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| The Return of the "Stab in the Back" ... |
| 05.31.04 (4:02 pm) [edit] |
[b]Our greatest institution in addition to our ability to hold our elected representatives in the Executive and Legislative Branches of our government accountable (and the Judicial Branch can be held accountable through the impeachment process if they violate the law and ethics regulations ...) is our Freedom of the Press, as per the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights ... It is vital that our media and press [i]are not made the scape-goats [/i]for reporting the truth and the facts ... [/b]
"We the People" must be [i]cognizant of the difference [/i]between editorialists who by definition give their opinions (the right-wing dominates the airways with blow-hard neo-con neo-fascists like Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Fox News, and other ideological demagogues ...) but [i]it is up to the intelligent citizen to differentiate [/i]editorialists and opinionated pundits from reporters ... Tragically, the corrupt and traitorous Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] is attempting to[i] tyranically put down factual reporting on the ground [/i]in Iraq and is launching a neo-hitlerian, neo-orwellian campaign to squash Freedom of the Press in order to avoid having the truth and the facts reported to "We the People" ... Moreover, it is the right of editorialists of all persuasions to express their opinions (conservative, liberal, independent, etc.) and this is why newpapers separate their editorial sections from their reporting sections ... The heinous violation of our U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights, must not be allowed to continue by the neo-con, neo-fascists who will do anything including destroy our nation in order to prop-up their corporate-owned Bush regime ...[b] Please[i] boycott those whom you hear blame the media and the press [/i]instead of the neo-con Bush regime for [i]its' own [/i]blatant and ugly failures, criminal corruptions and unconscionable incompetence that has led to their heinous [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the tragic sullying and tearing-down of America's values of democracy and freedom ...[/b]
[b]Read on ...[/b]
Take a look at the morning paper nowadays and it's clear that America has a lot of enemies. Two or three different brands of insurgency are operating in Iraq. North Korea has nuclear weapons and Pakistan is selling them. Our former best friend in Baghdad [Convicted embezzler, liar and neo-con con-man Ahmed Chalabi] turns out to be an American spy [Given top-secret U.S. intelligence by the Neo-Con Traitors in the Pentagon while spying for the Iranians]. Al Qaeda, of course, is still out there. All this notwithstanding, some commentators on the right seem to have decided that the real enemies aren't the ones they read about it the papers, but the people who write them.
Thus, Michael Barone opined http://www.townhall.com/colum... in his May 24 column "that today's press works to put the worst possible face on the war" in Iraq. The president's main task, then, is not to improve his war-fighting policies, but to "show, once again, that the media have got it wrong." Three days earlier, columnist Morton Kondracke warned http://www.realclearpolitics.... that "the media and politicians" are "in danger of talking the United States into defeat in Iraq."
The argument here - that everything is fine except the media coverage - is absurd on its face. [u]The reporters in question are[/u], [i]unlike their pundit-detractors[/i], [u]on the ground in Iraq witnessing the situation for themselves[/u]. It is undeniable, moreover, that a growing chorus of former war supporters - liberals and conservatives alike - people like George Will, Tucker Carlson, Thomas Friedman, Fareed Zakaria, and Bill Kristol have grown increasingly dubious that the president's policies will bring us to success. Is this band of ex-hawks really trying to bring America down, or are they sincerely worried that the president[i] is the one [/i]bringing us low? The doubters, moreover, are hardly to be found in the press alone. Three of the past four top generals in the U.S. Central Command have denounced http://www.washingtonmonthly.... the president's handling of the situation and the fourth is on the board of a company that depends on good will from the Pentagon to stay in business. These general are not die-hard liberals, or surly reporters, they're men who've spent years commanding all U.S. military forces in the region. Perhaps the argument can be made that the likes of Barone and Kondracke are more familiar with the difficulties of war-fighting ([i]sic[/i]) in the Middle East than are these men, but it's a case I've yet to see.
Nevertheless, the political purpose of the theory isn't hard to grasp. The groundwork is being laid for a new version of the "stab in the back" myth that helped destroy Weimar Germany. No matter how far south things go in Iraq,[i] the blame will be laid not at the feet of the president who initiated and conducted the war[/i], but rather on those who had the [u]temerity to note[/u] that it wasn't working. Rather than the critics having been proven right, or so the story goes, the critics are to blame for the failure of the very policy they were criticizing. It's an ugly tactic, and as you go down the journalistic food chain, it grows uglier still.
Former Gingrich aide, Tony Blankley, writing in the well-known bastion of journalistic "propriety" ([i]sic[/i]) that is [i]The Washington Times[/i], likewise took the press to task, calling it "heatbreaking, though no longer perplexing, that the president's political and media opposition want the president's defeat more than America's victory." Standard stuff, so far, but he went on to lament that nothing could be done about it . . . yet. "Sedition laws almost surely would be found unconstitutional, currently -- although things may change after the next terrorist attack in America." Some might find it heartbreaking, though no longer perplexing, that the president's political and media allies [i]are more committed to his re-election [/i]than to the basic principles of American democracy.
On May 18, Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee and the proprietor of InstaPundit, the most popular of the hawkish weblogs, pushed http://www.instapundit.com/ar... this line of thought further down the road. "[b]Freedom of the press, as it exists today[/b]," he observed, "[b]is unlikely to survive if a majority - or even a large and angry minority - of Americans come to believe that the press is untrustworthy and unpatriotic[/b]." While Blankley worried that the courts might block his dreams of censorship, Reynolds doesn't even need a majority. How will this work? Mob violence, perhaps? Indeed, if his campaign http://www.instapundit.com/ar... to incite the defacement of [i]New York Times [/i]distribution boxes goes well, that might be the next logical step.
The image of an "unpatriotic" press hell-bent on wrecking Bush's war couldn't be further from the truth. Indeed, we got into this mess in no small part because of the [i]media's reluctance to apply a proper degree of scrutiny to the administration's claims [/i]about weapons of mass destruction and the likely postwar situation. With the original rationale for war long since having bitten the dust, we've now shifted to a campaign designed to bring American freedoms to Iraq. It's a campaign that will likely fail, not because it's being undermined by a hostile media, but because the president has steadfastly refused to commit the resources necessary to achieve his grandiose vision. As if the consequences of the fateful mismanagement of the war weren't bad enough, we now face that prospect of losing the very liberties we set out to spread.
[i][b]Matthew Yglesias is a staff writer at The American Prospect. Visit his Web site at www.matthewyglesias.com.[/b][/i] - http://www.americanprogress.o...
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| The Abu Ghraib Scandal Cover-Up??? |
| 05.31.04 (3:26 pm) [edit] |
[b]The corrupt Bush regime is perpetrating more heinous lies, deceptions & falsehoods regarding their [i]Crimes Against Humanity[/i] at Abu Ghraib against the American people ... Moreover, they are now[i] engaged in covering-up [/i]their War Crimes and therefore are also guilty of treason & obstruction of justice for which they should be removed from office and put on trial ... [/b]Please contact Congress http://www.congress.org and insist upon the [i]impeachment[/i] of the traitorous War Criminals Bush & Cheney and the [i]immediate dismissal and summary firing [/i]of Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Feith and the rest of their neo-con, neo-fascist cabal of nazi-style thugs & goons ...
Consider [b]"The Abu Ghraib Scandal Cover-Up?" [/b]by Newsweek World News on http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5... :
[i][b]Bush insists that 'a few American troops' dishonored the country. But prisoner abuse was more widespread, and some insiders believe that much remains hidden[/b][/i]
The meeting was small and unpublicized. In a room on the third floor of the Old Executive Office Building last week, Condoleezza Rice grittily endured an hour's worth of pleading from leading human-rights activists who want to see a 9/11-style commission created to investigate the abuse of detainees in the war on terror. According to participants, the president's national-security adviser didn't repeat the line that George W. Bush had delivered to the American people in a speech two days before: that the scandal was the work of "a few American troops who dishonored our country." Nor did Rice try to make the case that by razing Iraq's Abu Ghraib Prison—a Bush proposal that took even his Defense secretary by surprise—administration officials would put the scandal behind them. "I recognize we have a very grave problem," Rice said, according to Scott Horton, a New York lawyer at the meeting whose account was corroborated by another participant. "There are major investigations going on right now to fully understand the scope and nature of it."
But numerous critics—not just in the human-rights community, but in Congress and the U.S. military as well—insist that the current probes are still too limited to bring full accountability. Some critics say Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department is doing its best to stop potentially incriminating information from coming out, that it's deflecting Congress's inquiries and shielding higher-ups from investigation. Documents obtained by NEWSWEEK also suggest that Rumsfeld's aides are trying hard to contain the scandal, even within the Pentagon. Defense Under Secretary Douglas Feith, who is in charge of setting policy on prisoners and detainees in occupied Iraq, has banned any discussion of the still-classified report on Abu Ghraib written by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, which has circulated around the world. Shortly after the Taguba report leaked in early May, Feith subordinates sent an "urgent" e-mail around the Pentagon warning officials not to read the report, even though it was on Fox News. In the e-mail, a copy of which was obtained by NEWSWEEK, officials in Feith's office warn that the leak is being investigated for "criminal prosecution" and that no one should mention the Taguba report to anybody, even to family members. Feith has turned his office into a "ministry of fear," says one military lawyer. A spokesman for Feith, Maj. Paul Swiergosz, says the e-mail warning was intended to prevent employees from downloading a classified report onto unclassified computers.
More worrisome, critics say, is that the Pentagon is investigating itself. Maj. Gen. George Fay, the No. 2 in Army Military Intelligence, is in charge of the probe into whether his own intel officers directed the MPs to abuse prisoners. But so far Fay has questioned no one above the rank of colonel, military and other sources say. Among those critical of Fay is Sgt. Samuel Provance, who was formerly in military intelligence at Abu Ghraib and has told reporters in recent weeks that the Army is engaged in a cover-up. "I had to volunteer more information than was being asked of me [by Fay]. It was like I was adding to his burden," Provance told NEWSWEEK last week. "There are so many soldiers directly involved who haven't been talked to."
The Army has tried to silence Provance. In a May 21 disciplinary order, a copy of which was shown to NEWSWEEK, battalion commander Lt. Col. James Norwood notifies Provance that he has lost his security clearance and is being "flagged" for violating a previous order to keep quiet. That means he is ineligible for promotions, awards or security clearance. Norwood appears to threaten Provance with prosecution, saying, "There is reason for me to believe that you may have been aware of the improper treatment of the detainees at Abu Ghraib before they were reported by other soldiers." General Fay's conclusions, Norwood warns, "may reveal that you should face adverse action for your failure to report."
Yet no officer above General Fay's rank is likely to have to worry about the conclusions of his investigation. Under military doctrine, Fay, as a two-star general, "can only hold a one-star accountable," says an Army general familiar with such investigations. "He can say someone higher up is the proximate cause, but he can't actually have a finding that says, 'I recommend Maj. Gen. so-and-so be relieved of command.' And if somebody tells him it came from the CIA, what can Fay do? Nothing. He can only say it's outside the jurisdiction of his investigation." Because Fay was appointed by Iraq commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, he is also effectively limited from taking his probe beyond Sanchez's command, says Scott Silliman, a former Air Force lawyer who is now a law professor at Duke. "It would be difficult for Fay even to question Sanchez," says Silliman. In fact, none of the five investigations the military itself is now conducting is aimed higher up the chain of command than Sanchez.
Pentagon officials said last week that Sanchez would be replaced as commander of Joint Task Force-7 in Iraq. Formally, Sanchez's recall is unrelated to the scandal. But military sources acknowledge that an increasing body of evidence indicates his command has not been forthright about when it learned of the abuses or what it did—and failed to do—about them. The Red Cross first warned Joint Task Force-7 of the kind of abuses seen in the prison photos last November, fully two months before Sanchez launched an investigation. The general says he didn't find out about the abuses until January. But two military sources say his deputy, Maj. Gen. Walter Wodjakowski, was present at a meeting in late November to discuss a response to the Red Cross. Also at the meeting was Col. Mark Warren, Sanchez's top legal adviser. In mid-May Warren denied in reply to a NEWSWEEK question that his office had drafted the command's response, which brushed off the Red Cross allegations. But Warren later acknowledged under oath to the Senate Armed Services Committee that his JAG team had drafted the command's response.
The White House insists the president wants to conduct a "systemwide" probe of the detainee issue. Administration officials point to a new "independent panel" formed by Rumsfeld. A top Bush aide says the panel—consisting of four members of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board, including former Defense secretaries James Schlesinger and Harold Brown—will address "the totality" of all the investigations. But Rumsfeld himself, in his letter appointing the panel, indicates that his interest is mainly in looking at future issues like interrogation, force structure and training. "Issues of personal accountability will be resolved through established military justice and administrative procedures," Rumsfeld says, "although any information you may develop will be welcome." (Former Rep. Tillie Fowler, a member, says the group is now "putting together a timeline of who knew what when.")
On Capitol Hill, legislators on both sides of the aisle complain testily that the Pentagon has turned into an informational black hole. Some 2,000 out of 6,000 pages were missing from the copy of the Taguba report delivered from the Pentagon to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita last week called this merely an "oversight." But among the missing pages were key documents, including the final section of Taguba's lengthy questioning of Col. Thomas Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, the unit that actually ran the interrogations in Abu Ghraib Block 1A when the abuses occurred. Sources say Pappas gave Taguba a detailed account of why he believed that "policies and procedures" at Abu Ghraib "were enacted as a specific result" of recommendations made by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the former commander at Guantanamo. Miller denies that he exported to Iraq techniques used on Qaeda and Taliban suspects at Gitmo. But Pappas even had some documents to buttress his case, sources say, including one titled "Draft Update for the Secretary of Defense."
Some senators say the Pentagon has so far obscured two issues: who ordered Miller to Abu Ghraib in the first place, and who in the Pentagon knew of the interrogation practices put in place there. Steve Cambone, Rumsfeld's under secretary for intelligence, merely said at a May 7 hearing of the Armed Services Committee that Miller had gone to Iraq "at my encouragement." But neither Sanchez nor CENTCOM commander, Gen. John Abizaid, would tell a later hearing if they knew of involvement by civilian higher-ups at the Pentagon. As one committee member, Sen. Robert Byrd, told NEWSWEEK: "I was stunned that the two top generals [in the Gulf] hemmed and hawed and claimed they had no idea whether the secretary of Defense or the civilian leadership of the Defense Department played any role."
Miller himself has been accused of being less than forthright in a classified briefing before Congress. In a May 21 letter to Miller, Rep. Jane Harman chastised the general for "gaps and discrepancies in your presentation" and for selectively withholding information in a classified session the day before. Harman, the ranking minority member on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, added that she now questions Miller's "candor." (A spokesman for Miller, Barry Johnson, told NEWSWEEK that Miller "is drafting a response and providing additional facts.")
Even Bush's Republican allies, like Armed Services Committee chair John Warner, want to know more. And now the White House seems to be constructing a legal moat around the president. Its argument is that Bush's orders were simply disobeyed. Rice told the human-rights lawyers last week that the president's clear directives on observing the Geneva Conventions and anti-torture laws were not followed. She also allowed that she didn't know yet the full scope of the scandal, which seemed to conflict with Bush's insistence that a few bad MPs were to blame. A senior administration official insists there is no contradiction: "When the president talks about Abu Ghraib in that specific, particular way ... I just don't think anybody believes you're going to find it that widespread across the system." But until all of the facts of the prisoner-abuse scandal come out, nobody will be able to make a sound judgment about who is ultimately responsible.
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| Bush & Blair: Never Mind the Truth ... |
| 05.31.04 (11:04 am) [edit] |
[b]Why should they tell the unpleasant truth when Bush & Blair get away with heinous lies, deceptions & falsehoods??? ...[/b]
[b][u]Never mind the truth[/u][/b] - http://www.guardian.co.uk/com...,3604,1228123,00.html
[i][b]Bush and Blair appear to think that making declarations on Iraq is enough to change the realities on the ground [/b][/i]
Seeing the US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, testify before the 9/11 commission on CNN in April was a challenge in eye-ear coordination. While she eloquently spelled out the Bush administration's strategy for the war on terror, the tickertape of rolling news spewed out grim news from the front across the bottom of the screen. Your ears took in the official narrative: "We are in control and shaping a positive future for the Middle East." Your eyes traced the brutal reality: "This is a bloody mess and innocents are dying."
At the very moment when Rice said that the invasion had removed a source "of violence and fear and instability in the world's most dangerous region", the tape read: "Iraq's interim interior minister Nuril Al-Badran announces his resignation; interior ministry is in charge of police forces."
At the point when she told the commission that invading Iraq was one of "the only choices that can ensure the safety of our nation for decades to come", the wire services reported: "Iraqis say air strike killed dozens gathered for prayers."
Politics has, to an extent, always been about the triumph of symbols over substance and assertion over actuality. But in the case of Iraq this trend seems to have reached its apogee, as though statements by themselves can fashion reality by the force of their own will and judgment. Declaration and proclamation have become everything. The question of whether they bear any relation to the world we actually live in seems like an unpleasant and occasionally embarrassing intrusion. The motto of the day both in Downing Street and the White House seems to be: "To say it is so is to make it so." These people are rewriting history before the ink on the first draft is even dry.
The most obvious example was President George Bush's speech to the nation last week, as he struggled to define the mission in Iraq. "On June 30 the occupation will end and Iraqis will govern their own affairs," he said. To understand what will happen at the end of the month it would make more sense to turn the sentence inside out so that it says the opposite: "On June 30 the occupation will continue and Iraqis will not govern their own affairs."
To the charge that this is leftwing axe-grinding, look no further than the lead editorial in the Economist, which supported the war. "To those who complain that in this case the sovereignty of the Iraqi government is going to be pretty bogus, the answer of Messrs Bush and Blair ought to be the honest one. Of course it is. In Iraq's present context, sovereignty is just a word on paper, and not even the most important one."
Only yesterday the Iraqi governing council members complained of "massive pressure" to endorse Adnan Pachachi, America's choice for president of the interim government, even though most of them favoured another candidate, more critical of the US. The US, which has the final say in the matter, threatened not to recognise the council's choice. Given that the US chose the members of the council, one can only imagine how they will get on with a truly independent, democratically accountable group of representatives.
Sadly, we are not about to find out. What will in fact happen on June 30 is that a former CIA operative, Iyad Allawi, who was picked by the US with little involvement from the United Nations, will head a puppet regime. This "sovereign" country will have 138,000 US troops on its soil, not to mention soldiers from Britain and elsewhere, and its "sovereign" leader will have no control over what they do. "US forces remain under US command and will do what is necessary to protect themselves," says Colin Powell.
Tony Blair for once disagreed. "If there is a political decision as to whether you go into a place like Fallujah in a particular way, that has to be done with the consent of the Iraqi government and the final political control remains with the Iraqi government," he said. But by the next day he was back in his box. "We are both absolutely agreed that there should be full sovereignty transferred to the Iraqi people, and the multinational force should remain under American command," he told the Commons.
In so doing he revealed two of the golden rules in this new era of politics by pronouncement. First, so long as you say things boldly and confidently, they do not have to make any sense. Second, whatever announcement you make last negates all announcements you've made before.
Indeed, Blair, of whom Doris Lessing, the novelist, once said: "He believes in magic. That if you say a thing, it is true," is the high priest of this dark art. Here are a few corkers he pulled out of the hat in the past two years.
"There is no doubt at all that the development of weapons of mass destruction by Saddam Hussein poses a severe threat, not just to the region but to the wider world," he said in April 2002. Just four months before he bombed Iraq he said: "Nobody in the British government is in favour of military action against Iraq." And then there is my favourite, from this April. "We have been involving the UN throughout," by which we can only presume he means bugging the offices of the secretary general.
The least kind, and yet most obvious, explanation for why these statements have no resemblance to the truth would be that Blair keeps lying. A more generous interpretation would be that he is a hopelessly wishful thinker.
In fact, wishful thinking has been the entire intellectual and political thrust of the "liberal hawks" - the lefties who backed the war. They wished that the UN would pass a second resolution, that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, that the Iraqi people would come out and greet western soldiers, that the Bush administration had noble intentions and that Blair could exert influence over the US in the Middle East. Some of us wished that they would get real.
For one of the most pernicious baseless assertions in recent times is the notion that there is any such thing as a "liberal hawk". There isn't. People are not liberal just because they say so. For the term to have any meaning at all they have to share some common ground on which the bombing of Iraq has no place. There was no progressive case for bypassing the will of the UN and international law and bombing a country that posed no immediate threat to any other. There was a liberal dilemma about how you confront vicious dictators. But in the case of Iraq it no more led to war than the liberal dilemma over how to solve crime leads to capital punishment.
Having seen their wish-list shredded by the neoconservatives in the Pentagon and the White House, some now wring their hands and wonder where it all went wrong, while others become ever more bullish and bizarre in defence of a stance long since discredited.
Liberals never provided a case for this war. There was "liberal" cover for it. A fact for which conservatives are delighted and those coopted by them should be ashamed.
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| Jewish Congresswoman Says Bush's Policies a Danger to Jews |
| 05.30.04 (5:17 pm) [edit] |
[b]It is frightening that we live in a neo-fascist anachronistic neo-orwellian era [/b]in which [i]any criticism [/i]of the insane neo-con warmongering policies of the corrupt Bush regime is bizarrely called "unpatriotic" (when it [i]is [/i]indeed patriotic to point out the traitorous war crimes committed by the vile Bushies) [i]and [/i]in which [i]any criticism[/i] of the insane neo-hitlerian policies of the corrupt Sharon Likud Party is bizarrely called "anti-semitic" (when it is[i] not[/i] "anti-semitic" but instead absolutely vital to stand-up for human rights) ...
For some insightful articles on this topic refer to:
"[i][b]Are Foes of Israeli Policy Enemies of Jews??? [/b][/i]..." on http://www.tblog.com/template...
"[i][b]Criticism of Israel Is Not "Anti-Semitic" [/b][/i]..." on http://www.tblog.com/template...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
[b]"The Forward"[/b] -- The simmering debate over the role of Jewish neoconservatives in drawing America into war in Iraq erupted with new fury this week. One of America's most respected ex-generals took to the airwaves to charge on[i] CBS News' "60 Minutes"[/i] that the war had been fought for Israel's benefit, just days after a similar charge was leveled on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
The retired general, Anthony Zinni, a past chief of the U.S. Central Command and President Bush's former Middle East special envoy, told [i]"60 Minutes"[/i] on Sunday that the neoconservatives' role in pushing the war for Israel's benefit was "the worst-kept secret in Washington." Three days earlier, Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, a South Carolina Democrat, rose on the Senate floor to defend a newspaper essay he had written earlier in the month making the same charge. Both men complained that they had been unfairly labeled antisemitic for speaking out.
Their comments come just weeks after the United Nations' special envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, called Israel a "poison in the region" and said that American support for Israeli policies was making his job more difficult.
In the face of these mounting criticisms, a leading Jewish Democrat on Capitol Hill, Rep. Nita Lowey of New York, told the[i] Forward [/i]that the president's policies were increasing the danger to Jews across the world.
"We are very worried about the rise of anti-semitism internationally," said Lowey in an interview Monday with the [i]Forward[/i]. She argued that disdain for the president and his policies has "stirred up" antisemitic feelings worldwide. "It's a real concern for me as a Jewish member of Congress."
Lowey's comments drew sharp criticisms from officials at the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Congress. "That's absurd," said the ADL's national director, Abraham Foxman, when informed of Lowey's comments. "It's worse than blaming the victim. It's blaming someone who stands up for the victim." David Twersky, the director of international programs at the American Jewish Congress, also objected, telling the Forward: "Without being partisan about it, I am appalled that anyone should attribute the rise of antisemitism in the Islamic world, and separately in Western Europe, to George Bush's policies in the Middle East."
One Democratic activist, who asked not to be identified, defended Lowey's comments: "There is certainly a strong stream within the party, and particularly among progressives and many Jews are progressives that George Bush's inability to play well with others and his inability to think diplomatically and multinationally ... has increased world hatred of the United States. There are many in the Arab world who believe that America is run by and owned by Jews. So it is not that hard to get from A to B. I tend to think that any independent analyst would tend to say the same thing. So why try to give [Bush] the benefit of the doubt? If he could connect these dots it would modify his behavior and make him think more diplomatically."
The Bush administration also was portrayed as reckless by Gen. Anthony Zinni during his interview with [i]"60 Minutes," [/i]in which he said it "was the worst-kept secret in Washington" that neoconservatives had sold Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on a plan to democratize the Middle East. Those remarks drew criticisms from officials at both the National Jewish Democratic Council and the Republican Jewish Coalition.
Just three days before Zinni's interview was broadcast, Hollings took to the Senate floor to defend his little-noticed claim earlier this month that Bush sent the country to war in order to win Jewish votes and protect Israel, after consulting with Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith and Richard Perle, the former chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. In his May 20 floor speech, Hollings also blasted the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the lobbying powerhouse in Washington known as Aipac.
"You can't have an Israel policy other than what Aipac gives you around here," Hollings said. "I have followed them mostly in the main, but I have also resisted signing certain letters from time to time, to give the poor president a chance."
Hollings said he was motivated by a concern for Israel, which he insisted has been threatened by the turmoil in Iraq. But the South Carolina senator drew sharp criticism from Jewish communal leaders, Jewish political activists from both parties, and Democratic and Republican lawmakers, including Senator John Kerry (Please see story on Page 4).
Foxman sent Hollings a letter May 14 arguing that the senator's remarks were "reminiscent of age-old, antisemitic canards about a Jewish conspiracy to control and manipulate the government."
During his floor speech, Hollings spoke angrily about critics who raised such claims. "I won't apologize," Hollings declared during a May 20 speech from the Senate floor. "I want them to apologize to me."
Zinni sounded a similar note in his [i]"60 Minutes"[/i] interview, complaining that he was "called antisemitic" for writing an article in which he mentioned Bush's neoconservative advisers.
"I mean, you know, unbelievable that that's the kind of personal attacks that are run when you criticize a strategy and those who propose it," Zinni said. "I certainly didn't criticize who they were. I certainly don't know what their ethnic religious backgrounds are. And I'm not interested."
http://www.forward.com/main/article.php?ref=eden200405271245" title="http://www.forward.com/main/article.php?ref=eden200405271245" target="_blank"http://www.forward.com/main/a...
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| 05.29.04 (2:38 pm) [edit] |
[b]Please contact [i]The Nation[/i] http://www.thenation.com/abou... to say good-bye to Matt Bivens who authors the outstanding [i]Daily Outrage [/i]... and will [i]very much [/i]be missed by those of us who seek the truth and not neo-con, neo-fascist propaganda ...[/b]
[b]Matt Bivens' last [i]Daily Outrage [/i]...[/b]
The mental image we share of a near-nuclear war scenario goes like this:
A threat is detected. Military men dutifully begin working their way through a crisp and precise set of protocols. In due time the threat is defused, or revealed to have been false. And then everyone stands down from Armageddon in the same crisp, orderly fashion as they had ramped up for it.
Well, guess what? Turns out that it's nothing like that.
Consider, for example, a fun Cold War-era fact from Bruce Blair, who is president of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information http://www.cdi.org/ .
Blair was a Minuteman nuclear missile launch officer in the 1970s, and ran through simulations of about 100 nuclear wars http://www.cdi.org/friendlyve... -- deadly exchanges in which he and his colleagues fired up to 50 nuclear missiles at the Soviet Union.
To launch a Minuteman in those days, one had to "unlock" the missile by dialing in a code -- the equivalent of a safety catch on a handgun. However, Blair reports http://www.cdi.org/blair/perm... , the US Strategic Air Command was worried that a bunch of sissy safety features might slow things down. It ordered all locks set to 00000000 -- and in launch checklists, reminded all launch officers like Blair to keep the codes there. "So the 'secret unlock code' during the height of the nuclear crises of the Cold War," Blair says, "remained constant at 00000000."
Blair recently buttonholed Robert McNamara, the former US defense secretary best known for overseeing the escalation of our war in Vietnam.
It was McNamara who ordered that safety locks be put on Minuteman missiles, and he spoke with great pride of this as a reform crucial to preventing accidental nuclear war. So when Blair told him http://www.cdi.org/blair/perm... the code was fixed at a line of zeros, he flipped.
"I am shocked, absolutely shocked and outraged," McNamara said. "Who the hell authorized that?"
Hmmm. Now, how could anybody be shocked -- shocked! -- to find we weren't in control http://www.cdi.org/blair/laun... of our nuclear arsenals?
Over the decades we've lived with thousands of hair-trigger-launch nukes, there have been four major false alarms (that we know of): 1979 and 1980 http://www.nuclearfiles.org/k... (both American false alarms); in 1983 (a Soviet false alarm, about which more in a moment); and in 1995 http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/c... (a Russian false alarm).
And yet the United States and Russia in 2004 -- just as in the 1970s, '80s and '90s -- still have thousands of nuclear weapons poised to be launched at each other in minutes.
Candidate-for-president George W. Bush back in 2000 argued forcefully http://www.nuclearfiles.org/r... for de-alerting the US missile fleet -- reducing the launch protocols from mere minutes to hours or even days. Sadly for us, he dropped that pretty definitively http://www.thenation.com/doc.... once in office.
And so we are left to be protected by the ad-hoc freelancing of men like Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov http://www.mosnews.com/featur... , who was honored recently http://www.mosnews.com/news/2... in Moscow by the Association of World Citizens http://www.worldcitizens.org/... , a San Francisco-based peace group.
Why? Because he did not do his job -- and, frankly, for no real good reason.
Nineteen-eighty-three was, in retrospect, a terrifying year. Ronald Reagan was pushing a nuclear buildup, talking about "winnable" nuclear wars and a "Star Wars" missile defense shield, and putting missiles in Europe; the Soviets were responding with the "Dead Hand" http://www.brook.edu/dybdocro... nuclear launch system and other grim moves to counter a surprise attack.
In June of that year, we had the idiocy http://www.thenation.com/outr... of the "Farewell Dossier" -- a recently revealed Cold War episode in which the Reagan team engineered a massive explosion at a Siberian pipeline (one that reportedly had startled US war planners into thinking a nuclear exchange was under way). In August, the Soviets shot down Korean Air Lines 007, killing all 269 people on board.
Weeks later, on September 26, 1983, at half-past midnight, Petrov was watching horrified as a warning system he had helped create reported five US missiles launched and headed toward Soviet territory.
Blair says this was the closest we've ever come to accidental nuclear war. "By all rights we should have blown ourselves to bits by now," he told me in an e-mail message, "but good luck and good judgment up and down the chain of command have spared us this fate ... so far."
All the data checked out; there was no sign of any glitch or error. Yet Petrov http://www.worldcitizens.org/... says, "I just couldn't believe that just like that, all of a sudden, someone would hurl five missiles at us." And: "I imagined if I'd assume the responsibility for unleashing the Third World War -- and I said, 'No, I wouldn't.'"
Petrov declared it to be a false alarm -- not because he had any evidence of that, but because he wanted it to be false.
And then, he says http://www.worldcitizens.org/... , "I drank half a liter of vodka as if it were only a glass and slept for 28 hours." Which is what I feel like doing every time I'm confronted with our complacence about this system we've built.
[b]NOTE TO READERS:[/b] [i][b]We've been outraged together for some time now, and I've enjoyed your company. So it's with some regret that I report this will be my last Daily Outrage. I am taking an indefinite sabbatical from my friends at The Nation to pursue some new projects. Thanks for reading, and all the best! -- Matt Bivens[/b][/i]. - http://www.thenation.com/outr...
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| Mad Dogs & Sick Puppies ... |
| 05.29.04 (8:05 am) [edit] |
"[i]'Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun[/i]." - Noel Coward
[b]The United States of America is tragically saddled with neo-con mad dogs & neo-fascist sick puppies in the corrupt & traitorous Bush regime who have hijacked our nation and deserve to be[i] impeached [/i]and sent to the Hague to be tried for [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]...
Read on ... [/b]
What is it going to take to get the people to rise up and demand Congress remove George W. Bush and his whole administration from power on charges of and conviction for treason and other high crimes and misdemeanors?
Thanks to Bush and the cabal of neoconservatives and religious zealots he had surrounded himself with, we are now the most hated nation on the planet. And rightly so. In addition, we also have been disgraced to our core by the actions of US troops, acting under orders that came all the way from the top, who tortured Iraqis and Afghanis in their custody, and who knows what unspeakable acts they have committed on so-called "enemy combatants" being held in Guantanamo.
In a little more than three years, the Bush regime wrecked our economy—which is the least of it—was complicit in the 9/11 attacks, engaged in illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that has left both countries in ruin, shredded our constitution, dehumanized Afghanis and Iraqis and condoned their torture, and not only sat by but approved its equally maniacal Israeli counterparts' genocidal slaughter of the Palestinians.
What sort of a people are we? What does it say about us if we do nothing to stop the mad dogs who now control our country?
Have not the photos of soldiers smiling and laughing over their atrocities awakened us? These are not merely "trailer park trash," as some have depicted them. Nor is what they did equate with "college kid pranks," as the sick puppies on right-wing talk shows and their equally sick followers claim. These are our kids, regardless of their degree of education or economic standing, who have been turned into depraved, cold-blooded killers. They are us.
And those soldiers who somehow escaped being turned into mindless mass murders and who haven't engaged in torturing helpless people, but who have the blood of innocent men, women and children on their hands, when the horrors of what they have done sink in will pay a terrible emotional price, as did untold numbers of Vietnam veterans. These are our kids, too.
Bush and his mad dogs are the ones directly responsible for the hellish nightmare thrust upon the world. But indirectly we the American people are responsible for letting it happen. The faces staring back at us from the mirror are our faces and we have to live with that, just as the German people have had to live with the horrors Hitler perpetrated in their name.
George W. Bush, who as a child stuck firecrackers in frogs and watched them blow up and who as an adult gleefully mocked condemned killer Karla Faye Tucker for pleading for her life, doesn't grasp the horror of what he has done. He showed that Monday night when he stood before the cameras at the Army War College, which in itself was an act of utter disdain and hubris when that institution told him not to invade Iraq.
Bush offered no apology for the horrors wrought by his war and showed no remorse for all the people he had killed—and continues to have killed—and tortured in our name. Instead, he stuck to the spin that he hopes will get him elected to the office he stole in 2000: what a great, honorable people we are and the freedom and democracy we are going to bestow on the Iraqis if only the "terrorists" amongst them will let us. How demeaning when Iraqis, trying to dodge our bullets and bombs and struggling to survive amid the rubble we created, can plainly see that freedom and democracy have been nearly vaporized by the Bush cabal in the US, and surely will disappear if Bush and his gang keep their hold on the White House.
This is the same Bush who has hidden from Americans' sight the returning coffins, who doesn't attend the funerals of the soldiers he pretends to love so much, who has cut services and medical care for those he has caused to be maimed, and who now pretends to be "disgusted, disgusted" by the sight of the photos of the atrocities committed by his troops—the photos, mind you, not what they did—and speciously chalks those horrific acts up to the "disgraceful conduct by a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values."
This man is lower than Richard Nixon who only screwed the country. But Nixon, before he was told his own head was about to be cut off, had the decency to fire John Dean, John Erlichman and H.R. Haldeman. Bush, who is screwing the world, has fired no one. Instead, he praised War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who has now issued an order banning troops from having digital cameras, camcorders and mobile phones with cameras, lest they photograph more atrocities to send to families, friends and journalists. And Bush sends CIA Director George Tenet to Qatar in an attempt to get Qatari leaders to silence Aljazeera, which Tenet accused of inciting violence against the US presence in Iraq. In Bushspeak, truth telling in Iraq is "incitement," just as dissent in the US is "un-American." This is freedom and democracy at work, Bushstyle.
But the sick puppies who pollute the US airwaves, print media and the Internet, and their equally sick followers, love this gang. What the mad dogs and sick puppies refuse to acknowledge is that sooner or later the troops who enjoy killing and torturing people and other living things are going to come home. They will walk among us. They will be our neighbors and co-workers. Some may return to their jobs in law enforcement or as prison guards so they can continue getting their sadistic jollies by torturing people in their custody. And who among us will be in the wrong place at the wrong time when a neighbor, a co-worker or a stranger in a public place goes berserk?
Then there will be the walking wounded. Those poisoned with depleted uranium. Those who can't cope with the radical changes in their lives, because they suffered some terrible head wound or lost one or more limbs. And depending on what they did or saw, there are those who will suffer excruciating emotional distress.
But never mind all that. It is of no consequence to the mad dogs and sick puppies or those who support them. Never mind that we lurch from disgrace to disgrace and scandal to scandal, the latest being that the neocons' and New York Times reporter Judith Miller's darling, Ahmad Chalabi, allegedly was working for Iranian intelligence for years and passed classified US documents to the Iranians.
While Chalabi denies the accusations, it was he who primed the neocons' hunger for war against Iraq with tales about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, mobile weapons laboratories and nuclear weapons programs—tales that were dutifully reported by Miller. And for his efforts, his Iraqi National Congress received some $340,000 a month of US taxpayers' money. Moreover, Bush even paid homage to him by giving him an honored seat behind Laura Bush at this year's State of the Union Address.
Investigative journalist Robert Parry has laid out the whole sordid story of the twisted relationship involving George H. W. Bush, Iraq, Iran and Israel's Likud Party in Bush Sr.ï¾’s Iraq-Iran Secrets http://www.consortiumnews.com... .
Professor Michel Chossudovsky provides a different take on Chalabi in his article, [i]Who is Ahmed Chalabi[/i]? http://globalresearch.ca/arti... Chossudovsky thinks the stories about Chalabi that have consumed the corporate media are a CIA disinformation job, the purpose of which is to actually strengthen puppet Chalabi's power in Iraq by pretending to distance him from his masters in Washington.
Perhaps Parry and Chossudovsky both are right, because the mad dogs do their best to keep the people off balance. Furthermore, diversions must be created to divert attention from the scandal du jour.
Add to the mix the pronouncement that the CIA-created al Qaeda has allegedly grown in numbers and strength—or as Ted Koppel said on Tuesday's Nightline, al Qaeda has become a "franchise" operation. If that isn't enough to send chills down the spines of those Americans already cowering in fear, repeatedly tell them that al Qaeda is planning one or more major attacks on the US sometime between now and election day. That will keep the people in line. If, however, it does not prove to be enough to allow Bush to hang on to the White House—in case his gang can't rig the vote—you can bank on more attacks.
As Andy Rooney said, these are our darkest days http://www.commondreams.org/v... . "Too many Americans don't understand what we have here, or how to keep it. I worry for my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren. I want them to have what I've had, and I sense it slipping away," Rooney lamented.
We Americans have just about hit bottom. The question is are we going to join the mad dogs and sick puppies or are we going to try to salvage our country by demanding Bush & Co. be impeached by the House, convicted by the Senate, and turned over to the civil authorities to be prosecuted for their crimes? - http://www.onlinejournal.com/...
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| American Bolsheviks With Apocalyptic Revelations ... |
| 05.28.04 (1:43 pm) [edit] |
"[i]Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society[/i]." - Thomas Jefferson, http://etext.lib.virginia.edu...
[b]We live in a bizarre age when Evangelical Christian Nutjobs collaborate with Israeli Neo-Con Neo-Fascists in order to bring about some sort of insane[i] Apocalyptic End-of-the-World [/i]with the assistance & encouragement of the stupidest, most corrupt & incompetent president we've ever had the misfortune to be saddled with ... [/b]Of course, the inept, crooked buffoon-boy Bush who hijacked the Oval Office doesn't know American history http://www.tblog.com/template... and is therefore [i]deaf, dumb and blind [/i]to the separation of Church and State at the heart of our Republic ...
[b]Read Matt Bivens' [i]Daily Outrage[/i] http://www.thenation.com/outr... , The Nation ... It makes your [i]skin crawl [/i]...[/b]
In a recent rambling essay http://www.inthesetimes.com/s... , the novelist Kurt Vonnegut mused aloud about the odd absence of the teachings of Jesus from the canon of conservative thought:
... "How about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount http://www.biblepath.com/beat... , the Beatitudes?
[i]Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God[/i]."
And so on.
Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney stuff.
For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. "Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!" ...
It's an excellent question. Why [i]do[/i] all of the professionally self- proclaimed Christians -- the ones who, like the hypocrites Jesus warned http://www.htmlbible.com/kjv3... against, pray so loudly in public -- prefer the harsh first half of the Bible to the entirely Christian second book?
Who are these Old Testy Christians?
* * *
Perhaps the White House knows. After all, they apparently have top men designing a "road map" to peace in the Middle East by consulting ... the Bible. And, of course, apocalyptic Christians.
That's not[i] apoplectic[/i], or really angry, Christians -- as fitting as that might seem.
No, it's [i]apocalyptic[/i] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages... , as in: Christians who eagerly seek the end of the world (preferably via a Middle East conflagration) because they believe it will bring the rapture http://www.unknownnews.net/ap... -- a Second Coming of Christ.
As if Jesus Christ could be summoned inexorably back -- like a rock band agreeing to an encore after enough chanting people hold up cigarette lighters -- just because we draw the right-sized borders around Israel and erect the right-sized tower in the middle.
But back to the Bush Administration. We've long known that fundamentalist Christians are granted a staggering level http://www.unknownnews.net/ap... of White House attention, about which they brag regularly http://www.ninetyandnine.com/... .
Now, however,[i] The Village Voice [/i]reports http://www.ninetyandnine.com/... , "the National Security Council's top Middle East aide consults with apocalyptic Christians eager to ensure American policy on Israel conforms with their sectarian doomsday scenarios."
That high-placed NSC aide would be yet another Reagan-era Iran- Contra retread: the unsinkable Elliott Abrams. As David Corn http://www.thenation.com/doc.... recounted after this Administration dusted Abrams off, Abrams is a man who denied massacres, lied to Congress, smeared his political enemies as "vipers", and had his testimony interrupted once by a Senator who said he wanted "to puke" after listening to him http://www.thenation.com/doc.... .
So, a natural fit as liaison to the Old Testies.
Abrams sat down on March 25 http://www.thenation.com/doc.... with leaders of the Apostolic Congress -- a group that keeps, among its modest website, a personal page http://www.apostoliccongress.... about George W. Bush, complete with photos of Karl Rove at bottom. The group's official symbol http://www.apostoliccongress.... -- much like that of the Presidential Prayer Team http://www.presidentialprayer... -- is a mirror of the US Presidential seal.
The opening passage of the group's own "about us" http://www.apostoliccongress.... description reflects a deep obsession with politics. It begins: "In 1981, early in the Reagan Administration, Brother Stan Wachtstetter was able to open the door for Apostolic Christians into the White House."
If you're wondering what the "Apostolic" (another A-word, sorry) stands for, it speaks to the group's belief that the original 12 apostles baptized converts directly in the name of Jesus -- and not in the name of a trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
But really, what more do you need to know about a Christian group that, when it volunteers its testimony, feels there's no more important place to begin than with the date and time it pried open the door to the Reagan White House?
And does it make things clearer if you consider the group's representative in Israel "believed herself http://www.villagevoice.com/i... to have been attacked by witchcraft unleashed by proximity to a volume of [i]Harry Potter[/i]"? That she refers to converting Jews to Christianity as "Circumcision of the Heart"?
[i]The Village Voice [/i]reports http://www.villagevoice.com/i... these particular Old Testies oppose a Palestinian state -- on grounds that all of Old Testament Israel has to be in Jewish hands, and Solomon's Temple http://www.us-israel.org/jsou... rebuilt, before Christ will come back.
... "Abrams [[i]The Voice [/i]continues] attempted to assuage their concerns by stating that "the Gaza Strip had no significant Biblical influence such as Joseph's tomb http://www.us-israel.org/jsou... or Rachel's tomb http://www.studylight.org/enc... and therefore is a piece of land that can be sacrificed for the cause of peace."
Three weeks after the confab, President George W. Bush reversed long- standing US policy, endorsing Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank in exchange for Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip." ...
Abrams was not the only top White House mind at the meeting with the rapture Christians this spring. Other officials spoke about how the 9-11 Commission is making America look bad; how same-sex marriage will change America; and how, as Karl Rove's lieutenant, Matt Schlapp, https://registration.realcities.com/reg/toolbar.do?dispatch=login&url=htt p%3A%2F%2Fwww.kansascity.com%2Fmld%2Fkansascitysta r%2F6148103.htm put it, the Bush Administration "is engaged in cultural, economical, and social struggle on every level."
Gee, Schlapp makes them sound like ... Bolsheviks.
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| Fatal Friendship: "A great empire and little minds go ill together." ... |
| 05.28.04 (9:27 am) [edit] |
"[i]A great empire and little minds go ill together[/i]." - Edmund Burke
[b]Edmund Burke was absolutely right and it is no wonder we're in [i]big trouble [/i]with the imbecilic traitors, liars, war criminals and petty-minded greed-ridden buffoons in the corrupt Bush regime that we have been saddled with for the last four disastrous years ... ([i]Unhappily, it seems longer, much, much longer [/i]...) [/b]
For an [i]alternative viewpoint [/i] with some great insights on the disarray and disastrously idiotic [i]panic-striken, out-of-control fiasco [/i]that the traitorous neo-con, neo-fascist Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]has stumbled, fumbled and bungled us into, [i]read on [/i]...
[u][b]Fatal Friendship: Our ill-conceived vendetta against the Saudis[/b][/u] - http://www.dailystar.com.lb/a...
"[i]It is often dangerous to be an enemy of the United States[/i]," Henry Kissinger used to say during the final years of Vietnam, "[i]but to be a friend is fatal[/i]."
The sordid tradition began at the Tehran summit in 1943. There FDR told Stalin he could keep that half of Poland that had been ceded to him in the Hitler-Stalin pact, even though Great Britain had gone to war to restore the territorial integrity of Poland.
FDR only asked that Stalin not mention the betrayal before the 1944 election, lest it cost him some Polish wards in Chicago.
After the Poles were sold out came the turn of the Nationalist Chinese. They were denied the money and war material to resist the Soviet-supplied Communist armies of Mao. Millions of Chinese who had cast their lot with the United States paid with their lives.
After our POWs came home from Hanoi in 1973, Congress all but cut off military aid to Saigon, denying the South Vietnamese even the right to die on their feet when the North invaded in 1975.
Under Jimmy Carter, Somoza in Nicaragua and the Shah did not meet America's exacting standards for human rights. Both were jettisoned, and, instead, we got the Sandinistas and the Ayatollah.
Now, it seems to be Saudi Arabia's turn.
From the time FDR met with King Ibn Saud aboard the U.S.S. Quincy in the Suez Canal, on the way home from Yalta, the Saudis have lined up with us. When Moscow armed Nasser in Egypt and Syria and Iraq during the Cold War, Saudi Arabia remained steadfastly pro-American.
In the Reagan era, the Saudis worked closely with us to drive the Red Army out of Afghanistan. In 1991, the king hosted the Army of Desert Storm, helped pay for the liberation of Kuwait, pumped oil to keep the prices down in the run-up to war.
Now we learn from John Solomon of the AP that when NATO ally Turkey denied us basing rights, "Saudi Arabia secretly helped the United States far more than has been acknowledged, allowing operations from at least three air bases, permitting special forces to stage attacks from Saudi soil, and providing cheap fuel.."
Gen. T. Michael Moseley, architect of the air campaign, calls the Saudis "wonderful partners." "We operated the command center in Saudi -Arabia. We operated airplanes out of Saudi Arabia, as well as sensors, and tankers," said General Moseley, adding that he treasured "their counsel, their mentoring, their leadership and their support."Thousands of special forces were allowed to launch operations from the kingdom. "Between 250 and 300 Air Force planes staged from Saudi Arabia, including AWACS, C-130s, refueling tankers and F-16 fighter jets during the height of the war," Solomon learned.
Only Britain did as much to ensure an American victory. Why, then, the vendetta against Saudi Arabia among those who supported the war? For much of the animosity is coming from pundits who pride themselves on hard-headed realism but sound like 1960s peaceniks denouncing the "corrupt and dictatorial Thieu-Ky regime." Here is National Review on the Saudis: "Potentially, the most dangerous foreign-policy issue confronting the Bush administration, and its greatest dereliction in the War on Terror, is its see-no-evil approach to terror's bankers, the Saudis." Michael Ledeen includes the Saudis on his target list of "terror masters," though Riyadh, given recent attacks, seems at the top of bin Laden's enemies list. Commentary magazine wants the Saudis taken down as part of a "World War IV" on hostile Arab regimes.
Have any of these people asked themselves who would take power in Saudi Arabia should the monarchy fall? Do they care? Do they want instability, chaos, and revolution to throw up an Islamic republic in Saudi Arabia and similar regimes across the Persian Gulf so that America will have no choice but fight a thirty years war? Saudi-bashing makes for good politics. Even John Kerry has gotten in on the act. But there is a vital interest here. Can anyone believe that if the Saudi monarchy collapses in revolution the regime that rises in its place will be as friendly to this country or that, in deciding whether to pump or not to pump oil, it will be as receptive as the kingdom is today to America's needs and requests?
As he observed George III kick away the crown jewels of the empire, the North American colonies, Edmund Burke made an astute observation, "[i]A great empire and little minds go ill together[/i]."
It applies to a goodly slice of the American elite today. If we are unprepared to deal with flawed friends, it is time to give up the pretense of being a world power, for most of mankind is flawed, not excluding our heroic selves.
[b]By Patrick J. Buchanan[/b]
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| Bush: A Study in Failure ... |
| 05.27.04 (3:22 pm) [edit] |
[b]Bush will truly be an interesting study in [i]corruption-and-incompe tence combined [/i]for future historians ... [/b]Most historians today consider the buffoon-boy Bush an abject failure, an abject coward, and an abject war criminal http://www.tblog.com/template... -- which of course is tragically true and blatantly obvious to anyone with [i]even an iota of brain matter [/i]...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
When a new history of the United States of America comes to be written, the narrative will show that the biggest disaster that ever happened to that country was President George W. Bush Jnr., and not the calamity of September 11, 2001.
And if George Bush should write his memoirs after being voted out of the White House, he should title the work, "Failure" with the sub-title, "How the Son Never Rose."
George Bush is the clearest example of how, in spite of all the privileges and advantages at one's disposal, one can easily fail to succeed in life.
George Bush will never be in the same league as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Frank Delano Roosevelt, J. F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Bill Clinton, for example.
While George W. Bush Snr., (the father) was carving a niche for himself in American society as ambassador, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and later as president of the United States, what was his son doing?
He was leading the life of the typical wastrel: dissipation and total aimlessness in life. In fact, as everyone knows, he had to be rescued from that life and rehabilitated by a group of Wesleyan priests.
One wonders whether the rehabilitation was one hundred percent successful.
This is the man who became the President of the United States of America under extremely dubious circumstances. In deed, if the way Bush was " elected" had happened in a so-called Third World or developing country, the "civilized and democratic" people of the Western world, would have cried "Foul."
The Florida vote was crucial. And Florida was where the elder brother of Bush was the Governor. Some ballot boxes disappeared for a time. Barriers were erected to stop some Black Americans from going to exercise their right to vote. They are known to vote for the Democratic Party.
A faulty voting machine was used that resulted in the votes of several Black Americans being rendered invalid.
The Democratic candidate for the Presidency, Al Gore, insisted on manual recounting of the votes. As the recounts threatened to turn the vote in Al Gore's favour, the matter ended up at the United States Federal Supreme Court.
There, with seven out of the nine Justices of the court being Republicans put on the Court mainly by previous Republican Presidents, the verdict unsurprisingly went in favour of Bush. Al Gore accepted the verdict with grace.
At the inauguration of a President of the United States, a number played is titled, "Hail To The Chief."
Having "won" the election under such unconvincing and highly questionable circumstances, it is no wonder that some of the spectators shouted, 'Hail To The Thief." Sure, he had stolen the Presidency, no doubt about that, Probably realizing his debilitating shortcomings as a person and as "a cut-purse president" George W. Bush set out to terrorize the rest of the world.
With a deadpan face, eyes almost shut out by his eyelids, snake-like lips, hectoring speeches and a bellicose posture, Bush sought to create the impression that he was the modern-day equivalent of the Old Wild West Sheriff who, alone or in the company of a posse, rides out of town to catch the bad guy and bring him to Justice.
On the contrary, Bush has proved himself rather the bad guy who, with his sidekicks, rides into town, pulls out his Smith & Wesson or Colt 45 pistols, heads for the nearest saloon, and starts to cower everyone by indiscriminating firing into the ceiling.
Came September 11 and Bush must have thought that a wonderful opportunity had been presented to him to embark on a crusade to rid the world of all the bad guys whom he describes as terrorists.
Buoyed up by his invasion of Afghanistan and the driving away of the Taliban regime, Bush must have convinced himself that he was invincible.
He must have been convinced further by the people he had assembled around him: Dick Cheney, his Vice President; Collin Powell, his Secretary of State; Donald Rumsfeld, his Secretary for Defense; Ms Condoleesa Rice, his national security Advisor, and John Ashcroft, his Attorney-General.
These people, as shown by the Guinness Book of Records, are all billionaires. The god they worship is an insatiable appetite for wealth, power and world domination.
Casting their eyes around, they saw what Bush came to describe as countries that terrorized the rest of the world through state-sponsored destabilization of other countries.
To Bush, these countries, namely Iraq, Iran and North Korea, formed an "axis of evil" that had to be destroyed. Attacked them one after the other and such so-called "rogue states" like Libya and Syria would quickly mend their ways.
The conquest of Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein would open up that country for economic rape. Most of the people around him had made their fortunes in oil, especially Dick Cheney and Condoleesa Rice. The oil fields of Iraq were there for the picking.
Why not attack Saddam Hussein on the false pretext that, contrary to the resolutions of the United States, he had acquired, or was seriously acquiring, weapons of mass destruction, namely chemical, biological and nuclear weapons (WMDs)?
Without the sanction of a resolution by the United Nations, George Bush, the World's Number One Policeman or Sheriff, wore his ten-gallon hat and his cow boy boots, buckled his belt with two holsters for his fighting guns, swung into the saddle, and headed straight for Iraq. Dear readers, you know the rest of the story of the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath.
In Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden, fingered as the villain who masterminded the September 11 catastrophe, reportedly remains at large.
So are the leaders of the Taliban regime.
Thanks to the power and the lure of money, Saddam Hussein has been betrayed to Bush. Far from Saddam's capture and the disbanding of his army ending hostilities in Iraq, Bush continues to sink in the Iraqi quicksand.
Far from being the Liberator bringing peace, development and prosperity, Bush has only succeeded in introducing chaos, needless bloodshed and disintegration to that country.
When he allegedly visited American soldiers in Iraq, he could only do so "Nicodemously," instead of riding in an open vehicle to acknowledge the cheers of a grateful people.
It is said that he wore a military uniform, ostensibly to empathize with the troops but more likely to hide his real identity so that he did not become a target. The man "highlighted it" out of town as fast as he had entered it.
On June 30, 2004, Bush will hand over the house of cards he has built in Iraq to a group. He knows very well that that house will collapse but it is anything to get out of that hellhole.
American jingoism, the policy of "my country right or wrong" and her hypocrisy and double standards pre-date the Bush Presidency.
Still, there can be no doubt that Bush in his almost four years in office has adopted the crudest type of foreign policy that has raised this American character to record heights.
The shocking record of the treatment of prisoners in Iraq and at the Guantanamo Base in Cuba has shown the ugliest face of George Bush and his America.
Today, the worst type of a so-called Third World dictator is an angel compared to George Bush. No wonder that 50 (fifty) former American diplomats have written to warn him about the effect of his policies. According to them, such policies are losing friends for America.
Today, George Bush encourages Israel to disregard international law, respect for human rights and to carry out acts of genocide. At least other American Presidents tried to bring about peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Today, George Bush says that the prisoners at the Guantanamo base are not regular prisoners of war but "illegal combatants." They are also said not to be on United States soil so the laws of the United States do not apply to them. Consequently, Bush has the right to hold them forever at the Base and under constant torture.
Far from winning his so-called war on terror, George Bush rather continues to stoke up the fires that forge terrorists around the world.
George W. Bush, this "king of shreds and patches" (apologies to Shakespeare's Hamlet), has become the biggest terrorist of all time.
[b]Source:[/b]
"Bush: A Study in Failure" by I. K. Gyasi, All Africa, on http://allafrica.com/stories/...
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| Neo-Con Tbloggers Akin to Japanese Soldier Found Fighting-On Over 50 Years After End of WW2!!! |
| 05.27.04 (8:07 am) [edit] |
"[i]WAR IS OVER An 85-year-old Japanese soldier has been found on the Philippine island of Mindoro. Going under the name of Sangrayban, he had been living among the Mangyan tribe for 54 years. He had a wife from the tribe who had given him four children and he was in very good health, according to Rufino Baldo, a member of a team searching for such Japanese stragglers.
Sangrayban was one of a group of soldiers who landed on the island in 1943 with orders not to surrender under any circumstances. He thought that American leaflets dropped over the island in 1945 declaring the war was over were a propaganda trick, so after his companions died he went native. According to one of the search party, "He has blocked out nearly all of his memories of pre-war Japan, but he still speaks an old-fashioned form of Japanese." He does not want to leave his sick wife and is unlikely to return to Japan.
Several Japanese soldiers have been found in the Philippines still fighting World War II, the most famous being Hiroo Onoda in 1974. Onoda was unable to adapt to modern Japan and now lives in Brazil[/i]." - CANBERRA TIMES, 14 Jan 1997
It astonishes & tickles me how some of the neo-con Tbloggers are akin to Hiroo Onoda & Sangrayban (actually the story turned out to be more fable than fact http://www.wanpela.com/holdou... ) who went on fighting World War II on deserted islands in the Pacific over 50 years after the end of hostilities ... But the proverbial illustration makes the point ...
You've got neo-con Tbloggers like Reducto-Yerian, NoGuru, Rsheinfield and others who continue to[i] post out-and-out lies, deceptions and falsehoods [/i](even the corrupt Bush regime isn't shouting about phony WMDs "found" all of a sudden-- or phony links between Al Qaeda & Iraq that suddenly "pop-up" from the embezzler & con-man Ahmed Chalabi's[i] Special Effects Factory[/i]-- and the phony slander & libel of [i]anyone-and-everyone[/i ] who dares to criticize the traitorous Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta [/i]including Paul O'Neill, Richard Clarke, Joseph Wilson, Ret. General Zinni and [i]others [/i]...) ... It's hilarious to watch these buffoons continue[i] day-in-and-day-out [/i]to deny the reality of the disastrous failures & fiascos perpetrated upon us by the corrupt and incompetent Bush regime ...
Even Bush's supporters (with a grain of integrity including John McCain, Richard Lugar, some experts at the neo-fascist American Enterprise Institute, etc.) [i]who are honest[/i], are not pretending that the insane Bush War in Iraq is a so-called "success" ... Nor are respectable conservatives blaming Bush's bloody failures on "liberals" ... [i]Jeez[/i] ...
Consider for example, this article entitled "[b]Bush speech alarms even war enthusiasts[/b]" on http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin... :
Even the staunchest supporters of President Bush's Iraq enterprise were less than cheered by his speech to the nation Monday night outlining the path forward, some describing the administration as being in a state of panic.
In particular, the neoconservatives who provided the intellectual argument that an invasion of Iraq could provide a template for democracy in the Middle East are expressing open alarm that this effort is dangerously off course.
"There's no question the administration has been in total panic mode, and they don't need to be, because Iraq is salvageable," said Danielle Pletka, vice president of foreign and defense studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that has been a hotbed of support for the war. "But I think there is still so much indecision about what to do that it's going to be hard for them to do the right thing."
Many administration hawks were drawn from the neoconservative intellectual ranks, notably deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the chief architect of the idea that the United States could make Iraq a democratic beacon.
Their dismay comes as some Republicans in Congress fear that Bush's Iraq policy has become unhinged, given the relentless bad news coming out of Iraq: a multiheaded insurgency among Shiites and Sunnis, the assassination of the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the steady rise in U.S. casualties.
Others on the political right, as distinct from their more interventionist neoconservative colleagues, have begun openly attacking the administration. Wall Street Journal contributing editor Mark Helprin called Abu Ghraib "a symbol of the inescapable fact that the war has been run incompetently, with an apparently deliberate contempt for history, strategy, and thought." He asked why the administration was trying to occupy Iraq with current troop levels, "even as one event cascading into another should make them recoil in piggy-eyed wonder at the lameness of their policy."
Some of Bush's supporters concede the administration has committed blunders over the past year. Many suggest a sharp change in course -- such as adding thousands of troops, or moving up elections or forcefully quashing insurgents -- which they contend Bush did not promise Monday.
"It was important for Bush to remind the American public of the cost of failure," said Michael Rubin, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute and another neoconservative war supporter. "Basically, Bush was letting us see the forest through the trees."
However, he said, "the devil's in the details, and with the stakes so high, we can't ignore the details."
Yet while criticizing the administration for failures of execution, few neoconservatives have abandoned their belief that the war was a good idea or that it is intimately linked, as Bush insisted Monday, with fighting terrorism.
Joining the neoconservatives in support of the basic war effort are Democratic hawks such as Rep. Tom Lantos of San Mateo, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee.
"Iraq is clearly waiting to see if we will help develop a more open society or whether we will tire, declare a Pyrrhic victory and leave," Lantos said, urging persistence and greater international involvement.
"Nobody is admitting defeat, and if anything they are taking an even harder line," said Charles Pena, head of defense studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, which opposed the invasion and urges a speedy withdrawal.
Some contend that neoconservatives resemble the communists they once ridiculed, blaming the failures of communist ideology on the Kremlin's execution.
"It's an argument that shows that they didn't understand the problem to begin with, that you just cannot use military force to dictate outcomes everywhere in the world," Pena said. "It's based on this presumption that somehow we have to turn Iraq into a democracy, that that will somehow make us safe, which presumes Iraq was a threat to begin with."
War supporters have been emphasizing the bright spots in the occupation, such as the relative calm in some parts of the country.
Many compare the current situation in Iraq with the darkest moments of World War II, when rampant despair clouded victories that lay ahead.
Neoconservatives warn, however, that the administration seems headed on a dangerous course. Pletka charges the administration with "subcontracting" the political process to the United Nations. Many are particularly worried by the decision to enlist a former Republican Guard general to pacify Fallujah, site of a bloody Sunni insurgency last month. Handing over security to factional militias is a recipe not for elections but for civil war, they contend. They urge instead a crackdown by U.S. forces.
"The truth is it wouldn't take much actually to turn this around, not that they necessarily will," said Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for a New American Century, a leading neoconservative think tank. "There are a lot of very positive trends going on in Iraq, and I think if you take care of the security situation and the political trend lines toward real elections, in fact I think Iraq is more than salvageable."
But their critics say the hawks' predictions have nearly all gone awry. The weapons of mass destruction used to justify the war were never found, and the war's cost, rather than being self-funded from Iraq's oil revenues, has reached $170 billion with no end in sight.
Neoconservatives widely predicted an easy occupation followed by an immediate peace, followed by "a flourishing democracy which would cause a domino effect across the region creating democracies elsewhere," said Peter Singer, a national security fellow at the Brookings Institution. "And then the very first foreign policy position taken by this new democratic Iraq, run by their exile friends, would be to recognize Israel, and that would somehow end the Arab-Israeli conflict, and bunnies would dance in the streets, and we would find life on Mars."
Singer said the plan was "incredibly ambitious to the point of absurdity, and of course reality stepped in, and that's where we are now."
Neoconservatives contend they predicted no such thing.
"I'm on the record as saying the occupation would require several hundred thousand troops and the process would take five to 10 years," said Schmitt. "So you didn't get the cakewalk stuff from us. That said, the administration made it harder on itself because, frankly, they planned a military campaign that was quite efficient at getting rid of the government but didn't plan on getting rid of the regime, and the result allowed a lot of Baathist Republican Guard and other insurgents to get their feet under them and create the insurgency we face today.
"I'm willing to say policy was still correct, but I'm not willing to take the blame for people's inability to carry it out in an effective fashion."
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| Even Ex-Rumsfeld Aide Admits Bush's Illegal US Occupation of Iraq a Failure!!! |
| 05.26.04 (3:44 pm) [edit] |
[b]The Mad King George has made the world [i]more dangerous[/i] by illegally and immorally occupying Iraq ... As such, should a terrorist attack occur in the U.S.A. just "before the election", we should "storm" the White House; arrest the bastard(s); and put them on trial for treason*-- Let us take our nation back ...[/b]
* [i]This is exaggeration ... Of course, the rule of law should be followed. Armed violence is not the solution-- In fact, that is the problem we've got with the corrupt Bush regime [/i]...
[b][u]US War Policy 'Grave Error'[/u] - http://www.commondreams.org/h...
Ex-Rumsfeld Aide Admits Occupation of Iraq a Failure
Britain, U.S. at odds over interim government's role[/b]
One of the ideological architects of the Iraq war has criticized the U.S.-led occupation of the country as "a grave error."
Richard Perle, until recently a powerful adviser to U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, described U.S. policy in post-war Iraq as a [b]failure[/b].
"I would be the first to acknowledge we allowed the liberation (of Iraq) to subside into an occupation. And I think that was a grave error, and in some ways a continuing error," said Perle, former chair of the influential Defense Policy Board, which advises the Pentagon.
With violent resistance to the U.S.-led occupation showing no signs of ending, Perle said the biggest mistake in post-war policy "was the failure to turn Iraq back to the Iraqis more or less immediately.
"We didn't have to find ourselves in the role of occupier. We could have made the transition that is going to be made at the end of June more or less immediately," he told BBC radio, referring to the U.S. and British plan to transfer political authority in Iraq to an interim government on June 30.
This public criticism of U.S. policy from one of the leading advocates of the war — and a firm political ally of U.S. President George W. Bush — indicates just how much Bush's political fortunes are being damaged by post-war chaos.
With polls indicating 64 per cent of Americans believe Bush has no clear plan for Iraq, the U.S. president is embarking on a series of weekly speeches to pitch his proposal to hand over sovereignty to an appointed interim Iraqi government on June 30. But that plan, contained in a United Nations Security Council resolution drafted by the United States and Britain, has led to confusion about who will have ultimate control over U.S.-led coalition forces.
The resolution leaves over-all military control in the hands of the United States, but British Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted yesterday that such power would be transferred to the interim Iraqi government.
The interim government, Blair added, will even have the power to order foreign troops to leave the country — a power not mentioned in the resolution.
"After the 30th of June there will be the full transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi government. Therefore, the people who will decide whether the troops stay or not will be the Iraqi government," Blair told reporters at his monthly press conference.
The Iraqi interim government, Blair added, would have the power to veto military actions, such as the one U.S. soldiers launched recently against militants in the Iraqi city of Falluja.
"If there is a political decision as to whether you go into a place like Falluja in a particular way, that has to be done with the consent of the Iraqi government," he said. "And the final political control remains with the Iraqi government. Now that's what the transfer of sovereignty means."
Blair's description of the U.S.'s Falluja operation as a "political decision" — suggesting it was not a matter of military or security necessity — was also veiled criticism of an action that killed an estimated 600 Iraqis, and has been strongly denounced in a British foreign ministry memo as "heavy handed."
Blair made clear that the Iraqi interim government's power over coalition troops would be limited, insisting that British troops will not carry out orders they disagree with.
Still, his comments seemed at odds with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who insisted yesterday U.S. forces "will remain under U.S. command and will do what is necessary to protect themselves."
Iraq's interim Defense minister, Ali Allawi, told reporters in London he thought coalition forces would be gone within months.
"In terms of the timeline for the presence of multinational forces to help us establish security and stability, I think it would be a question of months rather than years," he said.
Blair's comments on the powers of the Iraqi interim government provided the kind of detail that France, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, noted is missing from the resolution tabled on Monday.
The resolution says the "unified command" of the multinational force in Iraq remains under U.S. control. It also authorizes coalition forces to "take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq."
Blair added that Britain's 7,500 soldiers in Iraq would leave once Iraqi security forces were able to ensure the country's stability.
"We stay until we get the job done, but obviously, the sooner the better we are able to get Iraqi security forces in charge of their own security, then the easier it is for us to leave," he said.
France, Russia, Spain and China signaled they wanted changes to the draft U.N. resolution.
French President Jacques Chirac called Bush to say Iraqis must see the sovereignty they get June 30 as "real," and Russia said it needed to see the composition of the interim government. But several Security Council members said they expected the resolution to be adopted with only minor changes.
"I do not expect any fight," said Ambassador Abdallah Baali of Algeria, the only Arab member of the council. "All of us are in a constructive mood. We want the transition to succeed."
Bush has made Iraq the central plank in his so-called war on terror. But a report from a leading think-tank yesterday suggests the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have only accelerated recruitment for Al Qaeda.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies estimates the extremist network now has 18,000 radical militants in its ranks and cells in more than 60 countries.
"Al Qaeda must be expected to keep trying to develop more promising plans for terrorist operations in North America and Europe — potentially involving weapons of mass destruction," institute director John Chipman told a news conference to launch the think-tank's annual survey of world affairs.
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| Even Pro-War Institute Admits Herr Fuhrer Bush's Illegal US Occupation Has Made World More Dangerous |
| 05.26.04 (3:01 pm) [edit] |
[b]The Mad King George has made the world [i]more dangerous[/i] by illegally and immorally occupying Iraq ... As such, should a terrorist attack occur in the U.S.A. just "before the election", we should "storm" the White House; arrest the bastard(s); and put them on trial for treason*-- Let us take our nation back ...[/b]
* [i]This is exaggeration ... Of course, the rule of law should be followed. Armed violence is not the solution-- In fact, that is the problem we've got with the corrupt Bush regime [/i]...
[u][b]Occupation of Iraq made world less safe, pro-war institute says[/b][/u] - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...
The US and British occupation of Iraq has accelerated recruitment to the ranks of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and made the world a less safe place, according to a leading London-based think-tank.
The assessment, by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), states that the occupation has become "a potent global recruitment pretext" for al-Qa'ida, which now has more than 18,000 militants ready to strike Western targets.
It claims that although half of al-Qa'ida's 30 senior leaders and up to 2,000 rank-and-file members have been killed or captured, a rump leadership is still intact and over 18,000 potential terrorists are at large, with recruitment accelerating on account of Iraq. About 1,000 al-Qa'ida supporters are believed to be active in Iraq.
The IISS report, published yesterday, says that the Iraq invasion"galvanised" al-Qa'ida while weakening the campaign against terrorism. At the same time it has split the Western alliance, leaving the US and Britain isolated.
The report amounts to a sustained condemnation of US and British tactics, especially during the post-war period. Beginning with the decision of Paul Bremer, the US head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), to dissolve the Iraqi army - leaving a security vacuum - it criticises the occupation tactics of American troops who stayed in large fortified bases and only emerged in heavily armed patrols.
The report adds that later swoops, which led to mass arrests, and aggressive house searches "perversely inspired insurgent violence".
But the report does not spare British commanders. It points out that, brutal as he was, Saddam Hussein never tried to disarm the Iraqi population. The killing of six British soldiers in the town of Majar al-Kabir in June last year was preceded by a British raid to search houses for weapons. At the same time, however, Kurdish militants were allowed to keep their weapons.
The report points out that such is the level of turmoil in Iraq that the US and Britain will need 500,000 troops in the country, a huge increase from the 145,000 the Allies have at present, to stabilise the country.
Jonathan Stevenson, the editor of the survey, said: "Invading Iraq damaged the war on terror, there is no doubt about that. It has strengthened rather than weakened al-Qa'ida."
The report also highlights the shortcomings of US policy after the toppling of Saddam. It says: "The lawlessness and looting that greeted the liberation of Baghdad on 9 April 2003 was replaced by widespread criminality, violence and instability. A year later, US troops and newly constituted Iraqi forces faced an insurgency that had become a solid obstacle to rebuilding the country and moving it towards democracy and stability."
Unable to cope with the situation, the US is now acquiescing to the formation of new private militias similar to the one patrolling Fallujah, says the IISS.
The CPA, says the report, has little knowledge of the area it is meant to control. And Iraqi exiles brought back to the country by the Americans to become the new political elite "are very unpopular ... they have not managed to penetrate Iraqi society, mobilise support or engender allegiance".
The IISS has strong establishment links, with former US and British government officials among its members. The Foreign Office contributed £100,000 towards the setting up of its headquarters in central London, and Baroness Thatcher and Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, then secretary general of Nato, attended the opening.
The IISS dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, published on 9 September 2002, was edited by Gary Samore, formerly of the US State Department, and presented by Dr John Chipman, a former Nato fellow. It was immediately seized on by Bush and Blair administrations as providing "proof" that Saddam was just months away from launching a chemical and biological, or even a nuclear attack. Large parts of the IISS document were subsequently recycled in the now notorious Downing Street dossier, published with a foreword by the Prime Minister, the following week.
However, unlike No 10, the IISS admits that it made mistakes in its dossier about the extent of the Iraqi threat, and has commissioned an independent assessment by Rolf Ekeus, a former head of United Nations arms inspectors in Iraq.
Dr Samore and Dr Chipman pointed out yesterday that its dossier had caveats about Iraq's supposed WMD arsenal, while the Government insisted on removing such caveats from intelligence assessments - leading to "sexing up" accusations.
Dr Chipman said of the behaviour of American forces: "The US is realising the awful truth that the first law of peacekeeping is the same as the first law of forensics: 'Every contact leaves a trace.' Unfortunately, too many bad traces have been left recently, and many good ones will be needed to recover its reputation, prestige and effective power."
Dr Samore said: "Whether or not the Iraq war is seen as a success in the long term would depend on the successful transfer of power to an Iraqi administration in a stable situation. That does not look very hopeful at the moment and this, of course, is related to how this war and its aftermath has been dealt with by the coalition."
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| How Does Bush's Neo-Con Nazi Regime Treat Whistle-Blowers Who Tell The Truth To America??? |
| 05.26.04 (9:20 am) [edit] |
[b]How a nation, a corporation, a family or an individual treats whistle-blowers [i]who tell the "unpleasant" truth [/i]is an indication of its moral integrity, wisdom and honesty ...[/b]
Wise nations, corporations, families and individuals will applaude a whistle-blower for pointing out a problem or issue that poses a risk, an inappropriate activity/behaviour, and/or a danger (and/or a contravention of the law) ... and[i] honest [/i]brokers will try to [i]rectify the problem [/i]and ensure that the whistle-blower is positively acknowledged and rewarded for their honesty ...
[i]Not so [/i]with the corrupt and traitorous Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i]-- They carry-out Nazi-style destruction, slander, libel and heinous punishment of [i]anyone who is loyal [/i]to the United States of America ... Watch the on-going appalling mis-treatment of Paul O'Neill, Joseph Wilson, Richard Clarke, Ret. General Zinni and [i]others[/i] at the hands of the blood-thirsty Bush regime ... The Bushies are reckless and ruthless neo-con thugs & neo-fascist goons who should be [i]impeached[/i] and tried for [i]treason[/i] ... They are[i] unfit to serve [/i]in government ...
Consider "[b]Army kept whistle-blower in locked ward[/b]" by [i]United Press International [/i]on http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?S... :
The Army kept a soldier whistle-blower in a locked psychiatric ward at its top medical center for nearly two weeks despite concern from some medical staff that he be released, according to medical records.
The Army then charged him nearly $6,000 for the stay at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, billing records show.
"They are definitely retaliating against me," said Army Reserve Lt. Jullian Goodrum, a 16-year veteran of the Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Doctors say Goodrum suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, or combat stress, from Iraq. Last summer Goodrum asked for an investigation into the death in Iraq of a 22-year-old soldier in his 212th Transportation Company. He was also quoted in a United Press International article about poor medical care at Fort Knox, Ky., that helped spark investigations in Congress.
Last fall Goodrum sought mental health care at Fort Knox but was turned away -- just days after complaining in the press about poor medical treatment at Fort Knox. "I said I was having problems. I told them I felt like I was having a breakdown right there," Goodrum said. "They did not care. They said leave."
A form from Fort Knox from the day Goodrum says he sought help states that Fort Knox officials in charge of medical care "do not want him" in the medical-hold unit at the base.
Goodrum then went to see a private doctor who hospitalized him. That doctor alerted Fort Knox that Goodrum had been hospitalized, according to Goodrum's medical records and documents from that doctor. But Fort Knox cut off his pay, terminated his Army medical insurance and threatened to charge him as absent without leave.
Goodrum showed up at Walter Reed hospital in Washington Feb. 9, where doctors admitted him to Ward 54, the locked psychiatric unit.
Walter Reed medical records reviewed by UPI describe Goodrum as "cooperative and polite" when he arrived, but also "anxious and depressed" and "largely preoccupied with concerns about legal charges and financial stressors."
Records show Goodrum progressed well over the next few days. "Patient in bright spirits, good mood, thought processes logical," his medical records say on Feb. 14. "Denies (suicidal or homicidal thoughts) and has been fulfilling all responsibilities." He was encouraged to take a weekend pass out of the hospital. Doctors planned to move him to outpatient therapy -- out of the locked ward -- on Feb. 19.
But records show Fort Knox officials contacted Walter Reed on Feb. 18 and said to keep him in the locked ward. "Contacted by DCCS at Fort Knox ... who provided additional information and expressed concerns regarding potential discharge of LT Goodrum," the records show. "Currently, due to legal/admin concerns the patient should remain on ward 54," the the locked ward. "Patient states that he is doing 'a little bit better' ... Pt is scheduled for intake (for outpatient therapy) tomorrow, however due to recent admin developments concerning command at Fort Knox this may need to be postponed."
His records show that Goodrum was held in the locked psychiatric ward for the next 13 days. His health appears to have deteriorated some because of that confinement. "They hurt me, in terms of my recovery. I was doing fine, then 'bam,'" Goodrum told UPI.
On Feb. 21 his record states: "Per chief of psychiatry patient will need to be (in the locked ward) because he has charges pending ... Pt voiced concerns regarding his reduction in status, pt stated that he will continue to be cooperative with staff and follow the current treatment plan but does not understand why he was reduced in status."
Walter Reed public affairs officer Beverly Chidel said privacy rules prohibit any comment on Goodrum's case specifically. But she said care at Walter Reed is dictated by patients' medical needs.
"Everything we do for a patient is based on their medical or clinical needs," Chidel said.
But some medical staff at Walter Reed expressed concern that Goodrum was being held for those reasons. "Several team members have discussed concern that he is (in the locked ward). Serial Mental Status exams have not revealed signs of psychosis, (suicidal thoughts) or (homicidal thoughts)," his records say on Feb. 26.
"As discussed previously, this inpatient hospitalization has been extended due to administrative concerns," the records say the next day. "This treatment could have taken place in an outpatient setting."
Walter Reed released Goodrum from the locked ward on March 2, one day after UPI published a story on allegations that Fort Knox refused to treat him.
On March 2, an addition to Goodrum's medical records states that Goodrum was "a voluntary patient for the duration of his admission." Goodrum told UPI, "That's not true."
Fort Knox officials have not charged Goodrum with any offense, and he says the Army still owes him thousands in back pay -- he did not get a paycheck from early November through April. "I've got a mortgage to pay," Goodrum said.
Fort Knox has declined to comment on Goodrum's care, also citing privacy concerns. Fort Knox spokeswoman Connie Shaffery said soldiers who do not report for duty at Fort Knox may be AWOL. "If a soldier is not at his or her duty station and is not in an authorized leave or pass status, he is absent without leave," Shaffery said. "When a soldier is listed as AWOL, it stops all pay and benefits."
UPI published a series of stories last fall about poor medical care for soldiers on "medical hold" at U.S. bases, including many who served in Iraq like Goodrum. In response, the Pentagon announced a series of new polices and has pledged $77 million towards fixing the problem.
On Oct. 29, 2003, Under Secretary of Defense David S. C. Chu drafted new health care rules that said soldiers should be referred to private doctors if needed. When Goodrum could not get care at Fort Knox, he went to a private doctor instead. His medical records show that Fort Knox officials considered that "unacceptable."
"They are totally violating their own policy," Goodrum said. He said he has complained about his treatment at Fort Knox to his congressman, U.S. Rep. John J. Duncan, R-Tenn. A spokesman for Duncan said he is aware of Goodrum's complaint but couldn't comment on it.
Goodrum was named the 176th Maintenance Battalion's "Soldier of the Year" in 2001. He has received a host of awards, including the combat action ribbon, and positive reviews from superior officers.
"Lt. Goodrum is a truly outstanding junior officer," reads one performance evaluation from 2002. "In addition to his technical competence, he demonstrates great leadership potential. ... Promote to captain and select for advance military schooling."
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| ACT NOW: Verify Your Vote ... Sign Petition To Have Your Vote Counted!!! |
| 05.26.04 (8:32 am) [edit] |
[b]You don't[i] really [/i]want another 4 years of [i]hell-on-earth [/i]with the corrupt Bush regime blindly lashing-out in panic-striken barbarity by waging illegal, immoral & incompetent wars across the Middle East, [i]do you[/i]??? [/b]Of course you [i]don't [/i]... Now the traitorous Bushies are trying to stage another [i]banana republican coup d'etat [/i]in order to[i] rig [/i]the 2004 election ([i]like they did in 2000[/i]) because the Majority of Americans [i]don't want [/i]the Neo-Con Nazis back again ...[i][b] Make sure your vote counts [/b][/i]...
It's not enough just to get citizens registered to vote—we must ensure that each vote is counted and leaves an accurate, verifiable paper trail for recounts. But some states are planning to use machines that[b] don't allow voters to verify their choice[/b]. And the head of a major voting-machine manufacturer—also a big Bush contributor—has promised to deliver Ohio's votes to Bush. Speak up! Join Howard Dean's[i][b] Democracy For America [/b][/i]organization http://www.democracyforameric... and tell Congress to require a paper trail in November! [b]SIGN THE PETITION [/b]on http://petition.democracyfora... .
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| The Bumbling, Bungling Buffoon-boy Bush: Abooga Rooga??? ... |
| 05.25.04 (3:59 pm) [edit] |
[b]The indomitable Matt Bivens in his[i] Daily Outrage [/i]in [i]The Nation[/i], http://www.thenation.com/outr... says what many of us thought who[i] winced with embarrassment [/i]as we watched the National Disgrace, the Mad King George fumble, bumble and stumble through his screed about his bungled bloody fiasco in Iraq that has turned into a nightmare due to the traitorous Bush regime's corruption and incompetence ...[/b]
[b]Read on ...[/b]
It's hard to improve upon the opening to this dry, tiny [i]Reuters[/i] report http://www.reuters.com/newsAr... :
... "[i]Two rehearsals for his prime-time speech http://www.whitehouse.gov/new... were not enough to keep US President George W. Bush from mangling the name of the Abu Ghraib prison that brought shame to the US mission in Iraq.
During the half-hour televised address, Bush mispronounced Abu Ghraib each of the three times he mentioned it ... English speakers usually pronounce [it] as "abu-grabe". But the Republican president ... stumbled on the first try, calling it "abugah-rayp". The second version came out "abu-garon", the third attempt sounded like "abu-garah".
White House aides, who described the speech as an important address on the future of Iraq, said Bush practiced twice on Monday before boarding his helicopter for his trip to the speaking venue [/i]..." ...
If you want to see it for yourself, go to the White House web page for http://www.whitehouse.gov/new... the President's speech, and click on the video option. Start listening 20 minutes into the speech -- just at the two-thirds mark -- and all the various mangled iterations of Abu Ghraib come in quick succession.
[i]Reuters[/i] gets it basically right. But they don't quite communicate the look of angst that grips the President's face at his first effort, which actually comes out:
"[i]Abugah[/i] ...
[Pause; President bobs head in internal struggle to shake free third syllable; a truly anxious moment when one feels a stab of sympathy for the man, and wonders if he'll be able to pull it off;]
...[i] rayp[/i]."
[Heavy sigh of relief. He did it! Hooray! George W. "low expectations" Bush surprises and pleases us once again. And to think he only had to practice twice beforehand!] - http://www.thenation.com/outr...
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| Hypocrisy of the Neo-Crook: Bush Ignores Sick 9/11 Firefighters & Cops |
| 05.25.04 (2:44 pm) [edit] |
[b]Remember all of the so-called "pretty-talk" of [i]heroism and the debt America owed [/i]to the firefighters & cops who risked their lives and many of whom died on [i]9/11 [/i]... Like[i] everything else [/i]vomitted from the mouth of Herr Fuhrer Bush & his neo-con neo-nazis, it was empty, hypocritical[i] hot-air/crap [/i]... except that "We the People" are asked to [i]sacrifice our blood & treasure [/i]while the traitorous Bush neo-con thugs & neo-fascist goons[i] play "war"[/i] ([i]with no knowledge, no competence, no integrity and no experience[/i]), while [i]safe-and-sound [/i]as ugly arm-chair chicken-hawks ...[/b]
[b]Bush Ignores Sick 9/11 Firefighters & Cops[/b]
Over the last month, President Bush has repeatedly recounted how he was inspired by "the courage of the firefighters and the police"1 in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. He recounted how, when standing atop a pile of rubble at Ground Zero, he was told by a firefighter, "Don't let me down"2. But more than two years later, he continues to ignore the needs of firefighters and police officers who are now suffering adverse health effects from their rescue efforts at Ground Zero. The situation has reached a head: yesterday, 1,700 cops and firefighters were forced to sue in court for the medical help they desperately need 3.
While the President's very first campaign commercial used photos of coffin draped corpses4 being pulled from the rubble, the White House has sought to hide evidence that Ground Zero firefighters and cops were exposed to hazardous toxins. Specifically, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) intervened to doctor EPA press releases 5 that were supposed to warn the public about toxins near Ground Zero. The press releases were modified to claim that the air was safe - despite the fact that there was not adequate scientific evidence to substantiate that claim. The CEQ was headed by James Connaughton, a former asbestos industry lawyer who represented companies in toxic pollution cases6.
When Ground Zero firefighters and cops began getting sick, the White House tried to block $90 million in funding7 for medical treatment. When Congress forced the Administration to accept the $90 million, the Administration then delayed the money8 and threatened to shut down the health-screening program. Even today, the New York Police Department has been denied much needed health grants9.
[b]Sources[/b]:
1. Remarks by the President at Victory 2004 Luncheon, 04/20/2004.
2. Remarks by the President to the American Conservative Union 40th Anniversary Gala, 05/13/2004.
3. "1,700 sue over 9/11 sickness", New York Daily News, 05/24/2004.
4. "President Bush: Don't use my husband as your mascot", Salon, 03/05/2004.
5. "W. House Molded EPA's 9/11 Reports", CBS News, 08/22/2003.
6. "It's public be damned at the EPA", New York Daily News, 08/26/2003.
7. "Cough up 9/11 aid, workers tell Bush", New York Daily News, 01/25/2003.
8. "$90M in WTC aid on hold", New York Daily News, 07/10/2003.
9. "1,700 sue over 9/11 sickness", New York Daily News, 05/24/2004.
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| Bush's Neo-Con Neo-Scam: "Read My Lips, No New Plan"!!! ... |
| 05.24.04 (3:51 pm) [edit] |
[b]Is anyone[i] really [/i]expecting some kind of [i]well-thought-out strategy [/i]that will produce a[i] successful result [/i]in the aftermath of Bush's neo-con, neo-fascist bloody war-turned-bloody-guerril la-quagmire in Iraq??? ... [i]Don't hold your breath[/i]!!! ...[/b]
President Bush is scheduled to give a prime time address tonight from the U.S. Army War College, where he hopes to "reassure Americans on the Iraq war's direction." The speech "is expected to be the first in a series in which Bush will detail his plan" to hand over power to Iraqis on June 30. According to USA Today, however, "Bush won't propose a change in course." The president's intransigence comes amid new criticism of White House Iraq policy. Former Gen. Anthony Zinni told CBS 60 Minutes that neoconservative ideologues in the administration have "screwed up" and American troops are paying the price for it. And on Capitol Hill, "Iraq is opening fissures in the solid bloc that is - or was - the Republican Party and its conservative base." Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "criticized President Bush for failing to offer solid plans for Iraq's future," while Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) said the president "needs to break out of that cocoon a little bit, and to listen to more advice than he gets from his vice president and his war cabinet." Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) criticized the president's refusal to answer any questions from lawmakers last week about his Iraq policy. He said, "The president talked about being humble when he was running for office, but the opposite seems to be true."
[b]SPEECH AT COLLEGE HE REFUSES TO PAY ATTENTION TO[/b]: The president's decision to give his speech at the U.S. Army War College is curious, considering the White House has repeatedly ignored the recommendations of the college's key staff. For instance, in January the college published a scathing report http://www.commondreams.org/h... "criticizing the Bush administration's global war on terrorism as 'unfocused' and contending that the war in Iraq is 'unnecessary' and a 'detour.'" As War College Professor Jeffrey Record said at the time, "the invasion of Iraq was a diversion from the more narrow focus on defeating al Qaeda." In March, a report by the War College's Strategic Studies Institute said the administration was seeking to win in Iraq "quickly and on the cheap" while "ignoring the more critical strategic aim of creating a stable, democratic nation." And a War College report from last month "warns of potentially dangerous political damage to U.S.-Arab relations" if the administration does not articulate an exit strategy and instead uses the conflict to "establish a large American military presence in the region."
[b]INSTEAD OF FIXING SITUATION, BAN CAMERAS[/b]: Instead of addressing the serious problems in Iraq, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is focusing his energy on preventing the public from viewing the facts on the ground. This time, Rumsfeld has banned soldiers and media from using any "digital cameras, camcorders and cell phones with cameras." The move comes just after the publication of pictures of prison abuse from Abu Ghraib and a film from an Iraqi wedding which allegedly was attacked by U.S. troops. It also comes just weeks before Michael Moore's movie "Fahrenheit 911" is expected to hit U.S. theaters. The movie includes chilling combat and prison abuse footage. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...
[b]WHITE HOUSE NOT TAKING THE SITUATION SERIOUSLY[/b]: The NYT reports "the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has approved a new national military strategy that makes clear to the nation's war planners that they must pay greater attention to preparing for the complicated and dangerous transition between the end of major combat operations and the return of civil authority." Although the move is welcome news, it contrasts with how the administration ignored calls before the war to focus more attention on post-war stabilization and planning. In one example of the White House's nonchalance, the WP reports the administration appointed its political operatives to key positions in the Coalition Provisional Authority, instead of experienced experts who knew what to do. The story notes the CPA was filled with people in their twenties or early thirties who had no foreign service background yet were overseeing a world crisis point and "managing a $13 billion budget." The one thing the crew had in common was strong conservative political credentials, as proven by the fact that the Pentagon found many of the new staff from the Heritage Foundation, where many of the job candidates had "posted their resumes." - http://www.americanprogress.o...
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| Iraqi 'Sovereignty': Don’t Get Your Hopes Up ... |
| 05.24.04 (1:39 pm) [edit] |
[b]Amid more bad news from Iraq and increasing dissatisfaction among voters[/b], http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5... President Bush will give the first of a series of six speeches today detailing his plans for the June 30 "transfer of power" in Iraq. The speeches are meant to acquaint the public with a joint United States-Great Britain U.N. Security Council resolution regarding the transfer. But Iraq’s proposed "sovereignty" will likely disappoint audiences in all countries involved. Key elements follow:
1. [u]No date is set for coalition troops to leave Iraq[/u]. http://www.reuters.com/newsAr... U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will appoint a president, prime minister, two vice presidents and various ministers who will serve until the scheduled elections in January 2005. This new interim government will supposedly control the $10 billion Development Fund for Iraq, http://quote.bloomberg.com/ap... though a deputy in Iraq’s foreign ministry claims that the U.S. is actually skimming from the oil revenues http://english.aljazeera.net/... supplying the fund.
2. [u]France, Germany and others want the resolution to specify a date for coalition withdrawal[/u]. http://www.smh.com.au/article... British and U.S. diplomats say the mandate can be reviewed after a year.
3. [u]The U.S. will not pressure the new government to retain the interim constitution, which guarantees minority rights[/u]. Shi’ite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has protested these guarantees as undemocratic; Iraqi Kurds have insisted upon them. http://news.ft.com/servlet/Co...
4. [u]Iraqi troops and police will remain under U.S. control[/u]. http://www.nytimes.com/aponli...
5. [u]American and international advisers will stay on after the June 30 transfer[/u]. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0... Security issues for the new embassy, which will be one of the world’s largest, have not yet been resolved.
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| Democracy in the United States is Clinging by its Fingernails ... |
| 05.24.04 (10:19 am) [edit] |
[b]We are in[i] big [/i]trouble with the corrupt, traitorous Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]... [/b]We have a dangerously stupid war criminal in the Oval Office and a corrupt cabal of neo-con thugs & neo-fascist goons [i]lusting, salivating and foaming-at-the-mouth[/i] for more warfare throughout the Middle East (Syria, Iran, etc.) ... Meanwhile, on the home-front, these liars, embezzlers and traitors are [i]suckering, plundering & looting [/i]the American people, as Middle-Class & Working people are becoming increasingly impoverished as a horrible period of inflation commences ...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
If George W. Bush is re-elected in 2004, the fate of American democracy will be held in the hands of Al Qaeda and like-minded terrorists the world over. Is this rank paranoia or is it a logical conclusion based on careful observation of recent events? Before you decide, please try this little thought exercise: Imagine for one moment what is becoming an increasingly likely scenario in the United States: another large-scale terrorist attack somewhere on American soil. This might be a dirty bomb in New York City, a bio-terror attack in Washington, or a thermonuclear device in either of these two cities.
What would the Bush administration do in the face of such an attack?
First, the Bush administration would ram the Patriot Act II through Congress. This, in and of itself, would basically spell the end of American democracy. The Patriot Act II contains all the provisions necessary to turn America from a relatively free democracy into a Soviet-style totalitarian state. Most importantly, it would allow the government to declare anyone it wished to be `an enemy combatant’ and strip them of their rights as a citizen. It also contains provisions that would effectively repeal the fourth amendment (the freedom from unreasonable searches) and the fifth amendment (the right to a grand jury and the freedom from testifying against oneself).
But passing the Patriot Act II would only be the start. Faced with another large-scale terror attack on American soil, the administration would almost certainly declare martial law, suspend or significantly curtail the freedom of the press, and authorize the military to act as domestic policemen (the Bush administration has already floated the idea of authorizing the military to act as domestic policemen, see the New York Times article `Misusing the Military,’ July 24, 2002). Finally, the administration would quite likely suspend elections for some period of time, using the excuse that `an election cannot be held during this time of crisis.’ All of these measures would ostensibly be to keep the peace in the country and prevent further attacks, but they would also nicely serve to cement the ruling party’s grip on power, perhaps once and for all.
Certainly all of this sounds like the wildest fantasy, but consider how the United States reacted to the attacks of 9-11. Consider in particular how the Bush administration manipulated the tragedy for its own cynical ends. What is most important is not what the Bush administration did in response to the attacks of 9-11, but what they learned from the attacks and their aftermath. What have they learned? They have learned that the country will indeed allow them exploit a terrorist attack for their own ends. They have learned that the country will not blame them for allowing it to happen. They have learned that they will rally round the president, even if that very president allowed the attacks to happen due to his own negligence. In short, there is every reason to think that the Bush administration’s experience of 9-11 will have emboldened them to exploit any future terrorist attack in an even more cynical and ruthless fashion.
It is not too much to say that democracy is clinging by its fingernails in the United States. It would take very little to push it over the edge and replace it with a system that can only be realistically called fascism. The Bush administration is both ready and willing to make this change – they are merely waiting for the opportunity. They are well aware that this opportunity would come in the form of another large-scale terrorist attack on American soil. And given what we know of America’s porous borders, the ruthlessness of groups like Al Qaeda, and the administration’s own disastrous record of preventing terrorist attacks, can we be even remotely sure that such an attack will not come sometime in the next four years? Most experts on terrorism agree that such an attack is not a matter of `if’ but `when’. If such an attack were to occur, not only would thousands of Americans die, but American democracy would die with it. That is, if the Bush administration was at the helm when the attack occurred.
Thus, we must do all that we can to ensure that George W. Bush is not reelected president in 2004. While George W. Bush is in office, American democracy is in a position of great peril – it could literally vanish in an instant. This means voting for the only candidate who has any real chance of defeating him in the 2004 presidential election: Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. With John Kerry in office, we can be sure that the Constitution will be protected. More importantly, we can be sure that the great American experiment in democracy will not be held captive to the whims of nihilistic terrorists who would like nothing more than to see the United States of America go the way of Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy.
[i][b]Chris Rowthorn is an American journalist based in Japan. He has written for The Japan Times and now writes almost exclusively for Lonely Planet Guidebooks. He can be reached at rowthorninjapan@yahoo.com[/b][/i]. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...
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| A Middle-Class Scorecard ... |
| 05.24.04 (9:01 am) [edit] |
[b]The traitorous Bush regime and their GOP toadies are [i]taking[/i] American Middle-Class and Working people [i]"on-a-neo-con-neo-fasc ist-ride"[/i] for suckers, dopes & fools ... [/b]We need to [i]carry-out a serious re-think [/i]and assess their[i] insane corporate-take-all policies[/i], because these [i]sluts[/i] for their special interest [i]pimps[/i] are not acting in our best interests ...
Consider "[b]A Middle-Class Scorecard[/b]" by [i]Katrina vanden Heuvel[/i], The Nation, on http://www.thenation.com/edcu... :
The non-partisan Drum Major Institute http://www.drummajorinstitute...* has just released its first-ever scorecard of votes on legislation that significantly impact America's middle class. In "[u]Middle Class 2003: How Congress Voted[/u]," http://www.drummajorinstitute... representatives were graded on their votes on key legislation that both helps the middle class (the American Dream Downpayment Act http://www.consumer-guides.in... , the Pharmaceutical Market Access Act) and hurts it (Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act and the Death Tax Repeal Act http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb... ).
The results are clear: legislators need to put their rhetoric about the middle class where their votes are. While the Senate earned a B grade overall, fully one quarter of Republican Senators received an F. The scores in the House of Representatives revealed a similar divide: the House received an overall grade of C, but ninety-nine percent of Democrats passed compared to only one-third of Republicans.
The GOP http://www.thenation.com/dire... is good at talking the middle-class talk, especially during an election year. But what about the walk?
"[u]Middle Class 2003: How Congress Voted[/u]" http://www.drummajorinstitute... makes it possible to hold elected officials accountable for the legislation that determines the quality of life for middle-class families. Check out the Drum Major Institute's website http://www.drummajorinstitute...* for the scorecard http://www.drummajorinstitute... which was sent home with every legislator as they return to their districts this week. It's a valuable tool for the press, policy makers and voters alike.
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| AP Shows Video of Iraq Wedding Celebration Before Massacred by Herr Fuhrer Bush |
| 05.23.04 (3:52 pm) [edit] |
[b]The corrupt Bush regime perpetrates heinous lies, deceptions and falsehoods about 9/11; about phony WMDs in Iraq posing a so-called "imminent threat" to our national security; about phony links between Al Qaeda & Saddam Hussein; about phony, non-existent involvement by Iraq who wasn't really involved in 9/11; cover-ups of the [i]House of Bush, House of Saud [/i]to protect the Saudi Royal Crime Family who [i]was involved [/i]in [i]9/11 and price-gouging Americans [/i]at the gas pump; etc. etc. etc. ... [i]The list is endless ... What don't the Bushies lie about??? [/i]...[/b]
And [i]now[/i], the Bushies [b]lie[/b][i] yet again [/i]about massacring and slaughtering over 40 Iraqis at a wedding ceremony ... Again there are[i] pictures [/i]...
[u][b]AP: Video Shows Iraq Wedding Celebration[/b][/u] - http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
RAMADI, Iraq - A videotape obtained Sunday by Associated Press Television News captures a wedding party that survivors say was later attacked by U.S. planes early Wednesday, killing up to 45 people. The dead included the cameraman, Yasser Shawkat Abdullah, hired to record the festivities, which ended Tuesday night before the planes struck.
The U.S. military says it is investigating the attack, which took place in the village of Mogr el-Deeb about five miles from the Syrian border, but that all evidence so far indicates the target was a safehouse for foreign fighters.
"There was no evidence of a wedding: no decorations, no musical instruments found, no large quantities of food or leftover servings one would expect from a wedding celebration," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said Saturday. "There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations, too."
But video that APTN shot a day after the attack shows fragments of musical instruments, pots and pans and brightly colored beddings used for celebrations, scattered around the bombed out tent.
The wedding videotape shows a dozen white pickup trucks speeding through the desert escorting the bridal car — decorated with colorful ribbons. The bride wears a Western-style white bridal dress and veil. The camera captures her stepping out of the car but does not show a close-up.
An AP reporter and photographer, who interviewed more than a dozen survivors a day after the bombing, were able to identify many of them on the wedding party video — which runs for several hours.
APTN also traveled to Mogr el-Deeb, 250 miles west of Ramadi, the day after the attack to film what the survivors said was the wedding site. A devastated building and remnants of the tent, pots and pans could be seen, along with bits of what appeared to be the remnants of ordnance, one of which bore the marking "ATU-35," similar to those on U.S. bombs.
A water tanker truck can be seen in both the video shot by APTN and the wedding tape obtained from a cousin of the groom.
The singing and dancing seems to go on forever at the all-male tent set up in the garden of the host, Rikad Nayef, for the wedding of his son, Azhad, and the bride Rutbah Sabah. The men later move to the porch when darkness falls, apparently taking advantage of the cool night weather. Children, mainly boys, sit on their fathers' laps; men smoke an Arab water pipe, finger worry beads and chat with one another. It looks like a typical, gender-segregated tribal desert wedding.
As expected, women are out of sight - but according to survivors, they danced to the music of Hussein al-Ali, a popular Baghdad wedding singer hired for the festivities. Al-Ali was buried in Baghdad on Thursday.
Prominently displayed on the videotape was a stocky man with close-cropped hair playing an electric organ. Another tape, filmed a day later in Ramadi and obtained by APTN, showed the musician lying dead in a burial shroud — his face clearly visible and wearing the same tan shirt as he wore when he performed.
As the musicians played, young men milled about, most dressed in traditional white robes. Young men swayed in tribal dances to the monotonous tones of traditional Arabic music. Two children — a boy and a girl — held hands, dancing and smiling. Women are rarely filmed at such occasions, and they appear only in distant glimpses.
Kimmitt said U.S. troops who swept through the area found rifles, machine guns, foreign passports, bedding, syringes and other items that suggested the site was used by foreigners infiltrating from Syria.
The videotape showed no weapons, although they are common among rural Iraqis.
Kimmitt has denied finding evidence that any children died in the raid although a "handful of women" — perhaps four to six — were "caught up in the engagement."
"They may have died from some of the fire that came from the aircraft," he told reporters Friday.
However, an AP reporter obtained names of at least 10 children who relatives said had died. Bodies of five of them were filmed by APTN when the survivors took them to Ramadi for burial Wednesday. Iraqi officials said at least 13 children were killed.
Four days after the attack, the memories of the survivors remain painful — as are their injuries.
Haleema Shihab, 32, one of the three wives of Rikad Nayef, said that as the first bombs fell, she grabbed her seven-month old son, Yousef, and clutching the hands of her five-year-old son, Hamza, started running. Her 15-year-old son, Ali, sprinted alongside her. They managed to run for several yards when she fell — her leg fractured.
"Hamza was yelling, 'mommy,'" Shihab, recalled. "Ali said he was hurt and that he was bleeding. That's the last time I heard him." Then another shell fell and injured Shihab's left arm.
"Hamza fell from my hand and was gone. Only Yousef stayed in my arms. Ali had been hit and was killed. I couldn't go back," she said from her hospital bed in Ramadi. Her arm was in a cast.
She and her stepdaughter, Iqbal — who had caught up with her — hid in a bomb crater. "We were bleeding from 3 a.m. until sunrise," Shihab said.
Soon American soldiers came. One of them kicked her to see if she was alive, she said.
"I pretended I was dead so he wouldn't kill me," said Shihab. She said the soldier was laughing. When Yousef cried, the soldier said: "'No, stop," said Shihab.
Fourteen-year-old Moza, Shihab's stepdaughter, lies on another bed of the hospital room. She was hurt in the leg and cries. Her relatives haven't told her yet that her mother, Sumaya, is dead.
"I fear she's dead," Moza said of her mother. "I'm worried about her."
Moza was sleeping on one side of the porch next to her sisters Siham, Subha and Zohra while her mother slept on the other end. There were many others on the porch, her cousins, stepmothers and other female relatives.
When the first shell fell, Moza and her sisters, Subha, Fatima and Siham ran off together. Moza was holding Subha's hand.
"I don't know where Fatima and my mom were. Siham got hit. She died. I saw Zohra's head gone. I lost consciousness," said Moza, covering her mouth with the end of her headscarf.
Her sister Iqbal, lay in pain on the bed next to her. Her other sister, Subha, was on the upper floor of the hospital, in the same room with two-year-Khoolood. Her small body was bandaged and a tube inserted in her side drained her liver.
Her ankle was bandaged. A red ribbon was tied to her curly hair. Only she and her older brother, Faisal, survived from their immediate family. Her parents and four sisters and brothers were all killed.
In all, 27 members of Rikad Nayef's extended family died — most of them children and women, the family said.
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| Act Now! Join the Virtual March to Stop Bush's Blood-Thirsty Agenda! |
| 05.23.04 (2:39 pm) [edit] |
[b]Now is the time for "We the People" to stand against the corrupt Bush regime ...[/b]
Please register now to join with us in our virtual march on the White House taking place on Sunday 29th August 2004 at 2PM US Central Standard Time, 7PM UK time!
Let the Bush regime know exactly what you think about their policies!
Just click here http://www.livemarch.com/marc... , then click on the "Join this live march" button, then on "sign up now" and enter your details.
You'll receive reminders about the protest.
Shortly before the action begins you'll receive an email with instructions on where to send your messages, along with a suggested messge, please keep this to hand and rally here http://www.livemarch.com/marc... no later than 10 minutes before the start of the virtual march.
When the countdown clock on that page reaches 0:0:0 start sending those faxes and emails, phone the White House and visit the website! - http://geocities.com/tellbush...
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| George W. Bush: A Loser, A Wastrel, A Buffoon ... |
| 05.23.04 (12:32 pm) [edit] |
[b]Most [i]thinking people [/i]see George W. Bush for the loser, wastrel and buffoon that he truly [i]is[/i] ... in addition to being a war criminal ... A Neo-Imperial Emperor Caligula with No Clothes ... (Of course, unhappily [i]not all people are thinking people [/i]...)[/b]
[b]Read on ...[/b]
IN a sign of the times, President George W Bush is not fundraising for re-election this weekend. Nor is he attending his twin daughters' college graduations - which the White House claims is about preserving their privacy.
Bush is prepping for a rare prime-time speech tomorrow, on Iraq. It's a contrast with Friday, when the Commander in Chief unsuccessfully tried to balance his usual style with a defence of his administration.
"Choose your friends carefully," the folksy President told students at Louisiana State University. His secret in life? "Listen to your mother." He also warned of the hatred of America's enemies and said he remains committed to his policies in Iraq.
In another sign of the election's volatility, a row of lecturers and professors refused to stand even as others rose and applauded him - notable given that this was the Deep South, where Democrats usually lose. After a 15-minute speech, Bush rushed to a supporter's home where donors paid £14,000 a head for sea bass and salad with George.
It's the cognitive dissonance of an American election, all hoopla and money, and world-changing events. First Lady Laura Bush cracked jokes with TV host Jay Leno on Wednesday about her weightlifting - "I'm quite buff" - and her intimidating mother-in-law.
Meanwhile vice-president Dick Cheney played attack dog and tried to divert attention from Iraq. Campaigning for fellow Republicans in Texas, he slammed Bush's opponent John Kerry as "indecisive" and told his audience, pointedly, that it will be Americans who decide November's election.
The US's politics are routinely isolated from all but domestic issues. This election year is in uncharted waters, as the cliche goes, because of Iraq, national security, and job losses.
Bush's ratings are below 50%. In the last half century, that's a depth only seen by incumbents who failed to retake the White House: Bush's father George Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford.
"He is in dangerous territory now," says pollster John Zogby. So unpredictable is the race, some have suggested a landslide for Senator Kerry. That is not as yet likely for a Democrat from Massachusetts, home to the Kennedys and gay marriage.
But as every political pro knows, six months is a very long time in electioneering. Even so, as Bush's popularity is dropping, Kerry's is not rising as quickly as it might. The election is just not galvanising America - though it rarely, if ever, does so before autumn. The two men are still in a dead heat when potential voters are asked to compare them.
More people are undecided. In November, the outcome could be dependent on how many Americans are too disenchanted to vote, warns Daniel Schorr, National Public Radio's senior news analyst.
Already, slightly more than 50% of Americans do not bother - the highest rate in the developed world. And current events are so off-putting that that proportion could increase.
In an extraordinary trial balloon, Kerry's campaign has suggested he might buy time by waiting before formally accepting his party's nomination, a ritual that is traditionally the high point of each party's convention in the summer.
Such a move, unprecedented in US political history, would diminish Bush's financial advantage. Once a candidate is nominated, he is limited to the #50 million in public financing allocated to each major candidate.
Kerry's situation, especially as a Democrat, is unusual. He is the first to forego public funding during the primaries, the first segment of America's presidential elections which means his spending is unlimited. Bush made the same choice this year, as he had in 2000 when he ran against Democrat Al Gore. At this point in the race Gore was almost broke and had to coast until the convention.
Democrats meet in Boston in late July. The Republican convention is a month later in New York. If Kerry were to accept the nomination as expected, he would have to stretch his public funding a month longer than would Bush, a disadvantage his opponent would presumably hammer home with an advertising blitz during August.
But Kerry is raising money twice as fast, a trend that may or may not continue. Democrats chose an early date for their convention, assuming that Kerry would need cash early.
Some Democrats even suggested that delegates could vote online; or party leaders could reconvene to nominate Kerry on September 1 - not coincidentally in the middle of the Republicans' event - and steal the limelight. A resolution would have to be approved by the convention delegates, elected during the primaries.
But when the idea was leaked to Associated Press on Friday night, experts suggested that such a move might suck the life out of the convention. Time to rally the troops.
"Only John Kerry could be for a nominating convention but be against the nomination," says Ken Mehlman, Bush's campaign manager. "This is just the latest example of John Kerry's belief that the rules are for other people, not for him."
The Bush campaign is trying to paint Kerry as an elite New Englander who waffles on issues and is out of touch with most of the US. Remarkably, Kerry raised $1m dollars a day during April, according to figures released late last week.
He has thus managed to smash the conventional wisdom that he would be wiped out by the Bush-Cheney money machine. "The issue was, could Kerry raise the money he needed to get his message out and campaign aggressively through the summer? He's done that," Anthony Corrado, an analyst and former Democratic campaigner, told The Washington Post. Democrats are united, for the most part, in trying to oust Bush. In fact, many say this is the most important election in more than a generation.
Kerry has one million volunteers, according to fundraising letters sent to supporters. And yesterday, supporters were to hold 2000 "house parties" across the country to raise enough for a "miracle in May": more cash than in April.
Bush, whose fundraising abilities are legendary, still has the advantage. At the end of April, he had almost two and a half times as much cash on hand as Kerry. But he has also been spending a record amount . During March and early April, Bush spent almost #30m on advertising that apparently failed to bolster his ratings.
The White House is facing blistering criticism on Iraq and an increasingly worried and disoriented party. In an embarrassing election-year setback, a handful of Republicans broke rank late last week on Bush's proposed #1.38 trillion budget.
Rather than face defeat in the closely divided Senate, Republican leaders withdrew the initiative and will reintroduce it later. That came shortly after Bush went to Capitol Hill, an appeasing gesture by a President, to rally support.
Government spending has increased under Bush, a source of deep displeasure to fiscal conservatives. Much of the cost of the war in Iraq is not in the annual budget.
In a recent column, the influential conservative Robert Novak noted that one fifth of registered Republicans told a recent poll that they were not committed to Bush - a fact that could spell defeat in a closely contested election. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...
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| Israeli Cabinet Minister Sickened by Nazi-Style Treatment of Palestinians ... |
| 05.23.04 (10:11 am) [edit] |
[b]Conscientious human beings around the world, irrespective of political party, religious affiliation and/or nationality are sickened by the nazi-style treatment of the Palestinian people at the hands of the neo-hitlerian Sharon government (... as they are also heart-broken and angered by the nazi-style treatment of the Iraqi people at the hands of the neo-con, neo-fascist Bush regime of racist thugs & nazi goons ...) ...[/b]
Of coures, when an Israeli Cabinet minister expressed his outrage, the hypocritical Israeli right-wingers ([i]who have learnt nothing from the Holocaust-- and are turning into the vile war criminals like those who tried to wipe-out the Jews in Hitler's Nazi regime ...[/i]) shouted him down ... Just as the neo-con, neo-nazis are attempting to shout-down all concerned humanitarian people around the world and in the U.S.A. too ...
[u][b]Israeli Leader's WWII Analogy Draws Fire[/b][/u] - http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
Causing an uproar, an Israeli Cabinet minister said Sunday he was reminded of the suffering of his family under Nazi rule when he saw TV images of an Israeli offensive in a Palestinian refugee camp.
Justice Minister Yosef Lapid, a Holocaust survivor, insisted he was not likening army actions to Nazi policies. However, he said the picture of an elderly woman searching for medication in the rubble of a home razed by Israel in the Rafah camp reminded him of his grandmother.
Infuriated Cabinet colleagues said that even if unspoken, the analogy was clear, and demanded he retract his comments.
Lapid's remarks added fire to a debate in Israel over its offensive in the Gaza Strip (news - web sites) camp, which is near the border with Egypt. Some critics said the campaign makes little sense from a military point of view, while others questioned why Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) approved it even though he is pushing for an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Israel has damaged or demolished dozens of homes in Rafah in its six-day offensive, an attempt to root out militants and uncover arms-smuggling tunnels. The practice has been widely criticized around the world and questioned by Israel's attorney general.
Early Sunday, four military bulldozers and three tanks moved back into Rafah's Brazil neighborhood, scene of fighting last week.
Hundreds of residents fled the area, with some women loading belongings and young children onto donkey carts. Gunfire crackled in the air, and Israeli helicopters flew overhead.
Separately, three members of the Hamas militant group were killed Sunday while handling explosives in the West Bank town of Nablus, Palestinian security sources said on condition of anonymity.
The men had pulled their car up alongside an abandoned vehicle used to store their explosives, and the storage vehicle blew up while one of the militants was handling materials inside, the sources said, adding it was unclear whether the explosion had been accidental or carried out by Israel.
Lapid, of the centrist Shinui Party, called for a halt in the demolitions during a Cabinet discussion Sunday, evoking images of his family's suffering during World War II.
"I am talking about an old woman on all fours looking for her medicine in the rubble of her home and I thought about my grandmother," he later told Israel Army Radio.
Lapid, a native of what is now Yugoslavia, spent part of the war in the Budapest ghetto and lost many relatives, including one grandmother and his father, in the Holocaust. He immigrated to Israel in 1948 when he was 17.
Many Israelis have relatives who perished in the Nazi genocide, and using the issue in political debate, however heated, is considered taboo. Any comparisons between the Holocaust and other acts are seen as cheapening the memory of the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis.
"Can he make such an analogy just because he is a Holocaust survivor?" Health Minister Danny Naveh told Army Radio. "The comparison, maybe hinted or even unintentional, between the systematic murder of the Jews by the Germans and the army's operations in Gaza ... is not a legitimate analogy."
In the radio interview, Lapid also revealed that the army is considering demolishing some 2,000 homes in Rafah to expand a patrol road between the camp and the border with Egypt. Military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed for the first time that they are exploring plans involving the demolition of 700 to 2,000 homes.
"We look like monsters in the eyes of the world," Lapid told Israel Radio. "This makes me sick."
Israeli military officials want to widen the patrol road to make it more difficult for weapons smugglers to dig tunnels. The plan has been criticized by the United Nations (news - web sites), the European Union (news - web sites) and the United States.
Israeli officials said Attorney General Meni Mazuz believed the road-widening plan would not hold up in local and international courts, and that he told the army to come up with alternatives that would cause less destruction. In a meeting with Mazuz, military chief Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz proposed offering compensation to Palestinians who lose their homes, officials said. No decision was made on the he proposal.
Forty-one Palestinians have been killed since "Operation Rainbow" began last Tuesday. Israel says its offensive has resulted in the arrest of dozens of militants and the killing of a local leader of the armed group Hamas. The army also said it had discovered one arms-smuggling tunnel.
The ongoing violence has put new pressure on Sharon, who wants to withdraw from Gaza.
Sharon is exploring the possibility of bringing the moderate Labor Party into his government as he tries to push forward with the withdrawal plan, which faces considerable opposition in his Cabinet, officials said Sunday. - http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
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| Two Misguided Misfits: Bush, Sharon Lurching From Crisis-to-Crisis ... |
| 05.23.04 (8:42 am) [edit] |
[b]Two misguided misfits Bush & Sharon should have been born a century earlier, because they fit so nicely into the age of Hitler & Mussolini, whom they are emulating with blood-thirsty rage in their death cult of insane warfare, slaughter, murder, torture, rape and abuse of human beings ...[/b]
These neo-hitlerian tyrannical dictators should be removed from office:-- the neo-con Bush should be tried for [i]War Crimes [/i]and the neo-fascist Sharon should be [i]in the dock along side Dubya [/i]at the Hague, both of whom should be convicted of[i] Crimes Against Humanity [/i]...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
Events in Iraq and the Israeli-occupied territories show how George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon continue to create one nightmare after another. Whereas recent headlines have been about two events — an Israeli tank firing on a Palestinian protest march, and American jets bombing what was said to be an Iraqi wedding — there's been no shortage of horrors.
Israel has rightly apologized for Wednesday's attack that brought worldwide condemnation. But its military onslaught on Gaza in the days preceding or following the tragedy has been no less ferocious.
Besides 13 Israeli soldiers, about 70 Palestinians have been killed in the last two weeks and dozens injured.
Sharon's rationale, as always, is that he is targeting terrorists. But, as always, women and children are dead or maimed. Hundreds of civilians are homeless. Yet, as usual, there's no end in sight to the supply of militants.
Sharon's offensive is part of his plan to pull out of Gaza so as to keep most of the West Bank.
In bulldozing homes, ripping up roads and other infrastructure, and forcing people out, he is clearly trying to carve out an Israeli-controlled buffer between Gaza and Egypt — a smaller version of the one created in south Lebanon two decades ago.
This is no more likely to work than that one did. The ultimate restorer of peace to the Israel-Lebanon border was a political, not a military, solution.
Tear up the Palestinian underground arms-smuggling tunnels, and they'll likely find other ways to fight back. That's always the way of entrenched resistance to unwanted occupation.
Since September, 2000, Israel has demolished 1,200 homes and displaced 17,000 Gazans, with little success. If anything, it has made Hamas more powerful.
Sharon also has a penchant for appearing "tough" when doing something "soft."
Preparing the political ground for his pullout plan, he had Hamas leaders Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and then Abdel Aziz Rantisi assassinated. His current offensive, which is not limited to the area along the Egyptian border, was unleashed after he lost the May 2 Likud referendum on his withdrawal plan.
While America abstained from the Security Council vote condemning Israel for violating international law, Bush continues to back Sharon.
For so doing, he was lustily cheered by a pro-Israeli group in Washington at about the same time as missiles and shells were tearing into Palestinians.
Speaking to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Bush reiterated his support for Israel. But he was mostly mum on what the Arab League called Sharon's "war crimes aimed at ethnic cleansing" and what others characterized as egregious violations of human rights.
In this election year, Bush is trying to win as many Jewish votes and donations away from Democrats as he can.
Palestinians be damned.
As part of this wooing exercise, he earlier endorsed the Sharon plan to grab much of the West Bank, and also reject the right of return for the Palestinians displaced in 1948.
The president put that in writing to help Sharon convince the Likud rank and file. They rejected the plan anyway. But the U.S. commitment remains, with nothing in return to advance the American road map for peace.
This infuriated the other three backers of the map: the European Union, Russia and the U.N.
And it prompted King Abdullah of Jordan to ask for a written American guarantee that the Palestinians would at least be compensated, and that Israel would cede some territory in return for a lot in the West Bank.
Bush balked.
Jordan and Egypt, on whom Israel and the U.S. were counting on to ensure that Hamas does not fill the vacuum in Gaza after the Israeli withdrawal, are hesitating to help out.
But nothing seems to budge Bush and Sharon from their misguided policies.
In Iraq, America continues to make monumental mistakes.
Following the bombing death of about 45 people in a desert, James Mattis of the U.S. Marines said he had nothing to apologize for. "How many people go into the middle of the desert ... to hold a wedding?"
Many. Arabs routinely head to the sands for night picnics or celebrations. No matter. "There were more than two dozen military-age males" there, said the general. "Let's not be naïve."
Iraqi women and children be damned.
American credibility is in tatters on several other fronts.
With less than 40 days to hand over power to the Iraqis, security remains elusive, as the murder of the head of the Iraqi Governing Council showed. If the Americans can't guard their own handpicked leaders, even in Baghdad, whom can they?
The U.N., which offers the best hope for putting Iraq on the road to real self-rule, may hesitate before committing itself.
On the prison-abuse scandal, Bush's argument that it was the work of a few guards at the Abu Ghraib prison has fallen apart.
Stories abound of similar tactics used across Iraq and Afghanistan. Popping up are post-9/11 Pentagon and Justice Department directives suspending civil liberties.
Prison guards are not the only ones being scapegoated.
Ahmed Chalabi, the Pentagon's president-presumptive of post-war Iraq, has been dumped after being showered with $39 million over the last few years.
He has been given the shove not because he was a fraud artist who supplied false intelligence, or because he had little or no popular support (as long argued in this space). He made the mistake of attacking Bush (as a way to build his local credibility).
In the battles in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, America has got itself into a no-win situation. Landing bombs near shrines is no way to win friends among the majority Shiites.
If nabbing rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was important, why was he not tackled all these months in Baghdad?
In Falluja, where the Marines went on an undisciplined rampage to avenge the death of four mercenaries, peace has been bought at the price of turning the city over to an ex-Baathist.
As Sharon and Bush lurch from crisis to crisis, they have alienated just about every ally and made the world less safe — even for Israel and America. - http://www.thestar.com/NASApp...
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| Our Republic Stands for Our U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights, Not the Bible!!! |
| 05.22.04 (5:43 pm) [edit] |
"Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society." - Thomas Jefferson, http://etext.lib.virginia.edu...
Our Founding Fathers were adament in creating a "wall of separation between church and state" and would have been appalled at the pressure brought to bear to impose hateful intolerence & divisive ideologies by so-called "religious" zealots and tyrannical fanatics like the traitorous & hypocritical Bush (unfit to be president) who is corrupting our system of democracy ... Bush's so-called form of "Christianity (sic)" pathetically has resulted in:
1. Bloody warfare based upon heinous lies, deceptions and falsehoods (e.g. phony WMDs posing a so-called "imminent threat" to our national security, phony links between Al Qaeda & Saddam Hussein, cynically manipulating the fear & anger of Americans in the aftermath of 9/11, when Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, unlike the Saudis: Bush's buddies, etc.) for which he should be impeached;
2. Lack of compassion, lack of action to help over 45 million Americans without health care coverage (while Bush brags & smirks about Iraqis getting health care-- that is, when they are not being murdered, tortured, raped, ridden like donkeys, and abused in atrocities committed on orders from Bush, Cheney, Rice & Rumsfeld ...)-- so Americans live in miserable pain, diseased or go bankrupt with over 18,000 Americans dying each year because they can't afford health care;
3. Lack of concern, lack of action about skyrocketing poverty in the U.S.A. with over 25 million families desperately trying to to make ends meet, living below an out-dated poverty-line established over 40 years ago-- over 4 million Americans who are homeless-- between 9-15 million Americans without jobs;
4. Highest gap between the Hyper-Rich Haves & the Impoverished Have-Nots in over 75 years, with America's backbone, the Middle-Class shrinking;
5. Inflation (e.g. higher gas prices, higher costs in goods & services, more people losing their homes because they can't pay their mortgages) hitting the Middle-Class and Working people very hard, while corporations, wealthy oligarchs & hyper-rich plutocrats are awarded immoral tax cuts, tax loopholes and tax boondoggles and living like Emperor Caligulas-- supported by the rest of us who are saddled with Bush's record-level deficits and historically high debts-- that are hurting the value of the dollar and our standard of living.
Our nation's infrastructure is crumbling all around us (e.g. Bush's "Leave No Child Behind" Failure has Left Lots of Children Worse Off because no funds were allocated to enable teachers to teach [Why do you think that the rich send their kids to private schools with 15 kids/class instead of the 30-40/class sizes that public school teachers have to contend with?]!-- No money for fire-fighters-- No money for roads, hospitals, schools, etc.), while the so-called "Christian (sic)" Bush is spending over $5 Billion/Month on Iraq (over $114 Billion thus far in Iraq, with no end in sight!)-- Bush's gang of neo-con thugs bribed the embezzler, crook & liar Ahmed Chalabi with over $33 Million (including $340,000/Month) for false information, and Chalabi betrayed our nation by selling national security secrets to Iran (Which Neo-Con Traitors in the Pentagon gave their "pet" Chalabi Top-Secret US information? Shouldn't these Neo-Con Traitors including Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Feith, Bolton-- who have gotten us into this mess be fired and tried for treason?) Condi Rice was appointed head of the Iraqi Stabilization Group (ISG) back in October 2003 by Bush and the situtation has continued to spiral out-of-control ever since! Why is Rice still in office, as she is over-rated, incompetent and a liar?
Where are all of these so-called "Christian (sic)" "values"??? Americans are being damaged, harmed and impoverished by a reckless, ruthless gang of neo-con warmongers for war-profiteering... There is nothing "Christian" in their heinous War Crimes and Rape of America.
It is sad to watch the cynical manipulation of uneducated, well-meaning, but foolish so-called "Christians (sic)" who stand behind a dangerously stupid buffoon Bush who acts like a Nazi and not an American. These misguided people are suckered by the Bushies who are using them/us as cannon-fodder, slave labour & sheep to further their own sordid & squalid aims. Those who profess to "love life" should be concerned (or outraged) over Bush's abortions of nearly 800 U.S. Soldiers and between 11,000-15,000 innocent Iraqi Civilians (pregnant women with unborn kids are amongst his casualties) with the death toll rising day-in-and-day-out and no end in sight... Moreover, do these so-called "Christians (sic)" approve of murder, rape, torture, putting a harness on the elderly and riding them like a donkey, and abuse of prisoners??? If so, it is no wonder that the Arab world wants none of it... The rest of the world wants none of it ... Conscientious and thoughtful Americans want none of it either...
Let "We the People" reject the hypocrisy of the corrupt Un-Christian, Un-American Bush regime and their over-zealot followers who would make Jesus Christ weep with shame for their heinous & callous treatment of American people and other peoples around the world (especially the Iraqis and the Afghanistianis who have been mercilessly massacred, tortured, etc.) ... And, who would make Our Founding Fathers weep, for we are NOT a so-called "Christian (sic)" nation and this ugly, arrogant and self-righteous religiosity is tinny, false, abhorrent and destructive to our Republic For Which It Stands (Our Republic Stands for our U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights, and NOT the Bible) ...
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
In a highly informative interview by Bill Moyers (NOW with Bill Moyers http://www.pbs.org/now/societ... ) with Susan Jacoby, author of "Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism" (excerpt on http://www.beliefnet.com/stor... ), they explore the dangers of our society being turned into a fanatical religious totalitarian system if we do not go back to the roots of our government, our U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights ... Indeed, Ms. Jacoby cites John Adams, 2nd President of the U.S., who in the Treaty with Tripoli (1796-97), reassures the Barbary States of Northern Africa that the United States of America is "not to be founded on Christianity" http://www.ffrf.org/fttoday/j... ...
"We the People" must extricate ourselves from the dangerously stupid and corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. junta, comprised of vile traitors who are undermining our nation's heritage, system of laws and historical role in the world community ...
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| Attn: Right-Wingers! Your Buffoon-boy Bush Suffers Cuts Falling Off Bicycle (He's Afraid of Horses!) |
| 05.22.04 (2:11 pm) [edit] |
[b]The right-wing neo-con attack-dogs & neo-fascist court-jesters said that John F. Kerry is unfit to run for president because he fell off a snow-board last winter ... [/b]These hypocritical GOP maniacs seem to forget that their own buffoon-boy Bush chokes on pretzels, but what is worse, he [i]can't string 2 words together [/i]without [i]stumbling, bumbling and fumbling [/i]...
Today Bush suffered from "minor abrasions" after falling off a bicycle ... Laura Bush admits that her dumb-bunny husband [i]can't ride horses, because he is afraid of them ... [/i](Maybe Bush can get a[i] stand-in double [/i]to sit on a horse for another phony campaign photo-op, like his Top-Gun [i]'Mission Accomplished' [/i]buffoonery ...[i] Ha ha ha[/i]!!!) ... Horses are smart animals with good senses who hate cowardly idiots and probably[i] bucked-him-off [/i]along time ago ...[i] So should we [/i]...
[u][b]Bush Suffers Minor Abrasions in Fall from Bicycle[/b][/u]
CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - President Bush suffered minor abrasions after falling off a mountain bike on his Texas ranch on Saturday, the White House said.
The 57-year-old Republican president had cycled 16 miles of a 17-mile afternoon bike course when he toppled over while riding downhill on soil loosened by recent rainfall, White House spokesman Trent Duffy told reporters.
"He had minor abrasions and scratches on his chin, upper lip, his nose, right hand and both knees," Duffy said.
He added that Bush physician Dr. Richard Tubb was with the president, cleaned up the wounds and reported that Bush was fine.
Bush is to make a major televised speech on Monday night on his strategy for Iraq ahead of the June 30 deadline for transferring sovereignty to Iraqis.
Bush, who was wearing a safety helmet and mouth guard during the bike ride, declined the offer of a car ride home from Secret Service agents and instead pedaled the remaining mile to his house, Duffy said.
"It's been raining a lot. the topsoil was loose," the White House spokesman noted. - http://www.reuters.com/newsAr...
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| Intelligence (Or Utter Stupidity): Responsibility Goes To The Top!!! |
| 05.22.04 (8:12 am) [edit] |
"[i]I have repeatedly stated that [Chalabi's] Iraqi National Congress has been effective in the past and can be effective in the future. They represent the broadest possible base of the opposition... we are empowering Iraqis to liberate their own country[/i]."
– Trent Lott, 10/7/98, http://www.fas.org/irp/congre...
"[i]Instead of being the warrior-king who liberated town after town, [Chalabi] 'was jeered more than cheered. Iraqis were shouting him down. It was embarrassing[/i].'"
– WP, 5/20/04, http://www.washingtonpost.com...
[b]Tragically America is saddled with the biggest Ass ( http://www.tblog.com/template... ) and the most hypocritical and corrupt GOP congressional corporate-owned toadies in the history of our nation ... These traitorous liars, embezzlers, swindlers, felons and war criminals refuse to accept any responsibility for their heinous acts of treason & criminal activities, [i]understandably in a sordid & squalid sense[/i], because they would all be shipped off to the Hague to be tried for [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]if Americans [i]woke-up [/i]...[/b]
Decisions made directly by President Bush and other top officials may have played an even greater role in setting the stage for abuses at Abu Ghraib prison than was previously suspected. In early 2002, President Bush designated Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners as "unlawful enemy combatants" that were "not subject to the Geneva Conventions." The decision "opened the door to use of interrogation procedures harsher than U.S. soldiers had been trained to perform under standard doctrine." Subsequently, "the interrogation center at Abu Ghraib prison was run by a military intelligence unit that had served in Afghanistan and that had taken to Iraq the aggressive rules and procedures that it had developed for the Afghan conflict." Army documents reveal that members of that intelligence unit "have already been quietly punished in connection with the abuse of an Iraqi woman at the prison."
[b]RUMSFELD PERSONALLY APPROVED HARSHER METHODS[/b]: In the autumn of 2002, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld personally approved "harsh interrogation techniques...that were not in accordance with standard U.S. military doctrine." But the harshest procedures approved by Rumsfeld were abruptly halted in January 2003 after military lawyers expressed concerns "that some of those techniques went too far." New guidelines, however, were not approved until April 2003. No one knows the approved procedures were, either before or after the revisions, because administration officials refuses to release them. There are serious questions about whether "some approved U.S. interrogation procedures are in compliance with international law on the treatment of detainees."
[b]BUSH DECLARING 'MAJOR COMBAT OVER' WEAKENED PROTECTIONS[/b]: When Bush landed on an aircraft carrier on 5/1/03 and declared major combat operations over in Iraq it had "direct but unpublicized consequences for those detained in Iraq." According to military officials his declaration meant detainees in Iraq "were no longer to be treated as prisoners of war, but instead as civilians held by an occupying power." As a result, the Iraqi prisoners "the detainees would come under the protections of the fourth article of the Geneva Conventions" which affords detainees fewer protections than those that apply to prisoners of war.
[b]SANCHEZ TELLS INTERROGATORS TO MANIPULATE DETAINEES' EMOTIONS[/b]: Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez issued an order on October 12, 2003, shortly before the most publicized abuses occurred at Abu Ghraib, "explicitly calling for interrogators to assume control over the 'lighting, heating...food, clothing, and shelter' of those being questioned there." Sanchez directed intelligence officers to work with the military police to "manipulate an internee's emotions and weaknesses." Many in Congress believe the "language in the memo helped set the stage for the abuses and were part of a Washington-inspired effort to squeeze more information from Iraqis."
[b]CONTRACTORS USED FOR INTERROGATION TO AVOID OVERSIGHT[/b]: According to high-ranking military legal officers, "the Pentagon used private contractors to interrogate prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan in a deliberate attempt to obscure aggressive practices from congressional or military oversight." Employees from two private companies – CACI and Titan International – were involved in the interrogations at Abu Ghraib. Contractors "are not subject to the same military legal code as uniformed soldiers." In addition, "they have...been exempted from local laws in Iraq, under a decree by the Coalition Authority." Although contractors could theoretically be prosecuted by the Justice Department for crimes they commit, "while seven U.S. soldiers are already facing court martials for their conduct at Abu Ghraib, no contractors have yet been punished despite being implicated in the abuses." In Afghanistan civilian contractors "have also avoided sanctions even though at least one has come under investigation in connection with the death of a prisoner at an army detention facility." - http://www.americanprogress.o...
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| Evidence to Impeach: Bush White House Memorandum on the Geneva Conventions |
| 05.22.04 (7:48 am) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" have incontrovertible proof before us that the corrupt Bush regime is guilty of committing[i] Crimes Against Humanity [/i]and should be [i]impeached[/i] immediately for [i]War Crimes [/i]... [/b]Please contact Congress http://www.congress.org today and demand that [i]action be taken [/i]to oust the traitorous Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] from office ... Please feel free to incorporate the following links or texts into your plea: http://www.americanprogress.o... ... Also refer to "'[b]An Army of Asses Led by a Lion is Better Than an Army of Lions Led By An Ass'[/b]!!!" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
[u][b]Memorandum on the Geneva Conventions[/b][/u] - http://www.americanprogress.o...
[i][b]Tossing Aside the Geneva Conventions, Bush Decisions Place U.S. Troops in Greater Danger[/b][/i]
New information was revealed today indicating that decisions by Bush administration political appointees to ignore the advice of senior military and State Department officials led directly to the types of abuses seen in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq and elsewhere.
Michael Isikoff of Newsweek has uncovered two internal administration memos - a [i]draft memorandum [/i] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4... from White House Chief Counsel Alberto Gonzales recommending that the Geneva Conventions not be applied to the conflict in Afghanistan and an[i] urgent response from Secretary of State Colin Powell [/i] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4... disagreeing with that recommendation and many of Gonzales' arguments.
In a report on[i] ABCNews.com[/i], meanwhile, Jake Tapper and Clayton Sandell [i]quote two former Judge Advocates General [/i](JAG) http://abcnews.go.com/section... who charge that the uniformed military was overruled when it tried to make sure the Geneva Conventions be applied to all detainees in U.S. custody.
[b]The memoranda and interviews also make clear[/b]:
... Senior Bush political appointees devised a legal basis to systematically circumvent the requirements of the Geneva Conventions largely to protect themselves from future domestic prosecution for war crimes.
... Objections and warnings from Secretary of State Colin Powell, his legal advisor, and senior Pentagon officials were brushed aside.
... The former JAGs state flatly that had their advice been heeded, the abuses in U.S. facilities would not have happened.
[b]In his memo, Gonzales [/b]demonstrates an enormous talent for justifying setting aside a century of U.S. policy. [i]Highlights of the memo to President Bush [/i] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4... (January 25, 2002):
... Gonzales says the "new paradigm" of the war on terrorism "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."
... Gonzales outlines the pros and cons of applying the Geneva Conventions to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees. He is prescient in his prediction that a failure to apply the Conventions across the board "could undermine U.S. military culture which emphasizes maintaining the highest standards of conduct in combat, and could introduce an element of uncertainty in the status of adversaries."
... He rejects his own argument, concluding that "our military remains bound to apply the principles of GPW [Geneva Conventions on Prisoners of War] because that is what you have directed them to do."
... Gonzales also notes that "It is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section 2441 (of the US code, the War Crimes Act). Your determination [to bypass the Geneva Conventions] would create a reasonable basis in law that Section 2441 does not apply, which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution."
[b]The response from Secretary Powell [/b]– dispatched one day later – takes issue with Gonzales' arguments and conclusions. [i]Highlights of the memo to Gonzales and Condoleezza Rice[/i] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4... :
... Powell and his legal adviser William H. Taft IV argue: "It [declaring Geneva does not apply] will reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice in supporting the Geneva conventions and undermine the protections of the law of war for our troops, both in this specific conflict and in general."
... The memo also says that removing the protections of the Geneva Conventions from certain detainees would undermine U.S. detention policies at Guantanamo Bay and weaken our ability to hold potential terrorists. "The Geneva Conventions are a more flexible and suitable legal framework than other laws that would arguable (sic) apply," the memo contends. "Determining GPW does not apply deprives us of a wining ([i]sic[/i]) argument to oppose habeas corpus actions in U.S. courts."
[b]The [i]ABCNews.com [/i]report [/b] http://abcnews.go.com/section... presents unusually stark condemnation by two former JAGs, who argue that their warnings were ignored.
... "'If we – 'we' being the uniformed lawyers – had been listened to, and what we said put into practice, then these abuses would not have occurred,' said Rear Admiral Don Guter (ret.), the Navy Judge Advocate General from 2000 to 2002."
... "'When you say something down the chain of command like, 'The Geneva conventions don't apply,' that sets the stage for the kind of chaos that we've seen,' said Rear Admiral John Hutson (ret.), who was the Navy Judge Advocate General from 1997 to 2000."
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| Israeli War Crimes: Who to Believe, Jewish Lobby Or Amnesty International??? |
| 05.20.04 (11:03 pm) [edit] |
[b]The corrupt Bush-Sharon neo-con, neo-fascist regimes resemble Hitler's Nazi Party ... [/b]They are actively promoting the [i]annihilation of the Palestinian people[/i] in a [i]racist slaughter [/i]that represents heinous, blood-thirsty [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]... Please contact Congress http://www.congress.org and demand that Bush & the neo-cons be [i]impeached[/i] and tried for [i]War Crimes[/i], for they are traitors to our nation and are destroying the U.S. on behalf of their insane [i]Project for the New American Century[/i], in order to pander to the ultra-right-wing Israeli Likud Party who are directing U.S. Foreign Policy in order to systematically massacre the Arab peoples, as Hitler tried to do to the Jews ...
[b]Israeli War Crimes
[i]Who to Trust: AIPAC or Amnesty International[/i]?[/b]
In a speech recently, President Bush says Israel has a right to defend itself against terror but he made no mention of Israel's government's "war crimes."
Israel has a right to defend itself against terrorism, but does Israel's government have a right to kill innocent Palestinians?
Does Israel's government have a right to fabricate excuses that no one can confirm as reasons to ethnically cleanse areas of the occupied lands?
Does Israel's government have a right to steal lands, expel its Christian and Muslim Palestinian inhabitants and replace them with Jewish refugees who claim a "right of return" that they deny to others?
Does Israel's government have a right to violate the Geneva Conventions, commit war crimes and literally impose a new form of Apartheid on the occupied population?
Bush was addressing AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Council), a foreign lobbying organization that has as much power in this country as the Electoral College.
AIPAC defends Israel's government's right to do whatever it wishes and is silent on its military abuses and atrocities against the Palestinians it occupies.
But rather than address AIPAC, Maybe Bush should have spoken to a gathering of Amnesty International, an organization that is objective and more dedicated to fairness, justice, truth and individual liberties on this planet than AIPAC.
This week, Amnesty issued a scathing 65-page report accusing Israel not only of violating the Geneva Conventions - which Israel does not recognize - but also of committing "war crimes." (You won't read much about the report in our media and you won't find it on the White House web page, so go to Amnesty's web page at and read it yourself.)
At least there is someone in this world who does not fear the power of AIPAC or the defamation of those who criticize Israel's government "war crimes."
The report said the demolition and destruction are ``grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention and are war crimes'' Amnesty called on Israel to halt the practices immediately, and said the house demolitions are linked to Israeli intentions to take over West Bank and Gaza land.
Haven't people been saying that for years?
Amnesty reports "Families are forcibly evicted from their homes, often at night, without prior warning. They are given only a few minutes to leave their home and are not allowed to salvage their possession. The unprecedented scale of destruction has resulted in widespread violations of the right to adequate housing and standard of living for tens of thousands of people and violates fundamental principles of international human rights and humanitarian law.
It goes on to say, "In the Occupied Territories, demolitions are often carried out as collective punishments for Palestinian attacks or to facilitate the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements. Both practices contravene international law and some of these acts are war crimes.
The report is devastating and labels the Wall as a violation, too.
Amnesty concludes "Israel's right to take reasonable, necessary and proportionate measures to protect the security of its citizens does not allow such disproportionate and discriminatory restrictions and collective punishment, which violate international law."
What that means is this: the two kids at Columbine claimed they were being harassed and bullied by other students had a right to file formal complaints against the other students and to bring the harassment to an end.
They did not have the right to bring in their own weapons and wantonly murder other students as an act of revenge.
That's exactly what Israel's government is doing. Of course Israelis have a right to defend themselves, but not to do it in such a way that they are achieving other more sinister objectives such as the theft of Palestinian lands, which is the foundation of Israel's policies and actions.
I don't expect AIPAC to replace their blind support for Israel with truth and justice above. And, even tough I am an American who served during the Vietnam War and whose father and uncle served during World War II, I will be accused of being "anti-Semitic" just for repeating Amnesty International's conclusions.
But you might think that Bush, the guy who goes around the word lecturing everyone about civil rights, freedom, democracy and justice, might be less concerned with appeasing AIPAC. Bush should be more concerned about putting truth and justice above AIPAC's blind support for Israel, even if it is a presidential election year and he is stumbling in the polls.
[b]Ray Hanania is the former National President of the Palestinian American Congress. He can be reached at: www.hanania.com[/b]. - http://www.counterpunch.com/h...
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| "An Army of Asses Led by a Lion is Better than an Army of Lions Led by an Ass"!!! |
| 05.20.04 (10:19 pm) [edit] |
"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness."
"Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty."
"An army of asses led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by an ass."
- Quotations by George Washington
Now is the time for all good American Patriots to come to the aide of their country. Put your political partisanship aside as George Washington wisely advised that loyalty to country is paramount over narrow party affiliation.
Please call for the impeachment of President Bush and the firing of Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and the neo-cons in the Pentagon who have led us down a path to chaos, ruin and bloody disaster:
1. President Bush has betrayed his oath of office to uphold the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights, committing the most heinous act of treason by waging warfare based upon lies, deceptions and falsehoods. Moreover, we now know that he sought legal counsel to advise him upon how to sanction murder, torture, rape and abuse of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib (and other prisons) as well as in Afghanistan. Bush is unfit to be president because he is morally depraved and intellectually deprived. Bush has committed Crimes Against Humanity.
2. Dick Cheney should be fired immediately because he set-up the Office of Special Planning (a fascist militaristic agency under the direction of the Traitor Douglas Feith) which paid Ahmed Chalabi over $340,000/Month for false information, that Cheney continues to use to deceive the American people. Cheney also has abused his office by allowing corporations (Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, etc.) to hijack our government and define U.S. Domestic & Foreign policies. As such, Cheney is a traitor, unfit to serve as Vice President.
3. Condoleezza Rice has been a disastrously over-rated, incompetent and corrupt National Security Advisor. She did not read reports advising of potential terrorist attacks upon the U.S.A. prior to 9/11-- She treated her own employees with contemptuous disregard, preferring instead to pander to her powerful bosses, and ignored advice that could have prevented 9/11-- She has continuously lied about pre-9/11 intelligence, phony WMDs in Iraq, and was put in charge by Bush back in October 2003 of the Iraqi Stablizations Group (ISG), which she has mismanaged with utter arrogance, ineptitude and malfeasance. Rice is unfit to serve in government.
4. Donald Rumsfeld directed that the Special Access Program (SAP) under Stephen Cambone be set-up to bypass the Geneva Conventions in violation of international treaties. Rumsfeld refused to take action based upon reports provided by the Red Cross and Taguba-- and only feigned a pretence of "regret" because photographs surfaced that rightly outraged conscientious and patriotic Americans who do not want America to become a Nazi Germany. Rumsfeld should be fired and put on trial for War Crimes, and is back to his arrogant and criminal activities-- since Bush (who is without conscience and morals) has "let Rummy off the hook". Rumsfeld is unfit to be Secretary of Defense.
5. Paul Wolfowitz is a traitor. Wolfowitz, Feith, Bolton & the other neo-cons should be sent to Israel, as they have betrayed our nation and have no loyalty to the U.S.A. They are willing to squander U.S. lives and treasure in order to wage war based upon lies, deceptions and falsehoods, in their insane quest to conquer the Middle East on behalf of the treasonous Project for the New American Century. Moreover, Wolfowitz has mis-managed the Iraqi war effort so badly, that over 790 US Soldiers & 11,000-15,000 innocent Iraqi Civilians have been ruthlessly slaughtered.
The neo-cons have no legal or moral right to sacrifice our nation's people, our nation's well-being and our nation's prosperity for the sake of the Israeli Likud government, now undertaking a blood-thirsty neo-hitlerian annihialation of the Palestinian people. Their secondary motive (that serves Cheney's traitorous lusts) is the grab of Middle East oil and the installation of their Global Corporate Empire imposing (not democracy) corporate rule upon the world for gluttonous profits for a few wealthy oligarchs & hyper-rich plutocrats, to the detriment of working people.
The neo-cons are a blight upon our nation, and their justification of warfare, torture, murder, rape and abusive atrocities, in order to achieve their sordid and squalid aims is in direction violation of the law, and is abhorrent to the behaviour of civilized and humane societies.
Bush and his neo-con cabal of fascists, liars, felons and traitors have no moral authority. They have wantonly squandered our good will and our good name throughout the world. Moreover, the treasonous Bushies are brutalizing America, dividing our nation by playing on the fears of our citizens and using partisanship in order incite hatred, anger and blood-lust.
It is our duty as citizens to let the civilized world know that "We the People" are outraged, angered and reject the brutish barbarity of the Bush/Cheney neo-con doctrine of racism, hatred and 'pre-emption' cloaked under a false-and-phony pretence of "democracy" when in fact, their criminal intentions have nothing to do with "freedom and democracy" and the values that America stands for. I implore you to take action today to rid our nation of these War Criminals in the Bush regime, using the legal mechanisms defined in our U.S. Constitution.
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| Letter to Congress: The Ugly American ... |
| 05.20.04 (9:56 pm) [edit] |
[b]Please feel[i] free [/i]to send a copy of the following letter to your representatives in Congress http://www.congress.org ... It's time we get rid of the insane neo-cons who have sullied our nation's reputation; harmed our nation's well-being; and, are leaving us a legacy of destruction, chaos, death and misery ...[/b]
George W. Bush is the consumate Poster-Bully-Boy of the Ugly American: The imbecilic ne'er-do-well-cum-traitor Dubya takes pride in the fact that he is stupid, ignorant and treats other nations and peoples with disdain and contempt ...
Moreover, the neo-fascist Bush and his cabal of neo-con war criminals trample & tread on the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights which they also treat with disdain and contempt ...
Bush isn't fit to be president, as the majority of historians (who actually do know something about history, culture and politics, unlike the arrogant Bushies) will tell you ...
-- Please read about how historians view Bush on : http://www.tblog.com/template...
-- For further justification for why Bush should be impeached read "Bush White House Memorandum on the Geneva Conventions" on : http://www.tblog.com/template...
Now is the time to call for the impeachment of Bush and the firing of Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the neo-cons who have hijacked our government and who have treasonously handed it over to gluttonous corporations (as well as Israel) who unconscionably define-and-carry-out our U.S. Domestic & Foreign policies. Americans are being used as cannon-fodder in Bush's unnecessary blood-thirsty wars, and as slave labour while corporate top-dogs & fat-cats reap massive neo-feudal-style profits embezzled from working people (Minimum wage would be between $15.00-$36.00/hour if working peoples' wages rose at the same rate as over-rated, rapacious & unethical CEOs & Executives'golden-pay-pac kets over the past decade.)
Our Founding Fathers would hang their heads in shame!!!
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| Bush's Oil Torture: It's Inflation Hitting You, Stupid!!! |
| 05.20.04 (2:58 pm) [edit] |
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[b]Who will Traitor Bush's sordid & squalid Oil Manipulation (criminal price-gouging) [i]affect [/i]the most??? ... American Middle Class & Working people ... The Bush Crime Family, Corporate Top-Dogs & Fat Cats, Wealthy Oligarchs & Hyper-Rich Plutocrats can pay [i]anything[/i] because these traitorous fuckwits[i] raped [/i](embezzled) the U.S. Treasury and [i]don't pay taxes[/i]!!! ... However, for the rest of us, it will mean we will be gouged to pay for the[i] life-styles of the (ill-gotten) rich and (in)famous [/i]and will bear more back-breaking burdens, resulting in substantially less disposable income ...[/b]
It's the [i][b]inflation[/b][/i], stupid!!! ...[b] Inflation, here we come [/b]...
[b][u]Bush's Legacy The Perfect Storm That's About to Hit [/u]
Rising Oil Prices and a Weak Dollar could Shatter the Global Economy[/b]
The average nationwide price of a gallon of gasoline in America reached a record high of $1.77 this month. The steady spike in prices has left analysts wondering if this is a harbinger of even more dramatic increases as motorists head into the spring and summer months. Get ready for what might become the economy's version of the perfect storm later this summer. The devastation could quickly spread to the UK and the rest of the world, with dire consequences for the global economy. The first hint of what might be in store came last month when OPEC announced its decision to withdraw 1m barrels of crude oil a day from the market. OPEC is worried about the weakening value of the dollar: it has lost one-third of its value in just under two years. Since OPEC sells oil for dollars, the oil-producing countries are losing precious revenue as the value of the dollar continues to erode. And because oil-producing countries then turn around and purchase much of their goods and services from the EU and must pay in euros, their purchasing power continues to deteriorate. (The euro is currently valued at $1.23.)
How will the weaker dollar affect oil prices? Philip K Verleger, the dean of US oil market analysts and a visiting fellow at the Institute for International Economics, suggests that "oil-exporting countries may decide to adjust their price band to reflect the falling value of the dollar". If the dollar continues to slide, he warns, we could see oil prices rising from the current $38.18 a barrel to a record high of $40 by midsummer.
There are other dark clouds on the horizon. US crude oil inventories are at the lowest point since the mid 70s, and the retail gasoline market is operating with little reserve margin as we move into the summer months, where more travel will increase demand. The dwindling oil reserves are made worse by the White House decision to replenish the strategic petroleum reserve, further reducing the amount of gasoline available.
Verleger says gasoline could climb as high as $3.50 a gallon before leveling off at $2 by the autumn. How high prices eventually soar could depend on still other factors, including potential oil disruptions in Venezuela and the Middle East. There is also the prospect that one or two major refineries might fail during peak demand this summer - not that unusual when increased consumer pressure forces refineries to produce at peak capacity without taking the time for proper maintenance.
Here is where events potentially begin to feed off each other, creating the conditions for the perfect storm for the economy. If the price of oil increases to $40 a barrel with an accompanying rise in gasoline prices, the already weak economic recovery could stall.
How then do we lower the price of a barrel of oil? We'd have to strengthen the value of the dollar so that OPEC would not be forced to raise prices to compensate for the deteriorating value of the currency. But the dollar's value is declining because of America's growing debt. The IMF is so concerned about US debt - the result of rising budget deficits and trade imbalance - that it issued a report warning that if steps weren't taken to reverse the trend, it could threaten the financial stability of the world economy.
An ever-weaker dollar makes foreign investors less interested in financing the mushrooming US debt. The US could raise interest rates, making it more attractive for foreign investors, but that would mean higher interest rates for US companies and consumers, which could dampen the already weak recovery and send us back into a recession in the US and around the world.
So we have all the conditions coming together to create the perfect economic storm: record oil prices triggering a restriction in US economic growth and an increase in the federal budget deficit, accompanied by further erosion in the value of the dollar - with increased budget deficits and the diminished value of the dollar leading in turn to higher interest rates to convince foreign investors to lend the US additional money, followed by a further retraction of the US economy as rising interest rates lead to a drop in domestic investment and consumption. The cascade of events touches off a tsunami that engulfs the rest of the global economy, submerging the world in deep recession.
As long as the US and global economy are increasingly dependent on an ever-dwindling supply of oil from the Middle East, the conditions for a perfect economic storm will continue to haunt us. The solution, in the long run, is to wean the world off its dependency on oil. That would require much tougher fuel efficiency standards, greater energy conservation measures, support of hybrid vehicles and a switch to renewable sources of energy. Short of that, expect the storm clouds to gather in intensity.
·[b] Jeremy Rifkin is the author of 'The Hydrogen Economy' and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington DC [/b]- http://www.commondreams.org/v...
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| Dubya's Disgraceful "Pigs At The Trough" Speech!!! |
| 05.20.04 (1:52 pm) [edit] |
[b]Pigs At The Trough
Pres. Bush Speech at American Israel Public Affairs Committee Conference
As Israeli Occupation Forces Murder Palestinians
Our President Debases Himself And America In Search Of Zionist Votes And $'s[/b]
Watch Dubya give his disgraceful "Pigs At The Trough" Speech http://www.informationclearin...
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| The Ugly American |
| 05.20.04 (9:48 am) [edit] |
[b]George W. Bush is the Poster-Bully-Boy of the Ugly American:[/b] The imbecilic ne'er-do-well-[i]cum[/i]- asshole Dubya takes[i] pride [/i]in the fact that he is stupid, ignorant and treats other nations and peoples with disdain and contempt ... Moreover, the neo-con, neo-fascist Bush tramples & treads on the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights which he [i]also[/i] treats with disdain and contempt ... Bush [i]isn't fit [/i]to be president, as the majority of historians (who actually [i]do[/i] know something about history, culture and politics) will tell you ...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
Although his approval ratings have slipped somewhat in recent weeks, President George W. Bush still enjoys the overall support of nearly half of the American people. He does not, however, fare nearly so well among professional historians.
A recent informal, unscientific survey of historians conducted at my suggestion by George Mason University’s History News Network found that eight in ten historians responding rate the current presidency an overall failure.
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Of 415 historians who expressed a view of President Bush’s administration to this point as a success or failure, 338 classified it as a failure and 77 as a success. (Moreover, it seems likely that at least eight of those who said it is a success were being sarcastic, since seven said Bush’s presidency is only the best since Clinton’s and one named Millard Fillmore.) Twelve percent of all the historians who responded rate the current presidency the worst in all of American history, not too far behind the 19 percent who see it at this point as an overall success.
Among the cautions that must be raised about the survey is just what “success” means. Some of the historians rightly pointed out that it would be hard to argue that the Bush presidency has not so far been a political success—or, for that matter that President Bush has not been remarkably successful in achieving his objectives in Congress. But those meanings of success are by no means incompatible with the assessment that the Bush presidency is a disaster. “His presidency has been remarkably successful,” one historian declared, “in its pursuit of disastrous policies.” “I think the Bush administration has been quite successful in achieving its political objectives,” another commented, “which makes it a disaster for us.”
Additionally, it is, of course, as one respondent rightly noted, “way too early to make a valid comparison (we need another 50 years).” And such an informal survey is plainly not scientifically reliable. Yet the results are so overwhelming and so different from the perceptions of the general public that an attempt to explain and assess their reactions merits our attention. It may be, as one pro-Bush historian said in his or her written response to the poll, “I suspect that this poll will tell us nothing about President Bush’s performance vis-à-vis his peer group, but may confirm what we already know about the current crop of history professors.” The liberal-left proclivities of much of the academic world are well documented, and some observers will dismiss the findings as the mere rantings of a disaffected professoriate. “If historians were the only voters,” another pro-Bush historian noted, “Mr. Gore would have carried 50 states.” It is plain that many liberal academics have the same visceral reaction against the second President Bush that many conservatives did against his immediate predecessor.
Yet it seems clear that a similar survey taken during the presidency of Bush’s father would not have yielded results nearly as condemnatory. And, for all the distaste liberal historians had for Ronald Reagan, relatively few would have rated his administration as worse than that of Richard Nixon. Yet today 57 percent of all the historians who participated in the survey (and 70 percent of those who see the Bush presidency as a failure) either name someone prior to Nixon or say that Bush’s presidency is the worst ever, meaning that they rate it as worse than the two presidencies in the past half century that liberals have most loved to hate, those of Nixon and Reagan. One who made the comparison with Nixon explicit wrote, “Indeed, Bush puts Nixon into a more favorable light. He has trashed the image and reputation of the United States throughout the world; he has offended many of our previously close allies; he has burdened future generations with incredible debt; he has created an unnecessary war to further his domestic political objectives; he has suborned the civil rights of our citizens; he has destroyed previous environmental efforts by government in favor of his coterie of exploiters; he has surrounded himself with a cabal ideological adventurers . . . .”
Why should the views of historians on the current president matter?
I do not share the view of another respondent that “until we have gained access to the archival record of this president, we [historians] are no better at evaluating it than any other voter.” Academic historians, no matter their ideological bias, have some expertise in assessing what makes for a successful or unsuccessful presidency; we have a long-term perspective in which to view the actions of a current chief executive. Accordingly, the depth of the negative assessment that so many historians make of George W. Bush is something of which the public should be aware. Their comments make clear that such historians would readily agree with conclusion that then-Democratic presidential hopeful Richard Gephardt pronounced a few months ago: the presidency of George W. Bush is “a miserable failure.”
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The past presidencies most commonly linked with the current administration include all of those that are usually rated as the worst in the nation’s history: Nixon, Harding, Hoover, Buchanan, Coolidge, Andrew Johnson, Grant, and McKinley. The only president who appeared prominently on both the favorable and unfavorable lists was Ronald Reagan. Forty-seven historians said Bush is the best president since Reagan, while 38 said he is the worst since Reagan. Almost all of the historians who rate the Bush presidency a success are Reagan admirers. Indeed, no other president (leaving aside the presumably mostly tongue-in-cheek mentions of Clinton) was named by more than four of the historians who took a favorable view of the current presidency.
Ronald Reagan clearly has become the sort of polarizing figure that Franklin Roosevelt was for an earlier generation—or, perhaps a better way to understand the phenomenon is that Reagan has become the personification of the pole opposite to Roosevelt. That polarization is evident in historians’ evaluations of George W. Bush’s presidency. “If one believes Bush is a ‘good’ president (or great),” one poll respondent noted, he or she “would necessarily also believe Reagan to be a pretty good president.” They also tend to despise Roosevelt. “There is no indication,” one historian said of Bush, “that he has advisors who are closet communist traitors as FDR had. Based on his record to date, history is likely to judge him as one of America’s greatest presidents, in the tradition of Washington and Lincoln.”
The thought that anyone could rate the incumbent president with Washington and Lincoln is enough to induce apoplexy in a substantial majority of historians. Among the many offenses they enumerate in their indictment of Bush is that he is, as one of them put it, “well on his way to destroying the entire (and entirely successful) structures of international cooperation and regulated, humane capitalism and social welfare that have been built up since the early 1930s.” “Bush is now in a position,” Another historian said, “to ‘roll back the New Deal,’ guided by Tom DeLay.”
Several charges against the Bush administration arose repeatedly in the comments of historians who responded to the survey. Among them were: the doctrine of pre-emptive war, crony capitalism/being “completely in bed with certain corporate interests,” bankruptcy/fiscal irresponsibility, military adventurism, trampling of civil liberties, and anti-environmental policies.
***
The reasons stated by some of the historians for their choice of the presidency that they believe Bush’s to be the worst since are worth repeating. The following are representative examples for each of the presidents named most frequently:
REAGAN: “I think the presidency of George W. Bush has been generally a failure and I consider his presidency so far to have been the most disastrous since that of Ronald Reagan--because of the unconscionable military aggression and spending (especially the Iraq War), the damage done to the welfare of the poor while the corporate rich get richer, and the backwards religious fundamentalism permeating this administration. I strongly disliked and distrusted Reagan and think that George W. is even worse.”
NIXON: “Actually, I think [Bush’s] presidency may exceed the disaster that was Nixon. He has systematically lied to the American public about almost every policy that his administration promotes.” Bush uses “doublespeak” to “dress up policies that condone or aid attacks by polluters and exploiters of the environment . . . with names like the ‘Forest Restoration Act’ (which encourages the cutting down of forests).”
HOOVER: “I would say GW is our worst president since Herbert Hoover. He is moving to bankrupt the federal government on the eve of the retirement of the baby boom generation, and he has brought America’s reputation in the world to its lowest point in the entire history of the United States.”
COOLIDGE: “I think his presidency has been an unmitigated disaster for the environment, for international relations, for health care, and for working Americans. He’s on a par with Coolidge!”
HARDING: “Oil, money and politics again combine in ways not flattering to the integrity of the office. Both men also have a tendency to mangle the English language yet get their points across to ordinary Americans. [Yet] the comparison does Harding something of a disservice.”
McKINLEY: “Bush is perhaps the first president [since McKinley] to be entirely in the ‘hip pocket’ of big business, engage in major external conquest for reasons other than national security, AND be the puppet of his political handler. McKinley had Mark Hanna; Bush has Karl Rove. No wonder McKinley is Rove’s favorite historical president (precedent?).”
GRANT: “He ranks with U.S. Grant as the worst. His oil interests and Cheney’s corporate Haliburton contracts smack of the same corruption found under Grant.”
“While Grant did serve in the army (more than once), Bush went AWOL from the National Guard. That means that Grant is automatically more honest than Bush, since Grant did not send people into places that he himself consciously avoided. . . . Grant did not attempt to invade another country without a declaration of war; Bush thinks that his powers in this respect are unlimited.”
ANDREW JOHNSON: “I consider his presidency so far to have been the most disastrous since that of Andrew Johnson. It has been a sellout of fundamental democratic (and Republican) principles. There are many examples, but the most recent would be his successful efforts to insert provisions in spending bills which directly controvert measures voted down by both houses of Congress.”
BUCHANAN: “Buchanan can be said to have made the Civil War inevitable or to have made the war last longer by his pusillanimity or, possibly, treason.” “Buchanan allowed a war to evolve, but that war addressed a real set of national issues. Mr. Bush started a war . . . for what reason?”
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EVER: The second most common response from historians, trailing only Nixon, was that the current presidency is the worst in American history. A few examples will serve to provide the flavor of such condemnations. “Although previous presidents have led the nation into ill-advised wars, no predecessor managed to turn America into an unprovoked aggressor. No predecessor so thoroughly managed to confirm the impressions of those who already hated America. No predecessor so effectively convinced such a wide range of world opinion that America is an imperialist threat to world peace. I don 't think that you can do much worse than that.”
“Bush is horrendous; there is no comparison with previous presidents, most of whom have been bad.”
“He is blatantly a puppet for corporate interests, who care only about their own greed and have no sense of civic responsibility or community service. He lies, constantly and often, seemingly without control, and he lied about his invasion into a sovereign country, again for corporate interests; many people have died and been maimed, and that has been lied about too. He grandstands and mugs in a shameful manner, befitting a snake oil salesman, not a statesman. He does not think, process, or speak well, and is emotionally immature due to, among other things, his lack of recovery from substance abuse. The term is "dry drunk". He is an abject embarrassment/pariah overseas; the rest of the world hates him . . . . . He is, by far, the most irresponsible, unethical, inexcusable occupant of our formerly highest office in the land that there has ever been.”
“George W. Bush's presidency is the pernicious enemy of American freedom, compassion, and community; of world peace; and of life itself as it has evolved for millennia on large sections of the planet. The worst president ever? Let history judge him.”
“This president is unique in his failures.”
And then there was this split ballot, comparing the George W. Bush presidencies failures in distinct areas. The George W. Bush presidency is the worst since:
“In terms of economic damage, Reagan.
In terms of imperialism, T Roosevelt.
In terms of dishonesty in government, Nixon.
In terms of affable incompetence, Harding.
In terms of corruption, Grant.
In terms of general lassitude and cluelessness, Coolidge.
In terms of personal dishonesty, Clinton.
In terms of religious arrogance, Wilson.”
***
My own answer to the question was based on astonishment that so many people still support a president who has:
. Presided over the loss of approximately three million American jobs in his first two-and-a-half years in office, the worst record since Herbert Hoover.
. Overseen an economy in which the stock market suffered its worst decline in the first two years of any administration since Hoover’s.
. Taken, in the wake of the terrorist attacks two years ago, the greatest worldwide outpouring of goodwill the United States has enjoyed at least since World War II and squandered it by insisting on pursuing a foolish go-it-almost-alone invasion of Iraq, thereby transforming almost universal support for the United States into worldwide condemnation. (One historian made this point particularly well: “After inadvertently gaining the sympathies of the world 's citizens when terrorists attacked New York and Washington, Bush has deliberately turned the country into the most hated in the world by a policy of breaking all major international agreements, declaring it our right to invade any country that we wish, proving that he’ll manipulate facts to justify anything he wishes to do, and bull-headedly charging into a quagmire.”)
. Misled (to use the most charitable word and interpretation) the American public about weapons of mass destruction and supposed ties to Al Qaeda in Iraq and so into a war that has plainly (and entirely predictably) made us less secure, caused a boom in the recruitment of terrorists, is killing American military personnel needlessly, and is threatening to suck up all our available military forces and be a bottomless pit for the money of American taxpayers for years to come.
. Failed to follow through in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and Al Qaeda are regrouping, once more increasing the threat to our people.
. Insulted and ridiculed other nations and international organizations and now has to go, hat in hand, to those nations and organizations begging for their assistance.
. Completely miscalculated or failed to plan for the personnel and monetary needs in Iraq after the war, so that he sought and obtained an $87 billion appropriation for Iraq, a sizable chunk of which is going, without competitive bidding to Haliburton, the company formerly headed by his vice president.
. Inherited an annual federal budget surplus of $230 billion and transformed it into a $500+ billion deficit in less than three years. This negative turnaround of three-quarters of a trillion dollars is totally without precedent in our history. The ballooning deficit for fiscal 2004 is rapidly approaching twice the dollar size of the previous record deficit, $290 billion, set in 1992, the last year of the administration of President Bush’s father and, at almost 5 percent of GDP, is closing in on the percentage record set by Ronald Reagan in 1986.
. Cut taxes three times, sharply reducing the burden on the rich, reclassified money obtained through stock ownership as more deserving than money earned through work. The idea that dividend income should not be taxed—what might accurately be termed the unearned income tax credit—can be stated succinctly: “If you had to work for your money, we’ll tax it; if you didn’t have to work for it, you can keep it all.”
. Severely curtailed the very American freedoms that our military people are supposed to be fighting to defend. (“The Patriot Act,” one of the historians noted, “is the worst since the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams.”)
. Called upon American armed service people, including Reserve forces, to sacrifice for ever-lengthening tours of duty in a hostile and dangerous environment while he rewards the rich at home with lower taxes and legislative giveaways and gives lucrative no-bid contracts to American corporations linked with the administration.
. Given an opportunity to begin to change the consumption-oriented values of the nation after September 11, 2001, when people were prepared to make a sacrifice for the common good, called instead of Americans to ‘sacrifice’ by going out and buying things.
. Proclaimed himself to be a conservative while maintaining that big government should be able to run roughshod over the Bill of Rights, and that the government must have all sorts of secrets from the people, but the people can be allowed no privacy from the government. (As one of the historians said, “this is not a conservative administration; it is a reckless and arrogant one, beholden to a mix of right-wing ideologues, neo-con fanatics, and social Darwinian elitists.”)
. My assessment is that George W. Bush’s record on running up debt to burden our children is the worst since Ronald Reagan; his record on government surveillance of citizens is the worst since Richard Nixon; his record on foreign-military policy has gotten us into the worst foreign mess we’ve been in since Lyndon Johnson sank us into Vietnam; his economic record is the worst since Herbert Hoover; his record of tax favoritism for the rich is the worst since Calvin Coolidge; his record of trampling on civil liberties is the worst since Woodrow Wilson. How far back in our history would we need to go to find a presidency as disastrous for this country as that of George W. Bush has been thus far? My own vote went to the administration of James Buchanan, who warmed the president’s chair while the union disintegrated in 1860-61.
. Who has been the biggest beneficiary of the horrible terrorism that struck our nation in September of 2001? The answer to that question should be obvious to anyone who considers where the popularity ratings and reelection prospects of a president with the record outlined above would be had he not been able to wrap himself in the flag, take advantage of the American people’s patriotism, and make himself synonymous with “the United States of America” for the past two years.
. That abuse of the patriotism and trust of the American people is even worse than everything else this president has done and that fact alone might be sufficient to explain the depth of the hostility with which so many historians view George W. Bush. Contrary to the conservative stereotype of academics as anti-American, the reasons that many historians cited for seeing the Bush presidency as a disaster revolve around their perception that he is undermining traditional American practices and values. As one patriotic historian put it, “I think his presidency has been the worst disaster to hit the United States and is bringing our beloved country to financial, economic, and social disaster.”
Some voters may judge such assessments to be wrong, but they are assessments informed by historical knowledge and the electorate ought to have them available to take into consideration during this election year. - http://hnn.us/articles/5019.h...
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| New Polls Bring New Lows for the Mad King George ... |
| 05.20.04 (7:10 am) [edit] |
[b]Let us hope that [i]this is a good sign [/i]that Americans are [i]waking-up and recognizing [/i]that the Mad King George is an[i] Idiot [/i]Emperor With[i] No [/i]Clothes ([i]Or, Bushy-boy has stolen the duds-he-dons ... like the laughable buffoonery when the AWOL drunkardly deserter Dubya dresses-up in his Top-Gun Halloween Costume that is the joke of the U.S. Military who can see he is a Phony Congenital Imbecile[/i] ...) ...[/b] Refer to "[b]George W. Bush: [i]Morally Depraved & Intellectually Deprived[/i][/b]!!!" on http://www.tblog.com/template...
[u][b]New Polls Bring New Lows for Bush[/b][/u] - http://www.americanprogress.o...
... CBS News poll of 448 adults, http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs... released May 12 (conducted May 11)
... Harris Interactive poll of 1,001 adults for Time/CNN, http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPO... released May 14 (conducted May 12–13)
... Princeton Survey Research Associates poll of 1,010 adults for Newsweek, http://msnbc.msn.com/id/49868... released May 15 (conducted May 13–14)
... Zogby poll of 985 likely voters, http://www.zogby.com/news/Rea... released May 16 (conducted May 10–13)
Several new polls have Bush hitting new lows in important ways.
First, the Newsweek poll. In this poll, Bush's overall approval rating is down to 42 percent, with 52 percent disapproval, his lowest rating yet in any public poll. (Note: Zogby also has his rating at 42 percent, but Zogby job ratings are based on a different question and therefore are not directly comparable with other public polls.) And Bush's approval rating on Iraq is down to 35 percent, with 57 percent disapproval, also a new low. Wow. It was just a few days ago (see below) that his Iraq rating went below 40 percent for the first time.
Bad as the Newsweek findings are for Bush, the findings from the CNN poll are probably worse. First, the poll finds Kerry ahead of Bush in practically every issue area, including protecting the environment (+22); health care (+19); reducing the deficit (+18); handling the economy (+13); and even taxes (+6). But here's the really significant part: besides these domestic issues, Kerry is also ahead of Bush on handling foreign policy (+2) and handling the situation in Iraq (+3). A couple of weeks ago, Bush had a healthy lead on handling Iraq; last week Bush had a small lead; this week, he's behind. Clearly, the tide is turning.
And even on his "signature issue," as it were, handling the war on terrorism, he now only has a seven-point lead over Kerry (49 percent to 42 percent). I am quite sure that this is the smallest lead we have seen yet for Bush on this issue. If he loses a few more points and Kerry gains a few more, he and Kerry will be essentially tied on handling terrorism! I suspect that would get the Bush-Cheney campaign kind of worried.
And here's more on Bush's declining terrorism advantage. According to the CNN poll, more people now think Bush is doing a poor job (47 percent) than think he is doing a good job (46 percent) on handling terrorism. Ouch. That's got to hurt when you used to think that one issue guaranteed you re-election. (Note that this question isn't phrased as a typical job rating ["Do you approve or disapprove of the job President Bush is doing handling...."], so we really can't say his job rating on handling terrorism is now below 50 percent. But, on the evidence of this question, I would not be surprised to see such a rating fairly soon.)
Turning to the horse race data, only one of the polls mentioned above, provides registered voter (RV) data—the Newsweek poll—and that poll has Kerry ahead of Bush, albeit by only a single point (46 percent by 45 percent; though note that Kerry has a nice seven-point lead among independents). The CNN and Zogby polls both use the less desirable (in my view) likely voter (LV) approach and both have Kerry ahead by more—CNN by five points (51 percent to 46 percent) and Zogby also by five points (47 percent to 42 percent).
And here's something to chew on: in all three of these polls, the addition of Nader to the trial heat question does not reduce Kerry's margin, since Nader winds up drawing about equally from Kerry's and Bush's support. Interesting.
The first time Bush's approval rating on Iraq was measured below 40 percent was in the May 11 CBS News poll. In that poll, his rating on Iraq is 39 percent approval/58 percent disapproval (only 37 percent among independents).
Also in the poll, his overall approval rating is down to 44 percent with 49 percent disapproval (42 percent/46 percent among independents) and his approval rating on the economy is now just 34 percent/60 percent (30 percent/62 percent—more than two to one disapproval—among independents). And even his rating on handling the campaign against terrorism is a less than stellar 51 percent.
So, let's see, his overall rating is 44 percent and his average rating in what are probably the top three issue areas—the economy, Iraq, and terrorism—is now a dismal 41 percent. That's a startling contrast to how Bush was faring five months ago when Saddam was found in his spider hole and political pundits were rushing to declare him all but invulnerable politically.
And, wait, there's more. For the first time, less than 30 percent (29 percent) say that the result of the Iraq war was worth the loss of American life and other costs, compared to 64 percent who say that it wasn't worth the costs. And among independents, it's now an amazing three to one against the war being worth it (69 percent to 23 percent).
The poll has a similarly lop-sided result on whether the United States is in control of the Iraq situation. By 57 percent to 31 percent, the public says that the United States is not in control of events in Iraq, a margin that rises to 59 percent to 25 percent among independents—almost two to one. The increasing sense of lack of control is probably an important reason for the increasing willingness to turn over control to the Iraqis as soon as possible, even if Iraq is not completely stable, rather than keep troops in Iraq as long as necessary (now 55 percent to 38 percent for turning over control, up from dead-even at 46 percent to 46 percent in late April).
Could Bush's ratings on Iraq get any worse? Based on the way things are going, I would have to say that's a very strong possibility.
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| George W. Bush: Morally Depraved & Intellectually Deprived!!! |
| 05.19.04 (7:04 pm) [edit] |
"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness."
"Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty."
"An army of asses led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by an ass."
- Quotations by George Washington
Now is the time for all good American Patriots to come to the aide of their country. Put your political partisanship aside as George Washington wisely advised that loyalty to country is paramount over narrow party affiliation.
Please call for the impeachment of President Bush and the firing of Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and the neo-cons in the Pentagon who have led us down a path to chaos, ruin and bloody disaster:
1. President Bush has betrayed his oath of office to uphold the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights, committing the most heinous act of treason by waging warfare based upon lies, deceptions and falsehoods. Moreover, we now know that he sought legal counsel to advise him upon how to sanction murder, torture, rape and abuse of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib (and other prisons) as well as in Afghanistan. Bush is unfit to be president because he is morally depraved and intellectually deprived. Bush has committed Crimes Against Humanity.
2. Dick Cheney should be fired immediately because he set-up the Office of Special Planning (a fascist militaristic agency under the direction of the Traitor Douglas Feith) which paid Ahmed Chalabi over $340,000/Month for false information, that Cheney continues to use to deceive the American people. Cheney also has abused his office by allowing corporations (Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, etc.) to hijack our government and define U.S. Domestic & Foreign policies. As such, Cheney is a traitor, unfit to serve as Vice President.
3. Condoleezza Rice has been a disastrously over-rated, incompetent and corrupt National Security Advisor. She did not read reports advising of potential terrorist attacks upon the U.S.A. prior to 9/11-- She treated her own employees with contemptuous disregard, preferring instead to pander to her powerful bosses, and ignored advice that could have prevented 9/11-- She has continuously lied about pre-9/11 intelligence, phony WMDs in Iraq, and was put in charge by Bush back in October 2003 of the Iraqi Stablizations Group (ISG), which she has mismanaged with utter arrogance, ineptitude and malfeasance. Rice is unfit to serve in government.
4. Donald Rumsfeld directed that the Special Access Program (SAP) under Stephen Cambone be set-up to bypass the Geneva Conventions in violation of international treaties. Rumsfeld refused to take action based upon reports provided by the Red Cross and Taguba-- and only feigned a pretence of "regret" because photographs surfaced that rightly outraged conscientious and patriotic Americans who do not want America to become a Nazi Germany. Rumsfeld should be fired and put on trial for War Crimes, and is back to his arrogant and criminal activities-- since Bush (who is without conscience and morals) has "let Rummy off the hook". Rumsfeld is unfit to be Secretary of Defense.
5. Paul Wolfowitz is a traitor. Wolfowitz, Feith, Bolton & the other neo-cons should be sent to Israel, as they have betrayed our nation and have no loyalty to the U.S.A. They are willing to squander U.S. lives and treasure in order to wage war based upon lies, deceptions and falsehoods, in their insane quest to conquer the Middle East on behalf of the treasonous Project for the New American Century. Moreover, Wolfowitz has mis-managed the Iraqi war effort so badly, that over 790 US Soldiers & 11,000-15,000 innocent Iraqi Civilians have been ruthlessly slaughtered.
The neo-cons have no legal or moral right to sacrifice our nation's people, our nation's well-being and our nation's prosperity for the sake of the Israeli Likud government, now undertaking a blood-thirsty neo-hitlerian annihialation of the Palestinian people. Their secondary motive (that serves Cheney's traitorous lusts) is the grab of Middle East oil and the installation of their Global Corporate Empire imposing (not democracy) corporate rule upon the world for gluttonous profits for a few wealthy oligarchs & hyper-rich plutocrats, to the detriment of working people.
The neo-cons are a blight upon our nation, and their justification of warfare, torture, murder, rape and abusive atrocities, in order to achieve their sordid and squalid aims is in direction violation of the law, and is abhorrent to the behaviour of civilized and humane societies.
Bush and his neo-con cabal of fascists, liars, felons and traitors have no moral authority. They have wantonly squandered our good will and our good name throughout the world. Moreover, the treasonous Bushies are brutalizing America, dividing our nation by playing on the fears of our citizens and using partisanship in order incite hatred, anger and blood-lust.
It is our duty as citizens to let the civilized world know that "We the People" are outraged, angered and reject the brutish barbarity of the Bush/Cheney neo-con doctrine of racism, hatred and 'pre-emption' cloaked under a false-and-phony pretence of "democracy" when in fact, their criminal intentions have nothing to do with "freedom and democracy" and the values that America stands for. I implore you to take action today to rid our nation of these War Criminals in the Bush regime, using the legal mechanisms defined in our U.S. Constitution.
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| Commencement Address: 'The war on terror: Victims turning perpetrators' |
| 05.18.04 (3:54 pm) [edit] |
[b]Commencement Address, delivered by George Soros at the Columbia School of International & Public Affairs, Monday, May 17, 2004m Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City[/b]
Today, you are graduating from the School of International & Public Affairs. This ought to be an occasion for celebration. You have successfully completed your studies and you are about to enter the real world. But the real world is a very troubled place and international relations are at the core of our troubles. So it may be appropriate to pause for a moment and reflect on the world you are about to face.
Why are we in trouble? Let me focus on the feature that looms so large in the current landscape - the war on terror. September 11 was a traumatic event that shook the nation to its core. But it could not have changed the course of history for the worse if President Bush had not responded the way he did. Declaring war on terrorism was understandable, perhaps even appropriate, as a figure of speech. But the President meant it literally and that is when things started going seriously wrong.
Recently the nation has been shaken by another event: pictures of our soldiers abusing prisoners in Saddam's notorious prison. I believe there is a direct connection between the two events. It is the war on terror that has led to the torture scenes in Iraq.
What happened in Abu Ghraib was not a case of a few bad apples but a pattern tolerated and even encouraged by the authorities. Just to give one example, the Judge Advocate General Corps routinely observes military interrogations from behind a two-way mirror; that practice was discontinued in Afghanistan and Iraq. The International Red Cross and others started complaining about abuses as early as December 2002.
It is easy to see how terrorism can lead to torture. Last summer I took an informal poll at a meeting of eminent Wall Street investors to find out whether they would condone the use of torture to prevent a terrorist attack. The consensus was that they hoped somebody would do it without their knowing about it.
It is not a popular thing to say, but the fact is that we are victims who have turned into perpetrators. The terrorist attacks on September 11 claimed nearly 3,000 innocent lives and the whole world felt sympathy for us as the victims of an atrocity. Then the President declared war on terrorism, and pursued it first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. Since then the war on terror has claimed more innocent victims than the terrorist attacks on September 11. This fact is not recognized at home because the victims of the war on terror are not Americans. But the rest of the world does not draw the same distinction and world opinion has turned against us. So a tremendous gap in perceptions has opened up between us and the rest of the world. The majority of the American public does not realize that we have turned from victims into perpetrators. That is why those gruesome pictures were so shocking. Even today most people don't recognize their full import.
By contrast, the Bush administration knew what it was doing when it declared war on terror and used that pretext for invading Iraq. That may not hold true for President Bush personally but it is certainly true for Vice President Cheney and a group of extremists within the Bush administration concentrated in and around the Pentagon. These people are guided by an ideology. They believe that international relations are relations of power not law and since America is the most powerful nation on earth, it ought to use that power more assertively than under previous presidents. They advocated the overthrow of Saddam Hussein even before President Bush was elected and they managed to win him over to their cause after September 11.
The invasion of Afghanistan could be justified on the grounds that the Taliban provided Bin Laden and Al Qaeda with a home and a training ground. The invasion of Iraq could not be similarly justified. Nevertheless, the ideologues in the administration were determined to pursue it because, in the words of Paul Wolfowitz, "it was doable." President Bush managed to convince the nation that Saddam Hussein had some connection with the suicide bombers of September 11 and that he was in possession of weapons of mass-destruction. When both claims turned out to be false, he argued that we invaded Iraq in order to liberate the Iraqi people.
That claim was even more far-fetched than the other two. If we had really cared for the Iraqi people we would have sent in more troops and we would have provided protection not only for the Ministry of Oil but for the other Ministries and the museums and hospitals. As it is, the country was devastated by looting.
I find the excuse that we went into Iraq in order to liberate it particularly galling. It is true that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant and it is good to be rid of him. But the way we went about it will make it more difficult to get rid of the likes of Saddam in the future. The world is full of tyrants and we cannot topple them all by military action. How to deal with Kim Jong-il in North Korea or Mugabe in Zimbabwe or the Turkmenbashi of Turkmenistan is the great unsolved problem of the prevailing world order. By taking unilateral and arbitrary action, the United States has made it more difficult to solve that problem.
I am actively engaged in promoting democracy and open society in many parts of the world and I can testify from personal experience that it cannot be done by military means. In any case, the argument has become unsustainable after the revelations about the torture of prisoners. The symbolism of Saddam's notorious prison is just too strong. We claimed to be liberators but we turned into oppressors.
Now that our position has become unsustainable, we are handing over to local militias in Falluja and elsewhere. This prepares the ground for religious and ethnic divisions and possible civil war à la Bosnia, rather than Western style democracy after we transfer sovereignty.
The big difference between us and Saddam is that we are an open society with free speech and free elections. If we don't like the Bush administration's policies, we can reject him at the next elections. Since President Bush had originally been elected on the platform of a "humble" foreign policy, we could then claim that the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq constitute a temporary aberration induced by the trauma of September 11.
I would dearly love to pin all the blame on President Bush and his team. But that would be too easy. It would ignore the fact that he was playing to a receptive audience and even today, after all that has happened, a majority of the electorate continues to have confidence in President Bush on national security matters. If this continues and President Bush gets reelected, we must ask ourselves the question: "What is wrong with us?" The question needs to be asked even if he is defeated because we cannot simply ignore what we have done since September 11.
We need to engage in some serious soul-searching. The terrorists seem to have hit upon a weak point in our collective psyche. They have made us fearful. And they have found a willing partner in the Bush administration. For reasons of its own, the Bush administration has found it advantageous to foster the fear that September 11 engendered. By declaring war on terror, the President could unite the country behind him. But fear is a bad counselor. A fearful giant that lashes out against unseen enemies is the very definition of a bully, and that is what we are in danger of becoming. Lashing out indiscriminately, we are creating innocent victims and innocent victims generate the resentment and rage on which terrorism feeds. If there is a Single lesson to be learned from our experience since September 11, it is that you mustn't fight terror by creating new victims.
By succumbing to fear we are doing the terrorists' bidding: we are unleashing a vicious circle of violence. If we go on like this, we may find ourselves in a permanent state of war. The war on terror need never end because the terrorists are invisible, therefore they will never disappear. And if we are in a permanent state of war we cannot remain an open society.
The war on terror polarizes the world between us and them. If it becomes a matter of survival, nobody has any choice but to stick with his own tribe or nation whether its policies are right or wrong. That is what happened to the Serbs and Croats and Bosnians in Yugoslavia, that is what happened to Israel, and that is the state of mind that President Bush sought to foster when he said that those who are not with us are with the terrorists.
That attitude cannot be reconciled with the basic principles of an open society. The concept of open society is based on the recognition that nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth. Might is not necessarily right. However powerful we are, we may be wrong. We need checks and balances and other safeguards to prevent us from going off the rails. After September 11, President Bush succeeded in convincing us that any criticism of the war on terror would be unpatriotic and the spell was broken only 18 months later when the Iraqi invasion did get us off the rails.
Now it is not enough to reject the Bush administration's policies; we must reaffirm the values and principles of an open society. The war on terror is indeed an aberration. We must defend ourselves against terrorist attacks but we cannot make that the overarching objective of our existence.
We are undoubtedly the most powerful nation on earth today. No single country or combination of countries could stand up to our military might. The main threat to our dominant position comes not from the outside but from ourselves. If we fail to recognize that we may be wrong, we may undermine our dominant position through our own mistakes. We seem to have made considerable progress along those lines since September 11.
Being the most powerful nation gives us certain privileges but it also imposes on us certain obligations. We are the beneficiaries of a lopsided, not to say unjust, world order. The agenda for the world is set in Washington but only the citizens of the United States have a vote in Congress. A similar situation, when we were on the disadvantaged side, gave rise to the Boston Tea Party and the birth of the United States.
If we want to preserve our privileged position, we must use it not to lord it over the rest of the world but to concern ourselves with the well-being of others. Globalization has rendered the world increasingly interdependent and there are many problems that require collective action. Maintaining peace, law and order, protecting the environment, reducing poverty and fighting terrorism are among them. We cannot do anything we want, but very little can be done without our leadership or at least active participation. Instead of undermining and demeaning our international institutions because they do not necessarily follow our will, we ought to strengthen them and improve them. Instead of engaging in preemptive actions of a military nature, we ought to pursue preventive actions of a constructive nature, creating a better balance between carrots and sticks in the prevailing world order.
As graduates of a school of international affairs, I hope you will have an opportunity to implement this constructive vision of America's role in the world.
Thank you.
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| Is Torture Okay??? If So, Why Not Torture Bush, Cheney & Rice About Pre-9/11 Intelligence??? |
| 05.17.04 (9:36 am) [edit] |
[b]Of course, war crimes including murder, rape, torture and abuse of the accused, prisoners and the vulnerable are [i]morally wrong [/i]and are [i]evil atrocities in the eyes of every civilized human being [/i]... [/b]The following hypothetical question is posed to right-wing neo-con, neo-fascist brain-dead sheep who are unconscionably attempting to make ugly neo-nazi "[i]excuses"[/i] for the corrupt Bush regime's heinous[i] Crimes Against Humanity [/i]in Iraq and Afghanistan:-- Why [i]not[/i] torture Bush, Cheney & Rice about pre-9/11 intelligence in order to find out [i]what they knew[/i]-- [i]when they knew it[/i]-- and [i]whether or not they let 9/11 happen[/i] to give them an "[i]excuse[/i]" to [i]piggy-back [/i]upon the tragic terrorist attack waged by Al Qaeda (not Saddam Hussein, not Iraq) against America in order to[i] lie and deceive the American people [/i]and wage their illegal & immoral war-turned-bloody-guerril la-quagmire in Iraq??? ... We know that Bush, Cheney, Rice & their neo-con liars, traitors, felons and war criminals in the Bush Crime Organization are covering-up their [i]Crime Against America on 9/11[/i] http://www.americanprogress.o... , and should be made to[i] come clean[/i] ... Instead the 9/11 Whitewash Committee is a [i]fraud[/i] who let this neo-fascist cabal of crooks[i] off-the-hook [/i]...
"We the People" [i]should [/i]be outraged, angered and appalled by the traitorous Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta's[/i] neo-con, neo-fascist massacres, tortures, rapes and abuses of Iraqi and Afghanistani prisoners ... If [i]not,[/i] why[i] not [/i]murder, torture, rape and abuse Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rove, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and their neo-con cabal of neo-fascist thugs & goons??? ... [b][i]Should [i]we[/i]??? [/i]... [i]Of course not!!![/i][/b] ...
[b]Consider the following ...[/b]
[b]Rancid from Top to Bottom
[u]Green Lights for Torture[/u][/b]
So there were WMDs in Iraq after all. They're called digital cameras. Partly because of them the US faces one of the most humiliating defeats in imperial history. But there's also a clear paper trail. Not just the long and copiously documented record of US torture, with many of its refinements acquired by the CIA from the Nazis after World War Two, but the more recent lineage of encouragement.
Within in a few days of the Trade Towers going down in September, 2001, a vacationing FBI agent told an acquaintance of mine in Puerto Vallarta that torture was being used on detainees in the US. On May 3, 2004, two such detainees, a Pakistani called Javaid Iqbal and an Egyptian, Ehab Elmaghraby, filed a civil complaint with a US court describing their beatings in the Brooklyn Detention Center, being forced to walk naked in front of female guards, put in a tiny cell lit 24 hours a day without blankets, mattress or toilet paper. Both were expelled from the US, pleading guilty to charges unrelated to terrorism. The Detention Center was harshly criticized in a 2003 DOJ report for serious maltreatment of inmates.
By early November, 2001, public opinion here in the US was being softened up for the use of torture. At the start of November the Washington Post published a piece by Walter Pincus citing FBI and Justice Department investigators as saying that "traditional civil liberties may have to be cast aside if they are to extract information about the Sept 11 attacks and terrorist plans." Pincus reported that "alternative strategies under discussion are using drugs or pressure tactics, such as those used occasionally by Israeli interrogators."
Jonathan Alter, Newsweek's in-house liberal pundit, confided to his readers in the weekly's edition for November 5, 2001, that something was needed to "jump-start the stalled investigation." His tone was facetiously upbeat, in line with the "just hazing" approach now promoted by the pain-averse Rush Limbaugh. Alter: "Couldn't we at least subject them [detainees] to psychological torture, like tapes of dying rabbits or high decibel rap?" Alter also made respectful reference to Harvard's pride, Alan Dershowitz, then running around the country promoting the idea of "torture warrants" issued by judges and recommending needles under detainees' fingernails, and to Israel, where (in Alter's terms) "until 1999 an interrogation technique called 'shaking' was legal. It entailed holding a smelly bag over a suspect's head in a dark room", a decorous way of referring to how Palestinians were nearly suffocated by having their heads stuffed in sacks of excrement by Israeli torturers.
It was not far into the war in Afghanistan that Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld made plain his views of the treatment of prisoners, after horrifying accounts began to surface of the treatment of Taliban POWs.
Recall that after the surrender of the Kunduz fortress in November 2001 hundreds of Taliban were taken prisoner along with an American called John Walker Lindh. Rumsfeld had originally stated that the US was "not inclined to negotiate surrenders". He then amended this to say that the Taliban should be let out of the net but that foreign fighters should expect no mercy: "My hope is they will either be killed or taken prisoner."
It turned out they endured both Rumsfeld's options. A year later Jamie Doran, a British television producer, aired his documentary establishing beyond reasonable doubt that hundreds of these prisoners - with no distinction between Taliban or "foreign fighters"- died either by suffocation in the container trucks used to transport them towards the Shebarghan prison, or by outright execution near Shebarghan.
On the basis of interviews with eyewitnesses, Doran said U.S. soldiers were present when the containers were opened. "When the containers were finally opened, a mess of urine, blood, faeces, vomit and rotting flesh was all that remained ... As the containers were lined up outside the prison, a [U.S.] soldier accompanying the convoy was present when the prison commanders received orders to dispose of the evidence quickly. Newsweek's investigation into the Afghan atrocities ("The Death Convoy of Afghanistan," 26 August 2002) stated that "American forces were working intimately with 'allies' who committed what could well qualify as war crimes."
Witnesses also stated "600 Taliban PoWs who survived the containers' shipment to the Shebarghan prison ... were taken to a spot in the desert and executed in the presence of about 30 to 40 U.S. special forces soldiers" (The Globe and Mail, 19 December 2002). Other U.S. soldiers are said to have involved themselves directly and enthusiastically in the "dirty work" of prisoner torture and the disposal of corpses. "The Americans did whatever they wanted," stated one Afghan witness. "We had no power to stop them. Everything was under the control of the American commander."
John Walker Lindh was kept in a coffin sized box. As his lawyer later stated, the photographs left no doubt as to what kind of treatment he had endured. Part of his lawyer's final deal with the prosecution was a dropping of any possible charges of torture.
From May , 2003, the Red Cross was complaining to US army commanders and to proconsul Bremer in Iraq, to Rumsfeld, assistant defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice about frightful treatment of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. "The elements we found were tantamount to torture," Pierre Kraehenbuehl, operations director for the Swiss-based International Committee of the Red Cross, told reporters in Geneva at the end of the first week in May, 2004, after the Wall Street Journal disclosed the contents of a major Red Cross report. "They were clearly incidents of degrading and inhuman treatment."
Kraehenbuehl said said the ICRC investigations showed "a pattern, a broad system" rather than "isolated acts of individual members of the coalition forces." During an unannounced October visit to Abu Ghraib, for example, the ICRC monitors witnessed "the practice of keeping persons completely naked in totally empty concrete cells in total darkness for several consecutive days," the report said.
The Red Cross teams also saw guards forcing male prisoners to parade around in women's underwear, according to the summary report. When an ICRC official complained to the military officer in charge, the report says, the American explained that the practice was "part of the process." The ICRC report said the suspects were "beaten severely by [coalition forces] personnel" and one man, identified as 28-year-old Baha Daoud Salim, died. In the words of the report, "His co-arrestees heard him screaming and asking for assistance."
The Red Cross began making its complaints just about the time, back in May and June 2003, the U.S. was on a full-press diplomatic campaign to compel other countries to sign bilateral agreements exempting U.S. citizens, whether military or civilians, from the potential jurisdiction of the new International Criminal Court (ICC) in Rome.
What's clear enough is that the quality of US leadership from the very top down, both civilian and military, is rancid. Accountability has long gone out of the window. The venality and corruption of Bremer's coalition officials and many of Sanchez's officers have naturally allowed many in the armed forces to degenate into criminal thuggery. Iraqi families complain that after US troops have searched and smashed up their homes, the occupants return to find their safes broken open and their savings and valuables stolen.
The Red Cross report cites some coalition military intelligence officers as reckoning that "between 70 per cent and 90 per cent of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake."
It's ironic how the great moral crusade for freedom and democracy in Iraq has foundered on a photo of Private Lynndie England hauling around The Other on a dog leash. Even the images of torture degrade one's moral instincts with appalling speed. I''d love to see a photo of Anne Coulter clipping the leash on Rush Limbaugh, though not being Muslim he probably wouldn't care. Remember, being forced to strip naked and have one's genitals menaced by savage dogs is something Muslims apparently find abhorrent. Those Others are a bunch of ninnies, aren't they? Not like us Christians. - http://www.counterpunch.com
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| The Bush Administration’s Appalling Ineptness ... |
| 05.17.04 (9:17 am) [edit] |
[b]Great article that shows the corrupt Bush regime's [i]appalling ineptness [/i]... There are[i] plenty [/i]of articles around showing their [i]despicable corruption [/i]...
Read on ...[/b]
The ineptness of the Bush administration in the so-called war on terror is something to behold. One would not have expected the seasoned politicians and bureaucrats around President Bush to be so bumbling and tone-deaf. That they are both offers a valuable lesson: so-called experts are often worth less than any nonexpert with common sense.
The bungling began with the presumptuously named Operation Infinite Freedom (eventually changed) and the ill-advised use of the word “crusade” in reference to the early efforts to root out al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Moving on to Iraq, there was the blunder of staging the pulling down of Saddam Hussein’s statue by Americans, not Iraqis, preceded by the placement of an American flag on the statue’s face. (That mistake was recognized fairly quickly, but the image endured.)
The prisoner-abuse scandal has been the occasion for more examples of such ineptness. Even if monstrous actions were confined to only a few soldiers, we should not overlook the fact that the U.S. military chose to hold Iraqis in Saddam’s hated Abu Ghraib prison, the site of some of the very horrors that Bush claims he was rescuing the Iraqi people from. Why on earth did the military do that? (Indeed, why is the American viceroy, Paul Bremer, holed up in one of Saddam’s old palaces?) In the wake of the abuse revelations, some commentators are calling on the American administrators in Iraq to destroy the prison. That’s exactly the wrong way to handle things. Let Iraqis destroy it. No U.S. personnel should go within miles of that place.
In any catalogue of ineptness, who could neglect to include Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers’s confession last week that they had not read the Taguba report on the prison abuses? This ranks up there with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz’s ignorance of the number of American deaths in Iraq. (Don’t ask him about Iraqi casualties.)
It is bad enough that Rumsfeld and Myers apparently delayed telling Bush and the Congress, not to mention the American people, about the prison misconduct. Their public nonchalance defies belief. As the appalling pictures of sadism and humiliation at the hands of U.S. military men and women circled the globe at the speed of light — blackening America’s name even further in the Arab and Muslim world — the top men in charge of the U.S. armed forces couldn’t fit this report, prepared last February, into their busy schedules. Rumsfeld said it was too big a pile of papers to complete and he hadn’t been “briefed” on it. It was a mere 53 pages. Perhaps by now he’s had a chance to read Seymour Hersh’s account in the New Yorker. Or maybe someone has briefed him on it — if he hasn’t been too busy with other more pressing matters.
What we have here is evidence that attitudes in the administration and military reflect outward behavior. The U.S. policy in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the rest of the Middle East looks like imperialism. Some supporters of the policy concede that. The difference, they say, is that despite appearances, “we” are not seeking to build an empire. “We” are well-meaning. “We” want only good things for the people of the region. “We” want them to have freedom, democracy, and prosperity. “We” are different.
The recent revelations make that case look a lot weaker, because they betray an arrogance, callousness, and condescension. Did the attitude spawn the policy, or did the policy spawn the attitude? It’s hard to say, and it really doesn’t matter. Even if the intentions were good, the policy — which, let us not forget, entailed bombing, killing, and maiming innocent people — could be expected to brutalize those who executed it. “The end preexists in the means,” Ralph Waldo Emerson said. Or as another wise man, Lord Acton, put it, “[i]Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely[/i].”
[i][b]Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation, author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and editor of The Freeman magazine. Send him email mailto:srichman@conwaycor p.net .[/b][/i] - http://www.fff.org/comment/co...
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| Act Now! Join the Virtual March to Stop Bush's Blood-Thirsty Agenda! |
| 05.16.04 (6:52 pm) [edit] |
[b]Now is the time for "We the People" to stand against the corrupt Bush regime ...[/b]
Please register now to join with us in our virtual march on the White House taking place on Sunday 29th August 2004 at 2PM US Central Standard Time, 7PM UK time!
Let the Bush regime know exactly what you think about their policies!
Just click here http://www.livemarch.com/marc... , then click on the "Join this live march" button, then on "sign up now" and enter your details.
You'll receive reminders about the protest.
Shortly before the action begins you'll receive an email with instructions on where to send your messages, along with a suggested messge, please keep this to hand and rally here http://www.livemarch.com/marc... no later than 10 minutes before the start of the virtual march.
When the countdown clock on that page reaches 0:0:0 start sending those faxes and emails, phone the White House and visit the website! - http://geocities.com/tellbush...
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| Traitors-in-Arms: House of Bush, House of Saud ... |
| 05.16.04 (3:21 pm) [edit] |
[b]For a [i]great read[/i], click on[i] House of Bush, House of Saud[/i] on http://www.buzzflash.com/prem... , for [i]an eye-popping account [/i]of the traitorous relationship between the[i] treasonous liars, swindlers and embezzlers (and war criminals)[/i], the Bush Crime Family and the Saudi Royal Family, both of whom are colluding in illegal & immoral atrocities and blood-thirsty oppressions over human beings in the Middle East ([i]and in the U.S.A[/i].), as they [i]betray [/i]their respective nations in order to enrich & empower themselves ...[/b]
[b]The Great Escape [/b]
[i]House of Bush, House of Saud [/i]begins with a single question: How is it that two days after September 11, 2001, even as American air traffic was tightly restricted, a Saudi billionaire socialized in the White House with President George W. Bush as 140 Saudi citizens, many immediate kin to Osama Bin Laden, were permitted to return to their country? A potential treasure trove of intelligence was allowed to flee the country-- including an alleged al-Qaeda intermediary who was said to have foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks. Why did the FBI facilitate this evacuation, and why didn't the agency question the people on the planes? Why did Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of most of the hijackers, receive exclusive and preferential treatment from the White House even as the World Trade Center continued to burn?
[b]Two Families, Deeply Entwined [/b]
The answers to these questions, and ones far more troubling, lie in the largely hidden relationship that began in the mid-1970s, when the oil-rich House of Saud struck out for America in the wake of the OPEC oil embargo and soaring oil prices. Saudi Arabia needed American military protection, access to American political power, and a place to invest its staggering cash flow, which within 5 years reached $16 million an hour. Like wildcatting oil drillers, the Saudis began prospecting among promising American politicians, including the Bush family. And with the Bushes, the Saudis hit a gusher- direct access to Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush, as well as to Secretary of State James Baker, Vice-President Dick Cheney, and the entire U.S. intelligence apparatus.
[b]A Dangerous Liaison [/b]
What followed was an amazing weave of influence, strategic investment, socializing, and secret policy between the House of Bush and the House of Saud that arcs from the 1980s into the present day. The two parties conferred on war, oil, funding for Osama bin Laden's Afghan Arabs supporting the mujahideen in the Afghanistan War, illegal arms deals, banking, private matters, and much more. By the time George W. Bush was elected, the House of Saud had transferred an astonishing sum of money to the House of Bush in deals involving dozens of companies. The total? At least $1.4 billion in investments and contracts went to companies in which the Bushes and their allies held prominent positions. But the importance of the relationship goes far beyond money. More than any other country in the world, Saudi Arabia is responsible for the rise of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism that threatens America. Horrifying as it may seem, the secret liaison between these two great families helped trigger the Age of Terror and give rise to the tragedy of 9/11. - http://www.houseofbush.com/
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| Desperate Bat-bumb Bush & Bat-boob Blair Will Make a Joint Appearance in Baghdad!!! |
| 05.16.04 (2:51 pm) [edit] |
[b]Remember the funny [i]Caped[/i]-Crusaders Batman & Robin??? ... (... [i]Were they really "gay"??? [/i]...) ... The [i]Statesman[/i] reports upon the pathetic buffoon-antics of the [i]sorry imitation of the duo [/i]who are the [i]Crapped-Out[/i]-Crusad ers:[/b]
Mr Tony Blair and Mr George W Bush plan to make an unprecedented joint appearance in Baghdad in a[i] “desperate” bid [/i]to quell mounting anger over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
They fear the scandal over the torture of captives by US and British troops is threatening to wreck the coalition mission and destabilise the Middle East, the Sunday Mirror reported today. The report, however, did not spell out the date when the two leaders will make the trip. It said Mr Bush and Mr Blair, who are expected to travel to Iraq on separate planes, would make a[i] joint appearance [/i]in the Iraqi capital and try to reassure the people that the West condemned the actions of “rogue” troops and that those found guilty would be punished. — PTI, http://www.thestatesman.net/p...
[b]The [i]hilarious dog-and-pony show [/i]put on by the [i]Wonder-Neo-Con-Jokers[ /i], the Bat-bumb Bush & his [i]side-kick[/i], the Bat-boob Blair should be [i]good for a laugh [/i]to entertain the troops ... (...[i] Are they really "gay"??? [/i]...) [/b]
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| Condolizzard Torturing Russians into Supporting Dumb-Dubya's UN Iraq Resolution |
| 05.16.04 (12:29 pm) [edit] |
[b]Dumb-Dubya & his Lewinsky-the-Condolizzard Rice supported and approved of Crummy-Rummy Rumsfeld's murder, torture, rape & abuse of Iraqi prisoners in violation of the Geneva Conventions http://newyorker.com/printabl... and consequently these neo-con thugs & neo-fascist goons should be shipped off to the Hague to be tried for their heinous[i] Crime Against Humanity [/i]...[/b]
The corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]has [i]pissed-and-crapped [/i]on the nations of the world, but they've sent their vile henchmen like the mendacious Condolizzard[i] out-in-force [/i]to traitorously coerce, bribe and pressure other countries to support a UN Iraq Resolution in order to[i] get-them-off-the-hook from being[/i] tried for [i]War Crimes[/i]-- something Bush is desperate to escape http://www.commondreams.org/h... ... But, at what[i] cost [/i]to the American working taxpayers??? ...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday the United States wanted Russia’s cooperation in working out a UN resolution on Iraq.
“She made it clear that we want to work closely with the Russians on the text of the Security Council resolution which we will soon be drafting and sharing with our Russian friends,” a US Embassy spokesman said.
The arrangements for the June 30 handover were the subject of intense discussions on Friday in both New York and Washington involving foreign ministers of leading industrialized states and diplomats at the United Nations.
Russia made it plain on the eve of the talks with Rice that it was willing to work with Washington on a UN Security Council resolution to underpin the handover, but said it wanted a clear outline of post-occupation arrangements.
With officials disclosing only the barest of details, Tass said Rice turned over to the Kremlin leader a message from US President George W. Bush.
A Kremlin statement said talks focused on bilateral cooperation and on “key international issues, including the situation in Iraq and in the Middle East”.
Contrary to common practice, Russian television showed no pictures of the Kremlin meeting. Rice later met members of Russia’s Security Council, headed by former Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. She travels on to Berlin on Sunday.
Her mission focuses on persuading Russia, a permanent Security Council member with veto power, to back a new resolution to enable a multinational force to maintain security as long as possible.
Rice said in a newspaper interview on Friday that Washington wanted “to find out Russians’ opinion on what this resolution should contain”.
Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov, Russia’s top Iraq expert, told Interfax news agency the most important thing was to “agree precisely on the concept of the Iraqi settlement”.
He said Russia, which opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq, could support “a two-stage approach”, a short resolution followed by a longer document “spelling out in detail an Iraqi settlement game-plan.”
At talks attended by G-8 industrialized nations foreign ministers in Washington on Friday, major powers challenged the United States to transfer real power to Baghdad in the handover.
Russia wanted the new government to be “truly sovereign”. France, also a permanent Security Council member that opposed the Iraq invasion, said Washington must give up control over local forces.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States would withdraw its troops if the interim government made such an unlikely demand, but added that the top US commander should remain free to take decisions as he felt necessary. - http://www.aljazeerah.info/Ne...%20archives/2004%20News%2 0archives/May/16n/Rice%20 Wants%20Russia%20to%20Wor k%20on%20UN%20Iraq%20Reso lution.htm
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| Will Someone Tell Bush That A Wooden-Head Is Just As Dangerous As A Wooden-Horse!!! |
| 05.16.04 (10:57 am) [edit] |
[b]Maureen Dowd is [i]brilliant[/i] ... Read on ...[/b]
[b]The Springs of Fate[/b]
Oblivious of the consequences, the impetuous black sheep of a ruling family starts a war triggered by a personal grudge.
The father, a respected veteran of his own wars, suppresses his unease and graciously supports his son, even though it will end up destroying his legacy and the world order he envisioned.
The ferocious battle in the far-off sands spirals out of control, with many brave soldiers killed, with symbols of divinity damaged, with graphic scenes showing physical abuse of the conquered, and with devastatingly surreptitious guerrilla tactics.
Aside from dishing up a gilded Brad Pitt with a leather miniskirt and a Heathrow duty-free accent as he tosses about ancient insults, such as calling someone a "sack of wine," "Troy" also dishes up some gilded lessons on the Aeschylating cost of imperial ambitions and personal vendettas.
The Greek warriors question their sovereign's reasons for war, knowing that he has taken an incendiary pretext (Paris' stealing Helen from Sparta) to provide emotional acceleration to his real reasons — to settle old scores and forge an empire through war.
When Mars rushes into Achilles' soul in his battle with Hector, as Alexander Pope wrote in his translation of Homer's "Iliad," "the springs of fate snap every lock tight."
But Barbara Tuchman, in her book "The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam," observes that while the Trojans reject advice to keep that dagnab nag, as Rummy might put it, out of the walled city, "the feasible alternative — that of destroying the Horse — is always open."
Cassandra and others warned them. (The always ignored Cassandra is left out of the movie, but she must have sensed that was coming.)
"Notwithstanding the frequent references in the epic to the fall of Troy being ordained, it was not fate but free choice that took the Horse within the walls," Ms. Tuchman writes. " `Fate' as a character in legend represents the fulfillment of man's expectation of himself."
A State Department official noted last week that if any of the Bush hawks had read Ms. Tuchman's dissection of war follies, her warning about leaders who get an "addiction to the counterproductive," they might have been less rash.
"The folly" in Vietnam, she writes, "consisted not in pursuit of a goal in ignorance of the obstacles but in persistence in the pursuit despite accumulating evidence that the goal was unattainable, and the effect disproportionate to the American interest and eventually damaging to American society, reputation and disposable power in the world."
The Bush team, working on divine right, doesn't bother checking human precedent.
The president and secretary of defense boast about not reading newspapers, presumably because they don't want any contrary opinion or fact to shake their faith in the essential excellence of their policies.
It's astonishing the amount of stuff these guys don't bother to read, preferring to filter their information through their ideology. They certainly didn't read enough Iraqi history. They delayed looking at photos and reports on Americans abusing Iraqi prisoners. Paul Wolfowitz clearly wasn't bothering to read updated casualty reports.
The deputy defense secretary got cuffed around at a Senate hearing on Thursday when he admitted that he had first read a document that morning detailing questionable rules of engagement for confronting Iraqi prisoners.
As Ms. Tuchman notes, wooden heads are as dangerous as wooden horses: "Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs."
President Bush's Achilles' heel is his fear of wimpiness, and Dick Cheney and Rummy played on that, making him think he had to go to war once the war machine was revved up, or he would lose face and no longer be "The Man."
Maybe the president and vice president will catch "Troy" on their planes as they jet around to fund-raisers. But the antiwar message will probably be lost, except on the official who is both a snubbed Cassandra and a sulking Achilles, Colin Powell. "Wooden-headedness," Ms. Tuchman said, "is also the refusal to benefit from experience." - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...
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| Freethinkers: Keeping Government Out of Religion & Religion Out of Government |
| 05.16.04 (9:18 am) [edit] |
"[i]Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society[/i]." - Thomas Jefferson, http://etext.lib.virginia.edu...
[b]Our Founding Fathers were adament in creating a "wall of separation between church and state" and would have been appalled at the pressure brought to bear by religious zealots and tyrannical fanatics like the traitorous Bush (unfit to be president) who is corrupting our system of democracy ...[/b]
In a highly informative interview by Bill Moyers ([i]NOW with Bill Moyers[/i] http://www.pbs.org/now/societ... ) with Susan Jacoby, author of "[b]Freethinkers: [i]A History of American Secularism[/i][/b]" (excerpt on http://www.beliefnet.com/stor... ), they explore the dangers of our society being turned into a fanatical religious totalitarian system if we do not go back to the roots of our government, our U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights ... Indeed, Ms. Jacoby cites John Adams, 2nd President of the U.S., who in the Treaty with Tripoli (1796-97), reassures the Barbary States of Northern Africa that the United States of America is "not to be founded on Christianity" http://www.ffrf.org/fttoday/j... ...
"We the People" must extricate ourselves from the dangerously stupid and corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] who are [i]vile traitors [/i]to our nation's heritage, system of laws and historical role in the world community ...
[i]NOW with Bill Moyers [/i]web-site has more links to sources regarding the separation of church and state so vital to our nation's democracy and freedom on http://www.pbs.org/now/societ...
Susan Jacoby, who began her writing career as a reporter for THE WASHINGTON POST, is the author of five books, including WILD JUSTICE, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Awarded fellowships by the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, she has been a contributor to THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, THE NATION, TomPaine.com and the AARP Bulletin, among other publications. She is also director of the Center for Inquiry-Metro New York and lives in New York City.
In her latest book, FREETHINKERS: A HISTORY OF AMERICAN SECULARISM, Jacoby offers an impassioned history that challenges the current marginalization of secular values. FREETHINKERS illuminates the neglected accomplishments of secularists who have stood at the forefront of the battle for every kind of reform — from the framing of a Constitution based on human rights rather than divine authority to the feminist and civil liberties movements of the 20th century. The book not only explores the religious skepticism of such iconic figures as Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton but also restores to history such dedicated and forgotten secular humanists as Robert Green Ingersoll, known as "the Great Agnostic" and the most famous orator in 19th-century America.
Read an interesting interview with Susan Jacoby on http://www.beliefnet.com/stor... .
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| 24 Ways That Bush Is Like Adolf Hitler ... And This Is The Tip-of-the-Iceberg!!! |
| 05.15.04 (6:48 pm) [edit] |
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[b]The following list was compiled in 2003 before Dubya's disastrous bloody fiasco in Iraq[i] spiralled out-of-control [/i]and prior to the revelations of the corrupt Bush regime's heinous murder, torture, rape and abuse of Iraqi & Afghanistani prisoners, representing unconscionable[i] Crimes Against Humanity [/i]for which they should be put on trial ...[/b]
Visit [i]PeaceAware.com [/i]on http://www.peaceaware.com/mai...
[b]Is Bush of 2003/2004 like the Hitler of 1933?[/b] Certainly a President of a US democracy cannot be compared to a fascist, fear-mongering, propaganda-spreading, militarist dictator? And a two-bit, pip-squeak, want-a-be tyrant in Iraq cannot be Hitler? Yet former president, George H. W. Bush compared Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler to rally the support of the world for Gulf War I. And Donald Rumsfeld also compared the conflict between President Bush Jr. and Saddam Hussein to that of Winston Churchill and Adolph Hitler, to rally U.S. media to Gulf War II. Absurd! But equally absurd is the reverse.
Bush Jr. was angered by a recent comparison of himself to Hitler in Germany. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was forced to publicly apologize in September 2002 to President Bush Jr., after reports that one of his Justice ministers, Mrs. Herta Daeubler-Gmelin compared Bush to Adolf Hitler. http://www.zianet.com/boje/pe... The Schwaebisches Tagblatt newspaper, reported that she told metalworkers, "Bush wants to divert attention from domestic political problems" and onto Iraq… It's a method that is sometimes favored. Hitler also did that." After the object lesson of State power, most are afraid to compare Bush to Hitler. IN a time of Homeland Security and Patriot Act II, it is treasonous.
Yet, George W. Bush Jr. is more like Hitler and Iraq is his Poland, a statement that will not have the support of most of the U.S., but is an increasing world comment. What is the so-called “War on Terrorism”? Is it Bush’s way of rallying support around a leader of slipping economy, a way to encircle the Middle East with US military bases, so as to secure oil contracts for Halliburton, ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, and UNOCAL? (See Oil Wars http://www.zianet.com/boje/1/... ). It could be a way to avoid Enrongate (See Enron files http://cbae.nmsu.edu/~dboje/enron/index.htm ). What if Bush has constructed a propaganda machine that exceeds Hitler’s maniacal way of duping the public? Certainly there can be no real comparisons of Bush and Hitler. It cannot be true.
A review of the historical record, finds twenty-four direct ways in which Bush is reliving Hitler’s strategies of power and domination. (See Reference list http://www.zianet.com/boje/pe... ). My purpose here is to point out historical parallels. I do not mean to lessen the tragic impact of the Holocaust (Antidefimation League Press Release, 2002). Bush is not conducting a Holocaust. After laying out the parallels, I do conclude that both Hitler and Bush are leaders, by all measures, drunk with power, espousing visions of world domination, and rallying their nations by propagating fear. The start up events of World War II and those of what some say will be World War III are looking increasingly similar. The world remembers better than the U.S., how it failed to stop Adolf Hitler from coming to power and sees more clearly that it is failing to stop George W. Bush from initiating the 4th Reich. This is why worldwide, 11 million people turned out to protest Bush's war on February 15th.
[b]Here are 24 ways Bush and Hitler are too much alike for comfort[/b]:
1. President George W. Bush, like Adolf Hitler, came to power legally, but not democratically. The majority of Americans and the majority of Germans did not elect either leader. No one expected either one to rise to power.
2. The problem for both these fervent Christians was how to keep power. Both Hitler and Bush court the conservative Christian right, and implicate their acts of aggression and holy war.
3. The answer for both, concerning how to consolidate power, and keep opposition at bay, is the same --declare world war -- find weaker nations that can be enemies of the people -- subvert the free press into a propaganda machine. Hitler invoked the spectre of "the Red Menace," while Bush pronounces the spectre of the “Evil Axis.” These spectres taint any dissenter with the red or evil brush. The US propaganda machine requires that every American place dehumanize Afghanistan, Iraq, and North Korean lives. Just like Germany, the US people are consumed by fear, brought about by the propaganda of the State and Mass Media. America is going to war, because George W. Bush wants to be remembered as the next FDR. Bush is not FDR. Bush is a fabrication of his own egomania, a will to power, a desire to write his own leadership legacy as the president who won World War III.
4. Like Hitler, Bush weaves white lies into his speeches; the obedient media repeats them over and over, while the alternative media asks where is the proof of such accusations? Bush Sr. did the same; a Kuwaiti woman testified before Congress that she saw Iraqi soldiers tear Kuwaiti babies from incubators. After the Gulf War, we learned she was the daughter of a Kuwaiti Ambassador to the U.S. and that her story was a lie -- prwatch.org -- The point is that there is no proof; just repeat the lie until the masses believe it to be so true, and checking for facts is thought to be unnecessary. Several examples: First, there is no proof of massed chemical, nuclear, and bio weapons stockpiled to be used against the U.S. – America is the only country that believes the propaganda. Second, there is no proof that even if there were such weapons, that there is launch capability or intent to use them. Third, there is no proven link between Al Qaeda and Iraq. The point is not that there is no proof, but that the American public is not demanding any.
5. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.” Being silent in front of the War Machine is appalling because the dictator consolidates power, then dissent itself becomes dangerous. There is little opposition, and what little there is, is not widely reported, so it appears that there is no Peace movement at all in the U.S. Bush sent the U.S. military to destroy Afghanistan without any apparent opposition, and is now poised to annihilate Iraq, possibly over these Christmas holidays, again without noticeable opposition. Of course, there is opposition in every city across America, but it goes unreported, so it does not exist in the minds of the masses. The polls report that opposition is much more widespread in other countries.
6. Both Hitler and Bush lumped all liberals together and call anything they say “unpatriotic.” Like Hitler, Bush is pushing one war policy after another through the houses of government, and then both sought appeals for international support. The strategy is working. Like Hitler, Bush squashes dissent. Hitler rounded up activists, and then had them killed; that has not happened in the U.S., though many a foreign student is being rounded up, and Home Security, is a suspicious thing. Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash just before Election Day 2002.
7. Like Hitler, Bush Sr. and now Bush Jr. have dismantled worker protections. Americans, like Germans before WWII are putting in more hours for less pay. American has pursued a strategy of outsourcing to Third World countries for jobs as a way to keep unions powerless. Hitler also trashed trade unions. Like the Democrats, Germany’s Social Democrats were afraid to organize oppositions to their leader’s initiatives. Both the Democrats and the Social Democrats, sat back, and were overwhelmed by the opposition party, who was more aggressive and fanatical. This is coupled with a series of appointees that are loyal to the leader’s agenda.
8. To send a democracy into war, Hitler, like Bush whips up hatred, fear, and bloodlust. The propaganda is so transparent, one would think no intelligent being would find it credible. Like Hitler, Bush is demonizing Afghanistan, then Iraq as threats to U.S. national security, before invading them. Hitler demonized the "reds" and sent provocateurs to orchestrate a staged act of "terrorism." Bush demonized the Afghanistan people, and sent provocateurs to provoke acts of terrorism from the Al Qaeda, known as September 11th (See book by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked September 11, 2001). Bush Jr. and the administration may have known about the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, even provoked them be telegraphing US plans to topple the Bin Laden, then prevented the Air Defense system from intercepting the planes, so that a War on Terrorism could be launched. What little investigation there has been suggests that the US administration knew, did not respond on purpose, and has blocked any investigation of its role in 9-11. Hitler’s “dupe was a young revolutionary named Van der Lubbe, who was implicated in (i.e. framed for) the bombing of the Reichstag (the equivalent of the Congressional building)”(). Like Hitler, Bush is demonizing Hussein, provoking any act of terror that will legitimate the annihilation of the Iraqi people. Like Hitler, Bush has rallied the Americans against the "terrorists" and passed acts similar to Hitler’s "Enabling Acts," in which the State has the right to bypass any legal due process for "suspects" who may be enemies of the State.
9. Bush behaves like Hitler, threatening weaker nations with weapons of mass destruction and total annihilation unless they do as he says -- make a regime change. Bush’s World War III (WWIII), the invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and North Korea will be fought for the same reasons Hitler invaded Poland, Czechoslovakia and Russia -- for economic hegemony, to strike fear into followers, to intimidate the world into submission, and to divert attention. Hegemony is power exercised in ways we take for granted; we do not resist what we do not notice. This occurs through demonization, to promote fear, and unite the masses behind the leader who promises protection. In 1938-1939 Hitler demonized Czechoslovakia, then Poland, as a threat to Germany’s national security, before invading each.
10. Bush follows Hitler’s strategy by turning weaker nations into threats to one that is a national superpower. Bush said in January 2002, “The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.” Like Hitler, Bush uses weapons of mass destruction while blaming the victim for threatening a superpower. Who has the most such weapons? In the regime changes to promote US security, the most dangerous regime on earth is the US. The US has amassed the most biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons of mass destruction, and has used them in Japan (Hiroshima, Nagasaki), in Vietnam (agent orange), and in Iraq (nuclear tipped war heads).
11. Like Hitler, Bush wants his followers to accept war as a way to divert attention from an economy slipping into recession and depression. Like Germany, the US economy will be in ruins and millions of its citizens will be dead after the world war. Following in the strategy perfected by Hitler, Bush has declared Iraq, Iran, and N. Korea as an “axis of evil,” whose provocations must be met by invasion and destruction. Iran is on the list because in 1978-79 they overthrew the US-backed dictatorship of the Shah. N. Korea is on the list because it is the gateway to China, which could be the next target of America’s expanding world war of imperial conquest.
12. This is an Oil War. When Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, the corporation did $23.8 million in business with Saddam Hussein. The grand prize for the US war machine is that more than two thirds of the world’s reserves of oil and natural gas lie in the Middle East and Central Asia. The prize for Exxon, Unocal, Chevron, Texaco, Amoco, and BP is $1.1 trillion in oil reserve contracts in Iraq, billions in the pipeline through Afghanistan to get to the oil in the Caspian Sea reserves, and billions more once Iran has its latest regime change.
13. Many believed Hitler was merely a puppet of reactionaries. Like Hitler’s Vice-Chancellor Franz Von Papen, the puppet-master and real power behind President Bush, is Vice-President Dick Cheney. Both Bush and Hitler are pea-brained. Like Hitler, Bush seeks to install puppet regimes in one country after another.
14. Like Hitler, Bush is pushing for a World War. Like WWII, WWIII will begin with a doctrine of pre-emptive, unilateral attacks on other nations. What goes around comes around. Without democratic debate, the U.S. created, supported, and trained the Al Quida, Taliban, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and the Shah of Iran’s terror machine. The U.S. supported Saddam and Iraq with weapons to attack Iraq, knew about the attack on Kuwait, decided against that, and turned on the leader we once used to further our oil interests. Senator Bryd's website --http://byrd.senate.gov -- asserts that the U.S. provided Iraq with its building blocks for biological weapons of mass destruction. Osma Bin Laden was our ally, we propped him up, until UNOCAL determined a regime change would make the pipeline to the Caspian Sea through Afghanistan a better business strategy. As the number of declared and undeclared U.S. wars and insurrections accumulates, the imperial pattern becomes clearer to the world. Nations began to fear that Hitler would be attacking them next, and formed an alliance against the obvious aggressor. This pattern now repeats, as citizens around the world mass to oppose G8, WTO, IMF, World Bank, and their prime mover, the U.S.
15. Like Hitler, Bush is becoming a fanatical military dictator. The government, unions, universities, opposition political party, and the corporate media are surrendering democratic rights to the protection of their beloved dictator.
16. Like Hitler, Bush wants regime changes brought about by invasion, refugee (concentration) camps, and sanctions that perform the mass murder of innocent men, women, and children. Bombs do not kill nearly as many millions as the sanctions.
17. Like Bush Sr. in 1991 Dessert Storm, and Clinton in 1998 Dessert Fox, Bush Jr. sees Iraq as a way to divert national attention away from his own political issues. For Clinton Dessert Fox diverted attention away from his impeachment. For Bush Jr., the Dessert Oil war diverts attention away from his role in Enrongate. All three presidents sought to use weapons of mass destruction to make people rally behind their leadership and ignore mass poverty, injustice, imperialism, and colonialism.
18. Like Hitler, Bush maneuvers national resolutions to support the war machine. The hypocrisy and arrogance of their leadership is beyond belief. Yet, the masses, struck by fear and propaganda, are eager for World War. The mainstream media is obedient to their Masters’ call. Homeland Security is a way to keep the masses demanding their civil liberties is stripped away. The Military filmed protesters at D.C. Demonstrations (27-29 Sept 2002). Both Hitler and Bush have put in tough new aggressive laws suppressing public dissent and have revoked civil liberties.
19. Declaring a war during an election improves the gains of the party in power (e.g Thatcher in Falkland War of 1982). Few congressional leaders dare challenge the imperialist, colonialist invasion philosophy of a United States president. When Bush Sr.’s polls started to drop in 1989, a war against Panama seemed the answer. When Clinton was pursued by Impeachment hearings, Dessert Storm in Iraq seemed to be the answer. When Bush sees his polls start to slip, and wants to consolidate power in the 2002 elections of fellow party members, a war is a good thing. Only Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, and Howard Zinn have dared to call Bush’s war a racist, egotistical, religious war that will pit US fundamentalism against Islam. The mainstream media ignores the peace movement, those who resist colonial and racist propaganda. Few in America turn to the alternative media where they could easily learn about the reasons why the greatest superpower on the planet is going to destroy a country of Iraq for the third time.
20. Saddam Hussein is a despot, a torturer of his own people, a madman, in short a very bad man. Yet, unless cornered to protect his person, he is unlikely to use weapons of mass destruction. There is no proven capacity for said weapons of mass destruction, no proof of a delivery system beyond his own borders, and the military might has not been rebuilt since destroyed in four days by Bush Sr.’s Dessert Storm War in 1991. 1.2 million people, half of them Iraqi children have died of starvation and treatable diseases in the 12 years of U.S. led sanctions.
21. US colonial, racist, imperialist strategy is based on a philosophy of business in which so-called “free markets” are protected by CIA and Military in order to promote large corporate Oil industry interest. America uses its superior weapons of mass destruction, CIA subversion, IMF, WB, and WTO loans to rob and steal from small nations, in order to feed the SUV appetite of US citizens.
22. The US Presidents believe they have a manifest destiny to rule the planet, to be the superpower of all powers; a nation destroys other nations to keep the spectacle of Oil dependency and resource gluttony in play.
23. US markets are deteriorating. Only by appropriation through War can the US keep extracting and appropriating world resources to sustain the Americana blotted way of life. This year the US wages war on Afghanistan and Iraq; Next year the US intends a war on North Korea; after that, we can look forward to WWIII. The US has been in perpetual war since WWII.
24. The war will cost $200 billion and the defense budget another 396.1 billion (FY 2003). WWIII will bankrupt the U.S. just as the Soviet Union went bankrupt after its war budget consumed all.
[b]What happens next in this story?[/b] Are we headed for a second Holocaust and World War III? The USA is the only nation to have dropped nuclear bombs on civilian populations. We hear that Bush is going to drop mini-Nukes that rival the impact of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Instead of a blast radius of 1.5 miles, the "mini" means only 1 mile is nuked. Already some 1.2 million Iraqi civilians, including 500,000 children under five, have been killed by 12 years of sanctions. Over 10,000 US service men and women are dead from Gulf War Syndrome (see Depleted Uranium fact sheet). That is genocide. Iraq is already one huge refugee camp, and can be easily overrun, one more time, by U.S. military and weapons of mass destruction. This will produce a more concentrated refugee camp, one where civilians are more easily killed.
If the Arab world reacts to the genocide of its neighbor, then World War III is inevitable. Or, if the U.S. continues to pursue a path of mass destruction in one country after another, and increases its funding of the School of the Americas, then World War III is inevitable. Doing both makes World War III a fait accompli.
I am a Vietnam war veteran. I saw the 56,000 Vietnam vets loaded into body bags and sent home to moms and dads who thought their children were fighting a just war. I head each Wednesday to the Peace Vigil, in front of the Federal Building, downtown Las Cruces, New Mexico. I join with people whose dissenting voice has been silenced by U.S. corporate media. The centrist media is part of the propaganda machine. Media democracy is no more. Corporate media is an arm of the state war machine. We raise our peace signs and puppets in carnivalesque theatre, to draw attention to the spectacle façade of the Bush regime. We deconstruct the spectacle clichés about democracy, since democracy is being surrendered to dictatorship. The War on Terror is a War on Peace. Turn off the TV, and turn on alternative media. We are a small community. But each small community lights its candle and we hope and pray that President Bush does not follow the path of Hitler. We hope he does not drop the nuke on Baghdad. We pray he stops the sanctions that genocide. We ask for a ban on nuclear weapons, the so-called dirty bomb and all that plutonium laced depleted uranium. With all due respect, stop this war or Bush will be remembered as Hitler II, and we in America will be remembered as the Fourth Reich.
[b]References to consult:[/b] - http://www.zianet.com/boje/pe...
Ahmed, Nafeez Mosaddeq (2002) The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked September 11, 2001). Joshua Tree, CA: Tree of Life Publications
Antidefimation League Press Release (2002). Saudi Newspaper Compares President Bush With Hitler. http://www.adl.org/PresRele/I...
Author Unknown (2002). Similarities Among Bush, Hitler, Stalin and the GOP. The Public Cause Network. http://www.thepubliccause.net...
Dilacerator postings (2002). http://qsi.cc/blog/archives/0...
Ivins, Molly (2002). Dirtied by Iraqi Oil Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Sept. 5, 2002
Kranich Kim (2002). Why I Oppose the War. The Public. Vol. 2, # 10 (November). http://publici.ucimc.org/nov2...
Lemann, Nicholas (2002). The Next World Order The New Yorker, March 25.
Lindorff, Dave (2003) Bush and Hitler: The Strategy of Fear. Counter Punch. Feb 1. http://www.counterpunch.org/l...
Mother Jones (2003). Dubya's Dream World - In Bush's Orwellian world, war really is peace, at least as far as Iraq is concerned.
Nye, Joseph. Jr. (2001). Limits of American Power. the Academy of Political Science. Vol. 117 (4):
Peterson, Scott (2002). In War, Some Facts Less Factual Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 6.
Ritter, Scott (2002). Iraq Not Pursuing Nuclear Arms: Interview With Scott Ritter
CNN.com, Sept. 8.
Sengupta, Kim (2002). Saddam weaker now than before Gulf War. Independent News. 10 September. http://news.independent.co.uk...
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| Why the Troops Don't Trust Crummy-Rummy Rumsfeld ... |
| 05.15.04 (3:37 pm) [edit] |
[b]Conscientious Republicans, Democrats & Independents [i]alike [/i]are [i]sickened and disgusted [/i]with the corrupt Bush regime http://www.independent-media....%20Reported ...[/b]
Contact Congress http://www.congress.org and demand that Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Rice ([i]who was put in charge of the Iraqi Stabilization Group (ISG) last October 2003 http://www.disinfopedia.org/w... and has seriously [i]fucked-up everything [/i]the neo-con, neo-fascist goon touches[/i]) be[i] fired [/i]immediately ...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
ACCORDING to his handlers, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld went to Baghdad to "boost troop morale." The best way the SecDef could improve morale would be to resign. In Operation Iraqi Freedom, Rumsfeld and his apparatchiks boldly defended Washington while our troops fought overseas. Now that the battle's shifted to Capitol Hill in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, the SecDef's in Iraq.
It's like all those press briefings in which he answers the questions when things are going well, but defers to those in uniform when things are going badly.
Should Rumsfeld resign over the prisoner abuse by rogue MPs? No. He should resign for the good of our military and our country. Those twisted photos are only one symptom of how badly the Rumsfeld era has derailed our military.
Rumsfeld has maintained a positive image with much of America because he controls information fanatically and tolerates no deviation from the party line. Differing opinions are punished in today's Pentagon - and every field general who has spoken plainly of the deficiencies of either the non-plan for the occupation of Iraq, the lack of sufficient troops (in Iraq or overall) or any aspect of Rumsfeld's "transformation" plan has seen his career ended.
[i]It isn't treason to tell the truth in wartime. But it verges on treason to lie. And Rumsfeld lies[/i].
Our military needs vigorous, continual internal debate. Contrary to popular myth, our officer corps has a long tradition of dissenting opinions. And the grave new world in which we find ourselves is not susceptible to party-line solutions.
It's especially noteworthy that the officers who respectfully differed from the views of the Rumsfeld cabal turned out to be right. Consider former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who was right about the need for more troops and even right about the kind of vehicles we'd need in Iraq. For his service to our country, he was treated dismissively and mocked publicly.
What of that much-touted transformation so beloved of the neocons? In fact, it's just a plain old con, with nothing neo about it. The Office of the Secretary of Defense hasn't canceled one of the real budget-buster weapons systems designed for the Cold War and kept alive by lobbyists. Only the low-end Crusader artillery piece went to the chopping block as a token (the Army itself decided to cancel the Comanche helicopter).
Rumsfeld's "vision" was to lavish money on the defense industry and administration-friendly contractors, while sending too few troops to war, with too little battlefield equipment, inadequate supplies and no long-range plan. As one Army colonel put it in the heat of battle, "We're winning this despite OSD."
[u]Contractors grow rich[/u]. The Army grows exhausted. And every single prediction about the future of warfare made by the Rumsfeld gang proved incorrect. Airpower doesn't win wars on its own. Technology doesn't trump courage, guts and skill. Both war and its aftermath still require adequate numbers of well-trained, disciplined troops. And serious planning.
[u]We need a bigger Army[/u]. We got a bigger budget - but the money is going to CEOs, not to G.I. Joe.
[u]Outsourcing[/u]? We see now where that gets us. In Rumsfeld's military, you even outsource leadership. As we did at Abu Ghraib prison.
Even if none of the above mattered, Rumsfeld needs to go because he has utterly lost the trust of the officer corps. He isn't a leader. He's an arrogant ideologue unfit to serve our democracy.
On camera, in a Pentagon briefing room or at a carefully orchestrated, neo-Soviet visit to the troops he so despises, Rumsfeld surrounds himself with yes-men and sycophants. But just ask the combat generals in private what they think of Donald Rumsfeld.
I'm privileged to spend a good bit of time with our military officers, from generals to new lieutenants. And I have never seen such distrust of a public official in the senior ranks. Not even of Bill Clinton. Rumsfeld & Co. have trashed our ground forces every way they could. Only the quality of those in uniform saved us from a debacle in Iraq.
Of course, those in uniform don't get to pick the SecDef. And they continue, as they always will, to loyally carry out their orders to the letter. But to be effective, a SecDef must be respected. He doesn't have to be liked. But, especially in wartime, he must be trusted.
[i]Rumsfeld has failed the most important test of all[/i].
Clinging to power isn't a mark of strength, but of weakness, arrogance and brute obstinacy. Rumsfeld has wounded our military and sent our troops to die for harebrained schemes. In place of sound plans, he substituted political prejudices. Election year or not, he has to go.
It's time to bring integrity, mutual respect and a focus on the realities of warfare back to the Pentagon. The White House has Sen. McCain's phone number. - http://www.independent-media....%20Reported
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| America Betrays Itself ... |
| 05.15.04 (2:02 pm) [edit] |
"[i]Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism[/i]" - Thomas Jefferson
[b]Blind adherence to a ruthless and tyrannical leader is dangerously stupid and a form of treason against our nation, against future generations, against history, against humanity and against one's own conscience ... [/b]History teaches us that many of the most heinous crimes committed by dictatorial and corrupt leaders have resulted in the most atrocious blood-thirsty massacres, slaughters, inhumane tortures and abuses of human beings ... Those who support the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] are ignoring all of the lessons of history and are no different from the Germans who[i] turned their eyes away [/i]from the crimes committed by Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party ...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
To anybody with more than a child's understanding of history, the most remarkable thing about wartime atrocities is that anybody pretends surprise. As Orwell pointed out in an essay written around the end of WW II, there had been scarcely a year during his adult life when terrible crimes against humanity weren't being reported somewhere in the world. Yet people, particularly intellectuals, tended to believe or disbelieve the ugly truth depending upon their own nationality and political ideology.
"The nationalist," he wrote "not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. For not quite six years the English admirers of Hitler contrived not to learn of the existence of Dachau and Buchenwald. And those who are loudest in denouncing the German concentration camps are often quite unaware, or only very dimly aware, that there are also concentration camps in Russia."
For the record, Orwell had nothing against patriotism, defined as love of country. By "nationalism," he meant blind chauvinism, specifically "identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good or evil," and thinking "solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige." In short, primitive tribalism writ large.
Here in the United States, anyway, things were different. Since few Americans ever put faith in right- or left-wing creeds of militarized utopianism to begin with, the crimes of the Nazis and Soviets were more easily perceived. Committed to the proposition that "all men are created equal," to a written constitution and a government of laws, our own kind of denial has consisted largely of forgetfulness.
Whether it's the 19th century extermination of Native Americans, the use of nuclear weapons against Japan, or the massacres at My Lai, what historians call American "exceptionalism"--the sentimental belief that the United States exists above temptation and outside history--helps us to reassert the national innocence again and again.
Even mentioning Hiroshima all but guarantees furious rebuttals invoking Pearl Harbor and 9/11, which, no, I haven't forgotten. Yet it's symptomatic that within a year of the Toledo Blade's Pulitzer Prize-winning series documenting previously unreported massacres of Vietnamese civilians by the U.S. Army in the late 1960s, Sen. John Kerry's testimony about Vietnam War atrocities to a Senate committee in 1971 can be used against him as an issue in a 2004 presidential campaign. Unlike another candidate I could name, he was right and he was courageous.
To the extent other nations have forgiven the United States its excesses and still see it as a beacon of freedom, it has nothing to do with being "God's country." Rather, it's the ideals of free speech, due process and equality under the law embedded in our constitution. They help Americans rise above tribalism; the most moving account of Japanese civiliansí suffering was American John Hersey's "Hiroshima," an instant classic. Nor did it take an invading army to expose atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers at My Lai, and to bring some semblance of justice. It took an American journalist, Seymour Hersh, and American courts of law.
Which brings us to the offenses against humanity committed by American soldiers and civilians at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Once again, the indefatigable Hersh, writing in the New Yorker, got the story. This time, moreover, there's undeniable evidence in the form of digital photos and videotapes shot by U.S. soldiers and sent via e-mail to computers back home. (Will a technologically-advanced nation ever again be able to brutalize a captive population with impunity?)
It's one thing to read the dehumanizing details in Major General Antonio M. Taguba's report: Iraqi citizens (70 to 90 percent arrested by mistake, the Red Cross estimates), beaten, forced to masturbate and simulate sex acts, sodomized with broomsticks, raped, attacked by guard dogs, even murdered. It's another thing to see the pictures. Even the most fervid chauvinists can't deny the evidence of their senses. Whatís more, no less an authority than Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says it's going to get much worse.
The shame is bad enough, but the bad political consequences have scarcely begun. The worst atrocities took place during the U.S. government's futile search for non-existent "weapons of mass destruction" used to justify invading Iraq. No evidence has been found linking Iraq and al Qaeda. Yet thereís no doubt badly-trained, undisciplined U.S. troops encouraged to "go cowboy" on Iraqi prisoners imagined themselves avenging 9/11. President Bush's sly rhetoric assured it.
This time, moreover, the world's faith in American institutions has been badly damaged. The Bush administration has systematically insisted that neither the U.S. Constitution nor the Geneva Convention applies to anybody the president calls an "enemy combatant," which in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib atrocities appears to include the entire Muslim world.
It's a betrayal of everything it means to be an American. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...
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| G8 Demands Real Sovereignty for Iraq ... Not Dubya's Phony Scam Version ... |
| 05.15.04 (1:04 pm) [edit] |
[b]Bush is a neo-con scam crook who lives to enrich his neo-fascist criminal family & Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, etc.; while he exploits, abuses & enslaves American working people ... [/b]Dubya [i]ruthlessly lied[/i] about phony WMDs in Iraq ... Dubya [i]criminally lied [/i]about pre-9/11 intelligence because he & Condi were [i]doin' something [/i](having nothing to do with America's welfare and/or national security that the[i] Bush-Condi Duo [/i]ignored) in the Oval Office ... Dubya [i]arrogantly lied [/i]about sovereignty for the Iraqi people ... Dubya [i]traitorously lies [/i]about [i]everything[/i] ... It is exceptional to find something that Dubya [i]doesn't[/i] [i]lie[/i] about ...
[u][b]G8 demands real Iraqi sovereignty[/b][/u]
[i][b]The Group of Eight countries have urged the United States to transfer real power to Iraqis by the end of June, including the authority to influence US military decisions[/b][/i].
At the end of a meeting in Washington on Friday, France said Washington had to give up control over local forces while Italy said a new Iraqi government had to have a say over US-occupation troop's tactics.
In a nod to Iraqi authority, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States would withdraw its troops if the interim government made such an unlikely demand.
The US-led occupation authority plans to handover power to an interim Iraqi administration on 30 June.
But Powell insisted the top US military commander in Iraq remained "free to take whatever decision he believes are appropriate to accomplish his mission."
Washington held the G-8 meeting against the backdrop of widespread outrage at US abuse of Iraqi prisoners that has fuelled anti-Americanism among Arabs and reinforced the occupation's unpopularity at home and abroad.
[b]Symbolic transfer[/b]
Critics say the symbolic transfer of sovereignty only allows Iraqis limited self-rule because the interim government will not be able to pass laws and 135,000 US troops will remain in Iraq and retain command over all local security forces.
Russia called for the new government to be "truly sovereign" and said international support for Iraq would depend only on what Iraqis wanted.
French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said: "this government should be a sovereign government not only with all the trappings of sovereignty, but also the hard facts of sovereignty."
And Italy's Foreign Minister Franco Frattini called for an "effective transfer" in which Iraqis should be able to tell the US, for example, not to launch an attack in the flashpoint city of Falluja. - http://english.aljazeera.net/...
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| John F. Kerry Knows What He Is Talking About ... Bush Is A Buffoon!!! |
| 05.15.04 (12:14 pm) [edit] |
[b]John F. Kerry [i]knows[/i] what he is talking about ... Kerry [i]actually served in battle [/i]during Vietnam and was awarded the Purple Heart ... Bush was an AWOL deserter during Vietnam [i]partying-around in a drunken stupor slutting with any whore he could find[/i], and didn't take a stance on the war because he is a spoilt brain-dead ne'er-do-well-[i]cum[/i]- buffoon http://www.awolbush.com ...[/b]
Wouldn't it be nice if John McCain, a good friend of Kerry, would join his campaign??? John McCain has angrily stood against and denounced the corrupt Bush regime's ugly propaganda lies, slander, and libel against Kerry ... [i]Ah, we can but hope [/i]...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
Despite weeks of steadfast rejections from Senator John McCain, some prominent Democrats are angling for him to run for vice president alongside Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, creating a bipartisan ticket that they say would instantly transform the presidential race.
The enthusiasm of Democrats for Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, is so high that even some who have been mentioned as possible Kerry running mates — including Senator Bill Nelson of Florida and Bob Kerrey, the former Nebraska senator — are spinning scenarios about a "unity government," effectively giving Mr. Kerry a green light to reach across the political aisle and extend an offer.
"Senator McCain would not have to leave his party," Mr. Kerry said. "He could remain a Republican, would be given some authority over selection of cabinet people. The only thing he would have to do is say, `I'm not going to appoint any judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade,' " the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, which Mr. McCain has said he opposes.
Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist who once worked for Mr. Kerry, said such a ticket "would be the political equivalent of the Yankees signing A-Rod," referring to Alex Rodriguez, the team's star third baseman.
Mr. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee, "continues to be interested in" Mr. McCain, a fellow Vietnam veteran whom Kerry aides describe as the candidate's best friend in the Senate, as a running mate, said one longtime Democratic official who works for the Kerry campaign.
But the official said the plan was unrealistic, because Mr. McCain "won't do it." In an interview on Friday, Mr. McCain said, "I have totally ruled it out."
Even so, Democrats say a bipartisan Kerry-McCain ticket, featuring two decorated Vietnam War veterans from different parties and regions of the country, would give them a powerful edge in the debate over who can best lead the nation in the war on terror. "It would be a dream team," Mr. Lehane said.
This kind of open speculation suggests that Democrats are so eager to regain the White House in November that they are willing to overlook members of their own party, and to accept a candidate who disagrees with one of the core tenets of their platform, the right to an abortion. At the same time, the Kerry-McCain talk is testimony to the close friendship between the two, and the cool relationship between Mr. McCain and President Bush. The senator from Arizona is co-chairman of President Bush's re-election campaign there, but it is no secret in Washington that Mr. McCain has not quite forgiven Mr. Bush for the attacks on him during the 2000 Republican presidential primaries.
Mr. Kerry defended Mr. McCain then, and the Arizona senator returned the favor in March, dismissing suggestions by the Bush camp that Mr. Kerry is weak on defense. "If you don't stand by your friends if they are unfairly attacked," Mr. McCain said Friday, "then you've lost your bearings."
The two men talk on the phone periodically, most recently a few days ago. On the campaign trail, Mr. Kerry drops Mr. McCain's name almost daily. On Friday, he invoked Mr. McCain, a former prisoner of war, at a news conference when asked whether he thought pictures of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison should be released to the public.
"I think John McCain really had the right formula, personally," he said, referring to the Arizona senator's suggestion that the pictures would eventually find their way into public view, and should be put out in an organized fashion.
And it was not surprising that the words "our good friend John McCain" were the first thing out of Mr. Kerry's mouth earlier this week, when he was asked to name possible replacements for Donald H. Rumsfeld, President Bush's embattled secretary of defense.
Despite Mr. McCain's protestations that he would not be Mr. Kerry's No. 2, Senator Nelson, of Florida, said he had spoken to both Mr. McCain and Kerry campaign officials about it.
"There's a collective sigh that says, `This feels right,' " Mr. Nelson said Friday, adding, "I think it's very plausible that, with Iraq still in chaos, that if offered to him, he would say it's time for me to go serve my country again in another capacity, where I can do some good."
Such an offer would undoubtedly be controversial among Democrats. Some say Mr. McCain would upstage Mr. Kerry; others regard him as too conservative. Among the latter is Donna Brazile, who ran Al Gore's campaign in 2000. "McCain has not been pro-choice; he's not been out front on affirmative action," Ms. Brazile said. "He's not been out front on core issues that have defined the Democratic Party."
The list of possible Democratic contenders is a long one and runs the gamut from senators like John Edwards of North Carolina and Bob Graham of Florida, to governors like Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Thomas J. Vilsack of Iowa.
[b]For the rest of the article click [/b]on http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...
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| Bush's Ignorant Hypocrisy: "God", "Country"and Torture ... |
| 05.15.04 (10:47 am) [edit] |
[b]Bush's Ignorant Hypocrisy makes one's[i] stomach turn [/i]as the imbecilic buffoon-boy-[i]cum[/i]-ne 'er-do-well [i]vomits propaganda [/i]that he doesn't even comprehend:[/b]
. [i]"God" [/i]- Sorry, Bushy-boy, but you better demand your money-back from Yale because the Founding Fathers didn't want government in religion's affairs, nor did they want religion interferring with government http://www.tblog.com/template... ...
. [i]"Country"[/i] - Our country needs somebody with an[i] iota of brain-matter [/i]who isn't proud of the fact that he is a corrupt and stupid asshole who can't read/doesn't read/and-or is too lazy to read; too dumb to think; and too arrogant to ask the right questions of experts and well-informed people ... Sorry, Bushy-boy, but you ain't fit to wipe toilets in Wal-Mart http://www.petersingerlinks.c... ...
.[i] Torture [/i]- Does it give you some sort of bizarre thrill and jerk-off Bushy-boy to see pictures of murder, torture, rape & abuse of Iraqi prisoners??? You sure seemed to enjoy putting people to death in Texas, and get a spark-[i]n[/i]-smirk in your dumb-bunny gaze every time you talk about the tens of thousands of innocent human beings that you are massacring in Iraq http://www.davidcogswell.com/... ...
Isn't it[i] time [/i]for Americans to get rid of this despicable, pathetic "excuse for an inhumane being" Dubya who has brought [i]nothing[/i] but death, chaos and misery upon our heads??? ... Of course it [i]is[/i]!!!
[b]Read on ...[/b]
On October 21, 1994, the United States became a State Party to the "Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment". Article 2, section 2 of the Convention states: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture."
"If you open the window [of torture], even just a crack, the cold air of the middle ages will fill the whole room."{1} "The thing with the soldiers there, they think because we're Americans, you can do whatever you want," said Spc. Ramon Leal, an MP who served at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
"You get a burning in your stomach, a rush, a feeling of hot lead running through your veins, and you get a sense of power," said another soldier. "Imagine wearing point-blank body armor, an M-16 and all the power in the world, and the authority of God. That power is very addictive."{2} America and God ... Bush, Cheney, and other eminences of the imperial mafia know well how to invoke these feelings; with the help of the rest of flag-wavin' and bible-wavin' America the proper emotions can be easily imparted down to the ranks. The American part -- the mystique of "America" -- can also be exported, and has been for decades. Here's Chief Inspector Basil Lambrou, one of Athens' well-known torturers under the infamous Greek junta of 1967-74. Hundreds of prisoners listened to this little speech given by the Inspector, who sat behind his desk which displayed the red, white, and blue clasped-hand symbol of American aid. He tried to show the prisoner the absolute futility of resistance: "You make yourself ridiculous by thinking you can do anything. The world is divided in two. There are the communists on that side and on this side the free world. The Russians and the Americans, no one else. What are we? Americans. Behind me there is the government, behind the government is NATO, behind NATO is the U.S. You can't fight us, we are Americans."{3}
And here's Colin Powell at the 1996 Republican Convention: America is "a country where the best is always yet to come, a country that exists by divine providence." He then punched his fist into the air and shouted out, "America!"{4}
Defenders of the American soldiers accused of abusing the prisoners in Iraq have been insisting that the soldiers were only following orders. At the end of the Second World War, however, we read moral lectures to the German people on the inadmissibility of pleading that their participation in the holocaust was in obedience to their legitimate government. To prove that we were serious, we hanged the leading examples of such patriotic loyalty and imprisoned many of the rest.
[b]Cold War Redux[/b]
On May 11, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on Iraqi prisoner abuse, during which Senator James Inhofe (R.-OK) stated the following: "I have to say when we talk about the treatment of these prisoners that I would guess that these prisoners wake up every morning thanking Allah that Saddam Hussein is not in charge of these prisons.
When he was in charge, they would take electric drills and drill holes through hands, they would cut their tongues out, they would cut their ears off. We've seen accounts of lowering their bodies into vats of acid. ... and lining up 312 little kids under 12 years old and executing them."
What does that remind you of? Right, the October 1990 testimony before a congressional committee by a young Kuwaiti woman who claimed she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers taking babies from incubators in Kuwait after Iraq had invaded and "leaving them on the floor to die". The story was quickly used by the Bush I administration in its push for war. The president frequently cited the infants' deaths as an example of what he said was Iraq's brutal treatment of innocent Kuwaitis. It turned out to be a hoax, unmitigated war propaganda, and the young woman turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. And the number of babies supposedly left to die? 312.{5}
The same day as the hearing a letter was printed in The Washington Post which spoke of "applying electric shocks, pulling out fingernails, crushing feet, or raping a loved one's wife, daughter or mother while forcing him to watch -- all of which were practices employed by Saddam Hussein's henchmen."
And a while ago I received an email from one of my non-admirers who added to the list with "Children's eyes gouged out to elicit confessions from a parent; people having their tongues cut out and then left to bleed to death on streets; live bodies thrown into large mince machines." What do we have here? Apparently a campaign highly reminiscent of the many anti-communist horror stories -- torture and otherwise -- that during the Cold War were passed around the anti-communist circuit, each person quoting from the same initial source, sometimes adding or subtracting a bit. At some point a member of congress would read the horror story on the floor of congress and his remarks would thus appear in the Congressional Record; thereafter, those passing the story around could then quote the Congressional Record as the source, as Senator Inhofe's statement can now be quoted citing a Senate hearing.{6}
I wrote to the non-admirer asking her what evidence she could offer to substantiate her claims. We then exchanged a few more emails but she had nothing at all to offer, quoting at one point something from a report of Amnesty International which made no mention of the subject at hand.
I've also written to the Senator and the author of the letter in The Washington Post asking them for any proof of their claims, but it's too soon to expect any reply. At the hearing, Sen. Inhofe added that if we're going to show pictures of American soldiers abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib, we should also show pictures of the brutalities of Saddam Hussein, including those of "children being executed". It will be interesting to see if the good senator can produce such photos, perhaps of all 312.
[b]Brainwashed commies[/b]
George W. Bush, speaking in October 2003 after many resistance attacks in Iraq: "The more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will react."{7} Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaking in April 2004, depicted the insurrection and fighting that had risen over nearly a two-week period as a sign of progress. "I would characterize what we're seeing right now as a -- as more a symptom of the success that we're having here in Iraq," he said, explaining that the violence indicated there was something to fight against -- American progress in building up Iraq.{8}
Imagine that in the 1980s Russian leaders had used identical logic and language about how their war against Afghanistan insurgents was going for them. The American media would have a field day of snide remarks about those poor brainwashed, Orwellian commies.
[b]Ungrateful Iraqis, befuddled Americans[/b]
"Another Marine, his face flushed with anger, approached an interpreter on the base and said: "I just want to know why my friends are being hurt. Don't the Iraqis know we are here to help them build something new and better now that Saddam is gone?"{9}
Yes, they know that. They just don't believe it.
Apropos of this, Hans Blix, the former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, recently claimed that Iraq was now worse off than under Saddam Hussein. "Saddam and his bloody regime has gone, but when figuring out the score the negatives weigh more," he said.{10}
[b]Noted without comment[/b]
On February 17, 2003, a month before the US bombing began, I posted to the Internet an essay entitled "What Do the Imperial Mafia Really Want?", concerning the expected war against Iraq. Included in this were the words of Michael Ledeen, former Reagan official, then at the American Enterprise Institute (one of the leading drum-beaters for attacking Iraq): "If we just let our own vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to be clever and piece together clever diplomatic solutions to this thing, but just wage a total war against these tyrants, I think we will do very well, and our children will sing great songs about us years from now."
[b]More feet of clay[/b]
Former counter-terrorism official Richard Clarke was the fair-haired boy in March and April as a result of his testimony before the independent September 11 committee. To a multitude of Americans starved for inspirational and credible leadership he appeared to be the only official in the foreign policy establishment who took the pre-September 11 warnings seriously, who was open and honest, and who had the decency to say he was "sorry" to the families of the victims.
But in this sad day and age can such an image hold up once we look over a person's record?
In 1999 the Washington Post reported that "Current and former administration foreign policy officials have identified Richard A. Clarke, the National Security Council's counter-terrorism coordinator, as the leading proponent for striking el Shifa."{11} This was a reference to the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan that the Clinton administration had deliberately destroyed the previous year in the stated belief that it was a plant for making chemical weapons for terrorists.
In actuality, the plant in Khartoum produced a full range of antibiotics and medicines for malaria, rheumatism, tuberculosis, diabetes, and other ailments, in sum total about 90 percent of the drugs used to treat the most deadly illnesses in that desperately poor country; it was reportedly one of the biggest and best of its kind in Africa.
In his new book, Against All Enemies, Clarke discusses the Sudan bombing in several places, but in none does he give any indication of his role in the matter, nor does he make any mention at all that the plant was actually producing medicine. Instead he repeats many of the same fallacious arguments about how the plant was really producing chemical weapons, as if these arguments had not been totally discredited since 1998, so much so that when the plant's owner sued the US government, the United States did not even contest the suit, instead returning to him his bank account money that had been frozen.
[b]The Dems pull off another principled coup[/b]
On May 8, on his regular weekly radio broadcast, George W., as expected, commented about the Iraqi prisoner photos dominating the media at the time. Expecting this, the Democrats planned a counter commentary for that same day on their own radio broadcast. And who did the Democrats choose to discuss this issue of possible violations of the Geneva Conventions? Gen. Wesley Clark, a genuine war criminal, who led the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia which seriously violated those conventions amongst other international accords.
[b]Decadence and cruelty[/b]
At the peak of the international scandal about American abuse of Iraqi prisoners came the sale in New York of a painting by Picasso for a record $104.2 million. How, I wonder, will the proverbial history books deal with the level of cruelty and decadence of 21st century America?
[b]William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power. and West-Bloc Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir. He can be reached at: BBlum6@aol.com[/b]
[u][b]NOTES:[/b][/u]
1. Hans Christian Stroebele, Green Party member of the German parliament.
2. Knight Ridder newspapers, May 10, 2004
3. James Becket, Barbarism in Greece (New York, 1970), p.16. Becket was sent to Greece in December 1967 by Amnesty International.
4. The Economist (London), August 17, 1996, U.S. Edition
5. Los Angeles Times March 16, 1991, p.8
6. For a detailed history of these propaganda campaigns, see: Morris Kominsky, The Hoaxers: Plain Liars, Fancy Liars, and Damned Liars (Branden Press, Boston, 1970)
7. Washington Post, October 28, 2003, p.1
8. New York Times, April 16, 2004
9. Washington Post, April 14, 2004
10. The Times (London), April 7, 2004
11. Washington Post, October 21, 1999, "Back Channels" column by Vernon Loeb
[b]William Blum is the author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2 Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website. To remove yourself from this mailing list simply reply with "remove" in the subject line.[/b] - http://www.counterpunch.com/b...
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| UP-TO-HERE DEPARTMENT: Republicans for Kerry ... |
| 05.14.04 (6:20 pm) [edit] |
[b]A [i]coalition of the willing [/i]Republicans, Democrats and Independents [i]alike[/i] is forming to[i] rid our nation [/i]of the [i]disease-ridden rats [/i]who have infested the Oval Office and who are plaguing the United States of America and the entire planet ...[/b]
[b]Read on ...[/b]
Someday, no doubt, students of class politics will reach a consensus on precisely when it was that George W. Bush’s chucking of his family’s patrician—and moderate—ethos reached the point of irretrievability. (Was it when he said he didn’t read the newspaper? Or had his father put in the fix way back in 1988, with the pork rinds?) Future historians who find themselves examining the resulting countertrend, whereby the Rockefeller Republicans who were betrayed by Bush came around to betraying him back, might end up taking a look at Grant Winthrop.
For the most part, Winthrop has been a Party loyalist: his political vita includes a run in the 1976 California primary as a Gerald Ford delegate and a contribution to Rick Lazio’s Senate campaign against Hillary Clinton. And although John Kerry is a first cousin—their mothers, the Forbes girls, were sisters—Winthrop helped raise money for his friend William Weld’s bid to unseat Kerry in the 1996 Massachusetts Senate race.
Last year, however, at a memorial service for Kerry’s mother, Winthrop took his cousin aside and lamented the Republican Party’s rightward turn. “I told John I was thinking of switching parties, and John said, ‘Don’t do it,’” Winthrop recalled the other day in his office at Milbank Winthrop, an investmentadvisory firm. “John told me, ‘It’s better for me if you can raise money from Republicans.’” And so it is that Winthrop has come to serve on the finance committee of Kerry’s campaign in New York.
“Republicans for Kerry,” Winthrop said, chuckling. “There isn’t any official organization, though I did look into having some bumper stickers printed. It’s a growing movement.” This spring, for instance, he was in Jackson Hole, where he heard about some local Republicans who, he says, “absolutely can’t stand George Bush. I ended up coming home with a couple of checks.” So far, Winthrop and his wife have raised more than two hundred thousand dollars, and, he says, more than twenty of the people he’s collected checks from are registered Republicans. Winthrop’s two tables at a two-thousand-dollar-a-pla te Kerry fund-raiser at the Sheraton New York last month were within spitting distance of the dais. Among his guests was Theodore Roosevelt IV, one of Bush’s more vocal Republican critics.
Winthrop is a ruddy and sportsmanlike fifty-five years old. He lives on Fifth Avenue but grew up at Groton House Farm, the family’s estate on the North Shore of Massachusetts, which served as Kerry’s American home when, as a foreign-service brat, he was sent back to New England for boarding school. At his desk the other day, Winthrop pawed his way through a file and produced a handwritten list of potential Republican turncoats. He pulled out an e-mail exchange he’d had with one of them, a businessman in New Jersey, who, according to Federal Election Commission records, has made some six hundred and fifty thousand dollars in political donations—the bulk of them to Republicans—since 1997. “This e-mail came after I’d seen him at a dinner, when we’d all had some wine and so on,” Winthrop said. “But he made it clear that he was very unhappy with Bush. So I asked him, ‘Would you support Kerry?’”
In his reply, Winthrop’s target wrote, “I was one of Bush’s top five supporters financially approaching seven figures—not only could he care less, he has embarked on this partisan Christian Right Crusade. . . . I agree with the Iraqi adventure but find it incredibly poorly planned, and hold him and a senile Cheney responsible. Having said that, I am inclined to hold my nose and vote for him and am particularly leery of Kerry and Edwards, as I see no evidence of moderation. If you can convince me to the contrary, I would be open to reconsidering.”
The other day, Winthrop decided to follow up. “So here I’ve written, ‘Dear Blank,’ and I gave the two candidates grades,” Winthrop said, quoting from his newest e-mail. “‘Social issues: Kerry A, Bush F; Economic: Kerry B+, Bush B-; Foreign policy: Kerry A-, Bush C-.’ Then I wrote, ‘I feel, as a moderate Republican, that I have nowhere to turn except to the Democrats.’”
A response arrived just a few minutes later. Winthrop read it aloud: “The gentleman says, ‘If Kerry would really move to the middle, quit the economic nonsense he is spouting, and come down with a realistic defense and foreign policy, I could support him.’”
Winthrop scratched his forehead, gave the reply another look, and pronounced it something short of an out-and-out rejection. “I wouldn’t go back to this chap for some time,” he said. “But will I try him again before this campaign is finished? Oh, hell, yeah, absolutely. If this is part of the process he needs to go through, well, I think one just has to let time go by.” - http://newyorker.com/talk/con...
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| Traitor Bush Has Ripped-Off U.S. Taxpayers by $200+ Billion & $500+ Billion ... Does Anyone Care??? |
| 05.14.04 (12:32 pm) [edit] |
[b]The traitorous Bush/Cheney Inc[i]. junta [/i]has swindled, plundered, embezzled and looted the U.S. taxpayers out of $200 Billion ([i]the tip-of-the-iceberg ... there is no end in sight to pay for their fuck-ups in Iraq & Afghanistan [/i]...) for their insane, illegal & immoral neo-con, neo-fascist bloody fiasco in Iraq & Afghanistan, and created an unconscionable $500 Billion record-level deficit ([i]the highest in our nation's history[/i]) for 2004 [i]alone[/i] (...[i] trillions when the cumulative effects of their debts are added up [/i]...) by awarding reckless and treasonous tax cuts, tax loopholes & tax boondoggles to their corporate pimps, wealthy oligarchs & hyper-rich plutocrats who are trying to buy the election for the imbecilic ne'er-do-well-cum-war-cri minal Dubya ... Does anyone [i]care[/i]??? ... [/b]If you do, write Congress http://www.congress.org and demand that Traitor Bush & Veep-[i]N[/i]-Creep Cheney & their Neo-Con Criminal Organization be[i] impeached [/i]from office [i]immediately[/i] ...
[b]Visit [i]The Center for American Progress [/i]for eye-popping reports of the reckless mis-management and destruction of our nation by the corrupt Bush regime [/b] http://www.americanprogress.o...
Staring us in the face is a reckless fiscal policy that has been marked by three consecutive years of poorly timed, regressive and irresponsible tax cuts. The essence of these tax cuts is captured in a cartoon that has been making the rounds lately. It shows a janitor, hard at work, wearing a shirt that reads, "The President enacted a bunch of tax cuts and all I got was this lousy T-shirt." Regrettably, for janitors and all Americans, the numbers support that sentiment.
The average tax cuts Americans received in the past three years were more than offset by cost increases elsewhere, especially for such priorities as housing, medical care and higher education. Moreover, the vast majority of taxpayers received less than the average tax cut. And all of this happened at a time when millions of new jobs – the promised benefits of the tax cuts – have failed to materialize. By any measure, the short and long-term costs of the tax cuts outweigh any of its purported benefits.
[b]Download the entire column in PDF [/b] http://www.americanprogress.o...{E9245FE4-9A2B-43C7-A521- 5D6FF2E06E03}/taxday.pdf
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| Will No One Hold Bush Accountable For His Crimes Against Humanity? Even Conservatives Are Asking ... |
| 05.14.04 (12:07 pm) [edit] |
[b]When will "We the People" finally hold Bush accountable for his heinous [i]Crimes Against Humanity[/i]??? [/b]The [i]sluttish Bush [/i]has abused our U.S. Soldiers as his[i] cannon-fodder [/i]in order to enrich his criminal family and neo-con cronies, as well as his corporate pimps: Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Unocal, Big Oil, the Military Industrial Complex, etc. ... The[i] tyrannical dictator Bush [/i]has mistreated, murdered, tortured, raped and abused the Iraqi people enmasse ... The buffoon-boy[i] AWOL deserter Bush [/i]has destroyed the good-will of the entire world; trampled on international treaties and co-operation; and, waged illegal and immoral 'pre-emptive' warfare resulting in a bloody fiasco of historical proportions for which he should be [i]shipped-off [/i]to the Hague ([i]or sit in the dock along side of his Poppy's Buddy Saddam Hussein[/i]) ...
Even conscientious Conservatives are starting to ask questions!!! ... [b]A dangerously stupid man in the White House is placing us all in disastrous peril ...[/b]
[b]Even Conservatives Are Wondering: Is Bush One of Us?[/b] - http://www.thenation.com/doc....
Most Americans long ago stopped believing that George W. Bush is what he claimed to be during the 2000 presidential campaign: a compassionate conservative.
But is George W. Bush a conservative at all?
The answer might seem self-evident to progressives who have spent the past four years recoiling at the reactionary agenda the Bush Administration has advanced on everything from the environment to the courts, global warming to gay marriage. But while few people would confuse George W. Bush for a liberal, whether the policies he's championed qualify as traditionally conservative is by no means clear.
"Historically, conservatism in the United States has meant support for small government, balanced budgets, fiscal prudence and great skepticism about overseas adventures," notes Clyde Prestowitz, a former Reagan Administration official who back in the 1960s was among the young Republicans supporting Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, a conservative standard-bearer. "What I see now is an Administration that's not for any of these things."
While there are plenty of Republicans who would take issue with Prestowitz's definition of the term, a growing number of conservative thinkers and policy-makers have begun to echo this view, as thumbing through the pages of the conservative press makes clear. Hungry for hard-hitting criticism of the Iraq war? You're as likely to find it these days in publications like The National Interest, a conservative foreign affairs quarterly, and the recently launched American Conservative as in publications on the left. Want a rundown on the billions in government subsidies that the Bush Administration has lavished on corporations even as it claims to champion laissez-faire economics? Look no further than the website of the libertarian Cato Institute, which bristles with such information. How about sober analyses of the multibillion-dollar budget deficits the Administration has overseen? There's no better source than the staid, conservative business press.
Of course, disagreement among conservatives in America, a term that encompasses everyone from followers of Pat Robertson to admirers of Milton Friedman, is hardly unprecedented. Yet the fissures that have emerged of late are different, pitting not only social conservatives against economic ones (a familiar rift within the GOP) but realists against neoconservatives, supply-siders against deficit hawks, proponents of limited government against defenders of what looks to some like a curious form of Big Government Republicanism. In some ways, moreover, these fissures cut deeper, for they are rooted not merely in tactical disputes about how to advance a shared agenda but in basic disagreements about what being a conservative in America actually means.
Does it mean fighting messianic wars to spread America's values into the far corners of the world? As the body bags continue to pile up in Iraq, a growing number of establishment conservatives have begun to voice doubts. Does it mean ramming through tax cuts at a time when the nation faces an array of new threats and challenges? Not to those conservatives who take the notion of fiscal responsibility seriously.
Interviews with an array of conservative thinkers and policy-makers reveal a rising disquiet on these matters among people who have spent most of their lives proudly identifying with the Republican Party and the philosophy for which they've long assumed it stood. At the root of their discomfort is a feeling not that the Bush Administration is too conservative but that it has forsaken the guiding principles of conservatism--prudence, caution, restraint--to pursue an agenda that is messianic and radical. To these dissenters, it is an agenda that seems less a fulfillment of classic conservative principles than an exercise in hubris reminiscent of the ideological excesses of another era, the 1960s, only with the shoe on the other party's foot.
[b]For the entire article, click on [/b] http://www.thenation.com/doc....
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| Bush Regime's Criminal Activities: Tactic of Diversion While Destroying Our Nation |
| 05.14.04 (11:47 am) [edit] |
[b]The [i]pattern of behaviour [/i]of the traitorous Bush regime's laughable 'excuse-making' to cover-up their vile criminal activities is becoming obvious to anyone with an[i] iota of brain-matter:-- [/i][/b]Divert our attention[i] elsewhere [/i]while they lie, cheat, murder and swindle our nation ... The insane Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]are traitors and should be [i]impeached[/i] ... Contact Congress http://www.congress.org and demand that Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and their cabal of neo-con, neo-fascist criminals be sent to the Hague to be tried for their heinous [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
[b]Rummy's weird Fotomat & 'The Dog Ate My Homework' defense: I didn't [i]get it [/i]till I saw the pictures ... What a Mother-Fucking Liar!!![/b]
To hear Don Rumsfeld tell it, even though the Bush administration had been told back in January about the abuse and torture going on at Abu Ghraib -- and that there were photos documenting it -- the idea that this might be a very bad thing didn't really hit home until recently because no one in the White House had actually laid eyes on the photos.
"It is the photographs that give one the vivid realization of what actually took place," Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. "Words don't do it."
Really?
So being notified by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that U.S. soldiers were torturing and humiliating naked Iraqi prisoners in the very place that had once been Saddam Hussein's favorite Little Shop of Horrors wasn't vivid enough to get the alarm bells ringing on Pennsylvania Avenue?
Neither apparently were the non-visual warnings about the mistreatment of prisoners delivered by the Red Cross, Colin Powell and Paul Bremer.
Why not? Is the country being run by a bunch of preschoolers who can't process all those big words and will only sit still for a colorful picture book?
See Rummy spin. Spin, Rummy, spin.
Even the release of Gen. Taguba's damning 53-page report detailing the "systematic and illegal abuse of detainees" wasn't enough to pique Rumsfeld's concern.
"The problem at that stage," he testified, "was one-dimensional. It wasn't three-dimensional. It wasn't video. It wasn't color."
I challenge anyone to read the Taguba report and say that the nightmares it depicts aren't chillingly three-dimensional. Even without pop-up illustrations.
According to Taguba, U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib were guilty of: "Positioning a naked detainee on a box ... with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes and penis to simulate electric torture"; "Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees"; "Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair"; "Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broomstick."
Close your eyes. Now picture what you just read. Still need to see photos before you hit the roof? I didn't think so.
What a colossal failure of imagination on the part of our leaders.
But even as ludicrous as the "No photos, no fury" justification is, let's accept the premise that detailed descriptions of chemical light buggery and electrodes attached to genitals aren't enough -- that Rummy and company have made such a habit of twisting and spinning and manipulating words, mere language has lost its power to move them.
Fine.
But since photographic proof is now the prerequisite for moral outrage, why didn't Rumsfeld demand to see the photos as soon as he was told about them back in January? If you were in his shoes, wouldn't you have ordered them to be on your desk within the hour? Of course you would have. But not the man Dick Cheney just called "the best secretary of defense the Unites States has ever had."
When asked by a reporter why he never got around to actually viewing the incendiary photos until the night before he was called on the Senate carpet, Rummy insisted the problem wasn't his lack of interest; it was the lack of a good photo developer. Call it the Fotomat defense.
"I think I did inquire about the pictures," he said, "and was told that we didn't have copies."
No copies? The biggest U.S. military scandal since My Lai and the secretary of defense can't get any extra prints sent his way?
Memo to Rummy: We now live in the era of digital photos and instant uploads. "The dog ate my negative" just ain't gonna fly.
Rumsfeld claims he was "blindsided" by the revelation of what he called the "radioactive" torture photos. But the timeline proves otherwise: He wasn't blindsided, merely blind to the devastating impact the pictures would have once they became public.
That's where this failure of imagination turned into a profound failure of leadership.
The White House has said that the war on terror is as much a war of ideas as a war of weapons. If that were more than rhetoric, someone there would have seen the writing on the prison wall and gotten out in front of this crisis instead of allowing the Taguba report to languish unread by the top brass and the photos to be made public by the press and not the president.
Indeed, they treated it not as a political land mine that could flatten America's moral high ground but as a P.R. problem that would disappear if they kept the photos from public view.
Always a master of understatement, Rummy termed the Abu Ghraib scandal "unhelpful in a fundamental way." The time has come for him and his cohorts to admit that the situation in Iraq has become untenable in a fundamental way. We can't put the torture genie back in the bottle. And we can no longer pretend that we have any chance of ushering democracy into Iraq so long as democracy has an American face.
See Bush crumble. Crumble, Bush, crumble. - http://www.salon.com/opinion/...
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| Muslims Condemn Beheading, But Bigoted Neo-Con Racists Don't Listen ... A Neo-Con Cover-Up??? |
| 05.14.04 (11:00 am) [edit] |
[b]The Arab world and the Muslims condemned the beheading of the American Nick Berg, but the bigoted neo-con racists don't listen http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/n... http://www.smh.com.au/article... ... [/b]Refer to "[i]Iraqis condemn beheading, blame US[/i]" on http://www.theage.com.au/arti... ... In fact, the neo-fascist apologists for the corrupt Bush regime are enjoying this tragedy because it diverts attention away from Bush's heinous [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]and the Mad King George's murder, rape, torture and abuse of Iraqis ... Moreover, it isn't really clear what happened to Nick Berg (... Did the Bushies have Berg beheaded to divert attention away from their heinous atrocities in Iraq??? ...) ... There are conflicting stories ... Refer to "[i]Is There More To The Nick Berg Beheading Story Than We're Being Told[/i]???" on http://www.tblog.com/template... ... [i][b]A neo-con cover-up??? ... It wouldn't be the first!!! ...[/b][/i]
[b]Bush's March of Folly: The Crash of Civilizations [/b]- http://www.zmag.org/content/s...
When it all started out a few years ago the ideologues of the global War on Terror glibly called it the Clash of Civilizations. Between the torture, rape, murder of Iraqi prisoners by the US army and the gruesome beheading of an American hostage by Al Qaeda what we have instead is the very CRASH of Civilizations.
Two sets of despicable racists, one claiming to represent 'freedom' and the other 'faith' but both failing to uphold the basic tenets of either concept. If there is anything at all that marks this clash it is the complete absence of all civilized behavior and the contemptuous disregard for every law, rule and ethic evolved through centuries of accumulated human wisdom. (If the rest of the world allows these jokers to continue like this, the day will come when they make Genghis look like Gandhi)
True, in terms of their culpability one cannot really equate the armed forces of a supposedly responsible and democratic superpower, whose leaders for long have claimed global monopoly over the very idea of human rights, with a bunch of armed, medieval nuts who want to take the Muslim world screaming and kicking back to the 7th Century. The United States is far more culpable of course, with the blame for the breakdown of all norms going all the way up to the Commander-in-Chief and not confined to just minions lower down the pecking order.
On the moral plane though, today one cannot really see much difference between Bin Laden and Bush anymore.
What else can one say looking at the image of that naked, cowering Iraqi prisoner about to be set upon by vicious military dogs with America's 'finest' egging them on? Or those visuals of sexual humiliation and abuse visited upon those long-suffering Iraqis, delivered from the feudal hands of Saddam yesterday straight under the corporate heels of George Bush Jr today ? (And all this coming on top of a year of senseless killings of over 10,000 innocent civilians as part of the illegal US invasion)
Don't those images from the torture chambers of Abu Gharib, each on its own, represent the global crash of that soap opera of a 'morally superior civilization' that US elites have proudly paraded to the world for well over a century now? By stripping its captive, helpless victims of their clothes has not this lonely and very LOST superpower denuded itself of its last vestiges of legitimacy to any special global status?
After all this which child anywhere will ever buy another toy of a uniformed US marine without sending a shudder down his or her entire neighborhood? I bet right now, Burma's murderous generals are sitting in the dark recesses they inhabit laughing their heads off. (Ha, ha, ha, ha Human Rights ha, ha, ha!)
George Bush Jr., I am afraid, has not just allowed the corpses of his countrymen to be mutilated and dragged down the alleys of Fallujah but buried alive the reputation of an entire nation for at least a generation in all the bylanes and bazaars of the world.
The land of freedom, rule of law, respect for individual rights - the land symbolized in popular global folklore by the Statue of Liberty with its arms reached out to welcome the poor, weak and weary. And today, run by rightwing goons and represented abroad by a bunch of jackbooted thugs? Is this not indeed yet another self-styled 'God' that once flew high, flapped around and finally Failed?
But let me say also loud and clear - predatory Western Imperialism is not alone in its sinking to these lows of inhumanity. There is an absence of civilized behavior on all sides of this mean and mindless conflict that is truly frightening.
Beheading civilian hostages in the name of Allah? Carrying out suicide missions without concern for civilian casualties, publicly mutilating bodies of dead opponents? Blowing up scores of ordinary Spanish citizens (most of them probably opposed to the war on Iraq) to 'teach a lesson' to the Spanish government? Are you guys human or horror-movie extras?
For all their prattle about 'fighting the Crusaders' these cowards are surely no successors to the great Saladin who fought a principled war of resistance, saving not just fellow Muslims but also the large population of Jews under his protection. A successful resistance that led to the great renaissance of the Islamic world and the creation of societies superior to that of the invaders at that time. (Read your history carefully Bin)
And not very far from Iraq is that mother of all colonial occupations, in the Gaza and West Bank, where the Israeli regime of Ariel Sharon is bent on putting the Palestinians through every trauma that the Jews themselves underwent at the hands of the Nazis. In turn, a section of Palestinian militants are willing to stoop to the level of gunning down pregnant women and children just because they happen to be Jewish settlers on occupied land or dancing on the streets with body parts of dead Israeli soldiers. Liberation from colonial oppression, yes, but liberation from all basic human values?
I hesitate to call all this 'barbarism', a term that for too long has been abused to describe the 'primitive', 'tribal' people of this world - who despite their own bouts of occasional madness have done nothing as systematically evil as we see in Iraq and Palestine. Indeed, what we are witnessing now is nothing short of a crisis of modern civilization and its various concepts and institutions that have either outlived their utility or corroded to the point of complete collapse. A situation that could either lead to catastrophe or provide a chance to reshape the world depending really on what all of us propose to do about it. (Nothing I hate more than getting shot in the bloody crossfire)
The contours of the multiple crises engulfing our globe and rendering mainstream notions of 'civilization' obsolete are by now well known. And yet they bear repeating simply because they help clarify the momentous tasks ahead of the global movements for peace and justice:
Crisis of Economy: It is not difficult to see the long and dark shadows of the Asian financial crisis, the dotcom boom and bust, the dwindling domination of the US dollar, the ballooning US overseas debt and the decade-long stagnation of the Japanese economy in preparing ground for the ongoing global conflict. Without evoking any wild conspiracy theory but going just by principles of mainstream economic theory (which is all wild conspiracy anyway) one can safely claim that today the world is at war simply because it benefits those who control the current global economic order. Mega-corporations profiteering from rising oil prices, hedge funds speculating on oil futures, the rent-a-death arms dealers, manufacturers and mercenaries, construction giants vying for contracts to rebuild war-torn countries- these are the economic vultures feeding off the dying, decaying carcasses of our global 'civilizations'. It is about time the global peace movement went after the key financial players involved in the Iraq war, maybe even one of them (the Carlyle group of Papa Bush to start with) and simply vaporize the fellows. (I am thinking here of a hot sauna, of course)
Crisis of Ecology: The idea that there is a limit to all economic growth has been around with us for well over three decades now. In this period it has spawned powerful environmental movements, numerous international treaties and pledges, as well as a plethora of institutions that urge an end to the wanton destruction of our planet. And yet the global ecological crisis only deepens with every passing day, propelled by the myth of unstoppable industrial capitalism and a concept of consumption driven 'growth' that has become the cancer at the heart of all our civilizations. Will we have to wait for global catastrophe to change the voracious appetites of our consuming classes or can we collectively shut their mouths from feeding into our very future? How about seizing the assets of Exxon-Mobil and using them to clean up depleted uranium in Iraq ?
Crisis of Democracy: In just the past couple of months several populous Asian nations have gone to the polls, in yet another mass exercise that equates elections with the very idea of democracy. These include India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines.
And yet anyone familiar with realities in these countries can tell you that for a very large number of citizens democracy interpreted as the 'right to vote' every four or five years makes little difference to their day to day lives. The rich don't care who comes to power as they can buy them all, the poor vote with great hopes only to be deeply disappointed while much of the middle-classes chatter endlessly about this and that but don't even bother to vote or participate in any political activity. As for mainstream politicians, we all know why they spend millions of dollars to get elected and become 'servants of the people' in the abstract. (Hey, shine my shoes Mr. Prime 'Servant' Minister, India Shining Indeed!)
It is clear that the world, everywhere, urgently needs to go well beyond the dangerously superficial notion of 'elections = democracy' and build movements, concepts, institutions that restore genuine representation of ordinary people in the political and administrative structures that govern us all. The widespread disillusionment with electoral democracy otherwise will only be a prelude to the return of dictatorships at all levels, everywhere.
Frankly, all so-called democracies should have regular Filipino-style velvet/ pink/ rose/rainbow-colored demonstrations of people's power (Imagine Dubya and Rummy running away from the American people on the lawns of the White House. Sure, I am a Marxist on Marihuana.)
Crisis of Philosophy: Just as in the arena of economics the concept of 'growth' needs serious redefinition there are a variety of other globally influential concepts that are up for a thorough overhaul. One can in fact start with the very notion of what it means to be 'civilized'. For some strange reason the popular idea of civilization is all caught up with archaeology, antiques, monuments, ruins and tombstones - as if it was all about the history of the ancient real estate business. So the Egyptians show off their pyramids as examples of their once wonderful civilization, the Khmers their Angkor Wat and Italians the Colosseum while America seems to have lost its civilizational bearings with the collapse of the WTC towers. Is not civilization really about how we relate and interact with members of our own and other species, as well as the nature around us? What do dead buildings have to do with a concept that should primarily be about living life, here and now?
Here is a proposal, blasphemous as it may sound. Before building yet another inanimate MONUMENT to replace the WTC towers let us build a living MOVEMENT powerful enough to replace the global trust and respect among all people of the world. A trust, respect and solidarity demolished in the clash of the enemies of true civilization and without which living on this planet has no real meaning. - http://www.zmag.org/content/s...
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| Torturer Bush Refuses to Condemn Proponents of Torture ... |
| 05.14.04 (10:45 am) [edit] |
[b]The corrupt Bush regime set the [i]wheels-in-motion [/i]for the heinous torture of Iraqi prisoners and as such, should be[i] impeached and shipped off [/i]to the Hague to be tried for [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]...[/b]
President Bush has publicly deplored the treatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, having apologized for the fiasco. Yet, just days after his apology, the White House is refusing to condemn its right-wing allies who are making light of the situation and defending torture.
For instance, conservative radio host and White House supporter Rush Limbaugh this week called the torture "decent punishment," said soldiers were simply "having a good time, and also said "I don't see the big deal here"1. White House spokesman Scott McClellan refused to answer when asked how the President felt about those comments2. Additionally, when McClellan was asked whether Vice President Cheney would continue appearing on Limbaugh's show (as he did in March), McClellan again refused to comment3.
Similarly, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), who President Bush has repeatedly praised as an ally, said that he was "more outraged by the outrage" than by the abuse4. Inhofe also said that all the prisoners are "murderers, terrorists and insurgents"5 despite the fact that the Red Cross notes that between 70% and 90% of the Iraqi detainees were "arrested by mistake"6. The White House again has refused to rebut these comments, in stark contrast to other Republicans like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) who said such comments are "undercutting us in terms of our international standing"7.
[b]NOTE:[/b] Make sure to see the new television ad by Media Matters about Rush Limbaugh's comments at www.mediamatters.org.
[b]Sources: [/b]
1. Media Matters for America.
2. Press Briefing by Scott McClellan, 05/06/2004.
3. Press Gaggle with Scott McClellan, 05/11/2004.
4. President Bush Calls on Congress to Act on Clear Skies Legislation, 09/16/2003.
5. Senator 'Outraged at Outrage' in Iraq Prison Case, Reuters, 05/11/2004.
6. Up to 90% of Iraqi detainees arrested by mistake, Red Cross says, Chicago Sun-Times, 05/11/2004.
7. Iraq prison debate takes partisan turn, Houston Chronicle, 05/11/2004.
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| Bush Gang's Lies: More Rummy Rumsfeld "Spin" (In Other Words: Lies) ... |
| 05.14.04 (10:35 am) [edit] |
[b]The traitorous Bush gang's never-ending lies are becoming tiresome in their astonishing [i]lack of creativity [/i]... It's really too bad that Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz along with the rest of their neo-con cabal of neo-fascist thugs can't be submitted to the same interrogation techniques that[i] they are so heinously defending [/i]to find out about their own pre-9/11 knowledge of pending terrorist attacks upon America-- their swindle, plunder & looting of America & Iraq-- and the [i]myriad impeachable [/i]lies, deceptions and falsehoods that these crooks perpetrated upon America in order to wage their insane warfare for war-profits ...[/b]
[i][b]More Rummy Rumsfeld spin ... lies ... spin ... lies ...[/b][/i]
"Anything that's been authorized by the (Defense) Department...[was] consistent with the Geneva Conventions."
- Donald Rumsfeld, 5/11/04, http://www.latimes.com/news/n...,1,3656595.story?coll=la-home-headli nes
[b]VERSUS[/b]
General Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff "acknowledged Thursday during a long and often angry Senate hearing that interrogation techniques used by American guards in an Iraq prison violated the Geneva conventions."
- International Herald Tribune, 5/14/04, http://www.iht.com/bin/print....
[b]Sources:[/b]
"Pentagon Defends Interrogation Techniques", http://www.latimes.com/news/n...,1,3656595.story?coll=la-home-headli nes
"Geneva conventions were violated, general admits", http://www.iht.com/bin/print....
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| 82% of the Iraqi People Oppose Neo-Fascist Bush's Neo-Con Occupation of Their Country! |
| 05.13.04 (3:02 pm) [edit] |
[b]The Iraqi people are disgusted with the neo-fascist Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta's[/i] insane neo-con, neo-nazi occupation of their country ... [/b]The heinous [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]committed in Iraq are the responsibility of the corrupt Bush regime who have brought death, torture, abuse, rape and misery to the Iraqi people[i] as well as [/i]death, poverty and misery to many people in the United States of America ... It is time to get rid of this corrupt cabal of liars, war criminals, embezzlers, felons and traitors in the Bush Crime Organization ...
Refer to "[i][b]82 percent of Iraqis oppose U.S. occupation[/b][/i]" by [i]Thomas E. Ricks[/i], The Washington Post on http://seattletimes.nwsource.... :
Four out of five Iraqis report holding a negative view of the U.S. occupation authority and of coalition forces, according to a new poll conducted for the occupation authority.
In the poll, 80 percent of Iraqis surveyed reported a lack of confidence in the Coalition Provisional Authority, and 82 percent said they disapprove of the United States and allied militaries in Iraq.
Although comparative numbers from previous polls are not available, "generally speaking, the trend is downward," said Donald Hamilton, a senior counselor to civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer. The occupation authority has been commissioning such surveys in Iraq since late last year, he said. This one was taken in Baghdad and several other Iraqi cities in late March and early last month, before the surge in anti-coalition violence and the detainee-abuse scandal.
The findings appeared consistent with a poll taken about the same time by USA Today, CNN and Gallup, which found that 57 percent of Iraqis wanted foreign troops to leave immediately.
The new poll, which has not been released publicly, is a concern among occupation authority officials and in Washington, D.C., because the data provide evidence that the U.S. effort is not winning over Iraqi public opinion.
"How to ... win the hearts and minds of the people (in Iraq) is one of the things that we really have to work at," Army Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, head of Army intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee this week. "I mean, that is the key to solving not only that problem but the rest of the problems in the Middle East."
Hamilton, who said he oversees public-opinion issues for Bremer, declined to provide the number of Iraqis surveyed or other methodological details but said in an e-mail that "polls here are generally reliable" and that the new findings were consistent with those of other polls.
The new data reflect the fact that "the occupation, and the occupation forces, are getting increasingly unpopular," said Jeffrey White, a former Middle East affairs analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency. "A lot of people, including me, have been getting very pessimistic."
Reflecting that trend, the proportion of Baghdad residents who reported worries about safety has increased steadily: 70 percent named security as the "most urgent issue," up from 50 percent in January, 60 percent in February and 65 percent in March.
Overall, 63 percent of those polled said security was the most urgent issue facing Iraq. In addition to Baghdad, the poll was conducted in the northern city of Mosul and the southern cities of Basra, Nasiriyah and Karbala. Some questions were asked in the troubled western Ramadi.
There were a few bright spots. Iraqi police received a 79 percent positive rating, the best of seven institutions about which questions were asked. The reformed Iraqi army was not far behind, with a 61 percent positive rating.
Those polled were broadly divided on who should appoint the interim government that is supposed to take over limited power at the end of next month. The largest group, 27 percent, said the Iraqi people should appoint the new leaders, while 23 percent said judges should. Only one-tenth of 1 percent said that the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council should name the government, which is supposed to run Iraq until elections are held next year. None said the occupation authority should.
Indicating a general skepticism of foreign involvement in their political future, 83 percent of those polled said that only Iraqis should be involved in supervising the 2005 elections.
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| The Difference Between Patriots And Assholes!!! |
| 05.13.04 (11:33 am) [edit] |
[b]Many conscientious Republicans, Democrats and Independents[i] alike [/i]are angry and outraged by the corrupt Bush regime's[i] Crimes Against Humanity [/i]in Iraq ... However, unhappily there are too many brain-dead neo-cons and mindless neo-fascists[i] on the right [/i] http://www.tblog.com/template... who seem incapable of differentiating between Patriots and Assholes ...[/b]
[b]Read on ...[/b]
According to CNN, John McCain walked out of the hearings when Sen. James Inhofe, GOP maggot from the State of Oklahoma, test drove this excuse http://www.talkingpointsmemo.... for torture at Al Ghraib:
"[i]These prisoners, you know they're not there for traffic violations," Inhofe said. "If they're in cellblock 1-A or 1-B, these prisoners, they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands and here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals."[/i]
Doesn't take too much head scratching to figure out why.
John McCain spent over five years in the Hanoi Hilton getting tortured by the Vietnamese. By Inhofe's criteria, McCain -- not only a death-dealing combatant but also an officer, a high-value intelligence target, and propaganda trophy -- had it coming.
No wonder McCain left the room for a little fist clenching and vein throbbing.
In honor of this occasion, by the authority granted me as a blogger, I have decided to unilaterally redraw the political map of the United States.
It's no longer Red and Blue states.
No more GOP, independents, and Democrats.
And no more conservatives, moderates, and liberals.
Now it's:
Patriots and Assholes.
In the Patriot category I include anybody, left or right, conservative or liberal, that wants to make America a better place.
In the Asshole category I include people who use and abuse the wealth, power, prestige, and future of this nation to further their own private agendas.
Patriots can disagree, they can insist on their own views, they can be wrong, Lord knows they can do wrong...but when they see that the country is going to hell, they do something about it.
Assholes, on the other hand, are solipsists. They promote their own interests, objectives, and beliefs and if the country gets hurt, well that's just collateral damage.
George W. Bush is an asshole, the movement's poster child. Inside his world, GWB is the measure of all things. If he's doing well, everything's OK. Corporations, state governments, budgets, nations, the international system, and our planet might all go to shit. But as long as George W. Bush can wake up another morning and crow from his dunghill one more time, all's right with the world.
That's why I don't dismiss George W. Bush as a slow-witted, under-informed, easily-manipulated, and irrelevant puppet in the hands of Dick Cheney, Arial Sharon, and whoever else has the energy and intelligence to conceive and execute the catastrophic policies that are screwing up our world.
George W. Bush enjoys it too much. And he embodies the interests and worldview of too many of Americans.
Call them dingbats, dittoheads, Moral Majority, Middle Finger Americans, mouthbreathers, independents, whatever.
They are Americans whose moral and intellectual horizons go no further than the next tax cut. People who need the polarizing hate of a culture war or genuine military conflict to bring order and meaning to their lives.
People who prefer a government of disengagement and moral abdication because it mirrors the way they run their own lives: an amoral muddle coated with a shiny, false coat of "righteousness", "strength", and "liberty".
People who yearn to be swaddled in the cocoon of myths the Bush administration concocted to invade Iraq and divide this country.
People for whom a useful, ennobling lie counts more than the truth.
People who look for excuses for al Ghraib, instead of for the answers that its crimes scream out for.
Assholes.
I've decided it's time to stop pandering for the asshole vote with carefully calibrated appeals to narrow economic interests, fear, and racism. That's George W. Bush's job. He's welcome to it.
It's time to talk over their heads and past them -- to the patriots: the people all across the political spectrum who love and care about this country.
Patriots are people who realize that George W. Bush is covering this country with filth and failure, but doesn't have a plan for cleaning up the mess or doing anything else than covering his own ass.
There seems to be a groundswell of interest in a Kerry/McCain fusion ticket. Not because of McCain's "values" -- those oh so important litmus tests that the religious/ideological right and lefty progs bleat about.
McCain has a ferocious temper and narrow views. I guess five years in hell didn't teach him how to appreciate the views of the other fella.
But when he sees something disgusting, he gets...disgusted and does something about it.
We're not looking for the conservative messiah or liberal nirvana. We're just looking for four years without Bush to start cleaning up the fiscal, political, and moral mess he made -- and an alternative to the moral bankruptcy of the Bush/neocon wing of the GOP.
A fusion ticket seems to offer a way out of the national political impasse we're stuck in -- where confrontation and posturing and ass-covering trumps problem-solving and sacrifice.
Maybe even invite Colin Powell to come on board, to redeem himself and his cherished reputation after the mire and futility of the Bush years.
Even if the fusion ticket doesn't come off at the national level, maybe we can work it out at the grass roots, between liberals and conservatives who care more about the future of this country than about labels.
Don't ask yourself, what do I want as a liberal or a conservative, Republican or Democrat?
Ask not what your country can do for you...
...you know the rest...
...Patriots. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...
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| The Real, Genuine Iraqi Prisoner Torture Photos Make U.S. Senators Sick ... |
| 05.12.04 (9:18 pm) [edit] |
[b]It is time for the corrupt Bush regime to be [i]impeached[/i] ... [/b]Rumsfeld should be[i] fired immediately[/i] ... Americans must [i]send a message [/i]to the world that we do not endorse the neo-cons' neo-fascist neo-nazi criminal atrocities ... Contact Congress http://www.congress.org and express your outrage at the traitorous Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta's Crimes Against Humanity[/i] ...
[u][b]Lawmakers Say New Abuse Photos Disturbing[/b][/u] - http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/n...%2F20040512%2F1545117759.htm&sc=1152&floc=NW_1-T
[b]Members of Congress viewed fresh photos and videos of Iraqi prisoner abuse on Wednesday, and said they included disturbing images of torture and humiliation[/b].
``The whole thing is disgusting and it's hard to believe that this actually is taking place in a military facility,'' said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
``I expected that these pictures would be very hard on the stomach lining and it was significantly worse than anything that I had anticipated,'' said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. ``Take the worse case and multiply it several times over.''
Several senators, speaking on condition of anonymity, said photos of sexual intercourse were among the images that Pentagon officials screened for lawmakers in a top-secret room in the Capitol. At least some of them appeared to depict consensual sex involving U.S. military personnel, they added.
Others showed military dogs snarling at cowering prisoners, as well as shots of Iraqi women commanded to expose their breasts, these senators said.
The private screening marked the latest turn in a scandal that has rocked the Bush administration and apparently led to the beheading of an American in Iraq by Islamic militants who said they were avenging the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison.
``I don't know how the hell these people got into our army,'' said Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., after viewing the images.
``There were several pictures of Iraqi women who were disrobed or putting their shirts up,'' he said. ``They were not smiling in the pictures, that's for sure. But it didn't look like they had been beaten or hurt.''
He also said there were several pictures with dogs. ``Iraqis were against the wall and you could see that the dogs were pretty much terrorizing them because the dogs were snarling and crouching like they were about to attack,'' he added.
The Pentagon and Congress have already begun investigating the abuse, and one of the early questions has revolved around who bears responsibility: the relatively small number of lower-ranking military personnel seen in some of the photos or officers higher up the chain of command.
``In one particular still photo among troops that are in a hallway, where you've seen the clump of people tied together on the floor, we counted seven or eight troops,'' said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. ``Now you can't tell me all of this is going with seven or eight Army privates. ... Where did that failure of the command and control occur?''
Officials said Pentagon officials carried three discs with them to the Capitol, containing about 1,800 still images as well as an undisclosed number of videos. Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who conducted the Army's first investigation into the abuse, told Congress on Tuesday that he believed the pictures were taken by military personnel using their personal digital cameras. - http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/n...%2F20040512%2F1545117759.htm&sc=1152&floc=NW_1-T
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| Bush's Disastrous Legacy: Waging War on the Middle Class |
| 05.12.04 (9:00 pm) [edit] |
[b]The Middle Class is the back-bone of America ... [/b]Without a strong Middle Class we will devolve into a Dark Age Feudal System with a few hyper-rich plutocrats and wealthy oligarchs running gluttonous corporations while the rest of us serve as their neo-slaves in miserable neo-serfdom ([i]e.g. akin to Mexico and 3rd world military juntas [/i]...) ... The corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc.[i] junta [/i]lusts for the time when "We the People" are their slavish neo-feudal serfs ... Let us [i]get rid [/i]of this corrupt cabal of neo-con fascists in November ...
[b]The [i]Center for American Progress's [/i]report entitled http://www.americanprogress.o... IRAQ: [i]Waging War on the Middle Class [/i]is an eye-opener:[/b]
In a visit to a business owned by a top Republican campaign donor, Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday said the White House tax policy was working for all Americans and "don't let anyone tell you otherwise." But according to a new poll last week, 90% of Americans say they have felt little or no federal tax cut (a number consistent with earlier polling), while many are feeling the squeeze from increased state/local taxes. On the wage front, the news is no better: Bloomberg reports that while "U.S. corporate profits surged 87% between 2001 and 2003," wages/salaries grew by just 4.5% - "the smallest for the first nine quarters of any recovery since World War II." Instead of taking proactive steps to address the wage crisis, the administration has instead sought to reduce overtime pay protections for millions of workers, while touting the virtues of Wal-Mart – a company infamous for using its size to undercut local economies and paying such low wages that its employees are often forced to seek public assistance. As the WP notes, while the president wraps his economic policy "in talk of rewarding hard work and initiative" his agenda has done exactly the opposite, rewarding owners of vast wealth while squeezing the middle class.
[b]SAVINGS PLAN MAKING MATTERS WORSE:[/b] The administration is now putting its "soak-the-rich" ideology into overdrive: As Daniel Altman notes, the White House is seeking tax reforms that would "make it more attractive to accumulate wealth than to spend money." The White House's proposals for tax-free savings accounts for the wealthy would "give people every incentive to receive all their income from financial assets rather than wages and salaries." Ultimately, the policy "could lead to a whole new way of classifying people: working and upper-class would be replaced by taxpayer and free-rider. Titans of industry, heirs and heiresses, and wizards of Wall Street wouldn't pay for national defense, cancer research, or President Bush's trip to Mars. All those costs would be borne by America's breadwinners."
[b]SENATE CONSERVATIVES STILL OUT OF TOUCH:[/b] In two recent instances, Senate conservatives have shown just how out of touch with economic reality they are: Last week, while pushing a bill providing massive tax breaks to large corporations, conservatives tried to stop a bill that would preserve current overtime regulations, instead of reducing them, as the White House proposes (fortunately, the bill passed the Senate). And now this week, on the same corporate tax bill, CongressDaily reports that conservatives are still threatening to block a vote on extending unemployment insurance, despite a record number of Americans exhausting their unemployment benefits.
[b]CONSERVATIVE SAYS HIGH WAGES ARE THE PROBLEM:[/b] With thousands of workers in Michigan struggling with stagnating wages, one of the leading conservatives last week actually said the biggest problem facing the state is that workers are paid too well. State Republican Chairwoman Betsy DeVos issued a press release claiming, among other things, that "many, if not most, of the economic problems in Michigan are a result of high wages."
[b]CORPORATE EXECUTIVES MORE PROGRESSIVE THAN BUSH ON JOBS:[/b] While the Bush administration has refused to consider legislation to address the negative side effects of offshoring, a new poll finds that many corporate executives would actually support such legislation. All told, 40% of technology company executives said they would support "paying higher taxes to compensate for jobs they send offshore." These executives agree that companies should be required to pay a "per-head tax" for every position sent to another country. The poll also suggests that companies would be willing to help pay for improvements in the quality of American education and worker retraining to help the United States maintain its competitive edge in technology. - http://www.americanprogress.o...
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| Letter: Fellow Republicans, We Need a Bush Alternative in November ... |
| 05.12.04 (5:24 pm) [edit] |
[b]More and more honest Republicans and conscientious Conservatives with integrity are coming out [i]against[/i] the corrupt Bush regime ... Read on ...[/b]
[b]As published in the:
Pasadena Star-News - May 6, 2004
San Gabriel Valley Tribune - May 6, 2004
Whittier Daily News - May 6, 2004
Fellow Republicans, we need a Bush alternative in November
by
Gerald Plessner[/b] - http://www.geraldplessner.com...
Dear fellow Republicans,
I have wanted to write this letter for weeks but I kept putting it off. I knew some readers would be upset by the idea that I am a registered Republican, and a fourth generation one at that!
But I just can't wait any longer because our country is on the verge of a political upheaval about which we must act right away.
First, about my political pedigree. My dad was a Republican who voted for Dewey and Eisenhower and my grandpa Eddie was a St. Louis Republican patronage employee who walked a precinct for Wendell Wilkie. My great-grandmother Flora, the widow of a Union Army veteran, supported Teddy Roosevelt for president, and I have her campaign medallion to prove it!
When we moved to Arcadia, the only way your vote counted was to use it in the Republican primary, so I registered as a Republican. But I once actually voted for Barry Goldwater back in college! (I was much younger then.)
I am writing this letter now because the Bush administration is imploding on itself and if it loses the coming election, it would drastically change American politics for all time.
Whenever I meet someone who is a Republican, I now ask the same question, "Who are you going to vote for in November?"
You will not believe how many people --- Republicans all --- say something like, "I'm not sure but I certainly won't vote for this guy!"
They all share one complaint which goes something like this, "Everything bad the liberals said would happen in Iraq has happened, and it is getting worse, not better. He and Cheney are living in a dream world!"
I believe that most Americans now understand in their hearts that they have been betrayed. Even most of our Republican friends know that they were lied to but won't say so because it is hard to admit when you have been snookered.
They also feel that the cause for which our soldiers continue to sacrifice is still just and any criticism of political leaders reflects on our service men and women. Of course that is not true.
When one of our leaders lies to us --- even for a good cause --- we are betrayed and made the fools. When that happens, our leader's words are lowered to the ethical level of our enemies.
We now know that the president and his people lied to us about nuclear weapons, about their intentions well before 9/11 to invade Iraq, about their commitment to invest in rebuilding Afghanistan while they illegally diverted many millions from Afghanistan to the Iraq war build up.
We also know that vice president Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld distorted intelligence to convince us to go to war and that politicians in the defense department have given us one failure and ideological stupidity after another.
They never considered history in analyzing what was needed, they disregarded and they ridiculed our military leaders' advice and manpower estimates.
The looting of Baghdad was a disaster brought on by the smarmy arrogance of Donald Rumsfeld, whose demands for a too-small force and light unarmored Humvees, which are now being hurriedly replaced by heavily armored equipment, caused the deaths of too many fine American soldiers.
They never considered the three intelligence services Saddam Hussein maintained to protect his own skin, and discounted an army full of officers loyal to the dictator. Without something to do each day and without income, is it any wonder that the defense of Falluja is a victory for their resistance?
Although the president still thinks the war in Iraq can be won and we can bring democracy at the point of a gun, that is more unlikely every day. What if the turnover of so-called sovereignty to Iraqis doesn't work smoothly, and we begin to pull back and Iraq falls into civil war? What if the turn over happens with a lot more bloodshed and it leaves the world in far more peril than before?
All of these questions are why you and I must work to find an alternative to George W. Bush before it is too late. Election day may be too late because by then John Kerry might get his act together.
Worse still for Republicans, what if that happens and Kerry selects John McCain as his running mate? How many undecided voters would be attracted to a ticket that will promise a middle ground in our bitter political warfare?
How many moderate Republicans would vote for that ticket? What would that do to the party in the swing states? Would such a move establish a base for a genuine American third party, one that would appeal to moderates and stimulate cooperation for the greater good of all Americans?
Don't you agree that all this is something Republicans should worry about?
[b]About the author:[/b] Gerald Plessner is a Southern California businessman who writes regularly on issues of politics and culture. He would be pleased to hear from you and may be contacted at gerald@geraldplessner.com. - http://www.geraldplessner.com...
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| Bush's Legacy in Iraq: Torture & Sexual Abuse of Little Children |
| 05.12.04 (3:52 pm) [edit] |
[b]Beyond belief is Bush's torture, abuse and mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners ... [/b]Now we are learning that little children were incarcerated with adults as well as tortured and sexually abused by U.S. occupation forces ... What is Bush [i]turning us into[/i]??? ...[i] Monsters [/i]like Hitler[i] turned [/i]Germans [i]into[/i]!!! ...
[u][b]UNICEF Worried About Child Abuse in Iraq[/b][/u]
The United Nations children's agency said Tuesday it was "profoundly disturbed" by reports that children may have been abused in prisons in Iraq.
"Any mistreatment, sexual abuse, exploitation or torture of children in detention is a violation of international law," UNICEF spokesman Damien Personnaz said.
"UNICEF is profoundly disturbed by news reports alleging that children may have been among those abused."
NBC television reported last week that unreleased videotapes, apparently shot by U.S. personnel, showed Iraqi guards at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison raping young boys. British newspapers have reported that children were tortured under interrogation.
Personnaz said UNICEF so far has no independent confirmation of the reports but has decided to speak out nevertheless.
"If the reports are wrong, then we will say so," he said. But this is also a way for us to make sure that it doesn't happen in the future."
UNICEF stressed that mistreating children breaches the U.N. treaties on children's rights, torture and civil rights, as well as the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war.
Under international law, detention of children should only be used as a measure of last resort and for the shortest possible time, the agency said. Children should never be incarcerated with adults, and they should have access to legal, medical, emotional and other assistance. - http://www.independent-media....%20Reported
[b]Associated Press[/b], http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
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| Kerry is Right ... The Bush Gang's Arrogance is Responsible for Problems in Iraq ... |
| 05.12.04 (3:18 pm) [edit] |
[b]John F. Kerry will be a great president ... [/b]He is smarter than Bush ([i]ooopppsss, that's not saying much[/i])-- but okay, Kerry is much, much smarter than Bush and has a solid track-record for supporting the American Middle-Class and Working People, unlike AWOL Deserter Dubya who panders to neo-con pimps: gluttonous corporations, wealthy oligarchs and hyper-rich plutocrats ... And, John F. Kerry can[i] work with other people[/i], something that the neo-con, neo-fascist congenital idiots-[i]cum[/i]-asshole s in the traitorous Bush regime are unable & unwilling to do, rendering them [i]unfit to serve [/i]"We the People" ...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
[b]Kerry blames Bush team's 'arrogance' for problems in Iraq[/b] - http://www.macon.com/mld/maco...
Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive-Democratic presidential nominee, yesterday blamed the "attitude" of the Bush administration for creating a culture that allowed the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.
Kerry, during his first campaign visit to Kentucky, said the recently released photos showing U.S. soldiers posing with naked, hooded Iraqis, "is not reflective of 99.9 percent of the troops."
"This is something that comes out of an attitude about the rights of prisoners of war," he said. "It's an attitude that comes out of how we went there in the first place." He decried an "overall arrogance" that he said has "alienated countries all around the world."
Kerry, who as a member of Congress voted to send troops to Iraq, made the remarks to a crowd of more than 550 at a $1,000-a-plate luncheon fund-raiser at Louisville's Hyatt Regency hotel. In the morning, Kerry pitched his plan for health care reforms to an audience of small business owners and blue-collar workers at a locally-owned stoneware factory.
Though the photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison have dominated national news this month, Kerry shied from talking further on the war yesterday. Instead he devoted much of his 29-minute speech to an array of domestic subjects and criticism of President Bush.
Kerry referred to Bush's tenure as "the biggest say-one-thing-do-another administration in modern history." Specifically, he said the growing federal deficit, skyrocketing health care costs and the "worst jobs economy since Herbert Hoover was president" were Bush's major failures.
Those issues "make this the most important election of our lifetime," he added.
Kerry also briefly told reporters he would favor a tobacco buyout deal, but offered no details on how to pay for it.
At a morning forum at Louisville Stoneware, Kerry touted his plan to help small businesses and their employees deal with soaring health costs that have left 44 million Americans without insurance.
"This is the only industrialized nation in the world that doesn't understand health care is not a privilege for the wealthy, the elected or the connected," he said.
Kerry's plan would give small businesses a 50 percent tax credit on what they pay in employee premiums. They could also opt into the same coverage that members of the U.S. Congress give themselves, he said.
Because a federal pool would pick up the most expensive, "catastrophic" cases, premium costs would drop nationwide, he said.
To pay for it, Kerry said, he would repeal Bush's tax cuts. But he did not say how much his plan would cost.
In a statement released yesterday afternoon, Bush's campaign criticized Kerry for "advocating health care policies more focused on socialized medicine" that would cost taxpayers more.
But Bruce Cohen, owner of Louisville's BC Plumbing, said he was encouraged by Kerry's proposal. Cohen, like the other business owners on the panel with Kerry, complained of having to transfer more of the cost of care to his employees.
Kerry will spend the rest of the week campaigning in Florida and Arkansas, swing states expected to attract a lot of attention from both candidates in what appears to be a tight race.
Kentucky, however, is counted solidly in Bush's corner by most national political experts.
Nonetheless, at least one official from the Kerry campaign said the Massachusetts senator has not written off Kentucky.
"I expect that we will be back a number of times," said former New Hampshire Gov. Jean Shaheen, who was traveling with Kerry as his national campaign chairman. "Whether it will be a battleground state, that will play out as the months go forward."
That promise, coupled with more than $750,000 that the Kerry campaign estimated it had raised at yesterday's event, sparked hope among Kentucky Democrats that Kerry would not only return to the state, but could win it in November.
State House Majority Leader Rocky Adkins, D-Sandy Hook, said Kerry's campaign should start running TV ads here "to define himself, rather than letting someone else define him."
"And if he takes the time here, John Kerry can carry Kentucky," Adkins said. - http://www.macon.com/mld/maco...
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| House of Bush, House of Saud: Gas Prices At The Pump Reach Record Level High |
| 05.12.04 (2:12 pm) [edit] |
... "[i]When it comes to Saudi Arabia, the Bush family's business interests and personal relationships take precedence over our interests as a nation[/i]. ..." - House of Bush, House of Saud, http://www.buzzflash.com/prem...
[b]Gas prices [i]at the pump [/i]surge to record-level highs unseen in our nation's history ([i]another Bush fiasco ... nothing good or positive has occurred in the U.S.A. since the Mad King George hijacked our nation-- only disaster, mayhem and misery[/i] ...), http://www.kesq.com/Global/st... hitting Middle-Class and Working Americans the hardest, while the thieves, embezzlers and looters in the corrupt Bush regime & their Big Oil cronies[i] suck-the-blood [/i]out of the rest of us, gorging like[i] pigs-at-the-trough [/i]...[/b]
[b]Read on ...[/b]
Oil prices [crude] surged to within a hair's breadth of an all-time high on Wednesday on concern that OPEC may not pump enough oil to meet rapidly accelerating world oil demand, dealers said. [U.S. Oil Companies have not built any new refineries in over 11 years in order to fix-and-control supply and price-gouge consumers. Bush and Cheney support this extortion of U.S. consumers.]
A fresh fall in U.S. gasoline stocks reinforced concerns that U.S. refiners will have trouble making enough new cleaner-burning gasoline grades for peak summer holiday driving demand, which traditionally kicks off at the end of May.
U.S. light crude (CLc1: Quote, Profile, Research) ended up 71 cents at $40.77 -- its highest settle price on record -- after peaking at $40.92, which was 23 cents below the $41.15 all-time high hit in October 1990 during the buildup to the first Gulf War. London Brent crude (LCOc1: Quote, Profile, Research) rose 59 cents to $37.95 a barrel.
Importing nations are increasingly worried about the economic fallout of higher energy costs. The price spike has come during the second quarter, when world oil demand is typically at its lowest seasonal ebb, raising concerns about prices later in the year as demand rises again.
President Bush remains worried about rising gasoline prices, which are forecast to peak at a national average of $2.03 a gallon in June, and are already at record highs, the White House said on Wednesday. [Bush doesn't give a rat's ass, because he and his oil cronies are raping America and gorging like pigs-at-the-trough.]
"The president remains concerned about rising gas prices," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters. "We remain in contact with (oil) producers around the world, urging them not to act in a way that would hurt our economy or harm our consumers," he added. [McClellan is a toady who would sell his mother for a buck to kiss Dubya's fat ass.]
Tight U.S. fuel inventories have driven oil's long rally. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday gasoline stocks dropped 1.5 million barrels last week to 202.5 million, nearly 4 percent below the five-year average.
"This draw in gasoline stocks will keep this bull market alive," said Jim Ritterbusch of Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Illinois. "Demand is just stronger than expected. We're still running more than 3.2 percent year over year."
Oil prices have rocketed roughly $8, or 24 percent, since the start of the year as stronger-than-expected energy consumption among industrialized nations bolsters explosive demand growth in China.
[b]EXPLOSIVE GROWTH[/b]
World oil demand is forecast to grow by the largest absolute rate since 1988, the International Energy Agency, advisor on energy to 26 industrialized nations, said in its monthly Oil Market Report.
OPEC President Purnomo Yusgiantoro of Indonesia said on Wednesday the cartel is already pumping more than two million barrels daily in excess of official supply limits in a bid to cool world oil prices.
"We have not discouraged our members from producing more because we want to do everything we can to stabilize prices," Purnomo was quoted as saying in a statement released from OPEC headquarters.
Ministers are considering raising official production limits from 23.5 million bpd after Saudi Arabia proposed lifting quotas by at least 1.5 million bpd.
U.S. and European refiners said on Wednesday that Saudi Arabia has offered to increase crude supply in June, mainly of heavy grades which are less effective for making gasoline.
"OPEC seems to have been stung into making reassuring noises, guaranteeing supply to customers and abandoning any pretense of production cuts in line with target," the IEA's report said.
Supply outside OPEC is also failing to meet growth expectations, despite rising volumes from Russia, raising the requirement on OPEC for extra crude, the IEA said.
"The welcome resurgence in economic activity brings to the fore the issue of securing the necessary supplies to sustain the recovery," the IEA's report said.
The IEA said OPEC holds around 2.5 million bpd of spare capacity -- just a three percent cushion for the 80 million bpd world market, nearly half in Saudi Arabia.
Supply security worries from the Middle East have also fired up prices. Iraqi oil exports from the Basra Oil Terminal are still reduced to 1.1 million bpd after pipeline sabotage at the weekend.
A return to normal flows of 1.6 million has been delayed until Thursday. The weekend attack came just two weeks after suicide bombers attacked tankers at the terminals. - http://www.reuters.com/financ...
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| It's the Incompetence, Stupid!!! ... |
| 05.12.04 (1:59 pm) [edit] |
[b]"We the People" should be [i]alarmed[/i]:[/b] Bush is a dangerously stupid man-- a dishonest man-- a corrupt man-- a hypocritical man ... It is a disaster for our nation to be saddled with such a tyrannical, brutish, callous and closetted buffoon who [i]brags [/i]about being ignorant and unaware of history, economics, culture and current events ...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
[b]It’s the incompetence, stupid. [/b]That should be the battle cry of the forces of anti-Bushism. Sure, the war was a boneheaded policy move and predicated on false claims. But worse, its backers have repeatedly botched the job. They have taken lemons and made not lemonade but nuclear waste. And it’s not only the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. That controversy is important; the Pentagon messed up and handed the United States a PR disaster that may yield awful battlefield consequences: intensified opposition to U.S. forces in Iraq, eye-for-an-eye treatment of American POWs, and easier recruiting for Iraqi insurrectionists and Islamic terrorists. But it also revealed—once more—that the Bush administration and Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon were wholly unprepared for the post-invasion phase of the war, and unwilling or unable (or both) to consider and respond to others' concerns. For a year, the International Red Cross warned the Pentagon about abuse within its prisons and detention facilities in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib; the Pentagon did little.
But the mind-boggling mistakes didn’t start with Abu Ghraib. The Bush gang has bungled so many aspects of the Iraq occupation that its actions border on criminal recklessness. The most stunning revelation of Bob Woodward’s [i]Plan of Attack [/i]is not that Bush ordered the Pentagon to begin planning an invasion of Iraq in November 2001; it is what is absent from the book: any indication that Bush and his lieutenants engaged in high-level planning concerning what to do after the invasion. Bush repeatedly whistled General Tommy Franks into his office to go over the details of the war plans. He did not display interest in the hard work that would come afterward: how to reconstruct Iraq, how to build a democracy, how to provide security and basic services, how to deal with the competing political forces that could be expected to emerge; how to handle the remains of the military; how far to de-Baathify; how to bring other nations in the region and elsewhere into the process; how to conduct a transparent, fair and effective bidding process, how to budget for the war. That is, how to do the job correctly. If anyone else began such a complex and unprecedented project without mulling over the obvious pitfalls and complications, he or she would be out of work.
[b]Planning Deficits [/b]
Experts at the State Department did concoct some plans for the transition. But Rumsfeld’s Pentagon was not interested in the musings of those pansies at Foggy Bottom. And Bush never put pressure on Rummy to craft alternatives. Remember the early days of the post-invasion period when Jay Garner, the first U.S. proconsul in Iraq, was ad hoc-ing his way through every knotty issue? Bush, Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz—no one in the group ever bothered to look before crossing the Rubicon. Right before the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, Rumsfeld observed, "If you had said to me a year ago, 'Describe the situation you'll be in today one year later,' I don't know many people who would have described it—I would not have—described it in the way it happens to be today." But he was dead wrong. Before the war, many experts warned that the political transition would be tremendously difficult and troublesome, if not impossible, and that instability and security challenges would keep U.S. troops occupied—and dying—in Iraq for a year or more. (Shortly before the invasion, I asked one active-duty admiral how long U.S. forces would have to stay in Iraq. "Two words," he said. "South Korea.") There were plenty of pessimists back then hawking the worst scenarios. Rumsfeld and the others chose to pay such naysayers no heed.
But the incompetents of the Bush administration are guilty of more than arrogance and hubris. Let’s run through a partial list of screw-ups. In the first weeks of the invasion and occupation, the administration failed to conduct an effective search for the supposed weapons of mass destruction that were the main justification for the war. Weeks went by before U.S. troops even attempted to secure Iraq’s nuclear facilities and before the Pentagon had in place a search effort for the WMDs. (Not rushing to the nuclear sites was especially dumb, for nuclear materials might now be long gone and in who-knows-whose hands. At least fumbling the WMD hunt may have been a cost-free error, since the evidence to date is that Iraq did not possess any significant WMDs in the years prior to the war.) Then there was Ahmed Chalabi. The Pentagon and the White House too eagerly bought the weapons-are-there reports peddled by this exile leader and his Iraqi National Congress. Chalabi has said his gang was "heroes in error." That’s a polite way of saying "fabricators." In intelligence circles, exiles are always regarded as suspect sources of information. But the Bush gang disregarded this basic rule.
At the same time, it failed to conduct basic intelligence assessments of conditions in Iraq. Last fall, when it was becoming evident that reconstruction would not be a cakewalk, Rice ‘fessed up to one mistake. She said the administration had not realized that Saddam Hussein had been so awful and had allowed the Iraqi infrastructure deteriorate so much. Hello? Determining the state of the Iraqi infrastructure would have been a cakewalk. With satellite imagery and interviews with traveling Iraqis, diplomats and visitors to Iraq, any CIA intern could have determined the status of the electricity, water and health systems. It would have been easy for Rice to obtain an accurate picture of life in Iraq, which just might have been useful in terms of planning a reconstruction.
[b]Too Many Oversights [/b]
There’s more—too much more. Rice received memos noting that there was no solid basis for the claim that Iraq had been shopping for uranium in Niger. Yet—oops—that assertion became part of Bush’s State of the Union address. Last year, the White House admitted that neither Bush nor Rice had read the entire National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq that had been produced in October 2002. This document wrongly noted that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, but it presented a much more nuanced and less-frightening depiction of the WMD situation in Iraq than did Bush in his public statements, and it noted there was disagreement among the intelligence analysts as to the extent of the WMD threat. Shouldn’t the commander in chief and his national security adviser have read the main intelligence report on the publicly stated reason for the war? It was only 92 pages long. But it’s not surprising Bush didn’t do so. He has said he doesn’t even read newspapers.
The (selective) list goes on. The Pentagon at one point considered placing former CIA chief James Woolsey—one of the most vocal cheerleaders for the war—in charge of the post-invasion Iraqi ministry of information. Now how would giving an ex-CIA director the helm of this ministry have played in Iraq and throughout the Arab world? Another sign that these guys don’t know how to run an occupation came a few weeks ago when the occupation authority in Baghdad released a new Iraqi flag. It had two stripes on it that were the same powder blue of the Israeli flag.
The Bush administration’s incompetence, sadly, is not limited to the Iraq war. How about that anthrax investigation? Imagine how Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing gasbags would be screaming if the Clinton Justice Department had gone so long without cracking such a case. There’s also a strong argument that the Pentagon erred big time when it tried to capture bin Laden in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan after the initial war there was over. And don’t forget the infamous President’s Daily Brief of Aug. 6, 2001. It reminded Bush that Osama bin Laden was aiming to strike within the United States and reported that the FBI had 70 domestic investigations under way against Al Qaeda subjects in the United States. The 70 figure was an exaggeration, but, still, Bush apparently did not react to this unusual news—70 investigations?!—other than by saying, good, I’ll leave it to the bureau. He did not get involved, he did not demand more information, he did not place any pressure on the FBI and the CIA. And while it may not technically have been an act of incompetence, his administration placed ballistic missile defense (as expensive and unproven as it was) far ahead of counterterrorism in terms of priorities. That was a sign of lousy judgment—particularly since intelligence estimates had concluded that terrorists in possession of WMDs posed more of a threat than a missile from a rogue state.
[b]A Restless Right [/b]
The Bush crowd has amassed a record of failures almost as bad as Bush did when he was an oilman. And some natives on the right are getting restless. Columnist George Will wrote last week, "This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think." And neocon Robert Kagan groused, "All but the most blindly devoted Bush supporters can see that Bush administration officials have no clue about what to do in Iraq tomorrow, much less a month from now." He and fellow neocon William Kristol were pushing for Rumsfeld’s firing before the Abu Ghraib scandal hit, holding Rumsfeld responsible for ruining their war.
The Bush folks strike a pose of confidence and competence, and they entered office pretending to be the grown-ups. But they do not know what they are doing, and they are not doing it well. John Kerry has attacked them for waging a reckless, arrogant and counterproductive foreign policy, but other Democrats—not necessarily the usual suspects of Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd—need to be as vociferous and blunt as the Will-Kagan chorus. Bush and his band are careless and lousy drivers. These people do not deserve the keys to the car.
[b]Source:[/b]
"Reckless Executive", David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation, is the author of The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers). - http://www.tompaine.com/featu...
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| Beheaded Man's Father Blames Blood-Thirsty Dubya For His Son's Death! |
| 05.12.04 (1:20 pm) [edit] |
[b]Dubya & Cheney (and Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the rest of their blood-thirsty criminal gang of neo-con thugs & neo-fascist goons) should be shipped-off to the Hague to be tried for [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]... [/b]Not only are these traitorous neo-nazis responsible for waging illegal and immoral warfare based upon heinous lies, deceptions and falsehoods, but they are responsible for the torture, abuse, rape and mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners in violation of the Geneva Conventions http://www.genevaconventions.... ...
Even the father of the young man beheaded by vengeful Iraqi insurgents angry with the torture & abuse of their own people at the hands of Bush's U.S. Occupation forces blames the corrupt Bush regime for his son's death ... The Bush regime should be[i] impeached [/i]immediately ... Write Congress http://www.congress.org [i]today[/i] ...
[b]Read on ...[/b]
The killing of Nick Berg, the American telephone engineer beheaded by Islamic militants in Iraq, triggered a political storm last night as the murdered man's father blamed the Bush administration for the circumstances that led to his death.
Michael Berg, an avowed opponent of the war in Iraq, said his son might still be alive if the US military had not taken him into custody for 13 days in late March.
Mr Berg said he believed that if the 26-year-old had not been detained so long he might have been able to leave the country while conditions were more stable.
Nick Berg had traveled to Iraq as a freelance telecommunications entrepreneur intending to help rebuild communications antennae, but was detained by Iraqi police at a checkpoint in Mosul, amid confusion as to what he was doing in the area.
He was later passed to the US military, who finally freed him after his parents sued the federal government for his release on April 5. Mr Berg said his son had been held without a lawyer and was not allowed to make telephone calls.
The Berg family, from West Chester in Pennsylvania, were told of the gruesome video images of their son's killing by an Associated Press reporter yesterday afternoon.
Mr Berg's father, brother and sister collapsed in a tearful embrace in their front yard. The family already knew their son was dead. His mutilated body was found in Baghdad on Saturday.
"I knew he was decapitated before," Mr Berg said. "That manner is preferable to a long and torturous death. But I didn't want it to become public."
Mr Berg said his son had been a Bush supporter, and looked at the war "as bringing democracy to a country that didn't have it". The Bergs described their son as an idealist who had traveled before in the Third World, including Kenya and Ghana, where he had spent £500 on a brick press for an impoverished village.
Last night in a statement read by a neighbor the Bergs described their son as "a great kid" and said they were "devastated" by their loss.
Earlier they complained that federal officials had been unhelpful as they struggled to find out where their son was. They last heard from their son on April 9, when he said he was going to come home via Jordan.
Even before news broke of Mr Berg's murder Republican members of Congress and conservative media commentators, were expressing outrage at what they called the irresponsible and unpatriotic leaking of a secret military report into the abuses, and the publication of photographs of prisoner assaults.
It has already emerged that Gen Richard Myers, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, had warned CBS television that broadcasting the Abu Ghraib images might endanger the lives of soldiers and hostages.
Gen Myers succeeded in convincing CBS to hold off on broadcasting the images for two weeks, after he urged them not to inflame world opinion during the tense siege of Fallujah. The next 24 hours will tell whether public anger at the killing will swamp American soul-searching at the behavior of military reservists in Abu Ghraib.
There was already a significant slice of Middle American opinion that was impatient with talk of suffering Iraqis, arguing that the detainee abuse paled next to the attacks on US forces and hostages. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...
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| The Misunderestimated Man: How Bush Chose Stupidity As A Way of Life ... |
| 05.12.04 (1:14 pm) [edit] |
[b]Jacob Weisberg is editor of[i] Slate [/i]and co-author, with Robert E. Rubin, of [i]In an Uncertain World[/i] and keeps up-to-date the list of [i]Bushisms[/i] that truly are a [i]real hoot[/i], and writes a superb article (below) about Bush and his selective stupidity.[/b]
"We the People" should be holding Bush accountable for his heinous [i]Crimes Against Humanity [/i]committed in Iraq -- a bloody guerrilla quagmire in a bungled war waged based upon traitorous lies, deceptions & falsehoods regarding phony WMDs posing a non-existent threat to our nation ... It is [i]not [/i]the lowly U.S. Soldiers who are [i]alone[/i] at fault for the horrors of Bush's War Crimes ... Leadership sets the tone, the atmosphere, and the standards of conduct affecting the behaviour of their subordinates ... Are "We the People" to become like the Germans in 1939 who rationalize(d) the horrendous crimes committed in their/our name by their/our government, out of an insane hatred, racism and violence instigated by corrupt, arrogant, greedy and stupid people like Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the rest of their criminal ban of neo-con facists??? ... Let us hope [i]not [/i]...
[b]Read Jacob Weisberg's article and decide whether or not you think Bush is [i]fit [/i]to be president ...[/b]
[b][u]The misunderestimated man: How Bush chose stupidity[/u][/b]
The question I am most frequently asked about [i]Bushisms[/i] http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob... is, "Do you really think the president of the United States is dumb?"
The short answer is [i]yes[/i].
The long answer is[i] yes and no[/i].
Quotations http://slate.msn.com/id/76886... collected over the years in [i]Slate[/i] may leave the impression that George W. Bush is a dimwit. Let's face it: A man who cannot talk about education without making a humiliating grammatical mistake ("The illiteracy level of our children are appalling"); who cannot keep straight the three branches of government ("It's the executive branch's job to interpret law"); who coins ridiculous words ("Hispanos," "arbolist," "subliminable," "resignate," "transformationed"); who habitually says the opposite of what he intends ("the death tax is good for people from all walks of life!") sounds like a grade-A imbecile.
And if you don't care to pursue the matter any further, that view will suffice. George W. Bush has governed, for the most part, the way any airhead might, undermining the fiscal condition of the nation, squandering the goodwill of the world after Sept. 11, and allowing huge problems (global warming, entitlement spending, AIDS) to metastasize toward catastrophe through a combination of ideology, incomprehension, and indifference. If Bush isn't exactly the moron he sounds, his synaptic misfirings offer a plausible proxy for the idiocy of his presidency.
In reality, however, there's more to it. Bush's assorted malapropisms, solecisms, gaffes, spoonerisms, and truisms tend to imply that his lack of fluency in English is tantamount to an absence of intelligence. But as we all know, the inarticulate can be shrewd, the fluent fatuous. In Bush's case, the symptoms point to a specific malady—some kind of linguistic deficit akin to dyslexia—that does not indicate a lack of mental capacity per se.
Bush also compensates with his non-verbal acumen. As he notes, "Smart comes in all kinds of different ways." The president's way is an aptitude for connecting to people through banter and physicality. He has a powerful memory for names, details, and figures that truly matter to him, such as batting averages from the 1950s. Bush also has a keen political sense, sharpened under the tutelage of Karl Rove.
What's more, calling the president a cretin absolves him of responsibility. Like Reagan, Bush avoids blame for all manner of contradictions, implausible assertions, and outright lies by appearing an amiable dunce. If he knows not what he does, blame goes to the three puppeteers, Cheney, Rove, and Rumsfeld. It also breeds sympathy. We wouldn't laugh at FDR because he couldn't walk. Is it less cruel to laugh at GWB because he can't talk? The soft bigotry of low expectations means Bush is seen to outperform by merely getting by. Finally, elitist condescension, however merited, helps cement Bush's bond to the masses.
But if "numskull" is an imprecise description of the president, it is not altogether inaccurate. Bush may not have been born stupid, but he has achieved stupidity, and now he wears it as a badge of honor. What makes mocking this president fair as well as funny is that Bush is, or at least once was, capable of learning, reading, and thinking. We know he has discipline and can work hard (at least when the goal is reducing his time for a three-mile run). Instead he chose to coast, for most of his life, on name, charm, good looks, and the easy access to capital afforded by family connections.
The most obvious expression of Bush's choice of ignorance is that, at the age of 57, he knows nothing about policy or history. After years of working as his dad's spear-chucker in Washington, he didn't understand the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, the second- and third-largest federal programs. Well into his plans for invading Iraq, Bush still couldn't get down the distinction between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, the key religious divide in a country he was about to occupy. Though he sometimes carries books for show, he either does not read them or doesn't absorb anything from them. Bush's ignorance is so transparent that many of his intimates do not bother to dispute it even in public. Consider the testimony of several who know him well.
[b]Richard Perle, foreign policy adviser[/b]: "The first time I met Bush 43 … two things became clear. One, he didn't know very much. The other was that he had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn't know very much."
[b]David Frum, former speechwriter[/b]: "Bush had a poor memory for facts and figures. … Fire a question at him about the specifics of his administration's policies, and he often appeared uncertain. Nobody would ever enroll him in a quiz show."
[b]Laura Bush, spouse[/b]: "George is not an overly introspective person. He has good instincts, and he goes with them. He doesn't need to evaluate and reevaluate a decision. He doesn't try to overthink. He likes action."
[b]Paul O'Neill, former treasury secretary[/b]: "The only way I can describe it is that, well, the President is like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection."
A second, more damning aspect of Bush's mind-set is that he doesn't want to know anything in detail, however important. Since college, he has spilled with contempt for knowledge, equating learning with snobbery and making a joke of his own anti-intellectualism. ("[William F. Buckley] wrote a book at Yale; I read one," he quipped at a black-tie event.) By O'Neill's account, Bush could sit through an hourlong presentation about the state of the economy without asking a single question. ("I was bored as hell," the president shot back, ostensibly in jest.)
Closely related to this aggressive ignorance is a third feature of Bush's mentality: laziness. Again, this is a lifelong trait. Bush's college grades were mostly Cs (including a 73 in Introduction to the American Political System). At the start of one term, the star of the Yale football team spotted him in the back row during the shopping period for courses. "Hey! George Bush is in this class!" Calvin Hill shouted to his teammates. "This is the one for us!" As governor of Texas, Bush would take a long break in the middle of his short workday for a run followed by a stretch of video golf or computer solitaire.
A fourth and final quality of Bush's mind is that it does not think. The president can't tolerate debate about issues. Offered an option, he makes up his mind quickly and never reconsiders. At an elementary school, a child once asked him whether it was hard to make decisions as president. "Most of the decisions come pretty easily for me, to be frank with you." By leaping to conclusions based on what he "believes," Bush avoids contemplating even the most obvious basic contradictions: between his policy of tax cuts and reducing the deficit; between his call for a humble foreign policy based on alliances and his unilateral assertion of American power; between his support for in-vitro fertilization (which destroys embryos) and his opposition to fetal stem-cell research (because it destroys embryos).
Why would someone capable of being smart choose to be stupid? To understand, you have to look at W.'s relationship with father. This filial bond involves more tension than meets the eye. Dad was away for much of his oldest son's childhood. Little George grew up closer to his acid-tongued mother and acted out against the absent parent—through adolescent misbehavior, academic failure, dissipation, and basically not accomplishing anything at all until well into his 40s.
Dubya's youthful screw-ups and smart-aleck attitude reflect some combination of protest, plea for attention, and flailing attempt to compete. Until a decade ago, his résumé read like a send-up of his dad's. Bush senior was a star student at Andover and Phi Beta Kappa at Yale, where he was also captain of the baseball team; Junior struggled through with gentleman's C's and, though he loved baseball, couldn't make the college lineup. Père was a bomber pilot in the Pacific; fils sat out 'Nam in the Texas Air National Guard, where he lost flying privileges by not showing up. Dad drove to Texas in 1947 to get rich in the oil business and actually did; Son tried the same in 1975 and drilled dry holes for a decade. Bush the elder got elected to Congress in 1966; Shrub ran in 1978, didn't know what he was talking about, and got clobbered.
Through all this incompetent emulation runs an undercurrent of hostility. In an oft-told anecdote circa 1973, GWB—after getting wasted at a party and driving over a neighbor's trash can in Houston—challenged his dad. "I hear you're lookin' for me," W. told the chairman of the Republican National Committee. "You want to go mano a mano right here?" Some years later at a state dinner, he told the Queen of England he was being seated far away because he was the black sheep of the family.
After half a lifetime of this kind of frustration, Bush decided to straighten up. Nursing a hangover at a 40th-birthday weekend, he gave up Wild Turkey, cold turkey. With the help of Billy Graham, he put himself in the hands of a higher power and began going to church. He became obsessed with punctuality and developed a rigid routine. Thus did Prince Hal molt into an evangelical King Henry. And it worked! Putting together a deal to buy the Texas Rangers, the ne'er-do-well finally tasted success. With success, he grew closer to his father, taking on the role of family avenger. Thisculminated in his 1994 challenge to Texas Gov. Ann Richards, who had twitted dad at the 1988 Democratic convention.
Curiously, this late arrival at adulthood did not involve Bush becoming in any way thoughtful. Having chosen stupidity as rebellion, he stuck with it out of conformity. The promise-keeper, reformed-alkie path he chose not only drastically curtailed personal choices he no longer wanted, it also supplied an all-encompassing order, offered guidance on policy, and prevented the need for much actual information. Bush's old answer to hard questions was, "I don't know and, who cares." His new answer was, "Wait a second while I check with Jesus."
A remaining bit of poignancy was his unresolved struggle with his father. "All I ask," he implored a reporter while running for governor in 1994, "is that for once you guys stop seeing me as the son of George Bush." In his campaigns, W. has kept his dad offstage. (In an exceptional appearance on the eve of the 2000 New Hampshire primary, 41 came onstage and called his son "this boy.") While some describe the second Bush presidency as a restoration, it is in at least equal measure a repudiation. The son's harder-edged conservatism explicitly rejects the old man's approach to such issues as abortion, taxes, and relations with Israel.
This Oedipally induced ignorance expresses itself most dangerously in Bush's handling of the war in Iraq. Dubya polished off his old man's greatest enemy, Saddam, but only by lampooning 41's accomplishment of coalition-building in the first Gulf War. Bush led the country to war on false pretenses and neglected to plan the occupation that would inevitably follow. A more knowledgeable and engaged president might have questioned the quality of the evidence about Iraq's supposed weapons programs. One who preferred to be intelligent might have asked about the possibility of an unfriendly reception. Instead, Bush rolled the dice. His budget-busting tax cuts exemplify a similar phenomenon, driven by an alternate set of ideologues.
As the president says, we misunderestimate him. He was not born stupid. He chose stupidity. Bush may look like a well-meaning dolt. On consideration, he's something far more dangerous: a dedicated fool. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...
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| ... SIGN PETITION TO IMPEACH BUSH & CHENEY ... |
| 05.12.04 (1:12 pm) [edit] |
[b]PETITION TO IMPEACH PRESIDENT BUSH AND VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY[/b]
We, the undersigned, believe George W. Bush and Richard Cheney should be impeached for the following high crimes and misdemeanors, grounds that the Constitution sets forth for the removal of public officials:
The President and Vice President deceived citizens and Congress in the most serious act that a government can undertake - leading its people to war. The principal reasons they gave have been fraudulent, namely:
... That there was an imminent threat of a secret attack by Iraq which would use weapons of mass destruction against the US and its allies.
... That Saddam Hussein was cooperating with the al Qaida terrorists, with the implication that he was involved in the attacks of those terrorists on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001.
Even if the President was misinformed by his intelligence agencies, he did not take due diligence in oversight of their information in making the decision to go to war, for which he is accountable.
The President and Vice President undertook aggressive war under cover of a pre-emptive first strike, contrary to the United Nations Charter to which the US subscribes by treaty. Therefore they violated US law.
They also violated US law and the US Constitution in July 2002 by taking $700 million from funds Congress appropriated for the war in Afghanistan, and secretly diverting them to prepare for an unauthorized war in Iraq http://www.cbsnews.com/storie... .
In both the aggressive wars against Iraq and Afghanistan thousands of civilians were killed and wounded in violation of the Geneva Convention requiring protection of civilians in combat areas.
The President and Vice President have violated the Constitution's Fourth and Fifth Amendments' protection of civil rights of American citizens and legal residents. Over twelve hundred individuals have been detained, in many cases incommunicado, without charge, without benefit of legal counsel and the right to client confidentiality.
The President and Vice President have obstructed justice by restricting the investigation of the attacks of September 11, 2001. They have also refused to provide information and records necessary and appropriate for the constitutional right of congressional oversight of executive functions.
[b]Sign the petition, click here[/b] http://democrats.com/elandsli... .
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| With Immoral U.S. Leadership, is it so Shocking to find Torturers in the Ranks? |
| 05.12.04 (1:09 pm) [edit] |
[b]When the vile reports arose regarding the horrific torture and abuse by U.S. Soldiers of Iraqi prisoners, I was shocked and sickened, but [i]not[/i] surprised ... [/b]Because leaders [i]set the tone, atmosphere and direction [/i]of their administrations, and when an administration like the corrupt Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta[/i] are money-grubbing liars, crooks, war profiteers, felons, criminals, traitors, etc.-- neo-con thugs & neo-fascist goons who[i] tread upon [/i]the U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights; treat "We the People" with [i]contempt and disdain[/i]; and, [i]punish and destroy [/i]all dissenters and protestors against their[i] heinous Crimes Against Humanity[/i]; it is hardly surprising that their underlings simply [i]emulate[/i] them [i]for better or for worse [/i]... In the case of the corrupt Bush regime, they [i]bring out the worst [/i]in everyone who refuses to see them for what they are:[i] life's losers and war criminals [/i]bringing death, chaos and misery down upon our heads ...
Refer to "[i][b]When We're the Evildoers in Iraq[/b][/i]" by [i]Robert Scheer[/i], Los Angeles Times on http://www.commondreams.org/v... :
[i][b]With Immoral U.S. Leadership, is it so Shocking to find Torturers in the Ranks?[/b][/i]
President Bush is again refusing to take responsibility for any of the horrors happening on his watch. This time it is the abuse of Iraqi prisoners carried out by low-ranking military police working under the direct guidance of military intelligence officers and shadowy civilian mercenaries. Our president launched this war with the promise to the Iraqi people of "no more torture chambers and rape rooms. The tyrant will soon be gone." What went wrong?
The president has called the now-exposed pattern of violence an isolated crime performed by "a few people." Yet the Pentagon's own investigation of the incident shows that not only was the entire Abu Ghraib prison out of control, it was the MPs' immediate military superiors who "directly or indirectly" authorized "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses" of the prisoners as a way to break them in advance of formal interrogations.
"Military intelligence interrogators and other U.S. government agency interrogators actively requested that MP guards set physical and mental conditions for favorable interrogation of witnesses," says the report. The report, completed in March and kept secret until it was revealed on the New Yorker website Friday, also stated that a civilian contractor employed by a Virginia company called CACI "clearly knew his instructions" to the MPs called for physical abuse.
Furthermore, in a statement released Friday, Amnesty International reported that in its extensive investigations into human rights in post-invasion Iraq, it "has received frequent reports of torture or other ill treatment by coalition forces during the past year," including during interrogations, and that "virtually none of the allegations of torture or ill treatment has been adequately investigated by the authorities."
Recall that a key excuse for the U.S. invasion was to ensure the safety of Iraqi scientists and others in the know so that they might feel free to reveal the location of weapons of mass destruction or evidence of Saddam Hussein's potential ties to Al Qaeda. Shockingly, some of those scientists are now in coalition prisons, even though the weapons clearly don't exist.
In this context, of course, it makes sense that U.S. interrogators would feel enormous pressure to use any means necessary to verify the absurd claims made so aggressively by the president and his Cabinet before the war. Far from the jurisdiction of the U.S. legal system, they apparently felt quite free to approve techniques clearly banned by war crimes statutes.
Yet, astonishingly, weeks after the Pentagon's own damning internal report on the torture at Abu Ghraib, and several days after CBS' "60 Minutes II" broke open the story worldwide by showing those horrific photos, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld still had not been briefed on the report, a spokesman said Sunday. Similarly, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, admitted Sunday that he hadn't yet bothered to read the 53-page report filed by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, even though he had successfully requested that CBS delay its "inflammatory" broadcast. This shows far more concern for public relations than for finding out the truth.
How could it be that the top officials responsible for the military were not themselves interested in keeping abreast of the investigation — even after the story had exploded into a global scandal?
After all, an ambitious promise to bring democracy and the rule of law to Iraq became the ex post facto rationale for the invasion, once it became clear that the earlier claims of weapons of mass destruction and Hussein ties to Al Qaeda were a fraud.
So it should have been a clear and high priority to make certain that Iraqi prisoners incarcerated in Hussein's most infamous prison did not receive the same brand of "justice" the dictator had been doling out for decades. That they did is now a deep and dirty stain on the reputation of this nation.
Yes, it's great that we are still worlds away from being Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia or Hussein's Iraq.
We are a free society in which, it is hoped, truth eventually comes out, and thanks to what seems to be one brave whistle-blowing soldier and a responsible officer to whom he reported the torture, these crimes have come to light. Those are the acts of true heroes, and we should be proud of them.
Yet, before we go overboard in celebrating our virtues, let's admit that Americans too can be "evildoers," especially when we embrace, as the president consistently has done, the terribly dangerous idea that the ends justify the means.
The ultimate cost of a foreign policy based on blatant lies, and that equates military might with what is right, is that the brute in all of us will not inevitably lie dormant.
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| Traitor Bush the Short-Sighted Buffoon-boy Giving Wilderness to Oil & Gas Fat Cats |
| 05.12.04 (10:19 am) [edit] |
[b]The corrupt short-sighted traitor-[i]cum[/i]-buffoo n-boy Bush has the worst environmental track-record of any so-called president in over 30 years http://www.motherjones.com/ne... ... [/b]The [i]Slut[/i] Bushy-boy is literally permitting corporations (his Corporate-Take-All [i]Pimps[/i]) to[i] pollute and poison the natural world around us,[/i]and is[i] immorally handing over the wilderness lands of America [/i]to his ugly and vile gluttonous fat cats & top dogs in the oil & gas industries who funnel big campaign bucks (bribes) his way ... War Criminal Bushy-boy cares[i] nothing [/i]about "We the People" and/or Future Generations of Americans so long as he and his rapacious thieves-[i]cum[/i]-swindl ers-[i]cum[/i]-embezzlers -[i]cum[/i]-looters can[i] steal [/i]our national treasures and exploit-[i]n[/i]-destroy nature in order to [i]gorge like pigs-at-the-trough[/i] on vast riches ... Contact Congress http://www.congress.org and demand that they[i] put a stop [/i]to Bush's criminal activities [i]now[/i] ...
[u][b]Bush Giving Away Wilderness to Oil and Gas Industry[/b][/u]
The White House's rush to lease pristine public lands across the Rocky Mountains to the oil and gas industry is showing signs of being little more than a land grab, designed to prevent protection of hundreds of thousands of acres under the Wilderness Act.
A recent study of oil and gas drilling activity by The Wilderness Society found that the gas industry is stockpiling leases and drilling permits on 34 million acres of public lands in the Rockies, but is only producing oil or gas on 32 percent of that land. Over the past 10 years, the industry has received permission from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to drill 25,000 new wells, but has only drilled 19,000. Based on the record pace of drilling over the last few years, it would take several years to finish drilling the wells that have already been approved by the BLM.
While some industry representatives and Republican leaders accuse environmental groups of allegedly causing a slowdown in gas drilling activity, drilling is currently at its physical limit: there aren't enough drilling rigs in the Rockies to satisfy the abundant drilling prospects already made available to the gas industry. Further, some experts suspect that the gas industry is sitting on all that land in order to keep gas prices high -- many firms in the Rockies are posting record profits while families and businesses struggle to pay their energy bills.
"If sensitive areas on public lands were the only places left to drill, the BLM's actions might be explainable," the Denver Post said in a recent editorial. "But they're not. Energy companies have plenty of promising places to drill without invading proposed wildernesses or creating disturbances near parks and monuments."[1]
Meanwhile, the industry continues to push BLM to lease more land in even more remote areas -- many of which had already been nominated in Congress for wilderness protection.
One recent such proposal in Colorado drew the ire of U.S. Rep Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat who has legislation pending to protect nearly 19,000 acres of critical habitat and watersheds in her state's high country. Next month the BLM plans to offer all 19,000 acres for lease to the oil and gas industry.
"I realize that it is not a mistake that these particular areas are picked out for drilling, and all of us intend to protect them," DeGette told the Rocky Mountain News.[2] "(The) vast majority of federal land in Colorado already is open for drilling," she added. "Only a small amount is eligible for protection as wilderness, and the Bush administration should respect that."
The reasons behind Bush's push to give away public lands may be less obvious than they appear. The President's industrial backers and business partners are consistent opponents of federally-designated wilderness, because it precludes industrial activity like road building, timber cutting and oil and gas drilling.
But oil and gas industry executives, working from inside the administration, may have a more pressing reason to give away public lands to their once and future employers.
The energy industry, rocked by the Enron scandal and its own dubious business decisions, is saddled with massive amounts of debt. Large gas companies like El Paso have been forced to sell off major assets in order to keep Wall Street off their backs.
But questionable accounting practices common in the industry encourage gas firms to book potential future profits as a way to improve their earnings outlook. By stockpiling leases and drilling permits, the gas industry could be sacrificing America's wilderness heritage in order to pay off its junk debt.
[b]SOURCES:[/b] - http://www.bushgreenwatch.org...
[1] "Public Lands Under Attack," Denver Post, Apr. 11, 2004.
[2] "Foes seek protection for land Bush plan targets for
drilling," Rocky Mountain News, Apr. 30, 2004.
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| Letter to Congress: Rumsfeld Must Be Fired - Other Neo-Con Arm-Chair Chicken-Hawks Should Go Too!!! |
| 05.12.04 (10:04 am) [edit] |
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[b]"We the People" must take action [i]now[/i] ... WinstonSmith sent the following letter to represen | |
