take-all [/i]whores, war-profiteers, and wealthy plutocrats who are benefitting, and NOT YOU! [b]The neo-cons' smirking and shouting about growth [u]without including other economic factors[/u], is simply another neo-con-[i]con-game[/i], a swindle, a propaganda campaign devised to mislead you ([i]something the mendacious Cheney-Rice-Rove stooges & their neo-con attack-dogs & court-jesters are good at[/i])![/b]
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is an indicator of production ... So what? If the growth isn't translated into more jobs ([i]of which Bush has destroyed 3 million and between 9 million-15 million are unemployed[/i]), and reduction in poverty ([i]over 35 million people are living in abject poverty, below the poverty line[/i]), and a society than ensures its people have basic services including health care ([i]over 45 million are without health care coverage[/i]), education and other needs to live a civilized life-- then YOU ARE NOT BENEFITTING, [i]simply because the filthy rich are getting filthier & richer[/i]!
Frankly, I don't give a damn if the Bushies, Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay, the Cheneys and their [i]corrupt band-of-criminals[/i]-- who are raping Americans senseless-- LUST to buy 10 more mansions, 100 more yachts, 1000 more diamond tiaras, etc. etc. etc. -- and, can now do so because they have awarded their [i]corporate pimps [/i]hundreds of billions of swindled tax-payer dollars! [b]What Gives These "[i]Greed-is-Good[/i]" Ghouls the Right To Rape Americans & Give Back [i]Zip, Zero Nada [/i]To the Society That Enabled Them To Prosper? These Economic Rapists are Despicable![/b]
The American Middle-Class, Lower-Income & Poor, are bearing the back-breaking burden of Bush's record-level deficits and debts of over $560 billion in 2003 alone ([i]$1.9 trillion in Bush's insane reign in office[/i]). Moreover, rising local and state taxes are hitting the average Americans the hardest, as poverty and crime are skyrocketing, and basic services are being slashed. [b]Who do you really think is going to pay-off the corrupt Bush's insane re-distribution of the nation's income ([i]resulting in massive record-level deficits & debts ... the highest in our nation's history[/i]) to the wealthiest top 5% richest-of-the-rich? Not the Bushies' thugs, creeps and goons![/b]
Americans had better awaken from this [i][b]horrific nightmare of Bush's neo-con scam [/b][/i]benefitting the [i]richest-of-the-rich [/i]corporate thieves, swindlers & war-profiteers; wealthy plutocracy in the top 5%; and greedy, corrupt campaign contributors-- all pimps of the Bush whores-- before we find ourselves and future generations bankrupt. [b]The Bush/Cheney Inc.'s private debt collectors are [i]waiting in the wings[/i], rubbing their slimy hands together and salivating, in anticipation ...[/b]
The Bushies are arrogant, mendacious & corrupt thugs and goons ... One has to go far to imagine more squalid and sordid [i]house-guests [/i]... One wonders how criminals behave as [i]house-guests [/i]who are responsible for massacring thousands of people (433 U.S. Soldiers, 77 Coalition Troops & between 21,000-55,000 Iraqi citizens) in an immoral & illegal act of aggression, based upon lies, deceptions and falsehoods ... One wonders what kind of a [i]house-guest[/i] Adolf Hitler might have made: Was he charming and witty?
[i]Well, we know that Bush is neither charming, nor witty-- a "cowboy" buffoon who smirks imbecilic cliches. What a bore it must have been for the Queen and her entourage[/i]. [i]Not that one should give a tuppence whether or not the Queen & Philip were bored or not, as they seem like pretty boring people, too[/i].
Bush and his corrupt entourage spent their time gorging like [i]pigs at the trough[/i], on lavish banquets, gulping down rich food and swilling gallons of wine-- at the same time as our boys & girls (as well as innocent Iraqis) are being slaughtered-- in THEIR insane war-mongering to enrich their [i]corporate-take-all [/i]pimps & war-profiteers. Colin Powell is already becoming somewhat obese ... and the gluttonous Condi Rice [appointed head of the [i]Iraqi Stabilization Group [/i](ISG)], apparently prefers to hob-nob with royalty, that do her job (at which she is clearly incompetent)-- since things are getting progressively worse in Iraq. [i] [b]Bush & his criminal stooges-in-arms [/b][b]should have been [/b][b]frog-marched off to the Tower of London in hand-cuffs[/b][/i].
Yet, although we can observe first-hand the callous disregard for life by the corrupt Bushies:-- it appears that our[b] Vandal-in-Chief, the Mad King George, is also the Guest From Hell[/b].
"Remember when the Bush Administration was pushing a partisan falsehood about how outgoing Clinton folks had "vandalized" the White House? Remember how, even without photos or evidence -- or, ahem, facts -- the media couldn't get enough of the story? Remember how, after the formal US government study concluded the story was untrue -- an early indication of the Bush team's commitment to honesty -- editors defended their past enthusiasm for the non-story on grounds that it was just too sexy to ignore?
[b]Well, fine. Where are the headlines about the Bush team's trashing of Buckingham Palace?[/b]
[i]Queen Elizabeth -- already less than chuffed with Bush over the five personal chefs he brought along for his visit -- is now "furious" with our president for having let his men rip up her gardens, the Sunday Mirror reports[/i].
"[i]Palace staff said they had never seen the Queen so angry as when she saw how her perfectly-mantained lawns had been churned up after being turned into helipads with three giant H landing markings for the Bush visit. The rotors of the President's Marine Force One helicopter and two support Black Hawks damaged trees and shrubs that had survived since Queen Victoria's reign. ... clod-hopping security service men trampled more precious and exotic plants. The Queen's own flock of flamingoes, which security staff insisted should be moved in case they flew into the helicopter rotors, are thought to be so traumatized after being taken to a 'place of safety' that they might never return home. ... The Palace's head gardener, Mark Lane, was reported to be in tears when he saw the scale of the damage." [/i]
One unnamed Palace insider told the Sunday Mirror many of the plants and trees killed were rare species named after members of the royal family. "The Queen has every right to feel insulted at the way she has been treated by Bush. The repairs will cost tens of thousands of pounds but the damage to historic and rare plants will be immense. They are still taking an inventory. ... Thirty thousand visitors did not do as much damage as the Americans did in three days."
This story has everything the Clinton vandalism story had and far, far more. We're not talking about a few missing W keys from a few keyboards; we're talking about mass, crass destruction of rare historic gardens.
[i][b]So where's the breathless American media coverage[/b][/i]?"
[b]The Queen most certainly would have had to take an inventory to see what the Bushies might have "[i]picked-up[/i]" ([i]stolen[/i]) during their [i]garish and circus-act [/i]visit!
What a disgrace for America to have such slobs represent us, when [i]better men and women are dying in their insane wars of aggression[/i]![/b]
"GROUND FARCE 1 Nov 23 2003 - Queen's fury as Bush goons wreck garden" on http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk... or [ sundaymirror.co.uk/news/content_objectid= 13652625_method=full_site id=106694_headline=-GROUN D-FARCE-1-name_page.html ]
Bush's Insane Energy & Medicare Bills: Another Big Swindle for Bush's Top Campaign Contributors
The neo-con Bush regime's corrupt corporate cronies, wealthy plutocrats and filthy rich campaign contributors, have never had it so good. These rapacious and greedy swindlers are plundering and looting Americans on a scale unseen since Herbert Hoover's [i]Corporate-Take-All Give-Away[/i] that led to the Great Depression.
The Mad King George Bush's top 2 pieces of ([i]garbage[/i]) insane legislation are designed to enrich these already obscenely rich & gluttonous neo-fascist corporate robber-barons and war-profiteers: as these thugs & goons "[i]laugh all the way to the bank[/i]". They smirk that their neo-scamming of America is easier than "[i]taking candy from a baby[/i]", as they become wildly richer than the most hideous dreams ([i]our nightmares[/i]) of the blood-thirsty Roman Emperors-- and tragically, the rest of us must bear the back-breaking burdens and heart-ache of massive debts, wars, and social deprivation & chaos.
[b]Do you really think that the Global Corporate Empire is "coughing-up" over $200 Million without expecting their bribes to the Bush whores to be repaid many times over? That is what this neo-con-artist's scam is all about ...[/b]
[i][b]Read on about the Bush regime's Energy & Medicare Bills' Swindlers ...[/b][/i]
"[b]2 Bills Would Benefit Top Bush Fundraisers - Executives' Companies Could Get Billions[/b]" on http://www.washingtonpost.com... :
[b]More than three dozen of President Bush's major fundraisers are affiliated with companies that stand to benefit from the passage of two central pieces of the administration's legislative agenda: the [i]energy[/i] and [i]Medicare[/i] bills[/b].
[b]The energy bill provides billions of dollars in benefits to companies run by at least 22 executives and their spouses who have qualified as either "Pioneers" or "Rangers," as well as to the clients of at least 15 lobbyists and their spouses who have achieved similar status as fundraisers. At least 24 Rangers and Pioneers could benefit from the Medicare bill as executives of companies or lobbyists working for them, including eight who have clients affected by both bills. [/b]
[i]By its latest count, Bush's reelection campaign has designated more than 300 supporters as Pioneers or Rangers. The Pioneers were created by the Bush campaign in 2000 to reward supporters who brought in at least $100,000 in contributions. For his reelection campaign, Bush has set a goal of raising as much as $200 million, almost twice what he raised three years ago, and established the designation of Ranger for those who raise at least $200,000. [/i]
[i]With the size of donations limited as a result of the campaign finance law enacted last year, fundraisers who can collect $100,000 or more in contributions of $2,000 or less have become key players this election cycle. The law barred the political parties from collecting large -- sometimes reaching $5 million to $10 million -- "soft money" contributions from businesses, unions, trade associations and individuals. This has put a premium on those who can solicit dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of smaller contributions from employees, clients and associates. [/i]
[b]The energy and Medicare bills were drafted with the cooperation of representatives from dozens of industries. Power and energy company officials; railroad CEOs; pharmaceutical, hospital association and insurance company executives; and the lobbyists who represent them are among those who have supported the bills and whose companies would benefit from their passage. [/b]
[b]The Medicare bill was scheduled to be acted upon by the House late last night. If passed, it will go to the Senate. The first comprehensive revision of energy policy in more than a decade passed the House this week, but in the Senate, the measure ran into a roadblock yesterday when opponents stopped it from coming to a vote. Sponsors promised to make further efforts to get the 60 votes to break the filibuster[/b].
[b]Energy Bill Swindlers[/b]
The energy bill provides industry tax breaks worth $23.5 billion over 10 years aimed at increasing domestic oil and gas production, and $5.4 billion in subsidies and loan guarantees. The bill also grants legal protections to gas producers using the additive methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE), whose manufacturers face a wave of lawsuits, and it repeals the Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUHCA), a mainstay of consumer protection that limits mergers of utilities.
The bill has been the focus of a bitter ideological and partisan fight for three years. A leading sponsor, Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, praised the legislation, saying, "All Americans can look forward to cleaner and more affordable energy, reliable electricity and reduced dependence on foreign oil for generations to come."
Public Citizen, which has tracked the legislation and correlated patterns of contributions to members of Congress and to Bush, denounced the bill as "a national energy policy developed in secret by corporate executives and a few members of Congress who are showered in special interest money."
Perhaps the single biggest winner in the energy bill, according to lobbyists and critics, is the Southern Co. One of the nation's largest electricity producers, it serves 120,000 square miles through subsidiaries Alabama Power, Georgia Power, Gulf Power, Mississippi Power and Savannah Electric, along with a natural gas and nuclear plant subsidiary.
The repeal of PUHCA, for example, would create new opportunities to buy or sell facilities; "participation" rules determining how utilities share the costs of new transmission lines that are particularly favorable to Southern; two changes in depreciation schedules for gas pipelines and electricity transmission lines with a 10-year revenue loss to the Treasury of $2.8 billion; and changes in the tax consequences of decommissioning nuclear plants, at a 10-year revenue loss of $1.5 billion, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
At least five Bush Pioneers serve as a Southern Co. executive or as its lobbyists: Southern Executive Vice President Dwight H. Evans; Roger Windham Wallace of the lobbying firm Public Strategies; Rob Leebern of the firm Troutman Sanders; Lanny Griffith of the firm Barbour Griffith and Rogers; and Ray Cole, of the firm Van Scoyoc Associates.
The railroad industry also has a vital interest in the energy bill. For years, it has been fighting for the elimination of a 4.3 cent-a-gallon tax on diesel fuel, and, at a cost to the Treasury of $1.7 billion over 10 years, the measure repeals the tax. Richard Davidson, chairman and CEO of Union Pacific, is a Ranger, and Matthew K. Rose, CEO of Burlington Northern, is a Pioneer.
Among the major lobbying firms in Washington, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feldhas been one of the most successful collecting fees for work on the energy and Medicare bills. In the first six months of this year, Akin Gump, which has two partners who are Pioneers -- Bill Paxon and James C. Langdon Jr. -- received $1.6 million in fees from medical and energy interests. Barbour Griffith & Rogers received $1.1 million from similar clients.
On energy issues, Akin Gump represented Amerada Hess Corp., Waste Management Inc. and FirstEnergy Corp., Pacific Gas and Electric Co., BP Exploration and Phillips Petroleum Co. Two of those corporations have, in turn, executives who are major Bush fundraisers, Pioneer A. Maurice Myers, CEO of Waste Management; and Anthony J. Alexander, president of FirstEnergy, a Pioneer in 2000 and again in the current campaign.
[b]Medicare Bill Swindlers[/b]
On Medicare issues, Aikin Gump represents the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories and Pfizer Inc.. All would benefit from the expanded markets resulting from a key provision of the bill -- the first federal subsidies to help Medicare patients pay for prescriptions.
Hank McKinnell, chairman and CEO of Pfizer, has pledged to raise at least $200,000 for Bush's reelection, although he is not yet listed as a Pioneer or Ranger. Pioneer Munr Kazmir, who runs a direct-mail drug company called Direct Meds Inc., estimates that he has about 100,000 customers on Medicare who will have more money to buy drugs from his company. "We know the patients, we know how important this bill is," he said.
In addition to the prescription drugs provision, the Medicare bill is intended to encourage recipients to join preferred-provider organizations (PPOs) and other kinds of private health care, instead of receiving care through the traditional fee-for-service system in which they pick their doctors and generally get whatever care they request. The health industry has provided substantial support to the Bush campaign, and a number of officials whose companies and associations actively support the Medicare bill are Pioneers and Rangers .
Pioneer Charles N. Kahn, president of the Federation of American Hospitals, said that the Medicare bill will make "important strides in ensuring that all hospitals have sufficient funding to meet the medical needs of this nation's seniors." A federation spokesman noted that the bill provides more money for rural hospitals and for hospitals serving disproportionate numbers of the uninsured, and that it prevents doctors from setting up new competing specialty, or "boutique," hospitals.
M. Keith Weikel, chief operating officer at HCR Manor Care, a chain of more than 500 nursing homes and other facilities serving the elderly, is another Pioneer. Weikel and Manor Care did not respond to requests for comment on the Medicare bill, but the major nursing home trade group, the American Health Care Association, strongly endorsed the bill, which, among other things, would continue to bar Medicare from capping the amount it covers for various therapies offered by health care providers such as nursing homes.
9/11 DID NOT "Change Everything": Bush CANNOT Eradicate the U.S. Constitution ... Not Yet!
The dangerously ignorant and tyrannical Bush regime, stupidly chants "[i]9/11 Changed Everything[/i]" to cynically attempt to justify their insane neo-con policies, ranging from:
* [i][b]Crimes Against Humanity[/b][/i] [b]in Iraq [/b]- Bush's Death Toll Now Stands at [b]432[/b] U.S. Soldiers, [b]77[/b] Coalition Troops & [b]21,000-55,000 [/b]Iraqis. [b]Thousands[/b] of U.S. Soldiers have been injured, wounded & maimed for life in Bush's bloody guerrilla quagmire. [i]The Bushies' insane neo-con wars of aggression have been the CAUSE of MORE terrorism-- while he's ignored Al Qaida (who were responsible for 9/11) & making our own nation safer[/i]. [ http://www.antiwar.com/ewens/... , http://www.theage.com.au/arti... , http://www.veteransforcommons... ]
* [b]Neo-fascist "Patriot [sic]" Acts [/b] - Extreme un-democratic and un-constitutional powers handed over to the corrupt Bushies, who can only ruthlessly rule by eradicating our freedoms and rights under the U.S. Constitution. [i]The Bushies have unleashed their F.B.I. attack-dogs on anyone who doesn't support their neo-nazi policies[/i]. [ http://www.truthout.org/docs_... , http://www.tblog.com/template... , http://www.tblog.com/template... ]
The American Middle-Class, Low-Income Workers, and the Poor are headed for a very "[i]rough ride[/i]" ... as the Rich Get Richer, and the rest of us pay for their Good Times & Lavish Parties and the Life-styles of the Richest of the Richest Corporate Whores, Wealthy Plutocrats & the corrupt Bushies. [b]Who do you think will pay-off Bush's massive debts to award tax-cuts to his rich cronies; insane wars (that have caused an upsurge in terrorism); and, other goodies for his corporate whores and rapists?[/b]
Did "[i]9/11 Change Everything[/i]"? Although the corrupt Bushies hope to fool the [i]United States of Amnesia[/i] into willingly becoming a neo-slave state:-- it seems that there are still a few conscientious Americans who don't buy the Bush regime's "[i]bait-and-switch[/i]" con-games-- According to Judge Rosemary Pooler's admirably succinct summation of the issue, "[i][b]as terrible as it was, 9/11 didn't repeal the Constitution[/b].[/i]" ... [b]Amen[/b].
The U.S. Constitution seems unmistakably clear on the point: No person shall be deprived of liberty without due process of law -- to know the charges against him, to see a lawyer, to summon witnesses, to have a speedy trial. The Bush administration doesn't see it that way.
Citing various war powers, the administration says it can hold anyone incommunicado and indefinitely on the president's uncontested assertion that the person is an "enemy combatant."
And it did so with Jose Padilla, 33, a petty criminal but also an American citizen and lifelong resident of the United States. In May 2002, the feds took him into custody in Chicago, his hometown, and whisked him off to New York as a material witness.
The government can hold material witnesses but they have the right to lawyers and eventually to demand that they be brought before a grand jury or set free. Before Padilla could see a lawyer, he was declared an enemy combatant and shipped off to a brig in South Carolina where he has been held in solitary ever since -- with no access to a lawyer, a judge or his family.
The government alleges Padilla was part of a "dirty bomb" plot but has never charged him nor offered any proof.
A federal district court ruled that Padilla did have the right to a lawyer and the right to challenge his detention in a court. The Bush administration appealed, and a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court is now hearing that appeal.
Two of the judges expressed a healthy and much needed judicial skepticism of the administration's claims.
Said Judge Barrington Parker, "Were we to construe the Constitution as permitting this kind of power in the executive with only modest judicial review, we would be effecting a sea change in the constitutional life of this country and making changes that would be unprecedented in civilized society."
The Fifth and Sixth Amendments don't seem to leave a lot of room for construing that they don't apply to all Americans.
And, in Judge Rosemary Pooler's admirably succinct summation of the issue, "as terrible as it was, 9/11 didn't repeal the Constitution."
The Bushies Gorge on Lavish Banquets ... Meanwhile Bush's Death Toll in Iraq Rises
The corrupt Bushies had a marvelous time in the U.K., where they stayed closetted inside Buckingham Palace and made imbecilic visits to carefully staged events, as only invited sycophants showed-up who could be relied upon to bow-down before the squalid Emperor Bush ... They dined on obscene and lavish banquets, wearing garish finery and bejewelled in diamonds and outlandish baubles-- eating rich foods and drinking fine wines ... As these thugs & goons gobbled-up tons of extravagant foods & swilled gallons of wines:-- Men, women, children & babies were massacred, and are still being slaughtered in Iraq and elsewhere, all to enrich these blood-thirsty, neo-imperial Caligulas ...
Meanwhile, the Death Toll in Iraq rises on a daily basis ... today, 6 more U.S. Soldiers were slaughtered in Bush's immoral & illegal [i][... "long hard slog" (that the incompetent & sordid Bush gang claimed would be a "cake walk") ... and, where are all those WMDs[/i]?] war turned bloody guerrilla quagmire in Iraq. [[i]Source[/i]: "Attacks on convoys kill 3 U.S. troops - And 3 more U.S. soldiers die in accidents" on http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD... ]
[b]Bush's Death Toll now stands at[/b]:
Deaths of U.S. Soldiers since Bush's "Mission Accomplished" bombastic photo-op on 1st May: [b]292[/b]
Total Deaths of U.S. Soldiers in Iraq: [b]431[/b]
Total Deaths of Coalition Troops in Iraq: [b]77[/b]
Total Number of Iraqis Slaughtered: [b]21,000-55,000[/b]
Don't worry however, because, [b]the corrupt Bush regime is PRETENDING[/b]:
1) Bush[i] LIE [/i]that the economy is great: when instead [b]it's the worst economy since Herbert Hoover, who created the Great Depression and his "corporate-take-all" rape of the nation[/b]. Bush's obscene deficits are the largest in our nation's history and are destined to become a back-breaking burden that will devastate the Middle-Class & Low-Income Workers & the Poor. Bush's record level deficit is over $560 Billion for 2003 alone-- $1.9 Trillion for 2000-2004-- that will create inflation in the future.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate is over 9 million [[i]15 million unofficially[/i]] people (3 million jobs wiped-out by Bush ... ) -- lack of health care for over 45 million [[i]85 million unofficially[/i]] citizens -- and a skyrocketing poverty rate with over 35 million living [[i]at 1960s level ... in fact, much, much worse[/i]] in abject poverty, in the richest nation on earth.
Bush has awarded the corporate robber-barons, wealthy plutocrats, and his greedy fabulously wealthy campaign contributors, massive immoral, anti-christian boondoggles, tax loopholes & tax cuts for the rich.
2) Bush[i] LIE [/i]that the environment is status-quo: when instead, the idiotic Bush whores have [b]the worst environmental record in over 40 years[/b] ... and are rapists giving free reign to their rich cronies to exploit and pollute our planet. The Bushies' corporate robber-barons are polluting, ravaging and plundering our planet-- leaving wastage and wreckage for future generations.
3) Bush [i]LIE[/i] that their insane foreign policies reduce terrorism: when instead, the [b]Bush regime's neo-con, neo-nazi policies are increasing terrorism and are stupidly dangerous, inept, arrogant and barbaric [/b]... the U.S.A. has violated international law to invade sovereign nations: ... massacring thousands in order for the sluttish Bushies to enrich their corporate pimps: Halliburton, Bechtel, Chevron, Carlyle Group-- and the defense industry war-profiteers.
[b]Isn't is time to call a halt to the insane neo-feudal slaughter of thousands, to enrich the gluttonous plutocracy represented by the corrupt & isolated Bush regime-- who gorge on rich, lavish banquets, while better men die in their unnecessary, neo-fascist wars?[/b]
[b]CLAIM[/b]: “Politics ought to stay out of fighting a war. There was too much politics during the Vietnam War. There was too much concern in the White House about political standing."
[b]CLAIM[/b]: "[People] need to be very cautious not to seek political advantage [from the 9/11 or the War on Terror]... Such commentary is thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in a time of war."
[b]FACT[/b]: "The Republican Party is responding this week with its first advertisement portraying Mr. Bush as fighting terrorism...By indirectly invoking the Sept. 11 attacks, the commercial plays to what White House officials have long contended is Mr. Bush's biggest political advantage: his initial handling of the aftermath of the attacks."
Between 70,000 and 200,000 people demonstrated against Bush and the Iraq occupation today, toppling and burning effigies of the American president. For his part, Bush said "[i]Freedom is beautiful[/i]" and that "[i]All I know is that people in Baghdad weren't allowed to do this until recent history[/i]." [ http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/art... ]
[b]Perhaps he doesn't know that many demonstrations like this are still not allowed in Iraq, including labor protests[/b]. [ http://www.afl.org/LabourNews... ]
The neo-con Bush regime's insanely callous rhetoric is rendered tinny, ugly and incredibly squalid, in the face of Bush's bloody guerrilla quagmire in Iraq. Bush's Death Toll rises daily in this horrific carnage, now standing at 424 U.S. Soldiers, 77 Coalition Troops, and between 21,000-55,000 Iraqis -- Another U.S. Soldier was killed today. [ http://www.antiwar.com/ewens/... , http://www.theage.com.au/arti... ] Read "[i]Booby-Trap Kills U.S. Soldier North of Baghdad[/i]" on http://www.reuters.com/newsAr...;jsessionid=DTKZMXGKVOQRK CRBAEZSFEY?type=topNews&s toryID=3871605 .
The neo-con, neo-fascist thugs & goons in Bush's regime don't give a damn, and are indeed, oblivious to the unnecessary deaths, carnage, maiming, and wounding of human beings, in their anti-christian lust to slaughter life, in order to enrich their "corporate-take-all" cronies (Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Chevron ... )[i] Pools of Blood for Pools of OIL[/i] ... Thousands of U.S. Soldiers' lives are destroyed ... Thousands of innocent Iraqis' lives are destroyed ... Meanwhile, these sordid "arm-chair" chicken-hawks smirk and scream about "victory"-- instead the Bushies should be frog-marched off-to-jail in handcuffs, for having committed treason (under the U.S. Constitution, misleading the nation into war based upon lies, deceptions & falsehoods, is a crime).
The neo-nazi Bush regime, are seen by the rest of the world, for the aggressive, barbaric criminals, that they are-- and, indeed, the Brits were thrilled when Bush left the U.K. today ... The acrid stench from this imbecilic "useful idiot" may take a few days to clear, but it will ... hopefully, the Bushies stink will clear from the U.S., since Americans are increasingly turning against the corrupt Bush regime. [ "[i]Worth the Cost[/i]" on http://www.tompaine.com/featu... ]
Meanwhile, the indomitable [i]Robert Scheer[/i], makes a perceptive observation in his article entitled "[i]There's Something Happening Here[/i]" in [i]The Nation [/i]: - [i]Excerpt[/i] -
"[b]They used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff[/b]," Jessica Lynch told ABC's Diane Sawyer of the way the military packaged her story for the media. "[b]It hurt in a way, that people would make up stories that they had no truth about[/b]."
"Jessica Lynch is still grappling with just how she was used as a propaganda tool by a Pentagon that sought to turn her into a female action figure. But the stance she has taken against further manipulation of her suffering reveals a sterling character far stronger than the macho movie image placed on her when she was a prisoner of war. As Lynch told her biographer, Rick Bragg:
"[b]We went and we did our job, and that was to go to war, but I wish I hadn't done it--I wish it had never happened. I wish we hadn't been there, none of us.... I don't care about the political stuff[/b].[b] But if it had never happened[/b],[i][b] Lori [Piestewa, a fellow soldier and [/b][/i][b]her best friend] would be alive and all the rest of the soldiers would be alive. And none of this would have happened[/b]."
Amen."
Bush is the only U.S. prez not to have attended a funeral of a single U.S. soldier who died in battle under his watch ... Moreover the [b]corrupt Bushies [/b]refuse to mourn the dead and allow journalists to photograph the caskets coming back from Iraq ... They want to shield America from their [b]Crimes Against Humanity [/b]... Their neo-nazi propaganda campaign isn't working ... They can't [i]Fool All of the People All of the Time [/i]...
[b]Claim Versus Fact: Laura Bush on London Protestors[/b]
[b]CLAIM[/b]: "We actually have not seen that many protests. I don't think the protests are near as large as everyone was predicting before we got there."
[b]FACT[/b]: "The protest, which the police say was 70,000 strong and the organizers put at 150,000, was one of the biggest-ever midweek demonstrations in London."
The Bush regime's[i] inane "Keystone Cop" [/i]policy would be terribly funny, if it weren't for the fact that people are DYING every day, in their immoral & illegal war in Iraq.
Bush's insane [b]bloody guerrilla quagmire [/b]in Iraq, is deadly serious and the horrific carnage, chaos & mayhem, induced by neo-con, neo-fascist thugs is heart-breaking ... but, the following shows just how ludicrous this [i]imbecilic, out-of-control, panic-striken Bush regime [/i]really is:
"President George Bush blindsided the Pentagon in London Thursday, saying if more troops were needed in Iraq, they would be sent.
That contradicted earlier Pentagon statements claiming the goal was to reduce troop strength, and reportedly startled both National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell at the news conference."
"We could have less troops in Iraq. We could have the same number of troops in Iraq. We could have more troops in Iraq. Whatever is necessary to secure Iraq," Bush said." - [i]Excerpt [/i]-
What a GENIUS (sic), we've got running this country and other nations? (Afghanistan & Iraq, for example) ([i]into the ground[/i])!
The Keystone Cops were [i]funny[/i] ... Bush and his ghouls are [i]NOT[/i]!!!
Bush Gives Interview to U.K.'s Tabloid Version of Our "National Enquirer" ... Ha ha ha ha ha!
Bush is a shallow, stupid man ... Since the buffoon-boy prez doesn't read, doesn't study and doesn't know anything ... he is attracted to others of like mind ([i]i.e. superficial sensationalists who care nothing for truth, integrity or substance[/i]). Bush's handlers have protected their "[i]boy in the plastic bubble[/i]" from exposing his embarrassing [i]faux pas & childish, dumb-bunny responses[/i], by refusing interviews with serious newspaper journalists from the [i]New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, The Times of London, Independent, etc. [/i]... in other words, they can't afford to let Bush speak ([i]unless it's canned[/i]) with well-respected, knowledgeable journalists from respectable broadsheets.
Instead, the Mad King George has awarded an interview to the United Kingdom's version of the "[i]National Enquirer[/i]" the tabloid called "[i]The Sun[/i]"-- a known scandal sheet, that no one takes seriously ... they publish [i]scantily-clothed babes in provocative poses -- stories about the 7 legged-dog that eats 100 ice-cream cones a day -- Madonna's orgy with 1000 men & 1000 women last weekend & she still wasn't satisfied -- that Prince Philip once slept with the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, his daughter Anne & the Queen's corgies, all while caught on video-camera ... and the recent football scores and daily horoscopes![/i]-- In other words, it's trash ... but perhaps this is the world in which Emperor Bush truly belongs!
No other world leader (certainly not any British leaders who want to be taken seriously), or EU leader, or Asian leader (or even a former U.S. President)-- has, or would, behave in such an indecorous & unseemly manner, and allow the country that they represent to be so humiliated ... It's laughable and disgraceful ... It's as though Bush farted over and over again at the State Banquet given by the Queen: [i]Maybe he did![/i]
In [i]AlterNet[/i] [http://www.alternet.org ], "[b]Brit tabloid scores Bush interview[/b]", this bizarre event unfolds:
"President Bush has so far never given a solo interview to most of the major U.S. newspapers, be it the New York Times or Washington Post, decided to award the honor to the British tabloid Sun. The equivalent of the [i]National Enquirer[/i], the[i] Sun [/i]is best know for its bootylicious semi-naked babes, apart from the stellar reporting typical of its genre. The reason for such presidential munificence: "[i]It has a large readership[/i]," said the White House spokesperson."
Perhaps the Brits who read such garbage will be treated to another sensational headline: "[i]Bush Says He's [b]Sleeping[/b] With Condi, While Cheney Is[b] Doing [/b]Rummy[/i]!" ... as the sub-title reads "[i]Meanwhile, Karl Rove And Wolfy Wolfowitz Waging Middle East World War To[b] Wipe-Out [/b]Arabs and [b]Take Over [/b]U.S. Government For Good[/i]!" Who knows? Strange things are happening daily in the U.S.A.!
After coming to office with a vow to restore dignity to the White House, the president yesterday took a brief sabbatical from that effort: He granted an exclusive interview to a British tabloid that features daily photographs of nude women and articles akin to those found in our own National Enquirer."
[b]Post-script[/b]: In case anyone asks, "Jimmy Carter's 'Lust in the Heart' Playboy Interview – 1976" on http://www.washingtonpost.com... ... [i]was given [b]long before he was elected president [/b][/i]... and the right-wingers had a field day claiming that any candidate who gave an interview to a sensational magazine is unfit to hold office ... What will these neo-con hypocrites say about Bush? At least Carter wasn't President at the time, and wasn't on a State Visit to a foreign country!
Bush not only "travels" in a "bubble" ... Bush also "lives" in a "bubble" & "works" in a "bubble": ... He doesn't read any history, newspapers, outside sources; study, research or ask questions of those outside of his corrupt circle; or do anything that his handlers don't order him to do or say! (And he doesn't do [i]that[/i] very well!)
[b]Various Sources & Reads about Bush, the "Boy in the Plastic Bubble"[/b]:
Watching Emperor Bush's imperial visit from hell to the U.K. is an exercise or study in absolute corruption, waste (more taxpayer $$$ squandered to try to make Bush look like a "man" ... ha ha ha!) & buffoonery. The BBC showed Bush walking in a dazed fog (his face, not the weather) past the Queen's regiment, trying to look like Prince Philip ... It takes some doing to make the "diarreah-mouth" idiot Philip look smart: but Bush managed to make Philip look rather regal for a change, next to Bush who wore his stupid smirk, and was struggling not to trip over himself & the Queen ... [b]Bush is a national disgrace & embarrassment, and this state visit is an UnFunny Joke[/b].
The Brits have spent over $9 Million to keep the imbecilic Bush, the "[i]boy in the plastic bubble[/i]" protected by a "bubble" of security ... because most people can't stand his arrogance, ignorance and corruption. Many Brits are disgusted with the Bush regime's illegal and immoral carnage and blood-letting, to enrich their corporate cronies. Indeed, family members of some of those who died in Iraq, refuse to meet Bush ... Well, who can blame them? Would you want to tell your kids & grand-kids that you met with Hitler?
The U.K.'s [i]Sky News [/i]reports that already on Day 1 of this obscene, wasteful charade, "[i]At least 31 people have been arrested amid a series of protests against President George Bush's visit to London.
But police said most demonstrations were being conducted in a good-natured manner.[/i]" [ http://www.sky.com/skynews/ar...,,30000-12930426,00.html ] ... Of course, these folks are arrested because the corrupt Bush regime doesn't want any film footage showing how many people see them for what they are: despicable thugs & goons who have massacred thousands to enrich themselves & their corrupt "corporate-take-all" crooks-in-arms.
In "[b]Bring him on[/b]" by Tom Engelhardt, on http://www.nationinstitute.or... , describes the sterility and phony stage-managed photo-op:
"Who can even remember -- it might as well have been the Neolithic age -- the moment when Bill Clinton exuberantly walked the streets of London high-fiving passers-by near Trafalgar Square (where demonstrators on Thursday are planning to pull down a 20-foot high statue of our own Uncurious George)? Only a few years have passed and yet we've all disappeared down some rabbit hole.
As I write this, Air Force One is descending on London's Heathrow Airport and the President readying himself to step out and be greeted by Prince Charles, but that description hardly catches the moment. "He" will arrive with his imperial court and a veritable army of protectors, advisers, jesters, and spinners. Bush, in fact, no longer moves anywhere in anything less than an imperial processional. Like some juggernaut, it literally transforms the landscape in his path, turning his surroundings either into a series of Potemkin villages or into a completely sterile environment. His passages through the world are little less than those of a planetary ruler -- though in Roman imperial terms, his reign seems closer to Nero's (without the patronage of the arts) than to Augustus's.
If his advisers had had their way they undoubtedly would have landed a stream of C-130 transports at Heathrow carrying the Army Corps of Engineers and done everything but divert the Thames to "protect" our man in London.
In the planning for this four-day visit, you can catch in a nutshell so many aspects of Bush rule (or of the Cheney Regency, if you care to think of it that way). An invitation for the trip was evidently requested from Tony Blair almost two years ago when this administration felt in control of a world it was confident of remaking in its own image or simply crushing. Then Bush's foreign policy men (and lone woman) were proud of being on message, "disciplined," "secretive," close-mouthed, in control of the media, and arrogantly sure of themselves in a faith-based sort of way, as well as confident of a reelection victory in 2004.
With a presidential stay[i] chez [/i]the Queen and a presidential address to Parliament, as well as photo-ops of George standing firmly beside Blair, the First Ally, this was to be a photo-op of a trip meant to impress the American electorate. It was to be the foreign equivalent of that "mission accomplished" landing on the[i] USS Abraham Lincoln[/i]. In fact, you could probably date the period of administration control (and spin control) from the planning of this visit, or perhaps simply from a few days after the September 11th attacks, to a couple of weeks after the aircraft carrier drop-by. That flyboy-pinup moment was hardly half a year ago, but doesn't it seem like a lifetime away?
Now, Bush's men find themselves approaching this state visit to England in a fashion hardly different from the way they're approaching Iraq. Flustered and in a state of visible panic, driven by fear, they're trying to sort out "withdrawal" strategies. When people first started referring to Bush, Cheney et. al. as "chickenhawks" -- because of the way they managed to absent themselves not just from the military but from the whole Vietnam era -- I thought it a bit much. But I've come to believe that there's something deeply accurate about the term, for there's a darker, more shameful line that can be drawn from September 11, 2001 to November 18, 2003."
[b]Emperor Bush's imperial visit from hell to the U.K. is just another example of a "sales-job" done for the benefit of the 2004 election campaign ... and is just as phony as the tinny, shallow "Mission Accomplished" buffoonery aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln ... but, Bush's Death Toll rises daily and there is still no end in sight ... and this obscene "[i]dog-and-pony[/i]" show can't wipe out that tragic fact.[/b]
[b]Claim Versus Fact: Bush's Speech in London Today[/b]
[b]CLAIM[/b]: "The tradition of free speech exercised with enthusiasm is alive and well here in London. We have that at home too. They now have that right in Baghdad as well."
[b]FACT[/b]: "As criticism of his authority appeared in Iraqi media, occupying authority chief L. Paul Bremer III placed controls on Iraqi Media Network content and clamped down on the independent media in Iraq, closing down some Iraqi-run newspapers and radio and television stations."
[b]FACT[/b]: "American soldiers handcuffed and firmly wrapped masking tape around an Iraqi man's mouth after they arrested him for speaking out against occupation troops. Asked why the man had been arrested and put into the back of a Humvee vehicle on Tahrir Square, the commanding officer told Reuters at the scene: 'This man has been detained for making anti-coalition statements.' He refused to say what the man said."
The Bush regime are conducting a new aggression against Iraq called "Operation 'Iron Hammer'". "Iron Hammer" was a code name used by the Nazis for an aborted operation to damage the Soviet power grid during World War Two. The Soviets were our allies in WW2 (bearing more losses than any other nation), without whom the Nazis would have won the war.
The imbecilic neo-con asses in the White House & Pentagon are so ignorant on history ... on economics ... on winning wars ... You name it, they're ignorant!
They claim they "didn't know" ... There sure as hell is a lot that these corrupt neo-con buffoons "don't know":-- which is why we've lost 422 U.S. Soldiers, 77 Coalition Troops & 21,000-55,000 Iraqis in an unnecessary blood-letting and massacre. At the outset, Bush's handlers had to apologize for his bungled use of the word "crusades" ... (a time when Christians massacred Arabs wholesale) ... apparently, their "boy in the plastic bubble" who walks around in a stupid fog, lacks the brain-matter to comprehend the impact of the nasty, anti-christian propaganda he smirks, spits & vomits.
Bush's insane guerrilla quagmire is taking a heavy death toll daily, all to bolster his sorry ratings-- and to enrich his corrupt "corporate-take-all" cronies. The "useful idiot" Bush and his gang of thugs should be tried for Crimes Against Humanity. I guess you can't try someone for sheer & utter stupidity and incompetence.
" WASHINGTON – The U.S. military's code name for a crackdown on resistance in Iraq was also used by the Nazis for an aborted operation to damage the Soviet power grid during World War Two.
"Operation Iron Hammer" this week launched the 1st Armored Division's 3rd Brigade into the roughest parts of Baghdad to ferret out the attackers who have killed scores of U.S. troops since Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was ousted in April.
A Pentagon official said the name was chosen because of the "Old Ironsides" nickname of the 1st Armored Division. He was unaware of any connection to any Nazi operation.
"Eisenhammer," the German for "iron hammer," was a Luftwaffe code name for a plan to destroy Soviet generating plants in the Moscow and Gorky areas in 1943, according to Universal Lexikon on the www.infobitte.de Web site.
A researcher at Britain's Imperial War Museum confirmed the existence of Eisenhammer.
The Nazi's long-range bombing operation was repeatedly postponed and was finally scrapped after an allied air assault destroyed many of the German planes on the ground in 1945, shortly before the defeat of Germany.
After it declared war on terrorism, U.S. officials changed the code name for its impending attack on Afghanistan to Operation Enduring Freedom.
The original name, Operation Infinite Justice, was jettisoned amid fears that the Muslim world, already leery of U.S. intentions, would object on the basis of Koranic teachings that only God can provide infinite justice."
George Soros [ http://www.soros.org/ ] wants the Bushies [i]out-of-office [/i]in 2004, largely for the same reasons as any conscientious person who cares about this nation--
* The Bush [i]"Greed-is-Good" "All-For-Me"[/i] gang have the worst economic record since the Great Depression-- growth & wealth for the corporations, richest-of-the-rich & corrupt campaign contributors ... versus ... skyrocketing poverty, unemployment, outrageous lack of health care for many millions, and misery for the rest of us who must pay-off Bush's record-level debts: the highest deficits in history;
* The Bush [i]"Bring 'Em On"[/i] thugs are immoral & anti-christian war-mongers, who have waged an illegal & corrupt war in Iraq, based upon lies, deceit & falsehoods-- having massacred to-date: 422 U.S. Soldiers, 77 Coalition Troops & 21,000-55,000 Iraqis [ http://www.antiwar.com/ewens/... , http://www.theage.com.au/arti... ];
* The arrogant Bush [i]"We're Geniuses (sic)" [/i]buffoons are despised around the world for their hypocrisy and shallow rhetoric betraying their nasty contempt for the rule of law and decency. The Bushies demonstrate a ruthless demagoguery and are despots who trample on the principles of democracy enshrined in our U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights.
George Soros has publically and passionately committed himself to helping a Democratic candidate defeat Bush in 2004. Of course, Soros' contribution is peanuts compared with the hundreds of millions Bush is raking in from greedy, corrupt corporations, the wealthy plutocrats, and his hyper-rich campaign contributors-- to whom Bush immorally (and possibly illegally) has awarded massive boondoggles, tax loopholes & tax cuts ... at a time when Bush is wildly spending hundreds of billions on warfare!
Every contribution raised to defeat Bush is still welcome however, so I say: [b]Go George Go![/b]
[b]The G.O.P. Republican web-site published the following wildly anti-semitic screed-- until someone probably recognized it could backfire and they took it off their web-site ... but it's still on one of their neo-fascist attack-dog & court-jester's web-site ... The Background:[/b]
"[b]Imagine that[/b]. [b]The[/b] wildly anti-Semitic article about George Soros ("[i]Satan lives in George Soros[/i]") authored by James Hall and published at GOPUSA.com [ http://www.gopusa.com/ ] has been taken down off the site. (For the grisly details, see the prior post: [ http://www.talkingpointsmemo.... ]) No explanation of why, no apology, just gone --- poof!
I should have known to make a copy before they snatched it from the site.
But that turns out not to be necessary since the author, James Hall, has the piece up on his own website, with the helpful addition of a caricature drawing of Soros sprawling out on a mountain of US currency: [ http://batr.org/gulag/111303.... ]"
[i]George Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary on August 12, 1930. He survived the Nazi occupation of Budapest and left communist Hungary in 1947 for England, where he graduated from the London School of Economics (LSE). While a student at LSE, Soros became familiar with the work of the philosopher Karl Popper, who had a profound influence on his thinking and later on his professional and philanthropic activities.
The financier. In 1956, Soros moved to the United States, where he began to accumulate a large fortune through an international investment fund he founded and managed. Today he is chairman of Soros Fund Management LLC.
The philanthropist. Soros has been active as a philanthropist since 1979, when he began providing funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa. Today he is chairman of the Open Society Institute (OSI) and the founder of a network of philanthropic organizations that are active in more than 50 countries. Based primarily in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union—but also in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the United States—these foundations are dedicated to building and maintaining the infrastructure and institutions of an open society. They work closely with OSI to develop and implement a range of programs focusing on civil society, education, media, public health, and human rights as well as social, legal, and economic reform. In recent years, OSI and the Soros foundations network have spent more than $400 million annually to support projects in these and other focus areas. In 1992, Soros founded Central European University, with its primary campus in Budapest.
The philosopher. Soros is the author of eight books, including the forthcoming The Bubble of America Supremacy (PublicAffairs, January 2004). His other books include George Soros on Globalization (2002); The Alchemy of Finance (1987); Opening the Soviet System (1990); Underwriting Democracy (1991); Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve (1995); The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered (1998); and Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism (2000). His articles and essays on politics, society, and economics regularly appear in major newspapers and magazines around the world.[/i]
[b]A Copy of the hate-filled screed published-and-removed by GOPUSA.com ... another neo-con con-artist & rapist lusting for war to turn the U.S.A. into a neo-fascist, neo-feudal state[/b]:
"The fiction which is interdependency has a prolocutor in the congregation of Moloch. His name is George Soros. No other single person represents the symbol and the substance of Globalism more than this Hungarian-born descendant of Shylock. He is the embodiment of the Merchant from Venice. His public reputation as an astute currency speculator is generous, while his skills as a manipulator and procurer of pain and suffering is shrouded in the footnotes of the financial journals. Claiming to be a philanthropist, his record is literally one of being a patron for indentured enslavement.
His assault on Sterling caused the British empire to shutter. The Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad blamed the American billionaire for nearly ruining Malaysia's economy with massive currency speculation. And Hard-core Russian nationalists decried as "meddling" his funding of progressive newspapers and institutions in post-Soviet Russia. But his incontrovertible talent does not rest in amassing financial fortunes, it lies in his social agenda.
My Open Society will pay for My World
While it is reported widely that Soros funded groups support increased government spending, tax increases, opposes the death penalty and President Bush’s judicial nominees; it has a far more sinister scheme. In report by Neil Hrab - George Soros’ Social Agenda for America - drug legalization, euthanasia, immigration entitlements and feminism are examined. Mr Hrab point out that in the book Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism, Soros wrote that he is: “rather leery of self-appointment, self righteous” international NGO’s. From his own site Soros proudly claims that his foundations are dedicated to building and maintaining the infrastructure and institutions of an open society. They work closely with OSI to develop and implement a range of programs focusing on civil society, education, media, public health, and human rights as well as social, legal, and economic reform. In recent years, OSI and the Soros foundations network have spent more than $400 million annually to support projects in these and other focus areas.
Double standards for an advocate of a permissive, yet regimented globe? If you think he is a friend of humanity, beware of his public attempt to influence his tribe, by insulting their benefactors. Before the Jewish Funders Network, he recently made these remarks: "There is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. The policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration contribute to that," Soros said. "It´s not specifically anti-Semitism, but it does manifest itself in anti-Semitism as well. I´m critical of those policies." The inevitable outcry from the usual suspects, just illustrates the orchestrated nature of the Soros effort to rationalize his own social agenda, while deflecting criticism back to his ancestral blood line. Let the Zionist defend their fears, Soros has another George to defeat . . .
Since President George is busy consummating the relationship with Ariel, Soros must lump both together in order to attack the Bush administration. If it is the life’s mission of Soros to slay the dragon, why is he so bashful? “It would be too immodest for a private person to set himself up against the president,” he said. “But it is, in fact” – he chuckled – “the Soros Doctrine”.
The Scotsman reports: “Mr Soros invited Democratic strategists to his house in Southampton, including John Podesta, Jeremy Rosner, Bob Boorstin and Carl Pope. They discussed the coming election. Mr Soros took aside Steve Rosenthal and Ellen Malcolm, the CEO and president of America Coming Together (ACT), who were proposing to mobilise voters in 17 battleground states. Mr Soros told them he would give them $10 million.
The next morning, his friend Peter Lewis, the chairman of the Progressive Corp, had pledged $10 million to ACT. Rob Glaser, the founder and CEO of RealNetworks, promised $2 million. Rob McKay, president of the McKay Family Foundation, gave $1 million and benefactors Lewis and Dorothy Cullman committed $500,000.
Mr Soros also promised up to $3 million to Podesta’s new think tank, the Centre for American Progress.”
One need not be a Bush lackey to recognize that Soros is less fearful of Dubya and more motivated to enact his vision for the world. The dilemma that real conservatives have is distinguishing a truthful assessment of Bush and Sharon policies, while recognizing that the alternatives from a radical globalist like Soros are equally distorted. If Soros is correct when he says a “supremacist ideology” guides the White House, what would you call the practices of the archfiend of Free Enterprise? The Soros deception would make Shylock proud. However, where is Antonio?
Shylock: Antonio is a good man.
Bassanio: Have you heard any imputation to the contrary?
Shylock: Ho no, no, no, no: my meaning in saying he is a good man, is to have you understand that he is sufficient. - The Merchant of Venice [1.3.10-15]
Certainly George Bush has demonstrated his lack of sufficiency. No substitute is on the horizon, only alternatives from the likes of a Soros.
So when the billionaire financier said: “he, too, bears some responsibility for the new anti-Semitism, citing last months speech by Malaysia´s outgoing prime minister, Mahathir Mohammad, who said, "Jews rule the world by proxy"; why should anyone empathize or embrace Soros’ culpability? As is the normal practice, it’s not about anti-Semitism! Mahathir Mohammad was just stating the truth . . . The Soros duplicity is marked with the same betrayal as the framing of the eternal political conflict. The financial desolation that Soros leaves in the wake of his deceitful transactions is the proof. Ignoring this reality does not make it disappear.
Soros wants to drug you so you can’t think, terminate you when you can no longer pay tribute, force you to intermingle with alien invaders and emasculate you to an unnatural equality. If that isn’t the plan of the devil, what else would you call it?" [ http://batr.org/gulag/111303.... ]
[b]This is the kind of neo-nazi s.h.i.t. that the neo-fascist Bushies are promoting ... It's despicable![/b]
Even the Pentagon are debunking the lies, fairy-tale leaks & fabricated propaganda, that the corrupt neo-con, neo-nazi attack-dogs & court-jesters continue to shove down the throats of the "[i]dumbest-of-the-dumb[/ i]", too lazy or stupid to do any [i]leg-work and discover that we were scammed & conned by the squalid Bushies[/i], regarding: [i]phony WMDs posing an imminent threat (Bush's casus belli for war) [/i]- [i]phony links between Saddam Hussein & Osama bin Laden [/i]- and, [b]"souped-up" panic & "shock! shock! shock!" about Dem-memos [/b]cynically used to avoid investigating into the [i][b]Bush Regime's Crimes Against Humanity[/b][/i].
The imbecilic & incompetent Bush Buffoons can't even keep their dishonest stories straight! Ha ha ha ha ha!
"NEW YORK -- [b]Several newspapers and other media outlets had [i]egg on their face [/i]Monday after reporting or endorsing a [i]Weekly Standard [/i]story revealing new evidence of an "operational relationship" between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden[/b].
Several outlets, including the New York Post, The Washington Times and FOX News, ran with the story. There was just one problem: On Saturday, the Pentagon issued a press release stating that "news reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq ... are inaccurate."
Despite this, the New York Post on Monday titled its editorial on the subject: "Bush Was Right."
In the current Nov. 24 issue of the conservative journal The Weekly Standard, Stephen F. Hayes writes that Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein "had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda."
The magazine's revelations allegedly came from a "top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by The Weekly Standard." The Pentagon press release, however, states that the classified sections of the document contained "raw reports" and "was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaida and it drew no conclusions."
The Nov. 17 New York Post editorial made no mention of the Pentagon refuting the charge as "inaccurate."
Also on Monday, The Washington Times carried an editorial on the issue, using The Weekly Standard article as evidence. At the end of the editorial, the Times mentions the Pentagon release, but urges "readers to examine the Weekly Standard article and decide for themselves."
On Nov. 16, The Washington Post's Walter Pincus reported that the CIA has found "no evidence that Hussein sought to arm terrorists."
The New York Post editorial opens:
"As blood flowed freely again this weekend in the War on Terror, this time in Turkey as well as Iraq, a new report in The Weekly Standard suggests that events there may not be unrelated.
"In fact, the report by Stephen Hayes -- based on a top-secret government memo -- documents an even more profound linkage: between none other than Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
"According to Hayes, the memo, provides enormous evidence that the Bush team was right all along about Saddam's terrorist ties -- despite charges to the contrary by the president's foes, particularly Democrats ...""
[b]TRUTH doesn't matter to the Bush gang & their "corporate-owned" right wing media attack-dogs & court-jesters.
[i]Fox News, New York Post, Weekly Standard[/i], and other neo-con con-artists are simply neo-fascist "mouth-pieces" for the corrupt Bush regime[/b].
[b]U.S. Occupation of Iraq: Hypocritical About "Democracy"?[/b]
[b]Russell Mokhiber[/b]: "Scott, Ambassador (Paul) Bremer said yesterday that U.S. troops will remain on the ground in Iraq even after the government is elected there. What if the (Iraqi) government asks the U.S. to get out. Would we get out?" ...
The corrupt Bush regime is in the process of destroying all programs to help working people, the elderly, and the poor and vulnerable in America. This [i]neo-con, anti-christian cabal of thugs [/i]have created "happy days" for greedy corporations; wealthy plutocrats; and, their sordid & squalid campaign contributors; and, [i]the rest of us must bear back-breaking economic burdens of the highest debt in our nation's history & the heart-break of skyrocketing poverty; higher unemployment; and no health care for millions.[/i]
Now, the Bushies & GOP have "packaged" a new "plan" to [i]destroy Medicare that will put our elderly and poor people at terrible risk[/i]. Our elderly are so desperate for some promise of reduction in drug costs, that they don't yet recognize that this brutal, barbaric & ruthless so-called "[i]prescription drug benefit (sic) [/i]" is yet just another of Bush's many, many "bait-and-switch" scams perpetrated upon Americans, to benefit the rich and powerful, and harmful to the rest of us.
Apparently, in the doctrine according to the corrupt Bushies: "[i]Only the RICH Deserve Health Care[/i]" ... as the U.S.A. ranks 37th in the world, in caring for it's elderly citizens:
"They went in to design a prescription drug benefit for seniors and came out with an aardvark.
It's said that a camel is a horse designed by committee. But the camel metaphor doesn't do justice to the Medicare prescription drug bill that came out of a House-Senate conference over the weekend. It is not a compromise but a weird combination of conflicting policy preferences. It is unprincipled in the technical sense. Nobody's principles are served by this bill.
The problem is that many conservatives, especially in the House, don't like Medicare as it is. They would prefer a system in which the government guaranteed everyone a certain amount of money that could be used to buy private health insurance. Ending Medicare as we know it is their long-term goal. They call this "expanding choice."
Most Democrats and many Republican moderates say this is a dangerous illusion. As it stands, Medicare guarantees the real choices most seniors care about -- a choice of doctors and treatment. That's why experiments with HMOs have failed so far.
The virtue of Medicare is that it creates a large risk pool. The wealthy and the healthy are in the same boat as the poorer and the sicker. Busting up Medicare's risk pool would almost certainly raise costs to poorer and sicker seniors, as insurance companies make more money insuring healthy people than sick ones. It would take an enormous amount of regulation to prevent this sort of "cherry-picking."
Now, what does any of this have to do with a prescription drug benefit? Good question. If this were only about providing a limited prescription drug benefit, Congress could have debated the best ways to cut up the $400 billion it has allocated for this purpose. The amount covers a little more than a fifth of seniors' drug costs. Logically, this limited sum would have been best used to help the poorest seniors who are not now covered by Medicaid, and the sickest -- those whose drug costs are especially high.
Instead, Republican negotiators, joined by Democratic Sens. John Breaux and Max Baucus, went behind closed doors and decided to use the public's demand for drug coverage as an opening wedge to change Medicare. The shame of it is that Republicans and Democrats in the Senate had already reached a real compromise. The bipartisan proposal, crafted in cooperation with Sen. Ted Kennedy, was inadequate. Yet it was better than this bill. It passed the Senate overwhelmingly because it left the larger Medicare issues open for real debate later.
But House conservatives weren't willing to go that far. They want medical savings accounts, a tax cut for the wealthy in disguise, and they insisted on experiments with privatization.
But if privatization is such a good idea, why do the private insurance companies need such big subsidies to enter the Medicare market? The bill includes $12 billion for what Kennedy calls a "slush fund" to subsidize the private insurers. That's not capitalism or competition. It's corporate welfare.
"They've created a huge bias in favor of private plans," says Jeanne Lambrew, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a professor at George Washington University. "How can you call it choice or competition when private plans have such a large financial advantage?" And a bill that is supposed to expand drug coverage may cause at least 2 million seniors to lose their coverage from their former employers, Lambrew said.
What about containing Medicare costs? Market principles would tell you that with its huge pool of patients, Medicare could extract a good deal from the drug companies. But the bill prevents the Medicare system from doing that. "If you're serious about cost containment, you don't block Medicare from using its enormous purchasing power to bring drug prices down," says Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
How do you know this bill is such a great deal for the drug companies and HMOs? On word of an agreement last week, share prices of drug stocks soared. Watch your television set for the millions of dollars in advertising the drug and managed-care industry groups will spend to praise this bill. Watch your wallet, too.
It will be said that to oppose this bill is to oppose a prescription drug benefit. That's nonsense. After sending this aardvark on its way, congressional negotiators could get serious about a simple, straightforward prescription drug benefit that was supposed to be the real purpose of this enterprise. And, yes, let's then have a national debate on the future of Medicare, out in the open and not in some congressional back room."
[b]Additional Sources[/b]:
"Medicare Plan Covering Drugs Backed by AARP - Desperation Drives Elderly Coerced by the GOP To Destroy Medicare" on http://www.nytimes.com/2003/1...
"Deal Would Alter Medicare's Core - If a compromise bill on prescription drugs passes, the government program will become a massive subsidized insurance market." on http://www.latimes.com/news/n...,1,3116163.story?coll=la-headlines-n ation
"The Myth of the Quality of American Health Care - The [i]World Health Report [/i]ranked the U.S. 37th out of 191 countries" on http://www.centrecountyfordea...
Cowardly Emperor Bush Chickens-Out of Speech in His Visit From Hell to the U.K.
The [b]cowardly buffoon, Emperor Bush [/b][i]chickens-out [/i]of his imbecilic speech to the British Parliament, in his [b]visit from hell[/b] to the U.K. this week. Nobody really wants him to come to London ... no one respects him ... he's seen as a "useful idiot" of the neo-con cabal of thugs who lust for war, far, oh so far from the battle, in the safety of their "arm-chairs" ... these chicken-hawks.
Apparently, the "[b]boy in the plastic bubble[/b]" was "[i]hurt (sic)[/i]" by the heckling he received from the Australian parliament a few weeks ago. In Australia, as in Britain, their leaders are held accountable to answer questions and cannot behave like dictatorial neo-fascist tyrants, as the Bushies do in this country. If Bush is asked a question (without Cheney, Rove & Rice to tell him what to say), he's lost, except for a few tired ole' cliches, that his handlers have helped him to memorize ([i]comprising no more than 5-6 words per phrase ... ha ha ha ha ha[/i]!)
It is customary for a foreign leader to speak before British Parliament when making a state visit ... all foreign leaders do ... but, none are so stupid, idiotic and unprepared for answering questions, as this disgraceful embarrassment to America, the congenital idiot, Emperor Bush.
Apparently our U.S. Soldiers are supposed to behave bravely when faced with the barrage of attacks from "terrorists" bearing arms ... Bushy-boy is too cowardly to face a single question that might be embarrassing ... but then this corrupt goon Bush was AWOL in a druken-stupor, when better men DIED in Vietnam.
A "[i]must read[/i]" by Bob Roberts on http://www.commondreams.org/h..., entitled "[b]Bush Pulls Out of Speech to Parliament[/b]" is absolutely hilarious:
"GEORGE Bush was last night branded chicken for scrapping his speech to Parliament because he feared being heckled by anti-war MPs.
The US president planned to give a joint address to the Commons and Lords during his state visit to Britain.
But senior White House adviser Dr Harlan Ullman said: "They would have loved to do it because it would have been a great photo-opportunity.
"But they were fearful it would to turn into a spectacle with Labour backbenchers walking out."
The decision to abandon the speech came as extraordinary security measures costing £19million placed London under a state of virtual siege ahead of Mr Bush's arrival tomorrow.
Roads in Whitehall were closed with concrete blockades. Overhead, a no-fly zone has been established with the RAF on standby to shoot down unidentified planes. All police leave is cancelled.
The only speech Mr Bush, who will stay with the Queen at Buckingham Palace, is now due to give will be to an "invited audience" at the Banqueting House in Whitehall.
Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn said: "This is yet another slight on this country by the president of the USA.
"The least he could do is subject himself to questions from MPs."
And colleague John McDonnell said: "Bush might be able to run from the protesters, he might be able not to see the banners.
"But he must not be able to hide from the anger felt across the country at this unjustified war."
Previous world leaders, including Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela and Francois Mitterand, have all given speeches to the Lords and the Commons while visiting Britain.
Tony Blair gave a joint address to the American Senate and Congress in July.
But earlier this year, Bush was embarrassed when he was heckled by MPs in Australia.
Downing Street last night refused to comment on the president's itinerary.
A spokesman said: "We have said consistently the program details will be announced at the appropriate moment. There is nothing to add to this."
The row about the speech came after President Bush set up a showdown with demonstrators by refusing to be apologetic on the Gulf war.
In an interview with the BBC's Breakfast with Frost show, he said they would not "cut and run" from Iraq. He added: "We will not be defeated by the terrorists."
Mr Bush also refused to grant British pleas for mercy for the six Britons held in Guantanamo Bay.
He said: "They will go through a military tribunal at some point, a military tribunal in international accord, or in line with international accords.""
The Neo-Con Right-Wing Hypocrites Don't Comprehend Reaction To Bush's Crimes? Ha ha ha!!!
The neo-con, right-wing hypocrites, attack-dogs & court-jesters, apparently don't comprehend why many people of conscience, have a negative reaction to Bush's plethora of nasty lies, deceit & falsehoods resulting in the immoral massacre of tens of thousands, to enrich his greedy war-profiteers, wealthy plutocrats & corrupt campaign contributors. Ha ha ha!!!
In a scene from [b]Casablanca[/b], the German Gestapo orders the French Head of the Occupation, Louis, to close Rick's American Cafe. Louis "cooks-up" an excuse and tells Rick: "[i]I'm shocked, shocked, to find gambling going on in here[/i]!" Meanwhile, Rick's casino-pit-bull who runs the roulette tables, hands Louis his gambling winnings ... and Rick gives his casino worker a "dirty look" as Louis "wins" regularly ... the "excuse" to close Rick down is a "souped-up" fraud ... a very funny scene in this great classic movie.
This reminds me of the neo-con right-wing buffoons who cry "foul ... foul ... foul"... Why aren't you compassionate towards poor, little Bushy-boy & poor, little Rush Limbaugh? Frankly, Bush & Rush have gotten more compassion and understanding thus far, (probably because "corporate-take-all" interests now own the right-wing media) ... than either Bush or Rush deserve or have ever shown towards others (e.g. ask Joseph Wilson & his wife about their sordid & despicable (illegal) treatment at the hands of the petty Bush regime -- ask those whom the mean-spirited Rush has slandered, attacked & destroyed, like the Clintons). It represents the neo-con's neo-orwellian twist & lies to call others by pejorative labels, that they themselves warrant.
Somehow, methinks that a corrupt regime run by an ideological fool who massacres tens of thousands of innocents, based upon lies & deceit (remind you of Adolf Hitler?) to increase his sagging popularity and enrich his neo-fascist cronies, deserves some accountability and consequences. Bush & his corrupt ilk of thugs deserve to be tried for Crimes Against Humanity, and we can choose to pray for them when they're in jail where they belong.
Ah, and I haven't even mentioned Bush's appalling track-record on the skyrocketing poverty level of over 35 million Americans; no health care for over 45 million; 9 million out of work-- while Bush's insane & anti-christian tax cuts for the wealthiest 5% are seen (George Akerlof, Robert Rubin, George Soros, Warren Buffet, Paul Krugman, Robert J. Shiller, and hundreds of respected economists) as bankrupting our nation while the rich gorge on our blood, sweat & tears!
The neo-con right-wing hypocrites simply want to intimidate us into silence ... sorry, but we refuse to be silent in the face of such outrageous corruptions, death, mayhem, chaos and misery-- the result of self-interested greed, stupidity and incompetence by the Bush regime.
The best answer to the neo-con, right-wing's hypocritical screed, is this superb response by Molly Ivins, entitled "[b]Call Me a Bush-Hater[/b]" on http://www.alternet.org/story...
"Among the more amusing cluckings from the right lately is their appalled discovery that quite a few Americans actually think George W. Bush is a terrible president.
Robert Novak is quoted as saying in all his 44 years of covering politics, he has never seen anything like the detestation of Bush. Charles Krauthammer managed to write an entire essay on the topic of "Bush-haters" in Time magazine as though he had never before come across a similar phenomenon.
Oh, I stretch memory way back, so far back, all the way back to – our last president. Almost lost in the mists of time though it is, I not only remember eight years of relentless attacks from Clinton-haters, I also notice they haven't let up yet. Clinton-haters accused the man of murder, rape, drug running, sexual harassment, financial chicanery, and official misconduct. And they accuse his wife of even worse.
For eight long years, this country was a zoo of Clinton-haters. Any idiot with a big mouth and a conspiracy theory could get a hearing on radio talk shows and "Christian" broadcasts and nutty Internet sites. People with transparent motives, people paid by tabloid magazines, people with known mental problems, ancient Clinton enemies with notoriously racist pasts – all were given hearings, credence, and air time. Sliming Clinton was a sure road to fame and fortune on the right, and many an ambitious young rightwing hit man like David Brock, who has since made full confession, took that golden opportunity.
And these folks didn't stop with verbal and printed attacks. From the day Clinton was elected to office, he was the subject of the politics of personal destruction. They went after him with a multimillion-dollar smear campaign funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, the rightwing billionaire. They went after him with lawsuits funded by rightwing legal foundations (Paula Jones), they got special counsels appointed to investigate every nitpicking nothing that ever happened (Filegate, Travelgate), and they never let go of that hardy perennial Whitewater.
After all this time and all those millions of dollars wasted, no one has ever proved that the Clintons did a single thing wrong. Bill Clinton lied about a pathetic, squalid affair that was none of anyone else's business anyway, and for that they impeached the man and dragged this country through more than a year of the most tawdry, ridiculous, unnecessary pain. The day President Clinton tried to take out Osama bin Laden with a missile strike, every right-winger in America said it was a case of "wag the dog." He was supposedly trying to divert our attention from the much more breathtakingly important and serious matter of Monica Lewinsky. And who did he think he was to make us focus on some piffle like bin Laden?
"The puzzle is where this depth of feeling comes from," mused the ineffable Mr. Krauthammer. Gosh, what a puzzle that is. How could anyone not be just crazy about George W. Bush? "Whence the anger?" asks Krauthammer. "It begins of course with the 'stolen' election of 2000 and the perception of Bush's illegitimacy."
I'd say so myself, yes, I would. I was in Florida during that chilling post-election fight, and am fully persuaded to this good day that Al Gore actually won Florida, not to mention getting 550,000 more votes than Bush overall. But I also remember thinking, as the scene became eerier and eerier, "Jeez, maybe we should just let them have this one, because Republican wing-nuts are so crazy, their bitterness would poison Gore's whole presidency." The night Gore conceded the race in one of the most graceful and honorable speeches I have ever heard, I was in a ballroom full of Republican Party flacks who booed and jeered through every word of it.
One thing I acknowledge about the right is that they're much better haters than liberals are. Your basic liberal – milk of human kindness flowing through every vein, and heart bleeding over everyone from the milk-shy Hottentot to the glandular obese – is pretty much a strikeout on the hatred front. Maybe further out on the left you can hit some good righteous anger, but liberals, and I am one, are generally real wusses. Guys like Rush Limbaugh figured that out a long time ago – attack a liberal and the first thing he says is, "You may have a point there."
To tell the truth, I'm kind of proud of us for holding the grudge this long. Normally, we'd remind ourselves that we have to be good sports, it's for the good of the country, we must unite behind the only president we've got, as Lyndon used to remind us. If there are still some of us out here sulking, "Yeah, but they stole that election," well, good. I don't think we should forget that.
But, onward. So George Dubya becomes president, having run as a "compassionate conservative," and what do we get? Hell's own conservative and dick for compassion.
His entire first eight months was tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts for the rich, and he lied and said the tax cuts would help average Americans. Again and again, the "average" tax cut would be $1,000. That means you get $100, and the millionaire gets $92,000, and that's how they "averaged" it out. Then came 9/11, and we all rallied. Ready to give blood, get out of our cars and ride bicycles, whatever. Shop, said the President. And more tax cuts for the rich.
By now, we're starting to notice Bush's bait-and-switch. Make a deal with Ted Kennedy to improve education and then fail to put money into it. Promise $15 billion in new money to combat AIDS in Africa (wow!) but it turns out to be a cheap con, almost no new money. Bush comes to praise a job training effort, and then cuts the money. Bush says AmeriCorps is great, then cuts the money. Gee, what could we possibly have against this guy? We go along with the war in Afghanistan, and we still don't have bin Laden.
Then suddenly, in the greatest bait-and-switch of all time, Osama bin doesn't matter at all, and we have to go after Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with 9/11. But he does have horrible weapons of mass destruction, and our president "without doubt," without question, knows all about them, even unto the amounts – tons of sarin, pounds of anthrax. So we take out Saddam Hussein, and there are no weapons of mass destruction. Furthermore, the Iraqis are not overjoyed to see us.
By now, quite a few people who aren't even liberal are starting to say, "Wha the hey?" We got no Osama, we got no Saddam, we got no weapons of mass destruction, the road map to peace in the Middle East is blown to hell, we're stuck in this country for $87 billion just for one year and no one knows how long we'll be there. And still poor Mr. Krauthammer is hard-put to conceive how anyone could conclude that George W. Bush is a poor excuse for a President.
Chuck, honey, it ain't just the 2.6 million jobs we've lost: People are losing their pensions, their health insurance, the cost of health insurance is doubling, tripling in price, the Administration wants to cut off their overtime, and Bush was so too little, too late with extending unemployment compensation that one million Americans were left high and dry. And you wonder why we think he's a lousy president?
Sure, all that is just what's happening in people's lives, but what we need is the Big Picture. Well, the Big Picture is that after September 11, we had the sympathy of every nation on Earth. They all signed up, all our old allies volunteered, everybody was with us, and Bush just booted all of that away. Sneering, jeering, bad manners, hideous diplomacy, threats, demands, arrogance, bluster.
"In Afghanistan, Bush rode a popular tide; Iraq, however, was a singular act of presidential will," says Krauthammer.
You bet your ass it was. We attacked a country that had done nothing to us, had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, and turns out not to have weapons of mass destruction.
It is not necessary to hate George W. Bush to think he's a bad president. Grownups can do that, you know. You can decide someone's policies are a miserable failure without lying awake at night consumed with hatred.
Poor Bush is in way over his head, and the country is in bad shape because of his stupid economic policies.
If that makes me a Bush-hater, then sign me up. "
[i]Molly Ivins, a syndicated columnist out of Austin, Texas, is the co-author of "Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America."[/i]
[b]Absolutely right ... the liberals' problem is that they haven't fought back ... it's not in their nature to attack so viciously, to "win at all costs", as it is in the neo-con, right-wing hypocrites' nature ... Well, maybe we've got to get a bit tougher!
Go Molly, Go Girl Go![/b]
Proof of LIE: Neo-Cons Write Memo - Then Neo-Cons Leak Memo - Then Neo-Cons Report On It!
[i]The Neo-Cons Write The Memo ... Then the Neo-Cons Leak The Memo ... Then the Neo-Cons Report On It! ... ... Then later, the Pentagon Dismisses It![/i]
[b]The neo-con buffoons are running-around like [i]chickens-with-their-he ads-cut-off [/i]in a [u]panic-stricken modus-operandi[/u] ... This is like watching the Keystone Cops!!!
Ha ha ha ha ha !!!
Bottom-line: There is no evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaida. Even the Pentagon has dismissed the so-called [i]leaked "memo"[/i] drafted by the neo-con crazies. [ http://www.defenselink.mil/re... ]
Ha ha ha ha ha !!![/b]
In "[b]PROOF! (of spin): Big Story: Neocons Leak Neocon Memo, Then Report On It[/b]" by Eric Garris http://www.antiwar.com/commen... :
"Today, Fox News anchors [ http://www.foxnews.com/story/...,2933,103163,00.html ] are repeatedly mentioning the blockbuster story "proving" a long-time link between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
The leak was made to a truly unbiased source, the Weekly Standard. The neocon magazine titles the article on the "leaked" memo, "[i]Case Closed[/i]." [ http://www.weeklystandard.com... ]
The memo is from another [i]unbiased source[/i](???): [b]Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, one of the most hard-core neoconservatives at the Pentagon[/b]. [ http://www.antiwar.com/ips/lo... ]
At one point, a Fox reporter referred to the Weekly Standard as having "close ties to the White House." You would think that they might mention that Fox and the Weekly Standard are both owned by Rupert Murdoch. Current and retired intel officers have identified the work of Feith's Office of Special Plans as a key component of the exaggerated and manipulated intelligence produced on Iraq. Feith himself has been accused of being behind previous leaks of "raw intelligence."
I[i] wonder who "leaked" this memo to the Weekly Standard?[/i]
[b]Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith is a neo-con, neo-fascist extremist who lusted for the war in Iraq, and whose law firm is making a fortune in war-profiteering in Iraq! Feith should be in jail[/b] [ "All Roads Lead to Feith" on http://www.antiwar.com/ips/lo... ]
"A quick note on Stephen Hayes new article Iraq-al Qaida link story, “[i]Case Closed[/i]”, in the Weekly Standard.
(I was watching Fox News Sunday this morning and saw Fred Barnes --- Executive Editor of the Standard --- go almost apoplectic about how devastating and case-closing a piece it is.)
In any case, the quick note.
First, congratulations to Steve for a great scoop. He and I disagree about most things these days. But I'm certainly an admirer of his work.
[b]But is it "case closed"? Not quite. More like, case restated.[/b]
What do we already know about the intelligence wars over the Iraq-al Qaida link?
We know that most of the Intelligence Community didn't think there was much there. Some contacts, but nothing substantial. We also know that Doug Feith -- along with other administration appointees -- didn't agree. And Feith set up his own intelligence shop at the Pentagon to review all the raw data and find what the CIA and others had missed, misinterpreted or buried.
They came up with a raft of purported connections between Saddam and al Qaida. But when they presented their findings to professional analysts in the rest of the Intelligence Community, most notably at the CIA, the consensus was that those[b] findings didn't pass the laugh-test.[/b]
And who put together this new memo, the one the Standard article is based on? "The U.S. Government," as the headline of the article says?
Not exactly. As Steve's article makes clear, the authorship is a bit more specific. "The memo," writes Steve ...
[i]dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the administration. Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo comes from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources.[/i]
In other words, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee is doing their investigation into the pre-war intelligence. This memo is what Doug Feith sent them representing their side of the story. With the exception of some tidbits from interviews with Iraqis now in custody, this is, to all appearances, the same bill of particulars that Feith's shop put together in 2002 and which was panned by the analysts in the rest of the Intel community.
So, the first point to make is that there seems to be little if anything here that[b] the folks in the rest of the Intel Community [/b]-- outside of Special Plans -- [b]did not see before concluding that there were no significant links between Iraq and al Qaida.[/b]
Point two is that [b]Feith's shop, the Office of Special Plans, the original source of this memo, gained an apparently richly-deserved reputation for what intel analysts call cherry-picking[/b]. That is, culling raw intel data to find all the information that supports the conclusion you want to find and then ignoring all the rest.
Now, of course, Feith's advocates say that everyone else was just doing their own sort of cherry-picking, picking the evidence that supported their preconceived notions, etc. But this is simply another example of a pattern which we see widely in this administration: the inability to recognize that there is such a thing as expertise which is anything more than a cover for ideological predilection (for more on this, see this article.)
More to the point, there's now a record. These are the folks, remember, who had the most outlandish reads on the extent of Iraq's WMD capacities and the most roseate predictions about the ease of the post-war reconstruction. So their record of interpreting raw intelligence is, shall we say, objectively poor.
Having said all this, I am, needless to say, not a trained analyst. I'll be commenting on various points in the piece that I know something about. But there's really little point in my speculating on the meaning of the various data points raised in this memo. Much of the value of this evidence rests on the reliability of the sources and methods used to find it. And we on the outside have little way of knowing who the sources were or how reliable they are. Also, you'd want people who could put the data points into their proper context.
So, let's read Hayes' article, but also be clear on the character and source of the memo he's discussing and wait till other knowledgeable folks weigh in with their opinion of what it means."
CIA Finds No Evidence That Saddam Hussein Sought To Arm Terrorists
It is a sad commentary on the stupidity, naivete, and down-right laziness, of the American people that 25% still blindly believe the outright LIES, deceptions & falsehoods perpetrated on the U.S.A. and the world, by the corrupt Bush regime. I guess the wise President Abraham Lincoln was right about "fooling some of the people, all of the time" ...
How bizarre and strange when [i]the evidence is staring the entire world in the face[/i]-- that so many Americans still choose to believe in the dangerously stupid neo-con, neo-fascist war-mongers, Bush & Cheney Inc., who have massacred at least 418 U.S. Soldiers, 77 Coalition Troops, and between 21,000-55,000 Iraqi people-- and wounded, injured & maimed tens of thousands-- all this carnage & misery, to enrich their corrupt "corporate-take-all" cronies.
Dick "Anal-Retentive" Cheney, Karl "Bush's Brain & America's Joseph Goebbles" Rove & Condi "Mother Hen" Rice-- must be sitting back in disbelief, wonder & surprise ... How they must laugh their sordid and squalid heads-off (like O.J. when the verdict was announced) at their absolute ability to persuade dishonest neo-con attack-dogs & court-jesters to convince poor, dumb, idiotic sheep to "buy" their snake oil, swamp land, and crap. Bush is simply the "useful idiot" stumbling around in a fog, as he fumbles through Rove's speeches that he doesn't even appear to comprehend.
Another LIE falls ... and the domino of LIES fall down almost daily, as we find that there were NO WMDS, that the Bushies told us would be used any day now, and result in "mushroom clouds" wiping out tens of thousands of us ... [Instead, the Bushies have wiped out tens of thousands of Iraqi people with gleeful lust since their paymasters: Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Lockheed-Martin, are popping open the champagne as they swill lakes of blood & gorge on war-profits and our nation's treasury -- people and taxpayer money raped senseless ... while the Bushies & the wealthy plutocrats get richer-beyond-even-their- wildest-dreams.]
The other LIE that has been exposed, is the Bush regime's LIE told prior to their ugly, insane neo-con guerrilla quagmire-- that if we didn't go to war, Saddam Hussein (whom they dishonestly claimed had links with terrorist groups ... Saddam & Osama bin Laden were in fact, enemies who hated each other) would arm terrorist groups. Another LIE DEBUNKED:
"The CIA's search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has found no evidence that former president Saddam Hussein tried to transfer chemical or biological technology or weapons to terrorists, according to a military and intelligence expert.
Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, provided new details about the weapons search and Iraqi insurgency in a report released Friday. It was based on briefings over the past two weeks in Iraq from David Kay, the CIA representative who is directing the search for unconventional weapons in Iraq; L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civil administrator there; and military officials.
"No evidence of any Iraqi effort to transfer weapons of mass destruction or weapons to terrorists," Cordesman wrote of Kay's briefing. "Only possibility was Saddam's Fedayeen [his son's irregular terrorist force] and talk only."
One of the concerns the Bush administration cited early last year to justify the need to invade Iraq was that Hussein would provide chemical or biological agents or weapons to al Qaeda or other terrorists. Despite the disclosure that U.S. and British intelligence officials assessed that Hussein would use or distribute such weapons only if he were attacked and faced defeat, administration spokesmen have continued to defend that position.
Last Thursday, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith defended the administration's prewar position at the Council on Foreign Relations. "The idea that we didn't have specific proof that he was planning to give a biological agent to a terrorist group," he said, "doesn't really lead you to anything, because you wouldn't expect to have that information even if it were true. And our intelligence is just not at the point where if Saddam had that intention that we would necessarily know it."
Yesterday, allegations of new evidence of connections between Iraq and al Qaeda contained in a classified annex attached to Feith's Oct. 27 letter to leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence were published in the Weekly Standard. Feith had been asked to support his July 10 closed-door testimony about such connections. The classified annex summarized raw intelligence reports but did not analyze them or address their accuracy, according to a senior administration official familiar with the matter.
During the recent Baghdad briefing, Cordesman noted that Kay said Iraq "did order nuclear equipment from 1999 on, but no evidence [has turned up] of [a] new major facility to use it."
Although there was no evidence of chemical weapons production, Kay said he had located biological work "under cover of new agricultural facility" that showed "advances in developing dry storable powder forms of botulinum toxin," Cordesman wrote.
During his Nov. 1-12 trip, Cordesman visited Baghdad, Babel, Tikrit and Kirkuk, where he met combat commanders and staff in high-threat areas. Reporting on his briefing by Bremer, Cordesman said 95 percent of the threat came from former Hussein loyalists while most foreign terrorists, who entered Iraq before the war, arrived from Syria, with some from Saudi Arabia and only "a few from Iran." Bremer "felt Syrian intelligence knows [of the volunteers] but is not proactive in encouraging [them]." He also said there was "no way to seal borders with Syria, Saudi [Arabia] and Iran. Too manpower intensive."
Bremer said Hussein loyalists "still have lots of money to buy attacks [because] at least $1 billion still unaccounted for." He also said the Syrians had admitted "some $3 billion more of Iraqi money [is] in Syria."
The Coalition Joint Task Force briefers noted that the Iraq Governing Council felt "the U.S. is too soft in attacking hostile targets, arrests and use of force," while the U.S. side "feels restraint is the key to winning hearts and minds."
Hussein, according to the briefers, "is cut off, isolated, moving constantly, [and has] no real role in control." They told Cordesman that the "problem is ex-generals and colonels with no other future -- not former top officials." They also said Hussein "made officers read 'Black Hawk Down' [Mark Bowden's book about the fatal downing of U.S. helicopters in Somalia a decade ago] to try to convince them U.S. would have to leave if major casualties."
They said there will be attacks "until the day U.S. leaves" and "cannot ever get intelligence up to point where [they can] stop all attacks."
During his visit to the Polish-led international division, south of Baghdad where the Shiites predominate, Cordesman said there were 34 attacks before a Pole was killed Nov. 6.
The force there considers the holy cities "stable" but notes that Shiite leaders such as Grand Ayatollah Ali Hussein al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite cleric, "protect themselves with their own militias with CPA [Coalition Provisional Authority] approval. This has its advantages, but it means they cannot be given effective coalition protection," he wrote."
More US soldiers have died since Bush declared "major combat operations are over", than during the so-called "war" (US outspent Iraq on the military, by over 400 times every year over the last 12 years: Quite a contest, huh!?!?) ... Of course, we know know that the Bushies are corrupt and incompetent crooks, who insist on staying in Iraq, until their "corporate-take-all" cronies have swindled, plundered & looted all the blood they can swill and treasure they can gorge upon (Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, etc. etc. etc. Bush's cronies are war-profiteers who are raping America & Iraq senseless, and should be jailed for illegal price-gouging & profiteering) ...
The cowardly Bushies, all neo-con, arm-chair "chicken-hawks", (Bush was AWOL in a druken-stupor during Vietnam, while better men DIED), lust for war, and these goons ran-away from war when it was their turn to serve our nation ... These despicable and squalid neo-con cowards, rapists and war-profiteers, aren't fit to serve in office.
The Bush regime is massacring our people and the Iraqi people, and there is no end in sight to the unnecessary slaughter-for-riches-for- cronies ... Their Iraq guerrilla quagmire was justified based upon lies & fraud (a crime under the U.S. Constitution) ... They are squandering our treasury on boondoggles, tax loopholes & tax cuts for the rich ... on wars to enrich their cronies ... meanwhile the poor, low-income & middle-class are being saddled with the largest deficits in our nation's history, slashed services and more hardships.
Is this chaos, mayhem & misery really what you want?
[b]Claim Versus Fact : Bush Regime's Statement on the Military in Iraq[/b]
[b]CLAIM[/b]: “I think it's quite clear that if we, the United States, puts forward another resolution in the UN Security Council and that Security Council resolution is adopted and it authorizes multinational forces, that you'll see some countries stepping up.”
[b]FACT[/b]: Since the President's speech on September 7th, 2003 demanding more international troops, and since the passage of the latest U.N. resolution, the Bush Administration has been unable to attract any new nation to contribute even a single soldier to assist in Iraq.
And, what does Bush, our so-called "Commander-and-Chief" ([i]sic[/i]), do???
[i]Surprise, surprise, surprise!!![/i]
Absolutely nothing ... zip, zero, nada!!!
Bush is simply a "useful idiot" -- a puppet of the corrupt neo-con cabal who run American foreign policy in accordance with their insane [i]Doctrine According To 'The Project For The New American Century' [/i](PNAC) ...
[b]Question of the Day[/b]: Does Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon really run U.S. foreign policy & why doesn't he simply [i]move-in [/i]to the White House?
The Bushies lust to launch their blood-thirsty "pre-emptive" wars on those who refuse to do their bidding ... (Oooppss ... and also those who agree to do their bidding: Iraqi conceded to Bush's demands 1 week before the neo-con [i]arm-chair chicken-hawks[/i] launched their immoral & illegal incursion into Iraq!)@%&*! One could be forgiven for wondering whether Bush's rhetoric about Middle East peace and an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, are simply cynical propaganda ... more lies, deceit & falsehoods! Or, could it simply be that Sharon sees Bush as a weak fool, says whatever he wants to hear[i] at the moment[/i], and then ignores him ... Or, could it be both?!?! ... Hmmm ...
A story you won't find in the Corporate, Right-Wing American Media. Instead, the Guardian U.K. reports that "[b]Sharon broke vow to Bush[/b]" on http://www.guardian.co.uk/isr...,2763,1084786,00.html
"The Israeli government has admitted in a secret memorandum that Ariel Sharon has failed to honour commitments to President George Bush to dismantle Jewish settler outposts in the West Bank.
The memorandum, which originated in the Israeli foreign ministry and was leaked to Reuters, is an admission of duplicity by Mr Sharon, who gave face-to-face commitments to Mr Bush to dismantle the outposts to show good faith toward the US-led "road map" peace process.
The memo says: "International criticism is growing because of our lack of creative ideas for getting out of the conflict.
"Our claim that Israel has fulfilled its side of the 'road map' is seen as lacking credibility because not only have we not evacuated the illegal outposts, we are working in every way to whitewash their existence and build more."
At the Aqaba summit in June, Mr Sharon told Mr Bush he would remove Jewish settler outposts which even Israeli law recognises as illegal. The prime minister justified the move to his supporters by saying he was not giving ground to the Palestinians, merely enforcing Israeli law.
But after symbolically shutting about a dozen of the 100 or more outposts, the government quietly abandoned the closures.
In any case, some outposts were declared erased when they had been permitted to move a few hundred metres away. Others were re-established after a few weeks."
Bush is too stupid to remember what Sharon promised to do ... Bush is too ignorant to negotiate an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement ... Bush doesn't have a clue on what to do, and his handlers (who protect their "[i]boy in the plastic bubble[/i]") are currently [i]running-around-like-ch ickens-with-their-heads-c ut-off[/i], in a[b] panic-stricken modus operandi[/b], dealing with their [b]botched-up Iraqi fiasco[/b].
An American Master: Uncensored Gore Vidal on U.S. History & Today's Machinations
[b]Gore Vidal is an American Master [/b]... Vidal's essays will be treasured by future American scholars, as the writings of G. K. Chesterton are treasured by British scholars. Vidal's essays cast an insightful, eloquent and witty commentary on his (and our) times, and his historical novels (especially "Lincoln", my personal favorite) brilliantly give us an irreverent and truthful look back upon the motives and actions of our Founding Fathers, presidents, and the important milestones in American history.
The following interview with Gore Vidal by Marc Cooper, is a "[i]must-read[/i]" for anyone truly interested in the reality of the founding of America and today's political machinations:
It's lucky for George W. Bush that he wasn’t born in an earlier time and somehow stumbled into America’s Constitutional Convention. A man with his views, so depreciative of democratic rule, would have certainly been quickly exiled from the freshly liberated United States by the gaggle of incensed Founders. So muses one of our most controversial social critics and prolific writers, Gore Vidal.
When we last interviewed Vidal just over a year ago, he set off a mighty chain reaction as he positioned himself as one of the last standing defenders of the ideal of the American Republic. His acerbic comments to L.A. Weekly about the Bushies were widely reprinted in publications around the world and flashed repeatedly over the World Wide Web. Now Vidal is at it again, giving the Weekly another dose of his dissent, and, with the constant trickle of casualties mounting in Iraq, his comments are no less explosive than they were last year.
This time, however, Vidal is speaking to us as a full-time American. After splitting his time between Los Angeles and Italy for the past several decades, Vidal has decided to roost in his colonial home in the Hollywood Hills. Now 77 years old, suffering from a bad knee and still recovering from the loss earlier this year of his longtime companion, Howard Austen, Vidal is feistier and more productive than ever.
Vidal undoubtedly had current pols like Bush and Ashcroft in mind when he wrote his latest book, his third in two years. Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson takes us deep into the psyches of the patriotic trio. And even with all of their human foibles on display — vanity, ambition, hubris, envy and insecurity — their shared and profoundly rooted commitment to building the first democratic nation on Earth comes straight to the fore.
The contrast between then and now is hardly implicit. No more than a few pages into the book, Vidal unveils his dripping disdain for the crew that now dominates the capital named for our first president.
As we began our dialogue, I asked him to draw out the links between our revolutionary past and our imperial present. [Gore Vidal's answers to Marc Cooper's questions are in [i]italics[/i].]
[b]MARC COOPER[/b]: Your new book focuses on Washington, Adams and Jefferson, but it seems from reading closely that it was actually Ben Franklin who turned out to be the most prescient regarding the future of the republic.
[b]GORE VIDAL[/b]: [i]Franklin understood the American people better than the other three. Washington and Jefferson were nobles — slaveholders and plantation owners. Alexander Hamilton married into a rich and powerful family and joined the upper classes. Benjamin Franklin was pure middle class. In fact, he may have invented it for Americans. Franklin saw danger everywhere. They all did. Not one of them liked the Constitution. James Madison, known as the father of it, was full of complaints about the power of the presidency. But they were in a hurry to get the country going. Hence the great speech, which I quote at length in the book, that Franklin, old and dying, had someone read for him. He said, I am in favor of this Constitution, as flawed as it is, because we need good government and we need it fast. And this, properly enacted, will give us, for a space of years, such government.[/i]
[i]But then, Franklin said, it will fail, as all such constitutions have in the past, because of the essential corruption of the people. He pointed his finger at all the American people. And when the people become so corrupt, he said, we will find it is not a republic that they want but rather despotism — the only form of government suitable for such a people[/i].
But Jefferson had the most radical view, didn’t he? He argued that the Constitution should be seen only as a transitional document.
[i]Oh yeah. Jefferson said that once a generation we must have another Constitutional Convention and revise all that isn’t working. Like taking a car in to get the carburetor checked. He said you cannot expect a man to wear a boy’s jacket. It must be revised, because the Earth belongs to the living. He was the first that I know who ever said that. And to each generation is the right to change every law they wish. Or even the form of government. You know, bring in the Dalai Lama if you want! Jefferson didn’t care.[/i]
[i]Jefferson was the only pure democrat among the founders, and he thought the only way his idea of democracy could be achieved would be to give the people a chance to change the laws. Madison was very eloquent in his answer to Jefferson. He said you cannot [have] any government of any weight if you think it is only going to last a year.[/i]
[i]This was the quarrel between Madison and Jefferson. And it would probably still be going on if there were at least one statesman around who said we have to start changing this damn thing.[/i]
Your book revisits the debate between the Jeffersonian Republicans and the Hamiltonian Federalists, which at the time were effectively young America’s two parties. More than 200 years later, do we still see any strands, any threads of continuity in our current body politic?
[i]Just traces. But mostly we find the sort of corruption Franklin predicted. Ours is a totally corrupt society. The presidency is for sale. Whoever raises the most money to buy TV time will probably be the next president. This is corruption on a major scale.[/i]
[i]Enron was an eye-opener to naive lovers of modern capitalism. Our accounting brotherhood, in its entirety, turned out to be corrupt, on the take. With the government absolutely colluding with them and not giving a damn.[/i]
[i]Bush’s friend, old Kenny Lay, is still at large and could just as well start some new company tomorrow. If he hasn’t already. No one is punished for squandering the people’s money and their pension funds and for wrecking the economy.[/i]
[i]So the corruption predicted by Franklin bears its terrible fruit. No one wants to do anything about it. It’s not even a campaign issue. Once you have a business community that is so corrupt in a society whose business is business, then what you have is, indeed, despotism. It is the sort of authoritarian rule that the Bush people have given us. The USA PATRIOT Act is as despotic as anything Hitler came up with — even using much of the same language. In one of my earlier books, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, I show how the language used by the Clinton people to frighten Americans into going after terrorists like Timothy McVeigh — how their rights were going to be suspended only for a brief time — was precisely the language used by Hitler after the Reichstag fire.[/i]
In this context, would any of the Founding Fathers find themselves comfortable in the current political system of the United States? Certainly Jefferson wouldn’t. But what about the radical centralizers, or those like John Adams, who had a sneaking sympathy for the monarchy?
[i]Adams thought monarchy, as tamed and balanced by the parliament, could offer democracy. But he was no totalitarian, not by any means. Hamilton, on the other hand, might have very well gone along with the Bush people, because he believed there was an elite who should govern. He nevertheless was a bastard born in the West Indies, and he was always a little nervous about his own social station. He, of course, married into wealth and became an aristo. And it is he who argues that we must have a government made up of the very best people, meaning the rich.
So you’d find Hamilton pretty much on the Bush side. But I can’t think of any other Founders who would. Adams would surely disapprove of Bush. He was highly moral, and I don’t think he could endure the current dishonesty. Already they were pretty bugged by a bunch of journalists who came over from Ireland and such places and were telling Americans how to do things. You know, like Andrew Sullivan today telling us how to be. I think you would find a sort of union of discontent with Bush among the Founders. The sort of despotism that overcomes us now is precisely what Franklin predicted[/i].
But Gore, you have lived through a number of inglorious administrations in your lifetime, from Truman’s founding of the national-security state, to LBJ’s debacle in Vietnam, to Nixon and Watergate, and yet here you are to tell the tale. So when it comes to this Bush administration, are you really talking about despots per se? Or is this really just one more rather corrupt and foolish Republican administration?
[i]No. We are talking about despotism. I have read not only the first PATRIOT Act but also the second one, which has not yet been totally made public nor approved by Congress and to which there is already great resistance. An American citizen can be fingered as a terrorist, and with what proof? No proof. All you need is the word of the attorney general or maybe the president himself. You can then be locked up without access to a lawyer, and then tried by military tribunal and even executed. Or, in a brand-new wrinkle, you can be exiled, stripped of your citizenship and packed off to another place not even organized as a country — like Tierra del Fuego or some rock in the Pacific. All of this is in the USA PATRIOT Act. The Founding Fathers would have found this to be despotism in spades. And they would have hanged anybody who tried to get this through the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Hanged.[/i]
So if George W. Bush or John Ashcroft had been around in the early days of the republic, they would have been indicted and then hanged by the Founders?
[i]No. It would have been better and worse. [Laughs.] Bush and Ashcroft would have been considered so disreputable as to not belong in this country at all. They might be invited to go down to Bolivia or Paraguay and take part in the military administration of some Spanish colony, where they would feel so much more at home. They would not be called Americans — most Americans would not think of them as citizens.[/i]
Do you not think of Bush and Ashcroft as Americans?
[i]I think of them as an alien army. They have managed to take over everything, and quite in the open. We have a deranged president. We have despotism. We have no due process.[/i]
Yet you saw in the ’60s how the Johnson administration collapsed under the weight of its own hubris. Likewise with Nixon. And now with the discontent over how the war in Iraq is playing out, don’t you get the impression that Bush is headed for the same fate?
[i]I actually see something smaller tripping him up: this business over outing the wife of Ambassador Wilson as a CIA agent. It’s often these small things that get you. Something small enough for a court to get its teeth into. Putting this woman at risk because of anger over what her husband has done is bitchy, dangerous to the nation, dangerous to other CIA agents. This resonates more than Iraq. I’m afraid that 90 percent of Americans don’t know where Iraq is and never will know, and they don’t care.[/i]
[i]But that number of $87 billion is seared into their brains, because there isn’t enough money to go around. The states are broke. Meanwhile, the right wing has been successful in convincing 99 percent of the people that we ‰ are generously financing every country on Earth, that we are bankrolling welfare mothers, all those black ladies that the Republicans are always running against, the ladies they tell us are guzzling down Kristal champagne at the Ambassador East in Chicago — which of course is ridiculous.[/i]
[i]And now the people see another $87 billion going out the window. So long! People are going to rebel against that one. Congress has gone along with that, but a lot of congressmen could lose their seats for that.[/i]
Speaking of elections, is George W. Bush going to be re-elected next year?
[i]No. At least if there is a fair election, an election that is not electronic. That would be dangerous. We don’t want an election without a paper trail. The makers of the voting machines say no one can look inside of them, because they would reveal trade secrets. What secrets? Isn’t their job to count votes? Or do they get secret messages from Mars? Is the cure for cancer inside the machines? I mean, come on. And all three owners of the companies who make these machines are donors to the Bush administration. Is this not corruption?[/i]
[i]So Bush will probably win if the country is covered with these balloting machines. He can’t lose.[/i]
But Gore, aren’t you still enough of a believer in the democratic instincts of ordinary people to think that, in the end, those sorts of conspiracies eventually fall apart?
[i]Oh no! I find they only get stronger, more entrenched. Who would have thought that Harry Truman’s plans to militarize America would have come as far as we are today? All the money we have wasted on the military, while our schools are nowhere. There is no health care; we know the litany. We get nothing back for our taxes. I wouldn’t have thought that would have lasted the last 50 years, which I lived through. But it did last.[/i]
[i]But getting back to Bush. If we use old-fashioned paper ballots and have them counted in the precinct where they are cast, he will be swept from office. He’s made every error you can. He’s wrecked the economy. Unemployment is up. People can’t find jobs. Poverty is up. It’s a total mess. How does he make such a mess? Well, he is plainly very stupid. But the people around him are not. They want to stay in power.[/i]
You paint a very dark picture of the current administration and of the American political system in general. But at a deeper, more societal level, isn’t there still a democratic underpinning?
[i]No. There are some memories of what we once were. There are still a few old people around who remember the New Deal, which was the last time we had a government that showed some interest in the welfare of the American people. Now we have governments, in the last 20 to 30 years, that care only about the welfare of the rich.[/i]
Is Bush the worst president we’ve ever had?
[i]Well, nobody has ever wrecked the Bill of Rights as he has. Other presidents have dodged around it, but no president before this one has so put the Bill of Rights at risk. No one has proposed preemptive war before. And two countries in a row that have done no harm to us have been bombed.[/i]
How do you think the current war in Iraq is going to play out?
[i]I think we will go down the tubes right with it. With each action Bush ever more enrages the Muslims. And there are a billion of them. And sooner or later they will have a Saladin who will pull them together, and they will come after us. And it won’t be pretty.[/i]
The[b] panic-stricken [/b][i]modus-operandi [/i]on the part of the corrupt Bush regime, has resulted in Bush ordering a speedy transition from the bungled U.S. occupation to Iraqi control.
The CIA reports that 50,000 Iraq insurgents are strong and growing ... the Bushies lied about their phony [i]casus belli [/i](no WMDs posing an imminent threat to our security) to justify their anti-Christian war-mongering. Moreover, the Iraqis even offerred to concede to all of the Bushies' "souped-up" demands, in the week before the Bush regime launched their immoral & illegal war into Iraq-- but the corrupt neo-cons lusted for war (arm-chair, chicken-hawks who were AWOL from doing their duty) ... they don't give a damn about peace, about democracy, about the rule of law, or about honor & decency.
Now we are embroiled in a bloody guerrilla quagmire-- Another U.S. Soldier was killed today ... making Bush's Death Toll rise to 395 US Soldiers, 72 Coalition Troops & between 21,000 & 55,000 Iraqis.
[b]Bush[/b] can try to paper-over his [b]Crimes Against Humanity[/b], and his neo-con attack-dogs & court-jesters can play all the [i]word games [/i]they want-- but the disastrous carnage, mayhem & misery, in Iraq is a tragic testimony to the Bush regime's corruption and incompetence.
"The Bush administration, moving up its timetable for self-government in Iraq and yielding to its own handpicked leadership there, has decided to try to hold elections in the first half of next year and turn civilian authority over to a temporary government before a new constitution is written, administration officials said Wednesday.
Increasing attacks on American and other foreign forces forced a rethinking of the administration's approach in recent days, the officials said, lending more urgency to the need for Iraqi self-rule by the middle of next year.
The new plan — a two-step process — was intended in part, they said, to change the political climate in Iraq and reduce the anger toward occupying forces that fosters support for violence, including attacks on American and other foreign forces, by demonstrating to Iraqis that the United States is moving more quickly to establish self-rule.
But it was not clear whether those behind the guerrilla attacks, whoever they are, would regard a changed political situation as significant if large numbers of American forces are still in Iraq.
L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator in Iraq, who returned to Washington for high-level discussions earlier this week, headed back on Wednesday to begin consultations with Iraqi leaders about the American plan. They appear to have grown increasingly impatient with the American-led occupation.
In Baghdad, Iraqi political leaders in the 24-member Iraqi Governing Council said that they had decided to reject any plan to write a new constitution in the coming months, saying they will propose instead that they immediately assume the powers of a provisional government.
Members of the Governing Council said Wednesday that they had reached a consensus that writing a constitution and electing the drafters of a constitution as demanded by the powerful Shiite clergy would be too divisive at this stage. They are also increasingly frustrated with America's exercise of power.
Administration officials said Mr. Bremer was carrying a set of ideas rather than a fixed plan and would work with Iraq's Governing Council to develop a mutually agreeable approach to turning over civilian authority to Iraqis.
It appeared that the two sides were moving in the same direction but still had differences to bridge. The Iraqis favor the immediate formation of a provisional government, made up of the current Iraqi Governing Council, rather than elections.
An early transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government would not mean a withdrawal of American troops, administration officials said. But if an Iraqi government could command broad support within the country, it could enable a significant draw down of troops before the American elections next November.
"The Iraqis won't tolerate us staying in power for that long," said an administration official, referring to American rule as opposed to the presence of American forces. "Whatever we want to call ourselves, we are an occupying army, and we just cannot stay in power for that long."
The American plan to hold elections has yet to be worked out in detail. Administration officials said that voter rolls could be put together for an election in 2004 of some kind of representative body that would, in turn, select an interim government and write a new constitution. A second round of elections would follow the guidelines in that constitution.
Earlier American plans intended the drafting of a constitution to be followed by elections late next year, with no transfer of power before then to a provisional Iraqi government.
Various options for the future government of Iraq were discussed Wednesday at a meeting of the National Security Council, with President Bush in charge and Mr. Bremer in attendance.
Until recently, American policy was to have the current Iraqi Governing Council decide how to write a constitution. In its latest resolution, the United Nations Security Council called on the Governing Council to decide on such a process by Dec. 15.
But lately, the council told Mr. Bremer that the only way the writing of a constitution would be seen as legitimate was if the delegates were elected.
Elections have been demanded by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most influential Shiite religious leader. Experts assume that Shiites, who predominate in Iraq, would win a commanding majority of seats in any election.
Ayatollah Sistani's demand stirred fears among some American officials that an elected constitution-writing body might write a theocratic charter that enshrined Islam as a state religion and marginalized the Sunni minority, potentially aggravating the violent rebellion of remnants loyal to Saddam Hussein.
Ayatollah Sistani has kept his distance from the occupation forces, but administration officials said council members have tried to suggest alternatives to him, like having the convention chosen by some amalgam of elections, provincial councils, town meetings, local caucuses and the like. But he has rejected the proposals, the officials said.
"Sistani has enormous weight," an administration official said. "We have to heed what the Iraqis are telling us on this."
Administration officials said that after the constitution is written, a permanent Iraqi government would be recognized and another set of elections could be held. These ideas were to be carried back to the Iraqi Governing Council by Mr. Bremer later this week, administration officials said.
The United Nations and many European leaders have been pushing for a more rapid transfer of power to Iraqis, and the American refusal to speed up a transfer has made it more difficult for the United States to win international support for the rebuilding effort.
Mr. Bush, officials said, was impressed with the argument that writing a constitution would take a long time. "The president agreed that we couldn't wait for a constitution to be written," said one official. "The system can't handle it.""
Skepticism About U.S. Deep, Iraqis Distrust U.S. Motives ... So Do I!
Skepticism about the U.S. runs very, very deep in Iraq. The Iraqis are amongst the most well-educated people in the Middle East, and they distrust U.S. motives ... So do I!
Even the "[i]dumbest-of-the-dumb[/ i]", in the U.S.A. and around the world, must certainly see by now, that the phony [i]casus belli [/i]for war (WMDs posing an imminent threat) was "cooked-up" by the Bushies to terrify the American people into supporting their illegal & immoral incursion into Iraq. The real motives have more to do with the neo-con PNAC ghouls nightmarish plans for a Global Corporate Empire, in which the rulers become the Halliburtons, Bechtels, Carlyle Groups, and the other "corporate-take-all" robber-barons that are represented by the corrupt Bushies. The rest of us poor slobs are destined to become their neo-slaves.
In "Skepticism About U.S. Deep, Iraq Poll Shows - Motive for Invasion Is Focus of Doubts" on http://www.washingtonpost.com... : -[i] Excerpt [/i]-
"More than half of Baghdad's residents said they did not believe the United States would allow the Iraqi people to fashion their political future without the direct influence of Washington, according to a Gallup poll.
With the Bush administration holding consultations on the future of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, recent analyses of the poll data, which were gathered three months ago, highlight the roots within that city's populace of many of the concerns the U.S.-led coalition now faces there.
Only 5 percent of those polled said they believed the United States invaded Iraq "to assist the Iraqi people," and only 1 percent believed it was to establish democracy there.
Three-quarters of those polled said they believed the policies and decisions of the Iraqi Governing Council -- whose members were appointed in July by Coalition Provisional Authority Administrator L. Paul Bremer -- were "mostly determined by the coalition's own authorities," and only 16 percent thought the council members were "fairly independent."
Almost everyone interviewed -- 94 percent -- said Baghdad "now is a more dangerous place than before the invasion," and 86 percent said that for the previous four weeks "they or a member of their household had been afraid to go outside their home at night for safety reasons," Burkholder said in his analysis. He noted that in the two months before the U.S. invasion, only 8 percent said they had experienced a similar fear.
Asked about attacks against U.S. troops, 64 percent said they were not justified; 36 percent said they sometimes were. Burkholder noted that those who believed such attacks were somewhat or completely justified -- 11 percent and 8 percent, respectively -- would translate to 440,000 adults 18 or older among Baghdad's adult population of 2.3 million.
Forty-eight percent of those polled said they did not believe that the United States will "remain in Iraq as long as necessary, but not a day more," as President Bush has said. Thirty-six percent said they believed that the Americans would leave as Bush had promised."
Findings from a top-secret CIA report, warns that Iraqis are losing faith in US-led occupation forces ... Increasingly, Iraqi civilians are becoming sympathetic with Iraqi resistance forces who want to control their own country and destiny. They want us out ... how strange, since it's their country.
This new report simply confirms what many reporters have observed-- but who have been demonized by the Bushies, who want us to believe the obscene absurdity that Iraqis are tickled-pink to be raped senseless by Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group and other corporate rapists ... Of course, they think that if we're dumb enough to "[i]buy that swamp-land[/i]", we'll start worshipping at the altar of the Global Corporate Empire and be happy to continue to be raped, plundered & looted senseless by the Bushies, here at home.
The US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) are now being demonized because they are disgusted at the infighting in the "out-of-control", panic-stricken Bush Regime.
"WASHINGTON (AP) - A new top-secret intelligence report warns that Iraqis are losing faith in U.S.-led occupation forces, a development that is increasing support for the resistance, officials said Wednesday.
CIA officials refused to confirm the existence of the report, but it comes to light amid high-level meetings here on the situation on the ground in Iraq. Two other senior U.S. officials said the report paints a worrisome picture of the political and security situation there.
It suggests spiraling violence and a lack of confidence in the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council may be bringing efforts to a turning point, sending more Iraqis over to the side of insurgents fighting occupation troops, said two officials speaking on condition of anonymity.
Asked about the increase in guerrilla attacks on coalition forces in Iraq, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told CBS ``The Early Show'' Wednesday that ``these are very intelligent moves that the bad people are making ... time is not on our side.''
Because the report is classified, they talked about it only in general terms and only on grounds they not be publicly identified. The officials declined to furnish details.
On the subject of the increasing violence, one official noted that American forces already are using more aggressive raids and other tactics to try to fight insurgents, which officials fear could alienate more Iraqis. For instance, American forces responded with aerial bombing and mortars over the weekend in a show-of-force response to the downing of a U.S. helicopter last week.
On Wednesday, U.S. troops opened fire accidentally on a car carrying a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, the Iraqi administration said. The council member escaped injury but the driver was hurt.
A Pentagon official said Wednesday the administration worries that support of coalition partners also could wane, as more international contingents suffer casualties in Iraq. He spoke after authorities reported a deadly truck bomb attack against the headquarters of the Italian Carabinieri police in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah Wednesday.
Meanwhile on the political said, the CIA report warns, appointed Iraqi leaders don't appear to be up to the job of governing or working toward holding elections, one official said.
He declined to say what, if any, recommendations the CIA made in the report delivered to the administration Monday."
Bush's Fiasco Due to Infighting in His Regime ... Bush is Too Weak to be Prez ...
L. Paul Bremer, Civilian Administrator responsible for "running" Iraq (into the ground?) rushes back at the behest of a panic-stricken Bush regime "out-of-control" ... They don't have a realistic approach ... they don't have a plan ... they don't have an exit-strategy ... They're spinning, spitting, fighting, panicking ... They got us into a bloody-guerrilla-quagmire and don't know what to do.
The Bushies are putting out a new spin, that all the problems are caused by the laziness, incompetence or corruption, of the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), when, in fact, it's really due to infighting by the corrupt thugs & goons in the Bush regime. Bush is in denial-- scared sh*tless, regurgitating the same tired-ole' lies, because he is too weak to control his gang ... Bush isn't fit to be prez.
"Hoshyar Zebari defended the IGC and insisted the December 15 deadline would be met. "I think this debate about the ruling council - that it is not doing its work, that it is not taking decisions - this is unfair," Mr Zebari told the FT.
"American infighting among themselves between different departments over policy . . . has created many, many of the difficulties that we are going through."
Mr Zebari also criticised the quality of advice that Mr Bremer had received on security issues, although he said co-operation had improved since the early days after Baghdad fell in April.
Since the end of Saddam Hussein's regime, the former opposition groups that dominate the council have been pressing for more control over the security situation in Iraq. "The problem with the coalition is that they have some experts, so-called, who still live in the 1950s, in the 1940s - some geriatric ambassadors who have a certain interpretation of how Iraq works. It has gone, it has changed," Mr Zebari said.
Meanwhile, Mr Rumsfeld is poised to announce the appointment of an inspector-general for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq to investigate the awarding of reconstruction contracts. The move is in response to congressional demands for more accountability."
[b]It's indeed, [i]gonna' be a long, hard slog [/i]... to get us out of the domestic and foreign disasters that the Bushies have created to enrich their corrupt cronies![/b]
Mission Accomplished??? Karl (Bush's Brain) Rove's Spin on American Job Losses!!!
[b]Karl (Bush's Brain & America's Joseph Goebbles) Rove's Spin on American Job Losses ... [/b]
Unemployment still stands at close to 9 million jobs with 3 million jobs wiped-out by Bush-y-conomics! The rich are doing very well, thank you very much ... but as for the rest of us? Read article on http://business-times.asia1.c...,4567,99255,00.html about Wall Street fears of inflation. Adding a few hundred thousand jobs in a couple months as compared with the loss of millions of jobs isn't as yet, cause for celebration.
Read "UNEMPLOYED TO PRESIDENT BUSH: “PROVIDE THE RELIEF WE NEED TO CARE FOR OUR FAMILIES AND SUPPORT OUR SEARCH FOR NEW WORK”
More Than 1,300 Sign Open Letter Demanding Bush Administration, Congressional Leaders Address Jobs Crisis as Long-Term Unemployment Remains at 10-Year High" on http://www.nelp.org/news/pres... .
[b]Bush's Mission Accomplished on Domestic Policy?[/b] [u]The Neo-Feudal State Creating The Land of Neo-Slaves To Serve the Rich[/u]
[image]SamAdams_392317596 .gif[/image]
Bush is MIA from Public Grief Over US Casualties ... Bush Ignores Families of the Dead
There is an increasing disgust with Bush's lack of display of public grief over US casualties who are dying daily in his war-turned-bloody-guerril la-quagmire in Iraq. Bush ignores the dead because his corrupt handlers want to protect their "boy in the plastic bubble" from any association with the catastrophic consequences ([i]choas, mayhem, death, blood, misery[/i]) of his lies, deceit and falsehoods.
Another US Soldier killed today ... and the media is not allowed to photograph the coffins coming home from Iraq. Moreover, Bush is the only prez in history, to have run away ([i]AWOL[/i]) from attending a single funeral of a single service man or woman, killed in action under his watch. Karl Rove, Dick Cheney & Condi Rice haven't told him to-- and he's too stupid & callous, to acknowledge that it is his duty to do so. "Duty" and "Bush"? Antonyms ... Not terms to be used in tandem, for his "All for Me and Me for Me" regime!
Bush is a superficial bum, with plenty of time to attend fund-raisers and party with his buddies: thieves-and-rouges ... to whom he awards immoral (& illegal) boondoggles, tax loopholes & tax cuts, running-up the biggest deficits in our nation's history-- but doesn't want to "sully-his-image" by hob-nobbing with the "little people": the relatives of those who have died in his despicable, bungled war. (He also never visits those injured, wounded & maimed for life ... "[i][b]a boy about 19 or 20 who had lost both his arms[/b]" and then asked: "[b]Why are none of Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bremer, the president — why aren't they taking pictures with all these guys?[/b] Because I don't understand why these guys are so hidden and why there aren't pictures of them[/i]?[b] Answer:[/b] [i][b]Because to the Bushies, you're just cannon-fodder & they don't give a damn[/b][/i]! http://www.nytimes.com/2003/1... ]
Do you think Bush, who was AWOL in a druken-stupor, during Vietnam, is a Christian (as he hypocritically claims to be)? His actions say he is a cowardly anti-Christian thug!
Read "[b]WAR AND REMEMBRANCE - A President MIA from Public Grief Over Casualties - The ignored American dead come home to Dover[/b]" on http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin... :
"American soldiers are coming home each day, DOA at Dover, Del. More than 200 of them have been smuggled back into the country in this fashion since the mission in Iraq was declared accomplished. Stealth patriots.
Their homecomings are off-limits to reporters, and they come home on the Q.T. without so much as a greeting by the politicians who sent them to Iraq to meet their untimely deaths.
There is always talk on right-wing talk radio that President Bill Clinton "hated the military." This is a monumentally foolish thing to say about a) a president who increased military spending during his tenure in office and b) left his successor with a military strong enough to fight and "win" two wars, one of them less than a year after he left office.
If Clinton had hated the military and acted on that alleged antipathy, it would have been impossible for President Bush to successfully revamp a decimated military force in such a short time. To suggest that Clinton or any other president hated the military is just silly.
But we might question the cynical manipulation of the military by a politician who uses it as a backdrop for personal aggrandizement, who parades in a flight suit on the deck of an aircraft carrier to claim glory won through risks taken by men and women young enough to be his sons and daughters.
This same president's administration was going to cut benefits to service members until the idea became public and a stink got raised over such a move at a time when the richest among us have been receiving bountiful tax cuts and profits.
This same president has also done little to ensure that those young men and women in Iraq have proper gear. It's been widely reported, for example, that insufficient numbers of Kevlar vests were requisitioned for Iraq. Back home, medical facilities have been ill-prepared to treat the injured as they return.
President Bush loves the military, of course, but why was he so anxious to shirk service in it? Why was he AWOL for an entire year of his stint in the cushy Air National Guard slot his father's connections provided for him?
President Bush loves the military, of course, but unlike his father or his immediate predecessor, he does not greet the fallen dead as they come back home in coffins and body bags. He does not deign to appear at Dover to honor their sacrifice.
The news blackout continues. It would be bad for morale to see those bodies coming home, to experience, night after night, the depressing spectacle of flag-draped coffins being off-loaded at that Dover military base. So, to better serve the administration's need to spin events, these dead soldiers are denied a moment's recognition for their sacrifice.
Bush and company love the military, of course, but why has so much of the work the military once did been subcontracted to the private sector, where the taxpayer has to add to his tab the profit margins, CEO salaries and investor dividends of corporations? It's war for profit now more than ever, as food service and transportation and dozens of other military needs are outsourced to big business.
Although we've spent billions on military transport planes, we spend additional billions now transporting troops via private airlines. And the stereotypical image of the lowly GI peeling potatoes in the mess hall kitchen has been replaced with corporate for-profit food service providers.
Kellogg, Brown, & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, has been awarded $2. 3 billion in contracts pegged to Iraq. The administration has even formed a group, at taxpayer expense, to advise potential contractors how to make successful and profitable proposals to the government. And, as is well known by now, most of these contracts are awarded without the messy need for competitive bidding.
Nowhere is there any information about who is going to own Iraqi oil once that oil begins to flow again. It's said that the oil will ultimately be owned by the Iraqis, but which Iraqis would those be? And why such reluctance to cast the expense of rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure as a loan?
Our own country is deep in deficits, the biggest in our history. Iraq sits on the second-largest oil reserve in the world, and it has a relatively small population. Seventy percent of that population is out of work. Why can't those abundant human and natural resources be used to build schools and bridges and roads for the Iraqi people?
If Bush loves the military, it's time he offered up better justifications for the continuing losses the military is sustaining. It's time, and past time,
that those dead were welcomed home in the light of day, honored by the presence of the man whose judgments brought them home, dead to Dover."
Rummy Rumsfeld, The Neo-Con, Neo-Fascist Liar "Not-So-Extraordinaire"
Rummy Rumsfeld, is the neo-con, neo-fascist liar "not-so-extraordinaire":- - ... Does the arrogant and incompetent buffoon actually think no one does their homework?
[i]Joshua Micah Marshall, TalkingPointsMemo, [/i]un-covers one of the plethora of the Bush regime's lies, lies & more lies, on http://www.talkingpointsmemo.... :
[b]Who you gonna believe? Me, or your lyin' eyes?[/b]
Check out this gem, from an article from Hearst Newspapers' Eric Rosenberg, which I found through Atrios ... [ http://www.starbanner.com/app... ]
For example, on Feb. 20, a month before the invasion, Rumsfeld fielded a question about whether Americans would be greeted as liberators if they invaded Iraq. "[b]Do you expect the invasion, if it comes, to be welcomed by the majority of the civilian population of Iraq?[/b]" [i]Jim Lehrer asked the defense secretary on PBS' "The News Hour[/i]."
"[b]There is no question but that they would be welcomed[/b]," [i]Rumsfeld replied[/i], referring to American forces. "[b]Go back to Afghanistan, the people were in the streets playing music, cheering, flying kites, and doing all the things that the Taliban and the al-Qaeda would not let them do[/b]."
[b]The Americans-as-liberators theme was repeated by other senior administration officials in the weeks preceding the war, including Rumsfeld's No. 2 - Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz - and Vice President Cheney.[/b]
But on Sept. 25, - a particularly bloody day in which one U.S. soldier was killed in an ambush, eight Iraqi civilians died in a mortar strike and a member of the U.S-appointed governing council died after an assassination attempt five days earlier - Rumsfeld was asked about the surging resistance.
"[b]Before the war in Iraq, you stated the case very eloquently and you said . . . they would welcome us with open arms[/b]," [i]Sinclair Broadcasting anchor Morris Jones [/i]said to Rumsfeld as the prelude to a question.
The defense chief [[i]Rumsfeld[/i]] quickly cut him off. "[b]Never said that[/b]," he said. "[b]Never did. You may remember it well, but you're thinking of somebody else. You can't find, anywhere, me saying anything like either of those two things you just said I said[/b]."
Let me guess, we're gonna get hung up on "open arms"?
[i](Just between you and me, what's really pitiful about this exchange is that the Sec Def could have easily and correctly said that being welcomed by the majority of the population as liberators is not necessarily inconsistent with follow-on paramilitary or guerilla resistance -- even on a substantial scale. But Rumsfeld just can't help himself.)[/i]
[b]Ah, but Joshua, old buddy, Rummy Rumsfeld is a neo-con, neo-fascist thug who doesn't worry about lying ... because he figures he'll intimidate the media, with his "Big Brother is Watching You" goons! Or, maybe Rummy is simply hooked on the same mind-altering drugs as the Bush's neo-con, attack-dog Rush Limbaugh![/b]
Leading Presidential Scholars on the Bush Presidency - Part I
[b]FindLaw's [i]Writ[/i] Legal Commentary [/b]publishes an article by John W. Dean, on the preliminary views by leading Presidential scholars on the Bush Presidency.
"How is Dubya doing as president? Obviously, that's not an unimportant question as the countdown toward Election Day (November 2, 2004) has started.
Most people judge presidents by their own partisan predisposition, assessing presidents along party lines, and then rationalizing their conclusion afterward. Respected presidential scholars, however, typically try to understand the facts before they make their judgment. While they doubtless have partisan feelings, they recognize their bias, and seek to deal with it in making their judgments (somewhat in the way good judges do).
Earlier this year, a conference organized by Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School to review the first two and half years of the Bush presidency aimed to make just this kind of impartial assessment. The papers presented and panel discussions, later posted online, speak for themselves.
[b]The Leadership Style of George W. Bush[/b]
[i]Fred I. Greenstein, who heads Princeton's leadership studies program at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs[/i]:
Greenstein applies six "job requirements" essential for all modern presidents: the personal qualities of "emotional intelligence" and "cognitive style," along with the leadership qualities of "public communication," "organizational capacity," "political skills," and "policy vision."
Greenstein gives Bush high grades on emotional intelligence, given the fact that Bush could be (based on his years of alcohol abuse) "an emotional tinderbox." Yet as Texas governor, presidential candidate and now as president, Greenstein finds him in good control of his emotions.
Bush, however, does not score particularly well for his "cognitive style." While he does not find Bush lacking in intelligence, Greenstein also does not find him particularly "well equipped to reason clearly about the complex tradeoffs presidents typically have to make."
Our first MBA president gets high marks for his organizational abilities, but Greenstein says his lack of tolerance for staff disputes during meetings results in "Bush's deliberative processing" leaving "something to be desired." Bush's "congenitally gregarious" nature, Greenstein believes, puts him in a league of political masters like Lyndon Johnson. Nevertheless, Greenstein suggests Bush has not lived up to his potential as president because "there has been a hard edge to his administration's partisanship in Washington that was not evident in Texas."
When comparing Bush with his father, Greenstein finds that Dubya does have the "vision thing" -- not because he is interested in policy matters, rather because the younger Bush knows "that if a leader does not set his own goals, others will set them for him." In fact, Greenstein concludes, that while his father didn't have vision and lost, "the junior Bush may prove to suffer because of his policy vision."
[b]The Political Ethos of George W. Bush[/b]
In a fascinating presentation, [i]Hugh Heclo, an accomplished political scientist now teaching at George Mason University[/i], searches for "the distinguishing character of and guiding beliefs behind George W. Bush's approach to politics." In doing so, Heclo dispels the myth that Karl Rove is Bush's political brain -- the "utterly indispensable 'boy genius' who made a hapless George Bush into a political winner."
With "two generations of businessmen-politicians in his life from birth," Heclo says (referring to Bush's grandfather U.S. Senator Prescott Bush and his father), Dubya grew up in a family with an ethos for public service. Dubya apprenticed, and received a remarkable education in real world national politics, by working on his father's unsuccessful runs for the U.S. Senate (1964 and 1970), his successful run for House of Representative (1969), and his runs for the presidency or as vice president (1980, 1984 and 1988, and 1992). In addition, Dubya worked as a political consultant on several U.S. Senate campaigns in Florida and Alabama. In sum, Dubya is no rookie; rather, he is an experienced professional.
However, although Bush is an accomplished campaigner, and has made campaigning a permanent condition of his presidency, campaigning is not synonymous with governing. "While campaigning seeks to defeat enemies to win an unshared prize," Helco writes, "governing demands collaboration to bring others along on various paths of action. Campaigning is about selling a product. Governing is about judging how to use the terrible powers of the modern states."
Professor Helco does not find Bush very good at governing.
[b]Bush's White House In Comparative Perspective[/b]
Another contributor is [i]political scientist and Virginia Polytechnic Institute professor Karen Hult[/i]. Hult contends that, with the exception of a few minor changes, the Bush White House's structure and operations are not unlike those of the Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I and Clinton White Houses. Her expertise includes study of all these prior White House operations.
Professor Hult served as an advisor to the White House 2001 Project, which sought to assist incoming White House staff in governing. The White House has no institutional memory, since each president takes his files and staff with him when he departs. The Pew Charitable Trusts, a foundation known for its nonpartisan work, has sought to address this void by developing comparative White House studies, which can benefit all incoming presidents and their staffs.
In comparing Bush II with his predecessors, Hult notes the "discipline" and "secrecy" of his White House, but generally Bush runs a very traditional operation. Dubya was familiar from his father's tenure with chief of staff problems (for Dubya had to give the word to his father's chief of staff that it was time to move on). Thus, the Bush II White House has a powerful chief of staff (Andy Card), but not an all-powerful one. Instead, Karl Rove, Karen Hughes (while she was there), and Dick Cheney also have significant access to the president.
Clearly, the most distinctive feature of the Bush II White House is the enormous power of the vice president. While this is a trend that began with vice president Fritz Mondale, Hult finds that Cheney is more powerful than all his predecessors.
To make this point, Hult cites a little known but telling fact: Cheney "chairs the President's Budget Review Board, which rules on appeals of OMB decisions regarding proposed funding for executive branch departments; no other vice president has held this position." In addition, Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, is on the president's staff as well, carrying a title equal to that of Bush's chief of staff, assistant to the president.
Professor Hult's essay is filled with interesting nuggets. I confess I was not aware of Cheney's chairing the budget review board. Like many, I suspect, I find the budgetary process rather dull. Yet I also know that budget decisions define the executive branch. Without money, nothing happens. So I thank Hult for pointing out further evidence of the enormous power of Bush's vice president.
[b]Bush's Budget Problem[/b]
Recognizing the importance of budgetary matters, the conference had a particularly lucid expert address the subject:[i] University of Maryland professor, Brooking's Institute visiting fellow, and federal budget expert Allen Schick[/i]:
Mincing no words, Schick explains exactly what Bush is doing with the staggering deficits he has run up with his aggressive military spending and massive tax cuts for upper income taxpayers:
[Bush is] aware of the doomsday projections that if current policy* continues, a generation from now Social Security and Medicare will claim all of the federal revenue, leaving very little for the rest of the government. He wants to strip the government of future revenue, not in spite of these dire scenarios but because of them. He sees revenue privation as the only or best way to change the course of budgetary history….
As Schick puts it, "If Bush has his way, during his presidency many programs will be scaled back simply because there will not be enough money to go around, not because he has launched a frontal attack on government."
In other words, to shrink the federal government, Bush and the conservatives dare not try to repeal popular programs, for to repeal them would offend voters (and Congress would not likely have the courage to cut such programs). Instead, they plan to starve the programs to death.
Shrinking the federal government by putting it in hock will never be announced as their policy, but actions say it all. Nor has Bush told Americans the crapshoot (again my word, not Schick) he is taking with massive deficits.
As the professor explains: "Critics see chronic deficits as jeopardizing the future economic well-being of the United States; Bush sees them as irrelevant." No one will know the answer, however, until it may be too late.
"This is an area where taking the wrong turn may seriously damage America's economic health," Schick says. "Prudence dictates that we not pave the way to the future with trillions of dollars of additional debt."
*[i]Massive military expenditure exceeding all other nations combined and immoral (illegal) boondoggles, tax loopholes & tax cuts for the rich who are exempt from any responsibility towards this nation. My Comments.[/i]
[b]Bush's Foreign Policy Revolution[/b]
[i]Ivo H. Daalder, a senior fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, and James M. Lindsay, vice president and director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations[/i]. Both have served on the National Security Council:
Daalder and Lindsay trace Bush's foreign policy to its roots. When preparing to run for president, Bush acknowledged, "Nobody needs to tell me what to believe. But I do need somebody to tell me where Kosovo is." He assembled a group of eight GOP experts as tutors. They came to call themselves the "Vulcans" (after the Roman blacksmith god, of fire and metalworking) in working to harden Dubya.
The Head Vulcan was Condoleezza Rice. She was joined by Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, Robert Blackwill, Stephen Hadley, Richard Perle, Dov Zakheim, and Robert Zoellick. While these authors don't mention it, Dick Cheney was instrumental in gathering this group as well.
With the Vulcans as tutors, Bush was in effect, declaring his foreign policy posture -- whether he knew it or not. He was rejecting Republicans who were what the authors call "sovereigntists" -- those suspicious of all foreign entanglements and international institution. Rather, the Vulcans "supported international engagement and free trade."
The Vulcans also subscribed to a worldview often called "hegemonist." (This is a coined word based on hegemony, meaning "to control or influence," but as it is now being used in foreign policy discussions, it is shorthand for the idea that "American primacy in the world is the key to securing America's interest.") In other words, since we have unrivalled powers, we can have it our way, and kick ass when we don't get it.
In this brief series of columns, I cannot begin to address the insights Daalder and Lindsay provide. But their demolition of one myth seems a good place to start: September 11 did not produce Bush's radical foreign policy. Rather, it gave him reason to implement it.
Bush's foreign policy today -- from his "axis of evil" approach to focusing on rogue states as part of his war on terrorism -- emanates directly from his Vulcan tutors' thinking. He hinted where he was headed during the campaign, for those who looked closely.
Daalder and Lindsay trace every action Bush has taken, and why he had taken it, but in the end, they conclude that Bush has got it wrong: "Removing tyrants, while perhaps helpful, is not a guarantee that terrorists will be significantly weakened." To the contrary, as we now see in both Afghanistan and Iraq, we may be creating endless new generations of terrorists, potential and actual.
[b]In his next column, John W. Dean will discuss the remaining essays from the conference and collection assessing the Bush Presidency, and offer his own views as to how, in light of all this information, that Presidency -- so far -- should be assessed.[/b]
An Intelligent Discussion of the US-European Differences by A European Policy Expert
There are divergent perceptions regarding proper behaviour in the world, between the Bush regime and the EU governments:-- the [i]former (Bushies)[/i] sees the use of brute & brutish force (& coercion) wielded to enrich their corporate cronies (irrespective of impact upon the weak, poor & vulnerable), as the "only way" to operate, or else you'll be crushed on "our super-highway" ... the [i]latter (EU)[/i] see the more difficult and skillful task of employing diplomacy and co-operation (but, not as sexy for neo-con arm-chair chicken-hawks who are thrilled to watch bombs explode, bodies-bursting & blood-spilling) as the[i] modus operandi [/i]for the world community to work through and resolve problems. You decide which is the sane, humane and more civilized approach, in the best interest of all peoples in the complex world of the 21st century!
Bush has squandered the good-will other nations have traditionally shown towards America, and especially the out-pouring of support in the aftermath of 9/11 ... Now the world community is fearful of the neo-con, neo-nazis who have hijacked our democracy. In 2004, America needs to oust this corrupt neo-con, neo-fascist Bush regime, and replace it with an intelligence administration capable of working with other nations to achieve goals, beneficial for all mankind.
[b]European Affairs [/b]has published the following article, entitled "[i][b]U.S.-European Differences Are Many, but Manageable[/b][/i]" by Dieter Dettke has been Executive Director of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation since 1985. Previously, he was political counselor of the SPD Parliamentary Group of the German Bundestag, and served as Staff Director at the Office of the Minister of State at the German Foreign Ministry. From 1969 to 1974, he was a research associate at the German Society for Foreign Affairs in Bonn. He is a foreign and security policy specialist and has published widely on these issues. [Source: http://www.europeanaffairs.or... ]
"For Germany, the Atlantic Alliance has always been and will continue to be a crucial security lifeline. Thanks to the leadership of the United States after World War II, the Alliance provided protection without demanding submission and today NATO is still alive, whereas the Soviet empire collapsed and the Warsaw Pact is gone.
Common values, as much as a common threat, have kept the Alliance together in the past, despite political differences and economic conflicts. As a result, Germany is now united and Europe is whole and free.
This remarkable, historically unique achievement of the West is also a solid foundation for a European-American partnership in the future, despite the deep rifts over the war in Iraq. As far as Germany is concerned, the Transatlantic relationship is not heading for separation. To be sure, we have to address a number of differences beyond the Iraq issue, but they are manageable. The long-term prospects for the Transatlantic relationship are actually quite good.
The Iraq conflict revealed that we do have a conflict of world order concepts. Europe has reached a post-national stage in its history and is quite willing to pool its potential and to live with rules that chip away at individual national sovereignty. But Europe is not an empire and still far away from common power, let alone power projection.
The American analyst Robert Kagan is right to point out the differences between European and American thinking about world order, in particular the European preference for persuasion rather than coercion. His concept of power and weakness, however, can also be misleading because it suggests a permanent divergence that is not necessarily warranted. A closer, more detailed look at European and American power reveals that Europe is not all about weakness and America is not all about strength.
Even though the United States is by far the strongest military power ever, with a global reach far beyond any empire in history, and is dominant not only politically but also culturally, the United States is no less vulnerable in economic terms than Europe or any other economic power. Whereas military power can be controlled nationally, economic power is beyond full national control. Economic power relies on markets and is, therefore, much more amorphous and less tangible than military might. In terms of power, Europe is in the same economic league as the United States.
As a result of globalization, many problems, such as the environment, drugs, crime and trafficking in persons, inevitably need international cooperation for successful solutions. Although the United States can go it alone militarily, American economic objectives are much more difficult to achieve ui-laterally.
While there is a growing European-American values gap, it is important not to dramatize the differences that exist on issues ranging from religion, patriotism, and family values to sexual orientation. The United States and Europe also differ on important political issues such as social welfare, the environment, how far homosexuality should be accepted and how minorities should be treated. In most cases, however, the differences are more of degree than of principle.
This is true even for the death penalty, which is often cited as one of the most fundamental value differences. The numbers of people in Europe and the United States who favor or reject the death penalty are not totally different. Our legal systems differ, but there is no clash of civilizations within the Atlantic Alliance, as some have claimed. In a pluralistic society value clashes are more or less a built-in phenomenon. They are normal.
There are also broad areas of agreement on fundamental common values, such as democracy, freedom, tolerance, pluralism, human rights and the equality of men and women. It is obvious that our differences emanate from a common foundation, and they should be manageable even if our interests and values sometimes collide.
From a German perspective, opposition to the war in Iraq reflects a legitimate, but limited disagreement with the United States. It is a policy issue and does not affect the German-American friendship. There are many reasons why Germany is so reluctant to use military force, the strongest being its history of warfare and militarization, and ultimately German responsibility for World War II and the Holocaust. The postwar generation in Germany thinks of any kind of war as a catastrophe.
During the last decade, Germany has come a long way from its focus on civilian power to a more active policy of engagement commensurate with the country's economic and political weight in Europe. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, both with pacifist pasts, went to great lengths to prepare a reluctant German public opinion for the use of force in Kosovo and in Afghanistan. The country finally supported this course because in both cases fundamental values were at stake: humanitarian values in Kosovo and existential values in Afghanistan in the fight against international terrorism.
During the war in Iraq, Germany fulfilled all its commitments and obligations as a member of the Atlantic Alliance. Germany provided U.S. forces with full logistical support for their operations in Iraq, German troops helped to secure American barracks in Germany, and Germany provided Turkey with military support and aid. German support for Israel was never in question. There was public criticism of some of the Israeli government's military actions in response to Palestinian attacks, but the government's support for Israel was never in doubt.
Europe was quite willing to participate in the common task of disarming Iraq. What divided Europe into "old" and "new," as U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld suggested, was a difference of view over the concept of "coalitions of the willing," which countries such as France and Germany oppose. It would be wrong, however, to assume that this is going to divide Europe permanently.
The lesson from Europe's failure to reach a joint decision on Iraq is that European countries should not have to make a choice between their continent and the Atlantic. German foreign policy has so far always succeeded in bridging a commitment to Franco-German reconciliation and cooperation, which is essential for European integration, and Germany's Atlantic orientation. Ever since German Social Democrats added an Atlantic preamble to the Elysée Treaty of 1963, the foundation stone of the postwar Franco-German partnership, a key role for Germany has been to prevent a collision between Europe's foreign policy ambitions and American policy and interests.
A better understanding of Germany's role in Europe, particularly vis-à-vis France would have helped to avoid the kind of collision that unfolded in late January, 2003 when France, Germany and Russia, until then only loosely connected in their opposition to the war in Iraq, firmed up their opposition in view of the massive military build-up in the Gulf region. Differences over policy in Iraq are likely to persist.
In U.S. government and media circles, the concern was that during the German election campaign in the spring and summer of 2002 discussion of the Iraq issue often had anti-American overtones and led to a new wave of anti-Americanism in Germany. There is, however, no widespread anti-Americanism in Germany - only a strong anti-war sentiment.
Anti-Americanism in Germany has never been a serious or long-term problem, despite major policy differences over such issues as the Vietnam War in the 1970s and NATO's deployment of intermediate range nuclear missiles in the 1980s, when it was often difficult to distinguish between anti-Americanism and legitimate criticism of U.S. policies. Germany is still one of the most pro-American countries in Europe. Two thirds of the German population or more still say that they like Americans.
Nevertheless, this generally positive attitude toward America has undergone some dramatic changes. In the past, the vast majority of Germans believed the United States to be the most important partner for Germany. In October 2001, 58 percent of Germans saw the United States as their most important partner; that number had fallen to 47 percent by June 2003. Those thinking that France is Germany's most important partner increased from 36 percent to 43 percent.
In May 2002, as much as 88 percent of the German population still believed relations between Germany and the United States to be good, while only nine percent thought they were bad. In June 2003 a majority of Germans, 56 percent, believed relations were bad and only 39 percent thought they were good.
These trends make it all the more important not to lose sight of the real issue the West will continue to face in the future: How to deal with and ultimately defeat terrorism. Transnational catastrophic terrorism is a new threat. Terrorist attacks and mass killings by international terror networks using the language of religion for political purposes threaten the whole of Western civilization and must be resisted for existential reasons.
The existential fight against terrorism is complex and it will take a long time to free mankind of this new totalitarian threat. But we have to realize that this threat is very different from the totalitarian threat of the Cold War. The new struggle is asymmetric, and the enemy is not a state or an empire. Terror networks fight in the name of faith, attempting to entangle the West in a clash of civilizations in the desperate hope that, as a result, an energized and radical Islam will achieve its final victory.
This conflict is much more about hearts and minds than the previous one and it needs to be fought on many levels: politically, economically, culturally and, if necessary, but not predominantly, also on a military level.
To be sure, Europe shares Washington's serious concern about weapons of mass destruction. If proliferation continues and increases, European territory will be at risk, too. That is why non-nuclear European states in particular put so much emphasis on an effective non-proliferation system.
The reorientation of U.S. strategy after September 11 to allow asymmetric conflicts, including terrorist attacks, to be addressed more effectively is quite understandable. In Europe a strategic reassessment is also under way. Germany's new defense guidelines are an example of new strategic thinking beyond the Cold War and in line with the new threats, particularly asymmetric warfare like the September 11 attacks, transnational crime, drug-smuggling and trafficking in persons.
The German army now focuses on conflict prevention and crisis management in support of allies, including operations beyond NATO territory. International terrorism and weapons of mass destruction and their proliferation have become major concerns of the German armed forces. The only way to meet these challenges, according to the guidelines, is through a comprehensive security concept and a global collective security system. In fact, the German defense minister has stated that German defense now begins in the mountains of Afghanistan.
The United States is thus not alone in its strategic realignment and some of the new thinking in Europe is quite compatible with American policy. There is no way, however, that Europe will ever match U.S. defense spending dollar for dollar. Nor is that necessary. It will be more important to undertake the restructuring and transformation of military forces required by the new threats.
There is also concern in Europe, however, over the direction of the new U.S. strategic doctrine. By adopting a doctrine of preemption, rather than the traditional concept of self-defense, which relied on deterrence, America seems to be disregarding basic principles of international law. Waiting to be attacked - in the light of September 11 - is indeed bad security policy and strategy, as President Bush has said. Without changing the Charter of the United Nations, however, the doctrine of preemption would appear to create serious legal difficulties.
It would be a good idea to initiate a reform of international law as well as of the UN system so that the new threats, particularly terrorism, can be dealt with more effectively. One may safely say that prevention in general is part of the concept of self-defense. Prevention obviously involves acting to remove a clear and present danger, an example being the Israeli attack on Iraq's Osirak nuclear facility in 1981.
Preemption, however, is at best an act of putative self-defense, and may involve assuming a threat that is not even real. This is a dangerous concept, because it removes all legal hurdles in the way of waging war. Europe is not against prevention. European powers have demonstrated their willingness to act preventively, for example in Kosovo. Our differences are over preemption. It would be better not to adopt a questionable concept of putative self-defense without changing the UN Charter.
Another even more important issue is that by adopting a policy of creating coalitions of the willing, depending on the issue, the United States is creating a dual world order, in which the United Nations, NATO and other multilateral institutions can be replaced at any moment by such ad hoc groupings.
Europeans, after many devastating conflicts, came to the conclusion that to give away the right to wage war - the right of self-defense notwithstanding - is a major step forward, and not an encroachment upon national sovereignty. By replacing permanent allies with shifting coalitions of the willing, the United States would give up an enormous amount of normative power - rule-setting capacity or soft power - for a narrow purpose.
Coalitions of the willing, whether they mean to or not, will cause existing permanent institutions to waste away. As a result, maximum flexibility for the United States would come at a high price and could also be a source of new instability.
It is not difficult to put together an agenda for Transatlantic cooperation. Indeed, several think tanks and experts in Europe and the United States have already done so. Good fields for cooperation include the Group of Eight AIDS initiative, launched in Evian in June 2003, and the whole area of energy policy, particularly renewable energy.
Another idea is to create a new architecture for the U.S.-European relationship under a new Transatlantic Charter. Architectural designs, however, should not be our first priority - there are many more urgent problems to be addressed. In addition to Iraq, a primary concern is the stability of Afghanistan, which is far from assured. It might be necessary to increase substantially the security commitment of the anti-terror coalition.
The Alliance's capabilities could also be applied to peacekeeping tasks in Iraq under a UN umbrella. Since NATO's Prague summit meeting in November 2002, an evolutionary process has been under way to strengthen the Alliance's European pillar. This process is essential if NATO is to apply its full weight in the long struggle for peace and stability in Europe and beyond. The European Union can take over a number of peacekeeping operations that no longer require the full hardware of a military alliance. It has already done so in Macedonia, and Bosnia may be next. An EU peacekeeping operation, backed by a UN mandate, was launched in the Congo this summer.
The European Union is now on the way to creating the first modern constitution providing for a confederation with strong institutions. This unique post-national effort of pooling national sovereignty is in itself an important contribution to peace and stability in Europe. The United States should recognize the enormous potential for stability and economic progress embodied in the work of the European constitutional convention and the enlargement of the European Union. Washington should heed the advice not only of Europeans, but also of many Americans, to let Europe be Europe.
In a unipolar world, talk of multipolarity can hardly be a threat to the United States. Today, multipolarity is at best an aspiration or a preference for a different world order. Whether multipolarity can create a more stable and secure world order than the present system is an open question. More importantly, a multipolar world can only be achieved through a redistribution of global power. It is not enough simply to claim that the world is multipolar - establishing multipolarity is not a question of will but of capability.
For the stability of an international system, whether multipolar or unipolar, multilateralism is a more important principle. Without multilateralism, NATO and the United Nations cannot function and a European confederation would not work. Rules are essential for stability and so are permanent alliances. The United States, as a superpower, should be interested in this, too.
In late April 2003, shortly after major military operations ended in Iraq and the transition to civilian restructuring began, the leaders of four European countries - France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg - met to consider their own situation and the state of Europe after the war. This small caucus meeting of like-minded governments, favoring deep integration including a European Security and Defense Union, was an excellent opportunity to provide the European constitutional convention with some basic concepts for deeper integration, particularly in defense.
In the United States, this meeting of four countries that had all opposed the war raised fears that they would try to design a European foreign policy based not on Atlanticism but on anti-Atlantic neo-Gaullism, leading to the abandonment of the strategic partnership with the United States. The communiqué issued at the end of the meeting, however, states quite the opposite, namely that "the Transatlantic partnership is a fundamental strategic priority for Europe," and that "this partnership is a precondition for security and world peace."
Chancellor Schröder sees the initiatives launched at the meeting not as an effort to decouple Europe from the United States, but rather as a bid to strengthen the Atlantic Alliance through a more efficient European pillar. Despite much American concern, it is safe to say that the strategic objective of the four countries is the strengthening of both the Atlantic Alliance and the European Union. Their ambitions are driven by the old two-pillar concept first suggested by President John F. Kennedy, which is not a bad concept for a strong Atlantic Alliance in the future.
The revival of the old idea of a European Security and Defense Union is hardly a strategic challenge to the United States. On the contrary, it will emphasize compatibility with NATO activities. The only new message from the four-power summit is the creation of a new joint EU military planning structure. It remains to be seen how far this idea will advance in reality. Even if it were adopted, the Transatlantic context of all European operations would be maintained. If the results of NATO's Prague summit meeting are implemented and the enlarged European Union gets a new constitution, the Alliance will be much better prepared for the future. That will be a change for the better."
GOP Insiders View Veep Cheney as a Liability in the 2004 Election ...
The ghoulish Veep "Anal-Retentive" Cheney is a proven liar and neo-con extremist, who has lied to the American people on the [i]casus belli [/i]for the neo-con's immoral & illegal war-turned-bloody-guerril la-quamire in Iraq and his own sordid & squalid connections to the war-profiteers and "corporate-take-all" robber barons, who are swindling & looting America & Iraq.
There are no WMDs posing an imminent threat to the USA-- Saddam Hussein posed no threat to the USA-- and, Cheney still has enormous financial ties to the war-profiteer Halliburton-- Cheney is making sure that the corporate rapists are able to gorge off the blood of our boys & girls used as cannon-fodder, as they plunder the taxpayer monies in our nation's treasury. Meanwhile, this thug has funnelled hundreds of billions into the grimy, oily hands of the wealthy plutocrats & oligarchs, running-up the largest deficit in our nation's history-- while the low-income, middle-class & fixed-income retirees are forced to pay for the life-styles of the rich & famous, while badly needed services are slashed.
So, why do Republicans now consider Veep Cheney (who delivers upon their "corporate-take-all" agenda) a liability? Probably because even the sleepy-headed Americans are waking-up from their slumber, and many see this goon for the pathological criminal, he is ... Cheney should be marched-off in hand-cuffs to jail ... He is a liar and a swindler ... and one wonders what unsavory & illegal "promises" he made to his corrupt energy cronies in those "Top-Secret" Energy Meetings (attended by thieves like Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay) in the summer of 2000?!?!? Did he promise them their "little war" (before 9/11)??? We know Cheney lusted for a war with Iraq (prior to 9/11 ... prior to inspections ... prior to the 2000 election) ... Cheney lusts for war, as this coward & "arm-chair, chicken-hawk" ran-away during Vietnam ... Cheney is a "nasty-piece-of-work" and what is more, Americans know it.
[b]Why is Bush "let-off-the-hook"? After all, Bush is supposedly the leader ([i]For Whom The Buck Should Stop[/i]) and bears the responsibility for his regime's Crimes Against Humanity ... But the GOP figures that Americans will give poor, stupid Bush the "benefit-of-the-doubt", because he is so obviously a dumb-skull puppet who just does whatsoever he is told to do ... by the neo-con power-brokers who pull his strings.[/b]
In "[b]Has Cheney Turned Into a Liability? - Iraq and domestic failures might cost him a place on the 2004 ticket[/b]." on http://www.latimes.com/news/p...,1,3977412.story?coll=la-news-commen t :
"Is Vice President Dick Cheney an electoral liability for President Bush? Some top Republicans are reportedly worried that Cheney's actions might threaten Bush's bid for reelection in 2004.
The dump-Cheney talk probably originated with disgruntled State Department folks, who would like nothing better than to undermine the neocon foreign policy cabal headed by Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The movement's underlying premise is that the vice president's hawkish positions and statements related to terrorism, Iraq and foreign policy have put Bush at risk.
But even as more Republicans criticize the handling of postwar Iraq, international issues are only half the story. Another problem is Cheney's failed stewardship of the administration's domestic agenda in Congress, which also leaves the president vulnerable next year.
Cheney is the administration's chief legislative officer, responsible for shepherding its priorities through Congress. He's a regular presence at the weekly Senate Republican policy lunches. He also is the first vice president to maintain offices in both chambers. As a former House minority whip, Cheney is surpassed by few in knowing what makes the institution run.
Despite Cheney's unprecedented ties to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Congress has publicly rebuffed the administration on a series of legislative matters. Barring late reversals, the White House defeats will include changes in overtime regulations, the FCC's ruling on media consolidation and the end of the travel ban to Cuba, despite veto threats from the president.
Other bills, such as Washington, D.C., school vouchers s and Head Start funding, have passed the House by a single vote. Several judicial nominees, such as Charles Pickering, have yet to win Senate confirmation.
Cheney's role in pushing the administration's agenda isn't likely to get any easier. Heading into 2004, all House members and one-third of the Senate are up for reelection. Although they want a second Bush term, they've got their own reelections to think about. As Cheney's batting average on Capitol Hill drops, moderate Republicans are straying from the White House line. Even reliable members of the GOP caucus are abandoning ship on issues such as the Cuba bill. When that happens, the White House knows it's in trouble. Of course, not all of the fault lies with Cheney. The White House dispatches other advisors to make its case on Capitol Hill. Party leaders such as Bill Frist in the Senate and Tom DeLay in the House share the blame.
But Cheney's own actions have made him an unusually inviting target. He snubbed Congress and the General Accounting Office by refusing to answer questions about his energy task force. The panel, which came under fire for meeting with industry groups, helped shape the administration's energy agenda. The uncontested bid by Cheney's former employer, Halliburton, to restore Iraq's oil industry left a bad taste in the mouths of lawmakers whose districts contained other energy companies. Democrats have attacked Cheney's nearly $500,000 in deferred compensation from Halliburton.
The vice president's experience in Washington was supposed to balance Bush's lack of expertise in that area. If Cheney, who was elected six times to Congress, can't hold together a GOP Congress for a Republican president, perhaps Bush needs to tap someone else for the job.
In the campaign, Bush needs to be able to point to accomplishments other than his management of Iraq, especially if the death toll continues to rise and his approval ratings continue to drop. With Cheney focusing so much of his attention on terrorism and Iraq, perhaps the vice president has lost sight of Bush's legislative agenda. If so, Cheney may prove to be a bigger domestic liability to Bush than he is a foreign policy burden. Bush will have to decide whether he can afford both worries."
"Crazies" in the White House are Failing Miserably in Iraq ... So, What is Bush's New Idea???
The "crazies" in the White House are failing miserably in Iraq ... (Another Black-Hawk helicopter is downed today, killing another 6 US Soldiers ... Where are those WMDs posing an imminent threat, the Bush regime's [i]casus belli [/i]for war???) ... Idiot Bush's war-turned-bloody-guerril la-quagmire has devolved into a "long-hard-slog" that the Bushies don't have a clue, how to manage-- so they need a new diversionary tactic, to take our minds off the obscene carnage, chaos & mayhem. So, what is the crackpot, Mad King Bush's new idea??? [b]"Mission Creep" ... Let's conquer the entire Middle-East!!![/b]
"Mission Creep" is a term that describes what happens when a project within a given scope, cost & time-scale, balloons over time, into a massive extension far beyond the original terms-of-agreement, cost & time-scale ... Bush wants the entire Middle-East to be made-over into some sort of "ill-defined democracy? (sic)" that will enable his war-profiteers & corporate robber-barons to invade, and plunder & loot other Arab nations-- as they are raping & swindling America and Iraq.
[b]Given the events that have taken place in Iraq to-date, do you really trust that the Bushies are competent to take-on an even more massive endeavour and complicated change program? Hmmm ...[/b]
"In what the White House billed as a major address, President George W. Bush Thursday announced the United States has adopted a new policy he called "a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East."
The speech, which comes amid growing public and congressional unease about the costs and duration of the US occupation of Iraq, appeared designed to rally support by casting the occupation as part of an historic mission by Washington to spread liberty and democracy around the world.
But independent analysts warned that Bush's sweeping rhetoric could backfire against him, both by fueling concerns about his administration's larger regional ambitions and by creating expectations that are unlikely to be met, even in Iraq.
"The rhetoric is meaningless if the reality on the ground gets much worse," said Geoffrey Kemp, a top Middle East adviser to former President Ronald Reagan and currently with the Richard M. Nixon Center, a think tank here.
In an interview he also noted that Bush's praise of authoritarian allies in the region could well provoke more cynicism about US intentions among democratic forces there.
"This is part of an increasingly desperate attempt by the administration to shore up support for Iraq," said Charles Kupchan, a foreign-policy analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations.
"A war that was supposed to be about national security must now be cast as a war for Wilsonian liberalism," he told IPS.
The speech was addressed to the 20th anniversary celebrations of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a quasi-governmental agency created under Reagan that funds political activities abroad.
Invoking Reagan repeatedly, Bush insisted that the occupation in Iraq marks "another great turning point" signaling the "next stage of the world democratic movement" after the Cold War.
"Communism, and militarism, and rule by the capricious and corrupt are the relics of a passing era," Bush declared, noting that "our commitment to democracy is tested in countries like Cuba, and Burma and North Korea and Zimbabwe, outposts of oppression in our world."
"We will stand with these oppressed peoples until the day of liberation and freedom finally arrives," he added.
Bush said decolonization in the Middle East had led to the creation of "many dictatorships," some of which allied themselves "with the Soviet bloc and with international terrorism."
"Dictators in Iraq and Syria promised the restoration of national honor, a return to ancient glories. They've left instead a legacy of torture, oppression, misery and ruin," he added.
In spite of this history, he went on, "governments across the Middle East and North Africa are beginning to see the need for change."
Bush cited in particular political reforms implemented by Morocco's King Mohammed; recent elections in Bahrain and Jordan; the extension of suffrage to all adult citizens in Oman; a new constitution in Qatar; "a multiparty political system" in Yemen; and a directly-elected national assembly in Kuwait.
"These are the stirrings of Middle Eastern democracy," he said, "and they carry the promise of greater change to come."
In Iran, Bush claimed, the demand for democracy "is strong and broad," and he warned that the "regime in Teheran must heed the democratic demands of the Iranian people or lose its last claim to legitimacy."
As for the Palestinians, "the only path to independence and dignity and progress is the path of democracy," said Bush, who, without naming elected President Yasser Arafat, warned that leaders "who block and undermine democratic reform and feed hatred and encourage violence are not leaders at all."
Democratization need not take the form of "westernization," Bush stressed, suggesting that Middle East states could be "constitutional monarchies, federal republics or parliamentary systems."
But they should include certain "central principles," like limits on the powers of the state and the military; the rule of law; space for civil society, political parties, labor unions and a free press; religious liberty; the privatization of the economy; and guarantees of women's rights.
All of these, Bush said, are now being applied to Afghanistan and Iraq.
"The failure of Iraqi democracy," he warned, would embolden terrorists around the world, and increase dangers to the American people and extinguish the hopes of millions in the region."
As a result, Washington should put an end to "60 years of western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East (which) did nothing to make us safe, because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty."
"Therefore the United States has adopted a new policy – a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East."
While his remarks no doubt gave heart to neo-conservative hawks dispirited by recent setbacks in Iraq, the fact that Bush announced no new programs to back up his soaring rhetoric was noted privately, even by NED staffers who gave him a warm welcome.
The administration asked Congress last year to provide 140 million dollars in a new initiative to promote democracy in the Middle East and North Africa, a tiny fraction of the nearly 70 billion it is spending to sustain its military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The speech was "an attempt to put a very positive spin" on recent events "to convince a public that is becoming more skeptical about the benefits of the war in Iraq that it already has had very positive impacts on the area," according to Marina Ottaway, co-director of the democracy and rule of law project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
"I don't think this will be seen as very convincing in the Arab world or to people here who are familiar with recent developments there," she added in an interview.
Ottaway described the speech as a "double-edged sword" for Bush, primarily because of the fading likelihood that elections for a new government in Iraq – a precondition set by Washington for transferring sovereignty to the Iraqi people – can be held before next year's presidential elections here.
Any premature transfer to shortcut the process, as Bush will be tempted to do, "is likely to be very messy," she said.
Kemp said the speech – particularly the different treatment accorded US allies, such as Saudi Arabia and the emirates on the one hand, and perceived foes, such as Syria and Iran on the other – will be greeted in the region as another example of the administration's double standards.
"The irony is that to succeed in Afghanistan, the US embraced two very powerful dictators, Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan and Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, and he didn't mention either one," noted Kemp."
[b]Bush on "Taking Responsibility", In His Own Words[/b]
[b]THEN:[/b] “I think that people need to be held responsible for the actions they take in life. We need to say that each of us need to be responsible for what we do. And people in the highest office of the land must be responsible for decisions they make in life. And that's the way I'll conduct myself as president of the United States.”
“We're working to change the culture in this country from one that said, if it feels good, do it, and if you've got a problem, blame somebody else; to a new culture in which each of understands we're responsible for the decisions we make in life.”
[b]NOW:[/b] “The ‘Mission Accomplished’ sign, of course, was put up by the members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, saying that their mission was accomplished. I know it was attributed some how to some ingenious advance man from my staff - they weren't that ingenious.”
“[The decision to send more troops to Iraq] is a decision by John Abizaid. General Abizaid makes the decision as to whether or not he needs more troops.”
“A recession and a war we did not choose have led to the return of deficits.”
- [i]President Bush, 2/3/03 [/i][Subsequently, CBPP found that about 48% of the deficit was caused by the Bush tax cuts] [Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/new... ]
[b]NOW:[/b] “Every time someone has answered those questions [about troop deployments and time commitments], they've been wrong. They've been embarrassingly wrong. I'll use another word. They have misinformed. By believing they knew the answers to those questions, they've misinformed and misled the American people.”
The Bushies are despicable. More of our US Soldiers are being ruthlessly massacred every day and so are innocent Iraqi civilians-- all to enrich Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Exxon-Mobil: and all the other greedy, corrupt war-profiteers, "corporate-take-all" robber-barons, and the richest-of-the-rich. There is no end-in-sight to this bloodletting ... no exit strategy ... in fact, the Bushies are reacting day-to-day in a [b]panic-stricken modus operandi [/b]because they're "in over their dumb heads".
A "rubber-stamp" Congress, approved in a cowardly voice call (no roll-call count, but it's not hard to identify the neo-fascist collaborators who should be ousted), awarding the arm-chair chicken-hawks, like Bush (who was AWOL in Vietnam) his $87 Billion appropriation for his bungled war-turned-bloody-guerril la-quagmire. Now, the entire tab, borne by low-income, middle-class, and fixed-income retirees is over $166 Billion. Meanwhile the wealthy oligarchs get immoral (& possibly illegal) "welfare-for-the-rich" boondoggles, tax loopholes & tax cuts.
[b]Bush's Death Toll now stands at:[/b]
Over 376 Americans massacred 15,000 Iraqis massacred
Over 2176 Americans injured, wounded & maimed Countless thousands of Iraqis injured, wounded & maimed
This nightmare is tragic. Furthermore, the disgusting bum Bush refuses to attend a single funeral of a US Soldier fallen in his neo-con neo-nazi slaughter in Iraq, because the "boy in the plastic bubble's" handlers don't want him associated with the "unpleasant reality of death". Bush is the only president in our history to behave in such an immoral, callous and anti-Christian manner. [Source: http://www.alternet.org/story... ]
Now, the neo-orwellian Bush gang have come-up with neo-fascist language that would do Adolf Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbles, proud. This cynical, callous and corrupt attempt to manipulate us so ruthlessly and wantonly, by creating sick propaganda, demonstrates that this cabal of thugs, swindlers and looters should be put in "[b]transfer tubes[/b]" out-of-office A.S.A.P. (they should be tried for Crimes Against Humanity), but no later than the election of 2nd November 2004!
[i]Those who support Bush's Iraqi guerrilla quagmire don't give a damn about our US Troops-- They're supporting the unnecessary massacre of our US Troops, by the Bushies: none of whom have ever faced anything more uncomfortable than hemorrhoids or herpes, while sitting on their fat asses. [/i]
[i]Those who support Bush's Iraqi bloodletting don't give a damn about the Iraqi people-- They're supporting the plundering and looting of the American taxpayer and Iraq businesses & industries; while the Iraqi people are placed in ever-greater danger, by attracting terrorists & using the Iraqis as cannon-fodder. [/i]
[i]Those who support Bush's Iraqi neo-holocaust don't support freedom and liberty-- They're supporting the arrogant, bombastic unilateralism of Bush cowards-with-blood-lust who want to watch a war they lack the courage & ability to fight themselves, while handing over the "war-booty" to our nation's traitors & oligarchs ... And they are destroying democracy while installing a neo-fascist state, in the U.S.A.[/i]
[b]I'm not alone in my shame and disgust at the Bush Regime:-- the worst president and the worst administration, in our nation's history-- and there are many, many like-minded Americans who will fight with ever breath in our body to turn these thugs out in the street, in the elections of 2004! Let's send'em in "transfer tubes" to the ranks of the unemployed![/b]
[i]Read on ...[/i]
In "[b]Pentagon Keeps Dead Out of Sight - Bush Team Doesn't Want People to See Human Cost of War : Even Body Bags are Now Sanitized as 'Transfer Tubes'[/b]" on http://www.commondreams.org/h... :
"WASHINGTON—Charles H. Buehring came home last week.
He arrived at the air force base in Dover, Del., in the middle of the night, in an aluminum shipping case draped in an American flag.
When the military truck drove his remains across the tarmac, workers paused and removed their hats.
He was met by a six-member honor guard acting as pallbearers, to allow a "dignified transfer" to the Charles C. Carson mortuary, where he became one of an estimated 60,000 American casualties of war that have been processed there over almost five decades.
"It reminds us we are at war," says Lt.-Col. Jon Anderson, who describes business at the Dover mortuary as "steady."
But America never saw Lt.-Col. Buehring's arrival, days after a rocket from a homemade launcher ended his life at age 40 in Baghdad's heavily fortified Rasheed Hotel last Monday.
Americans have never seen any of the other 359 bodies returning from Iraq. Nor do they see the wounded cramming the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington or soldiers who say they are being treated inhumanely awaiting medical treatment at Fort Stewart, Ga.
In order to continue to sell an increasingly unpopular Iraqi invasion to the American people, President George W. Bush's administration sweeps the messy parts of war — the grieving families, the flag-draped coffins, the soldiers who have lost limbs — into a far corner of the nation's attic.
No television cameras are allowed at Dover.
Bush does not attend the funerals of soldiers who gave their lives in his war on terrorism.
Buehring of Winter Springs, Fla., described as "a great American" by his commanding officer, had two sons, 12 and 9, was active in the Boy Scouts and his church and had served his country for 18 years.
No government official has said a word publicly about him.
If stories of wounded soldiers are told, they are told by hometown papers, but there is no national attention given to the recuperating veterans here in the nation's capital.
More than 1,700 Americans have been wounded in Iraq since the March invasion.
"You can call it news control or information control or flat-out propaganda," says Christopher Simpson, a communications professor at Washington's American University.
"Whatever you call it, this is the most extensive effort at spinning a war that the department of defense has ever undertaken in this country."
Simpson notes that photos of the dead returning to American soil have historically been part of the ceremony, part of the picture of conflict and part of the public closure for families — until now.
"This White House is the greatest user of propaganda in American history and if they had a shred of honesty, they would admit it. But they can't."
Lynn Cutler, a Democratic strategist and former official in Bill Clinton's White House, says this is the first time in history that bodies have been brought home under cover of secrecy.
"It feels like Vietnam when Lyndon Johnson was accused of hiding the body bags ....
"This is a big government and a big Pentagon and they could have someone there to meet these bodies as they come back to the country."
But today's military doesn't even use the words "body bags" — a term in common usage during the Vietnam War, when 58,000 Americans died.
During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the Pentagon began calling them "human remains pouches" and it now refers to them as "transfer tubes."
One term that has crept into the U.S. military lexicon, however, is the "Dover test," shorthand for the American public's tolerance for wartime fatalities.
The policy of banning cameras at Dover dates back to the 1991 Gulf War, under Bush's father, Pentagon officials say.
But it has been unevenly applied: You can see photos of soldiers' bodies returning in coffins from Afghanistan at Ramstein airbase in Germany.
Clinton met returning coffins from Kosovo and, in an elaborate ceremony, was on hand for the arrival of the bodies of his former commerce secretary Ronald Brown 32 others killed in a 1996 plane crash.
Pictures were allowed of incoming caskets after the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in 2000 and President George H.W. Bush helped eulogize Americans killed in Panama and Lebanon.
But last March, a directive came down reaffirming the banning of cameras, likely in anticipation of the sheer volume of casualties being repatriated.
At Dover, Lt.-Col. Anderson says the policy is strictly in place to respect the privacy of the families, although he is well aware that there are those who think it was a political decision.
"The administration has clearly made an attempt to limit the attention that would build up if they were showing Dover every day," says Joseph Dawson, a military historian at Texas A & M University.
The White House policy works — to a point.
If there are no pictures of caskets being delivered to U.S. airbases, citizens don't think of them, analysts say.
Dawson says television pictures of the wounded at Walter Reed would be a jolt to Americans as they head out to dinner or are thinking of the week's NFL matchups.
Right now, he says, they likely equate war casualties with highway accidents: They know both kill and don't need to see graphic photos.
"The administration may have to come to grips with this in the months to come. This strategy depends on how long this war goes on. I have to wonder whether it might be a good idea to have a monthly remembrance to reflect on how this campaign is going."
The need for reflection in America is important, Dawson says, because the country seems to have lapsed back into a state of complacency.
"The country should be asking whether these men and women are putting their lives on the line for a justifiable purpose."
The Bush strategy, he says, is to divert focus from the dead and the wounded until — or if — his administration's policy can be judged a winner, then laud the men and women who gave their lives for freedom.
But it is really rooted in the perception in some quarters that the media cost the U.S. the Vietnam War.
There are parallels between Vietnam and Iraq in the words used by the president and in media coverage, even if there is so far no comparison in duration or casualties.
Whereas Lyndon Johnson and his top general, William Westmoreland, spoke of "steady and encouraging success" in Vietnam when they knew differently, Bush last week said the car bombing of the Red Cross showed the "progress" of the American campaign because insurgents were becoming more desperate.
Johnson called U.S. bombing missions "limited in scale" or "commensurate with need" and groused about news coverage. Bush also says the national media are not telling the truth and keeps implying the war in Iraq is needed to prevent another attack on U.S. soil.
Also like the Vietnam era, more attention is being given to U.S. victims the longer the conflict drags on.
The Associated Press last week ran the names and hometowns of all victims since the Iraq invasion began.
In 1969, Life magazine published a famous, black-covered edition consisting entirely of portraits of 250 young Americans who died in Vietnam in one routine week.
Dawson remembers, because his parents cancelled their subscription.
Television images of American soldiers in combat interrupted Americans' dinners nightly during the Vietnam War.
Clinton took his troops out of Somalia after a photo by the Toronto Star's Paul Watson, showing crowds cheering as a dead American soldier was dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, was beamed around the world on news wires.
Increasing casualties in Iraq have had no such dramatic effect on Bush, but that could change if more attention is paid to the wounded coming home and the way they are being treated.
Walter Reed officials did not return calls seeking comment, but the crush of casualties in late summer was such that outpatients had to be referred to hotels in nearby Silver Spring, Md., because the hospital was full.
The Washington Times said the hospital had treated about 1,700 patients from Operation Iraqi Freedom.
"Rarely have we seen so many young patients at one time," a spokesperson said.
Montana soldier Adam McLain, recovering from injuries when a military Humvee drove over his leg and head in Baghdad, told the newspaper from his hospital bed: "I didn't realize how many people were without limbs or without eyes. It's just depressing. I feel lucky. I have all my limbs."
The situation at Walter Reed and the administration's perceived indifference were highlighted last week by Cher, who visited troops there, then called an open-line show on C-SPAN, the U.S. network that broadcasts congressional debates and other political events.
She did not initially identify herself.
"Why are Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bremer, the president — why aren't they taking pictures with these guys?" she demanded, referring to Vice-President Dick Cheney, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and the civilian administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer.
"I don't understand why these guys are so hidden, why there are no pictures of them."
Cher also criticized the media for ignoring the "devastatedly wounded."
"Don't hide them," she said. "Let's have some news coverage where people are sitting and talking to these guys and seeing their spirit."
For every Jessica Lynch, the wounded soldier who returned to a hero's welcome and a book and movie deal, there is a Shoshana Johnson.
Johnson, shot through both legs and held prisoner in Iraq for 22 days, will receive 30 per cent disability benefits, about $700 per month less than her colleague Lynch.
Johnson is black, Lynch is white and the Johnson family says that is the difference.
There is also an ongoing investigation into the condition of patients awaiting treatment at Fort Stewart, Ga., where hundreds of sick and wounded soldiers say they are languishing in dirty barracks waiting months for needed medical treatment.
They say they must hobble across sand to the use the bathroom, are housed 60 to a barracks and must pay for their own toilet paper.
Only recently did the Senate successfully demand the White House stop charging wounded soldiers $8.10 per day for their hospital meals.
Congress also had to step in to increase danger pay and separation pay for soldiers, as it appeared the Bush administration was set to let them expire on Sept. 30.
When Congress formally approved funding for military operations and reconstruction in Iraq, it carved Bush's request for $87 billion by about $2 billion.
Much of that money will instead be spent — over White House objections — on improved health-care benefits for those in the military reserve and National Guard who are serving in Iraq."
Bush To Face "Un-Welcome" Fiery Demonstrations During His Visit To Great Britain
Bush will face a a fiery crowd during his upcoming 3-day "un-welcome" visit to Great Britain, in mid-November. Unlike the state-censors and state-run-media, in the U.S.A., Bush can't hide (like the Boy in the Glass Bubble) from protestors in the U.K., as he is able to "run-away" and "escape" from, right here in good ole' America.
A few weeks ago, the White House expressed its' dismay and anger that Bush will not be appearing in any formal ceremonies with the Queen-- But, both Buckingham Palace & Downing Street, said they could not provide the iron-clad security needed, as Bush and his corrupt cabal of thugs, are despised by millions of people of conscience. [Even Tony Blair must be regretting the invitation by now-- Maybe, Tony & George should re-stage this photo-op in Baghdad, where they are surely loved as "liberators" by the Iraqi people!!!] You've got to read this -- It's hilarious ...
"This Wednesday Guy Fawkes will share his perch on bonfires with a man who, his critics say, poses as great a danger as the 17th-century conspirator once did.
Anti-war campaigners will prop grinning effigies of George Bush on to pyres around the country, hoping to stoke up opposition to his state visit to Britain this month.
The gesture is an apt one, for the US president can expect pyrotechnics when he arrives on November 19. Protesters angered by the invitation hope it will backfire on the government; George Galloway MP has described it as "sheer political madness".
Activists say it is galvanizing opposition to the occupation of Iraq, and demonstrators will travel from across Europe to join the protests in London.
"Although people were prepared to suspend their disbelief [to support troops], events around the war and immediately afterwards have made them think they should be opposing it again," said Lindsey German of the Stop the War coalition.
"The invitation adds insult to the injury caused by the war. People are saying this is the most antagonized they have felt since February [before the war began]."
Bush's three-day stay is the first official visit by a US president since Ronald Reagan's in 1982. But despite the rarity of the diplomatic honor, Downing Street has refused to comment, beyond describing it as an opportunity "to deepen our close relationship with a close international partner".
Critics argue it provides Mr Bush with an opportunity to portray himself as a well-respected statesman in the run-up to next year's presidential elections. And they are determined to show the world that British opposition to involvement in Iraq has not faded.
"Our main message is to Blair, but undermining Blair undermines Bush," said Simon Hester, an activist at a recent meeting in London to plan the protests.
"If we can help sabotage George Bush's election campaign, so much the better. We want to send a message to all the people of the world - I think our best defense against a terrorist outrage is having a huge demonstration."
While protests will take place across the country, from small communities, such as Calderdale and Keighley, to cities such as Sheffield and Wolverhampton, the focus will be on London.
Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan police commissioner, this week said he expected demonstrations of up to 60,000 people and was canceling leave for all officers.
But it seems that both the organizers of the visit and the protesters hope to keep each other guessing as to their arrangements until the last moment. A Buckingham Palace spokesman said Mr Bush's itinerary was still being prepared and he refused to confirm that the prospect of protests had ruled out a carriage procession or a direct address to parliament, as campaigners claim. They have vowed to dog him every step of his way.
Ms German said: "We are saying he will not be able to drive round London and go to banquets and have photo-opportunities for his forthcoming election campaign back home without it being clear that opposition to the occupation of Iraq continues on a mass scale in this country
"People feel they have a right to protest and to protest in an effective way; getting close to him and making their voices heard.
"But if the only way to get Bush round London is behind a huge iron curtain of security, that in itself will be a terrible blow to the idea that he is welcome here."
No one expects the turnout to rival the million or more who marched against the war in February, not least because these demonstrations will take place on weekdays.
But even a handful of activists can have a huge impact, as Free Tibet protesters showed during Jiang Zemin's state visit in 1999.
While the police presence may be larger this time, it is also likely to be more low profile than during the visit from the Chinese president of the day, when officers unlawfully seized flags and banners.
"[People] have a legitimate right to be protesters and we will uphold their democratic right to protest," a Met spokeswoman said.
The most controversial protest will be a non-violent act of civil disobedience at Buckingham Palace. Milan Rai of the anti-war group Justice not Vengeance, which initiated the plan, stressed that it would not involve trespass, but declined to elaborate.
There will be a big demonstration on the second day of Mr Bush's visit, as well as rallies and vigils around the country, and, organizers hope, school, college and workplace walkouts like those seen on the day that the war began.
But many events will focus on symbolism rather than mass participation. Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, will snub Mr Bush by holding an official reception for peace activists; while the Muslim Association of Britain has asked non-Muslims to join a dawn-to-dusk fast on November 20.
Most potent of all may be the presence of another American, Ron Kovic. The trip from California is challenging for the paralyzed Vietnam veteran turned peace activist, but he said he was determined to join the protests.
"[i][b]This is about life and death. I can't help feeling - as many veterans do - that we are watching a replay of the Vietnamese war[/b][/i]," said Mr Kovic, who is best known for his autobiography, Born on the Fourth of July.
"President Bush is going to London to represent a particular point of view on the war. I'm here to represent what war really is. I'm coming to represent the millions of people in my country who knew this war was wrong from the start."
[b]Ready to protest
The official itinerary[/b]
"The program is still not set," said a Buckingham Palace spokesman
[b]The 'Unwelcome Bush' itinerary[/b]
[b]Saturday, November 15 [/b]
[i]Rallies around the country, in Swindon, Newcastle and elsewhere, to alert the public to the upcoming visit [/i]
[b]Sunday, November 16 [/b]
[i]Screening of Born on the Fourth of July, introduced by Ron Kovic, in London [/i]
[b]Tuesday, November 18 [/b]
[i]Public rally in London with speakers including Tony Benn and George Galloway [/i]
[b]Wednesday, November 19 [/b]
[i]"Alternative state procession" through London. Other protesters to follow Mr Bush. March to the US consulate in Edinburgh. Demonstrations in Cardiff, Sheffield and other cities. In Bristol, protesters will topple a statue of Mr Bush [/i]
[b]Thursday, November 20 [/b]
[i]National demonstration in London organized by CND, Stop the War and the Muslim Association of Britain. Vigils in various cities [/i]
[b]Friday, November 21 [/b]
[i]Mock trials of Mr Bush for war crimes in London and Edinburgh. "Goodbye George" concert in London[/i]."
[b]Mock trials of Mr Bush ... hmmm ... too bad Bush doesn't pay a visit to the Hague to be put on trial, for real, for Crimes Against Humanity.[/b]
Richest Country in the World Faces Rising Poverty Crisis ... What is Bush Doing?
The wealthiest nation in the history of the world, the U.S.A., is facing a rising poverty crisis ... What is Bush doing? Giving massive immoral & illegal boondoggles, tax loopholes & tax cuts to his rich campaign contributors: a consortium of corrupt war-profiteers, "corporate-take-all" robber-barons, and the wealthy oligarchy.
Bush doesn't give a rat's ass about anyone unable to funnel big bucks his way ... Indeed, under Bush, Texas faced the worst child poverty, child disease and poorest record on education-- in the entire nation. Apparently, the Bushies want to replicate his appalling track-record across the U.S.A.-- Their ghoulish objective: [i]Create a Neo-Slave Class to Serve the Neo-Feudal Emperor Caligula Bush & his Neo-Court's Whores.[/i]
Under the corrupt Bush Regime, the rich-are-getting-obscenel y-richer, and the rest of us are getting poorer, as we bear the burden of losing our loved ones in insane neo-con wars, and the rape of our treasury: Progressive taxation is the only fair mechanism to ensure that citizens pay their right and proper share investing in our country, to enable us all to participate in a free and civilized society-- something the ignorant, greedy and corrupt Bush cabal of swindlers & looters, are callous and blind to-- "[b]Why isn't there a "Pre-emptive" War on Poverty?[/b]" on http://www.tblog.com/template... .
Today, the UK Guardian publishes the following article, entitled, "[b]Long queue at drive-in soup kitchen - George Bush's America, the wealthiest nation in history, faces a growing poverty crisis[/b]. In the first of a three-part series Julian Borger takes the pulse of the US with elections just a year away" on http://www.guardian.co.uk/use...,13918,1076608,00.html :
"The free food is handed out at nine, but the queue starts forming hours earlier. By dawn, there is a line of cars stretching half a mile back. In Logan, it is what passes for rush hour - a traffic jam driven by poverty and hunger.
The cars come out of the Ohio hills in all shapes and sizes, from the old jalopies of the chronically poor, to the newer, sleeker models of the new members of the club, who only months ago considered themselves middle class, before jobs and their retirement funds evaporated.
Dan Larkin is sitting in his middle-of-the-range pick-up truck. Since the glassware company he worked for closed its doors this time last year, he has found it hard to pay his bills. His unemployment benefits ran out six months ago and his groceries bill is the only part of his budget that has some give. He and his wife sometimes skip meals or eat less to make sure their six-year-old daughter has enough.
"I would have a real problem putting food on the table if it wasn't for this," Mr Larkin said, his car inching towards Logan's church-run food pantry. As the queue rolled forward, he reflected on the ironies of being a citizen of the world's sole superpower.
"They're sending $87bn to the second richest oil nation in the world but can't afford to feed their own here in the States."
George Bush's America is the wealthiest and most powerful nation the world has ever known, but at home it is being gnawed away from the inside by persistent and rising poverty. The three million Americans who have lost their jobs since Mr Bush took office in January 2001 have yet to find new work in a largely jobless recovery, and they are finding that the safety net they assumed was beneath them has long since unravelled. There is not much left to stop them falling.
Last year alone, another 1.7 million Americans slipped below the poverty line, bringing the total to 34.6 million, one in eight of the population. Over 13 million of them are children. In fact, the US has the worst child poverty rate and the worst life expectancy of all the world's industrialised countries, and the plight of its poor is worsening.
The ranks of the hungry are increasing in step. About 31 million Americans were deemed to be "food insecure" (they literally did not know where their next meal was coming from). Of those, more than nine million were categorised by the US department of agriculture as experiencing real hunger, defined by the US department of agriculture as an "uneasy or painful sensation caused by lack of food due to lack of resources to obtain food."
That was two years ago, before the recession really began to bite. Partial surveys suggest the problem has deepened considerably since then. In 25 major cities the need for emergency food rose an average of 19% last year.
Another indicator is the demand for food stamps, the government aid programme of last resort. The number of Americans on stamps has risen from 17 million to 22 million since Mr Bush took office.
In Ohio, hunger is an epidemic. Since George Bush won Ohio in the 2000 presidential elections, the state has lost one in six of its manufacturing jobs. Two million of the state's 11 million population resorted to food charities last year, an increase of more than 18% from 2001.
In Logan, over 500 families regularly turn out twice monthly at the food pantry run by the Smith Chapel United Methodist Church.
"In all our history starting in the mid-80s we've never seen these numbers," said Dannie Devol, who runs the pantry. The food comes from a regional food bank, which is stocked by a mix of private donations and food bought from local farmers by the government.
Efficient
Fresh vegetables, cans of meat and tuna, and boxes of cereal are stacked in the car park and as the line of cars breaks into two queues to edge past the pallets, volunteers inspect identity cards (customers have to show they live in the county and are in need) before loading rations of food into the backs of the vehicles. It is an efficient and peculiarly American solution to hunger - a drive-through soup kitchen.
Those without cars hitch rides with neighbours. Mothers come with their children in the back of trucks. Karin Chriss brought one of her three children in a 10-year-old Chevrolet van. "If they stopped this I'd be hurt food-wise. I'm cutting down the amount we eat as it is," Mrs Chriss said. Her husband is a truck driver but does not earn enough to pay the bills. The people in Washington, she says, "need to come down and see how many people are in these lines".
Not many Washington politicians do. There was a time when fighting this kind of poverty was at the core of American politics: Franklin Roosevelt made it his life's work; Lyndon Johnson declared a war on poverty with his Great Society programmes in the 1960s.
There are more Americans living in poverty now than there were in 1965, but neither party has much to say about it. The Bush Republicans see it as a matter for "faith-based charities", the status quo before Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s. The trouble is that hard times are drying up donations at the very time private charities are being asked to take on most of the burden.
Democrats, meanwhile, are anxious not to appear as class warriors, and most of the Democratic presidential contenders in this election portray themselves as champions of the middle class, for good reason. Americans who see themselves as middle class are much more likely to vote than those who know they are poor. Mrs Chriss thinks all parties should be abolished. Angela Cooper, also queuing with a young child, complains that families like hers have been forgotten. But then again, she has relatives posted in Iraq and feels she ought to "support our troops" by voting for the president.
"There's resentment down deep but people don't know what to do with it. A lot of people turn inward, rather than outward. You think it would be ripe for an outcry. But it's not, it's all kind of dulled," said Bob Garbo, who runs a regional food distribution centre in this corner of Ohio. "There's a feeling you can't do much about it, that politicians are all bad. Voting rates are down, and politicians are taking advantage of that. Here, only 20% turn out to vote in some counties."
It is hardly surprising the very poor feel they have no one to turn to. A string of local factories have closed in the past two years to relocate to Mexico, a delayed consequence of the North American Free Trade Agreement established by Bill Clinton in 1994. And two years later, it was Clinton, in cooperation with a staunchly Republican Congress, who dismantled much of the welfare system built in the New Deal and the Great Society. Clinton's welfare reform set a time limit on how long the poor and unemployed could draw social security payments. It helped force people back into work with the encouragement of an array of federally funded job training programmes.
It worked well while the economy was booming, cutting the number on welfare from 12 million to five million in a few years. But now there are no jobs. Those who went to work under welfare reform are among the first to be fired, and often find that welfare is no longer available to them. Some have used up their lifetime maximum. Some have accumulated too many assets to qualify, such as a car or a house that they do not want to sell for fear of falling yet further into destitution.
Others have had difficulty dealing with the welfare system's more demanding requirements. A few in the line at Logan said they were struggling without success to extract vital documents from former employers, who have either gone bankrupt or gone abroad.
Decline
So, while poverty rates have been rising in the past few years, the number of Americans on welfare has been steadily declining. Another impact of the 1996 welfare reform was that the unemployed were obliged to take service jobs at the minimum wage (now $5.15 per hour) without benefits such as paid holidays or health insurance. On paper they were part of the success of the welfare-to-work project, but the jobs stocking supermarket shelves or cleaning offices usually left them worse off, especially if someone in the family fell sick.
In Ohio, according to Lisa Hamler-Podolski, more than 40% of the people in the food lines are the working poor.
The harsh impact of welfare reform was initially mitigated by the 90s boom and Clinton-era social programmes to support the working poor and retrain the unemployed. Those programmes are now disappearing under an administration which fundamentally does not believe government should have a direct role in alleviating poverty.
Melissa Pardue, a specialist on poverty at the market-oriented Heritage Foundation, reflects the beliefs of many in the administration when she argues welfare reform has not gone far enough. "The impact of the recession would have been far greater without welfare reform," she said. "The people who continue to be affected are not working. People who choose not to get a job are not going to see more income. It's all the more reason to give greater incentives to looking for work."
The government still distributes food stamps, but they are worth on average only about $160 (£100) a month, not enough to buy food for a family with no other income. Furthermore, more than 10 million "food insecure" Americans, at risk from hunger, do not apply for them. Often they are unaware they are eligible. Welfare reform pushed them out of a system that they have lost contact with.
A study this year by Washington-based think tank the Urban Institute found that 63% of this forgotten category sometimes or often run out of food each month. All these factors explain why, although the current slump in America has not been as deep as the last major recession a decade ago, the food lines this time are longer. They also explain why hunger remains a largely invisible problem. The Americans in the food lines often do not show up in the statistics and usually do not turn up for elections.
"Hunger is a hidden thing," said Lynn Brantley, who runs a food bank in Washington where the very poor live within sight of Congress. "It's something we don't really want to look at. We don't want to admit it.""
Bush Says God Chose Him To Lead Nation: Hmmm, But Majority of Americans Didn't Chose Bush!
Bush is a crazy, ignorant and sorry excuse for a "human being (sic)" ... a bum ... The corrupt Bushies are the only war-time regime, never to have attended a single funeral of a soldier killed in action. They're too busy sucking-up to their "corporate-take-all" war-profiteers, robber-barons & crooks, who put them in office. [ http://www.tblog.com/template... ]
Today, another 15 Americans were massacred in Iraq, bringing Bush's Death Toll to over 372 Americans and 15,000 Iraqis ... This blood-letting is sheer insanity, costing our collective peoples, a tragic toll in lives and treasure ... Rummy Rumsfeld calls it all "necessary" ... Why don't the "arm-chair" chicken-hawks (AWOL Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle), all get up off their fatt, poxxy asses, and go fight ... these cowardly goons, deserve to be frog-marched in hand-cuffs off to jail.
The Bush Regime is raping, plundering & looting both the American taxpayer and the Iraqi industries ... The Bush gang should be tried for Crimes Against Humanity ... They aren't fit to serve in office.
Apparently, the "dumb-skull" Bush is running around the world, smirking to anyone who will listen, that God chose him to lead our nation ... Hmmm, could it be? Maybe, since the majoriity of Americans didn't want, and didn't vote for the whacko Bush. Foreign leaders must think we've got a weirdo & buffoon in charge: They're right! The neo-con, neo-fascist Bush Regime high-jacked the 2000 election, in an immoral (& possibly illegal) banana republican coup d'etat.
Cowboy Bush should explain to us all why God is permitting the daily massacre of US Soldiers & Iraqis-- since Bushy-boy said, prior to his bloody-war-turned-guerril la-quagimire fiasco, that the "Mission" is "Accomplished" ... and the occupation would be a cakewalk welcomed by the Iraqi people ... Apparently, God isn't on Bush's side anymore!
Let's join forces to make certain that the corrupt Bushies don't rig the 2004 election ... Vote and get your friends to vote, a year from today, 2nd November 2004 ... We don't need four more years of this insanity, rape, swindling, looting and tragic blood-letting.
My Message to God: [i]Please Stay Out of Our Government Affairs! Bush has been a Bloody Disaster Down Here on Earth![/i]
Bush says God chose him to lead his nation - Book reveals how President's religious and political beliefs are entwined - and claims he did pray with Blair : http://observer.guardian.co.u...,6903,1075950,00.html :
"President George W. Bush stood before a cheering crowd at a Dallas Christian youth centre last week, and told them about being 'born again' as a Christian.
'If you change their heart, then they change their behaviour. I know,' he said, referring to his own conversion, which led to him giving up drinking.
Behind Bush were two banners. 'King of Kings', proclaimed one. 'Lord of Lords', said the other. The symbolism of how fervent Christianity has become deeply entwined with the most powerful man on the planet could not have been stronger.
Few US Presidents have been as openly religious as Bush. Now a new book has lifted the lid on how deep those Christian convictions run. It will stir up controversy at a time when the administration is keen to portray its 'war on terror' as non-religious.
The book, which depicts a President who prays each day and believes he is on a direct mission from God, will give ammunition to critics who claim Bush's administration is heavily influenced by extremist Christians.
Bush is already under fire for allowing the appointment of General William Boykin to head the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Boykin, who speaks at evangelical Christian meetings, once said the war on terror was a fight against Satan, and also told a Somali warlord that, 'My God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.'
Bush has also been accused of a 'creeping Christianisation' of federal government programmes. In September, the government made more than $60 billion available for religious charitable groups. Critics say the groups will be able to use the cash to promote their religion. One group that benefited from previous grants was an Iowa prison project that entitled inmates to televisions, private bathrooms and computers - in return for Christian counselling.
Now Bush is likely to face intense scrutiny. The book, The Faith of George W. Bush, was written by Christian author Stephen Mansfield. It details numerous incidents where Bush's faith has been shown to be at the centre of his political thinking.
Among Mansfield's revelations is his insistence that Bush and Tony Blair have prayed together at a private meeting at Camp David. Blair has previously denied this.
Mansfield, however, says that, while there were no witnesses, aides were left in little doubt as to what had happened. He told The Observer: 'There is no question they have shared scripture and prayed together.'
The book also shows that in the lead-up to announcing his candidacy for the presidency, Bush told a Texan evangelist that he had had a premonition of some form of national disaster happening.
Bush said to James Robinson: 'I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen... I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it.'
In another incident, Mansfield recounts how, on Palm Sunday last year, Bush was flying back from El Salvador aboard the presidential jet Air Force One and seemed to be destined to miss church.
However, knowing that Bush hated to miss a service, some officials suggested they worship in the air. Bush agreed, and soon 40 officials were crammed into the plane's conference room. The service was led by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, while the lesson was read by close Bush aide Karen Hughes.
The author also proves anecdotes about Bush that had previously been dismissed as false. Rumours that he had prayed with a young soldier who had lost a hand in Iraq were thought to be myth, but Mansfield tracked down witnesses and a hospital chaplain who said that Bush had prayed with the man, ending by kissing him on the forehead and telling him he loved him. 'For me, that sums up Bush's beliefs. He really believes Jesus is taken up in his heart and soul,' Mansfield said.
· A woman rammed a car carrying her children, aged three, five and eight, into a building where Bush was campaigning in Mississippi yesterday. Betina Mixon, 29, was dragged away at gunpoint and charged with aggravated assault."
Rummy Rumsfeld is having a bad time of it lately ... of his own making, it must be said. Emperor Bush's New Clothes, Veep Cheney's Anal-Retentive Screed & Condi "Mother Hen" Rice's neo-creative fabrications (lies, deceptions, and falsehoods) do not cover-up the horrific ugly facts on the ground in Iraq.
The Bush Regime's appallingly incompetent planning as a result of arrogance, blind ideology and foolhardy wishful thinking-- has thrust the United States (and the rest of the world) into a bloody guerrilla quagmire in Iraq, taking a tragic toll on the lives of American and Iraqi citizens:
[b]Bush's Death Toll:[/b]
357 Total American deaths in Iraq
219 American deaths since Bush's bombastic "Mission Accomplished!" screed
Meanwhile, as the corrupt Bush gang launch a neo-con propaganda coup to persuade sleepy-headed Americans that all is happy-go-lucky in Iraq, and Iraqis are tickled pink to be occupied and raped senseless by Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group & other Bush & Cheney Inc.'s consortium of war-profiteers, robber-barons & corporate rapists -- Rummy drops his "long, hard slog" bombshell. [Source: http://www.townhall.com/news/... ]-- Thus, what everyone with an iota of brain-matter observed, was finally confessed by one of the Bush Regime's own insiders: "stuff" is "happening" ... and it ain't a pretty sight.
The neo-hitlerian Bushies, of course, revert-to-type, and start screaming & shouting their imbecilic rhetoric over-and-over again, in the mind-numbing chant: "It's Clinton's Fault ... Remember 9/11 ... It's Clinton's Fault ... Remember 9/11 ... It's Clinton's Fault ... Remember 9/11 ..." ... Although neither Clinton, nor 9/11, nor the souped-up "liberal media", have anything to do with the nightmare in Afghanistan and Iraq (In fact, our media has been highjacked by the right-winged neo-cons-- which is why Bush is let-off-the-hook, for his Crimes Against Humanity & Crimes Against the U.S. Constitution) ...
The bungled, bloody fiascos in Bush's wars-turned-guerrilla-qua gmires, in Afghanistan and Iraq, are the result of corrupt and incompetent decisions made by the neo-fascist Bush cabal, including Bushy-boy himself, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the other neo-con groupies -- all of whom should be tried for lying to the American people and Crimes Against Humanity.
[b]Rummy seems to be losing it ... Is Rummy losing his mojo? ... Just a little indication of how rattled these neo-con ideological crooks are becoming:[/b]
"As the headquarters of the US department of defence, the Pentagon can boast close to 500,000 employees in more than 140 nations but today it saw attention drawn to its second mix up over countries in a week. Shortly after the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, confused Afghanistan with Iraq at a news conference, the US embassy in Bucharest had to apologise to the president of Romania, Ion Iliescu, for the Pentagon decorating his table with a Russian flag when he lunched with Mr Rumsfeld earlier this week.
"It was an unfortunate and embarrassing mistake. Sometimes mistakes happen, but no disrespect was intended," it said in a statement.
Scheduled to join Nato in May next year and a member of the US-led coalition of the willing in Iraq, Romania is one of Washington's firmest European allies but in the past it was in Moscow's orbit.
Romania's influential Evenimentul Zilei newspaper poked fun at the mistake. Alongside a photograph of the lunch, clearly showing Russian and US flags intertwined in the space between Mr Rumsfeld and Mr Iliescu, ran the headline "Memories are coming back to haunt me", the Associated Press reported.
Romanian officials moved quickly to play down the incident. "I don't believe that anyone can imagine that Mr Rumsfeld doesn't know who he is meeting," Mr Iliescu's spokeswoman told reporters.
In yesterday's gaffe, Mr Rumsfeld answered a question from a journalist on warlords in Afghanistan by talking about Kurdish peshmerga fighters in Iraq until it was pointed out that that was a different country.
"Oh, I'm sorry ... I was thinking of Iraq. No wonder I couldn't understand it," he explained.
He did however concede with a chuckle that the two countries were "close".
Mr Rumsfeld was also forced to admit at the same briefing that he was unsure whether he had lost his mojo, largely because he did not know what it was.
An article in Time magazine headed "Is Rumsfeld losing his mojo?" had suggested that he might be. The defence secretary said he had consulted an aide who told him that in "in 1926 or something, it had to do with jazz music."
Mr Rumsfeld's Pentagon press briefing
Extracted from the website of the US department of defence.
Journalist: Do you think that warlordism is something that should be factored into Afghanistan?
Rumsfeld: Well, I don't know quite what it means in this case. If you're talking about militias existing in the country, clearly, militias have existed in parts of that country, not least of which are the Kurdish peshmerga forces. And other elements have had militias...
Journalist: Sir ...
Rumsfeld: Just a minute.
Journalist: Afghanistan, sir, not Iraq.
Rumsfeld: Oh, I'm sorry. Go to Afghanistan. I'm sorry. I was thinking of Iraq. No wonder I couldn't understand it.
Journalist: I thought you might ...
Rumsfeld: I'm sorry. Yeah, I had the wrong country.
Journalist: They're close!
Rumsfeld: Yes, they are. (Chuckles)."
[b]Ariel Sharon better hope that Bush's idiot cabal, in their rattled & panic-stricken modus operandi, don't get Jerusalem confused with Kabul or Baghdad, next time they decide to conduct more airstrikes and drop more bombs (WMDs) on the Middle East "terrorists" ... By the way, which "terrorists", since Bush has created so many?!?!?[/b]
RESULTS OF HALLOWEEN CONTEST: WHAT COSTUME DID BUSH WEAR FOR "TRICK-OR-TREAT"?
LAST NIGHT WAS HALLOWEEN ... AND I STAGED A "LAST-MINUTE" CONTEST TO DETERMINE WHAT COSTUME [b]GEORGE BUSH [/b]WOULD WEAR AS HE [b]TRICKS [i]THE AMERICAN PUBLIC [/i][/b]AND [b]TREATS[i] HIS RICH CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTORS[/i][/b]!!!
THE WINNER IS AWARDED 100 TBUCKS!!!
[u]THE FOLLOWING COSTUMES WERE ALREADY "TAKEN"[/u]:--
We know Bush loves to dress-up in [i]Military Garb [/i](as he proved on his bombastic 1st May "Mission Accomplished" circus act, on the USS Abraham Lincoln) ...
We know Bush loves to dress-up as the [i]Average Joe [/i](when visiting towns & cities in his Campaign Fund Raising, where he's wiped-out jobs across the fruited plains) ...
We know Bush loves to dress-up as a [i]Cowboy[/i] (when eating bar-b-que and watching re-runs of 'How the West was Won' & thinking-up macho-man Bushisms) ...
Also, the [i]Adolf Hitler [/i]costume was sold out ... Veep Cheney already donned that one ...
Also, the [i]Insane Asylum Inmate [/i]costume was sold out ... Rummy Rumsfeld already donned that one ...
Also, the [i]Humpty-Dumpty Couldn't Be Put Back Together Again [/i]costume was sold out ... Condi "Mother Hen" Rice already donned that one ...
Also, the [i]Chicken-Little [/i]costume was sold out ... Colin Powell already donned that one ...
Also, no French costumes were allowed, so John Ashcroft spent the night at the Justice Department where they spied on University professors, since he couldn't don his[i] Robespierre [/i]outfit ...
Also, there was limited space, so Karl Rove & Robert Novak, went to a gay-bar in downtown L.A. dressed as [i]Tweedle-Dum & Tweedle-Dee [/i]...
Finally, British PM Tony Blair couldn't decide between the [i]Toy Poodle & the Mad Emperor with No Clothes [/i]costumes ... so instead settled on the [i]Fat Lady Contortionist [/i]...
[u]OUR CONTESTANTS PROPOSED THE FOLLOWING COSTUMES FOR OUR OWN MAD KING GEORGE[/u]:--
1. Cheese Pizza : Chhheeezzzyyy ... No toppings -- well Bush truly is a bore ... Hmmm
2. Woman with Big Boobs : Bush does seem to have an Oedipus Complex ... Hmmm
3. Rev. Al Sharpton : Might work as long as Bush doesn't open his mouth ... Sharpton's a whole lot smarter ... Hmmm
4. Elmo from Sesame Street : But Elmo cares about teaching little kids to read ... Bush "leaves no RICH child behind" ... Hmmm
5. Ronald Reagan : But Ronny passed legislation to make corporations pay a minimum amount of tax, since the 13 largest US companies were paying zip, zero, nada ... Bush wouldn't like that ... Hmmm
6. Check for $87 Billion : Would it cost Americans another $87 Billion and no end in sight? ... Hmmm
7. Together Bush & Cheney could go as Beavis & Butthead : Aren't they, already? ... Hmmm
8. Iraq General : Bush's head is too small for the General's hat ... Hmmm
9. Draft-Dodger dressed as a Hippie : The Canadians don't like Bush ... and since Bush spent his Vietnam Tour-of-Duty in a druken-stupor, Laura would have to be the designated driver ... Hmmm
10. Osama bin Laden : Dead or Alive? ... Hmmm
11. Penis : Tiny, Deflated Penis? Bush would have to spend all night in a limp, reclining position ... Hmmm
12. Sumo Wrestler : Crush the opposition by sitting on them? ... Hmmm
13. Arnold Schwarzenegger : Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay has met both Arnold & Bush for secret meetings in hotel rooms ... Hire a room at Motel-6, and see if it's a "trick" or a "treat" ... Hmmm
14. Marylin Manson : Too handsome, mild-mannered and civilized for Bush's taste ... Hmmm
15. Squidwird : Would Bush's security detail notice any difference? ... Hmmm
16. Monkey : The taxpayers wouldn't be saddled with the cost of a mask and he could grunt all evening (like he does at press conferences) ... Hmmm
17. Freaky Spongebob XD : Did George Tenet place his dibs on this one? ... Hmmm
[b]... GOOD SUBMISSIONS ...
IT WASN'T AN EASY CHOICE, BUT THE WINNER IS:
THERE IS 1 WINNER & 2 RUNNER-UPS ...[/b]
THE TWO RUNNER-UPS ARE:
[b]skerks5588 [/b]for [b]Osama bin Laden [/b]- If Bush & Bin Laden switched places, maybe we'd all be better off ... the Bush & Bin Laden families are close, so the Bushies would gain in the bargain ... 50 tbucks
[b]whoisjohngalt[/b] for [b]Ronald Reagan [/b]- It's bad, bad, bad ... when Ronny "Greed is Good" Reagan starts to look good, good, good ... a downright genius & humanitarian compared to Bush ... 50 tbucks
AND THE FIRST-PRIZE WINNER IS:
[b]sky18luv [/b]for[b] Rev. Al Sharpton [/b]- because even good ole' Al, would make a better president ... and Bush could improve his memory skills, by reciting Al's words (although he'd have to practice for weeks & have his "Mother Hen" Rice by his side to remind him): "[i]If this president can argue that we can spend billions of dollars to take care of Iraq because we must occupy it, what about the 50 states we already occupy? I'm running for president against a man who believes in privatizing Social Security, privatizing Medicaid, privatizing education. Al Sharpton only wants to privatize one thing. I want to privatize George Bush and make him a private citizen in 2004[/i]." http://www.ontheissues.org/Al...
Bush had a problem with the Rev. Al Sharpton's costume, however, since Bush was too scared to "trick-or-treat" with the other Democratic Candidates ... and asked his mommy, Barbara, to let them know there would be no debates!
[b]100 TBUCKS for sky18luv ... Congrats! [/b]...
[b]NEXT YEAR??? HOPEFULLY, BUSH IS PLANNING TO BORROW AL GORE'S "GOOD LOSER" COSTUME ... SINCE HE DOESN'T HAVE ONE OF HIS OWN ...[/b]
