Bush rendered in photos of some those who have died in his war (from TruthOut ) <---- Click the collage for larger image http://icasualties.org/oif/ details the Iraq war cauualities.

"Governor Bush and I are also absolutely determined that [we] will restore a tone of civility and decency to the debate in Washington." - Dick Cheney, 8/4/00   ....     “Go Fuck Yourself''  - Dick Cheney to US Senator Patrick Leahy, 6/23/04

Even Ripublican stalwart Sen. Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has conceded that, had Congress known before the vote for war what his committee has now discovered, "I doubt if the votes would have been there."

Members of the press "don't represent the public any more than other people do. I don't believe you have a check-and-balance function."  - Karl Rove in an interview with New Yorker writer Ken Auletta.

Corporate profits are at their highest portion of GDP since the 1920s.

US chief executives' pay up more than 20% in 2003.  (article)   How much, if any, raise did you get in 2003?

"In 1960, the gap in terms of wealth between the top 20% and the bottom 20% was 30 fold. Four decades later it is more than 75 fold"- from a great Bill Moyer's speech

Shrub has been the first president since Hoover to see a net loss of jobs (over 1 million) during his term.

"I was wounded in World War II and have a Purple Heart to show for it.   If President Bush were here right now I would throw that medal in his face."-  A WWII veteran at a Howard Zinn speech.

"I feel deceived personally. I don't trust anything Rumsfeld says, and I think Wolfowitz is even dirtier." -  Staff Sgt. A.J. Dean

"The administration went from Shock and Awe to Sneak and Shirk"-  Maureen Dowd on Bremmer's hastly exit from Iraq

Jack Ryan, a Illinois ripublican candidate for the US Senate, opposes gay marriage because it's a threat to marriage, was forced to drop his campaign for the Senate after divorce papers revealed he had forced his wife to go to sex clubs with him.

"Our active military  respond better to Republicans" because of  "the tremendous support that President Bush has  provided for our military and our veterans." -  Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi; on the same day the regime announced plans for massive cuts in veterans' health care for 2006.

"My Administration firmly believes in controlling the deficit and reducing it."-  Shrub, 2/03 (article)
"I am a deficit hawk. So is the president."- Cheney, 9/03 (interview)
This years federal deficit will exceed $420 billion- a record.  (article)  And that's not counting the additional $$$ for the Iraq fiasco and the $1 TRILLION in new tax cuts demanded by the regime.

In trying to punish Castro, Bush tightens aid to Cubans.  Ripublican Rep. Diaz-Balart, who support Shrub's punishment of ordinary Cubans, said "We recognize that many common Cubans will be severely affected, and especially the children, the elderly and the ill,"  (article)

Scheduled Senate hearings into the safety of anti-depressant medicine were canceled.   Coincidentially, it was revealed the Ripublican chairman is being considered for mega-buck job representing the pharmaceutical industry.   (Bill Moyers article)

"The two groups of holy warriors - Islamic and Christian - reinforce each other at every turn, holding the rest of the world hostage. Except in their often brilliant use of political tactics, neither lives by reason. Both threaten those of us who try."  (Steve Weissman's essay "Jesus, Jihadis, and the Red-State Blues")

Bush regime has effectively forgotten about Afghanistan.  It's so bad there that Doctors Without Borders has pulled out after 5 of its aid workers were killed.  They been there 24 years- through both the Russians and the Taliban.  Now, with the regime's puppet running the country, it's too dangerous.   Oxfam, which had 10 international and 100 local staff in Afghanistan, pulled out of Iraq months ago because of deteriorating security   (article)

Bush's record of service (more like non-service) in the Texas Air Guard are required to be kept in Texas but Shrub has refused to authorize their release.  (article)

Shrub names business exec. Tony Raindondo as manufacturing czar.  He certianly has the experience- he axed employees at his corporation and shipped work to China.  (article)

Copyright infringment is now a terrorist act.  The financial records of the creator of a fan website for the TV show Stargate SG-1 were obtained in a copyright infringment investigation via the Patriot Act.  (article)

On a campaign swing through the heartland Bush said repeatly "results matter".  Yeah- like almost 1,000 dead (and counting) from his adventure in Iraq, the rich getting richer at the expense of everyone else, a deficit so huge our grandchildren will be paying it off, Asscroft, ad nauseum....

A study of the two weeks around Colin Powell giving his address at the U.N. for war looked at the four major nightly news casts ABC, CBS, and NBC and the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer. Of the 393 interviews done around war, only three were with anti-war representatives.  (Amy Goodman interview with Ted Koppel).

NASCAR champion Dale Earnhardt Jr."  "Well, I took my crew to go see Fahrenheit 9/11.  I think all of America should see this movie."

So, we arrest kids for smoking marijuana, force them into treatment and then use those treatment admissions as "proof" that marijuana is addictive. Somewhere, George Orwell is smiling.    (from a Bruce Mirken article)

Airline executives have underfunded employee pension plans (while also paying themselves megabucks).  Bush and the ripublican Congress aided this by loosening the funding rules in April.   Much like Reagan's S&L scandal, us taxpayers will have to bail out the pension plans.  (article)

Politicians will stretch the truth. They'll exaggerate their accomplishments, paper over their gaffes. Spin has long been the lingua franca of the political realm. But George W. Bush and his administration have taken "normal" mendacity to a startling new level far beyond lies of convenience. On top of the usual massaging of public perception, they traffic in big lies, indulge in any number of symptomatic small lies, and, ultimately, have come to  embody dishonesty itself. They are a lie. And people, finally, have started catching on.-   Ron Reagan, Esquire article

Perspective is a ghost in American journalism. History is forgotten as soon as it happens. You would think that given the presidential record of duplicity - Bill Clinton on Monica, Ronald Reagan on Iran contra, Richard Nixon on Watergate, Lyndon Johnson on the Gulf of Tonkin, John Kennedy on the missile gap - the journalists might catch on one day.   Not in America.-     Laurence Martin essay.

"I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war. I will have a Vice President who will not conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite our environmental laws. I will have a Secretary of Defense who will listen to the best advice of our military leaders. And I will appoint an Attorney General who actually upholds the Constitution of the United States."   John Kerry's nomination acceptance speech.

Bush has nominated William Myers for a Circuit Court of Appeals vacancy.  This idiot  has never participated in a single jury trial, hasn't been a judge at any  level, and resigned as a top Interior Dept. lawyer amid an investigation of his giving illegal favors to a politically connected Wyoming rancher.  Worse yet, Myers has argued in court that the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act are unconstitutional, and that there is no constitutional basis for the U.S. government to protect wetlands. He has compared management of the public's federal lands to "the tyrannical actions of King George in levying taxes" on the American colonies.  Just Bush's sort of guy!

Robert Fisk reports from Iraq: This month's death toll of Iraqis in Baghdad alone has now reached 700 - the worst month since the invasion ended.

In October 2001, he was dead-set against the need for a Department of Homeland Security.   Seven months later, he thought it was a great idea.

In May 2002, he opposed the creation of the 9/11 Commission.   Four months later, he supported it.  Now he says his regime "will move on all fronts very aggressively in the coming days and weeks" on the Commission's recommendations.  Stay tuned for a flip-flop on that also...

During the 2000 campaign, he said that gay marriage was a states' rights issue: "The states can do what they want to do."  Now he's called for a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

During the 2000 campaign, he said he would work to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.   Yet, only 2 months after he was installed by the Supreme Court, he withdrew American support from the Kyoto Treaty to regulate carbon dioxide.  (1, 2)

• A 7/5/04 Boston Globe article on the Asscroft move.
• A classified (by Asscroft) Justice Department investigation has concluded she was dismissed in part because she accused the bureau of ineptitude, and it found that the F.B.I. did not aggressively investigate her claims of espionage against a co-worker.  Investigators confirmed some of Ms.Edmonds's allegations to be true, but could not corroborate others because of a lack of evidence.  Indeed- because her allegations were not adequately investigated by the FBI.  None of her accusations were disproved. (7/29/04 NY Times article or here)
• The 5/21/04 artilce by Sibel Edmonds, "Gagging Congress"
• Background info from a post on the Memoryhole (includes press releases from the whistleblower and her attorneys,  a letter from Senators Leahy and Grassley to Ashcroft (since declared "state secret" info by Asscroft),  and the text of her civil suit.  It's also posted locally.
• A Disinfopedia page on Edmonds
• Her 7/13/03 interview on CBS's 60 Minutes

In the months after the tragic attacks of 9/11, President Bush told the American people that he had "no ambition whatsoever to use [the War on Terror] as a political issue." (source)   But according to a new report, the Bush Administration is now demanding that international allies coordinate the arrest of al Qaeda terrorists to coincide with key U.S. political events, so as to maximize political benefits for the President.  Again, Bush has lied...   According to the New Republic article "Pakistan for Bush. July Surprise?",  top Pakistani intelligence officials have confirmed that the Bush Administration is demanding the Pakistani government find as many "high value" terrorist targets specifically before Americans go to the polls in November.  Even more troubling, Pakistani sources admit White House aides told the Pakistani Director of Intelligence that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any high value terrorist target] were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July" - the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

I think an orchestrated "surprise" is likely in the offing.  If not production of bin Lauden (or, more likely, someone that looks like him), then a "wag the dog" diversion.  William Lind reports that:

...my informal intelligence network gave me an interesting report: Iran was beginning to mass troops on the Iran-Iraq border.  Did this portend overt Iranian intervention in Iraq?   I said I didn't think so.   Events in Iraq are not unfavorable to Iran, and the risks of direct intervention would be great.  However, there is a potential situation that could lead to Iranian intervention: if it were in response to an American-Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.   Such an attack may very well be on the agenda as the "October Surprise," the distraction George Bush desperately needs if the debacle in Iraq is not to lead to his defeat in November.

Then there's this from a William Rivers Pitt 7/12/04 article :

American citizens, hypnotized by a media that knows war and fear keeps people glued to the TV, and therefore buttresses revenue by way of commercials, are far easier to incite into a lemming-like charge off the nearest cliff.  Should there be another attack near the election, Americans will be bombarded with the refrain, "Do you want the terrorists to decide the election?" The implication will, of course, be that a vote against Bush is a vote for Osama. If the timing of such an attack falls close to November, a state of emergency declaration could well put off the election entirely. The chairman of a new federal voting commission appointed by Bush, DeForest Soaries, is already in the process of developing scenarios for such an occurrence.

In his rapid-fire delivery, the onetime Democratic presidential front-runner rattled off all the ways he saw Nader as a hypocrite:  Nearly half the signatures Nader gathered in a failed attempt to get on the Arizona ballot were from Republicans.  A significant amount of his campaign kitty comes from Bush-Cheney donors.  And, said Dean, "you accepted the support of a right-wing, fanatic Republican group that is antigay in order to help you get on the ballot in Oregon" - a reference to the Oregon Family Council, which produces a "Christian Voter Guide" and campaigns against gay marriage....  Unable to offer cogent responses to Dean's charges, Nader frantically roams the countryside demanding his relevance.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is filing FEC charges Nader's campaign has benefited from illegal assistance provided by tax-exempt right-wing Oregon organizations -- at the behest of the Bush-Cheney campaign.  The organizations have acknowledged that they are trying to help Nadar get on the Oregon ballot and describe Nader as nothing more than a convenient instrument to drain support from Kerry in a battleground state.   (article)

In further election news...  A dozen Democratic House members sent a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan asking for U.N. monitors for the Nov. elections.  The letter states, "We are deeply concerned that the right of U.S. citizens to vote in free and fair elections is again in jeopardy,''  In the debate on an admendment to prohibit UN election monitors, Rep. Corrine Brown stated, "I come from Florida, where you and others participated in what I call the United States coup d'etat. We need to make sure that it does not happen again. Over and over again, after the election, when you stole the election, you came back here and said, 'Get over it.' ''   (More)

When the feds swoop down and cuff racketeers, they also load the vans with all the perp's ill-gotten gains: stacks of cash, BMWs, whatever. Their associates have to cough up the goodies too: lady friends must give up their diamond rocks.   Under the racketeering law, RICO, even before a verdict, anything bought with the proceeds of the crime goes into the public treasury.   But there seems to be special treatment afforded those who loaded up on the 'bennies' of Ken Lay's crimes. If the G-men don't know where the tainted loot is cached, try this address: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Ask for George or Dick.  Ken Lay and his Enron team are the Number One political career donors to George W. Bush. Mr. Lay and his Mrs.,  with no money to pay back bilked creditors, still managed to personally put up $100,000 for George's inaugural Ball plus $793,110 for personal donations to Republicans. Lay's Enron team dropped $4.2 million into the party that let Enron party.      OK now, Mr. President, give it back - the millions stuffed in the pockets of the Republican campaign kitty stolen from his Enron retirees.

And what else did Ken Lay buy with the money stolen from California electricity customers? Answer: the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Just before George Bush moved to Washington, Kenny-Boy handed his hand-picked president-to-be the name of the man Ken wanted as Chairman of the commission charged with investigating Enron's thievery. In a heartbeat, George Bush appointed Ken's boy, Pat Wood.     Think about that: the criminal gets to pick the police chief.

And while we're gathering up the ill-gotten loot, let's stop by Brother Jeb's. The Governor of Florida picked up a cool $2 million from a Houston fundraiser at the home of Enron's former president long AFTER the company went bankrupt.

On the trial of Saddam:  "Salem Chalabi, the brother of convicted fraudster Ahmad and the man entrusted by the Americans with the tribunal, told the Iraqi press two weeks ago that all media would be excluded from future court hearings. And I can see why. Because if Saddam does a Milosevic, he'll want to talk about the real intelligence and military connections of his regime - which were primarily with the United States. "

The Labor Department has refused to use tools at its disposal to identify violations of equal pay laws.  Labor repealed regulations that allowed paid family leave to be made available through state unemployment funds. Now it's unpaid leave only.   Labor has proposed new regulations that deprive millions of workers of the right to overtime pay - and even gives tips to employers on how to avoid paying overtime when the law still requires it.   The Department of Justice has weakened the enforcement of laws against job discrimination and abandoned pending sex discrimination cases.

Among the Bush budget cuts affecting the lives of millions of women are cuts in Head Start and other early childhood education programs, after-school programs, K-12 education, housing subsidies, child care, career education, services for victims of domestic violence, the nutrition program for women, infants and children (WIC) and Pell grants to help pay for college.

Young male prisoners were filmed being sodomized by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, according to the journalist who first revealed the abuses there.  Seymour Hersh, who reported on the torture of the prisoners in New Yorker magazine in May, told an audience in San Francisco that "it's worse". But he added that he would reveal the extent of the abuses: "I'm not done reporting on all this," he told a meeting of the American Civil Liberties Union.   He said: "The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling, and the worst part is the soundtrack, of the boys shrieking. And this is your government at war."  He accused the US administration, and all but accused President George Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney of complicity in covering up what he called "war crimes".

Rumsfeld stated publicly last month that, at Tenet's request, he ordered that several prisoners in Iraq not be registered with the International Red Cross, as required by the Geneva Conventions.   As an official Army report put it, this was "contrary to Army doctrine and in violation of international law." ....

Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former Iraq theater commander, and Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the former commander at Guantánamo who now supervises Iraqi prisons, testified under oath to the Armed Services Committee in May that they had nothing to do with a set of "rules of engagement" posted at the Abu Ghraib prison last year.   But other testimony and documents show that most or all of those interrogation techniques were listed in a policy issued by Gen. Sanchez's office, following the recommendations of Gen. Miller.   Gen. Miller's testimony is contradicted by sworn statements given to an Army investigative team in Iraq.

More on Prisioner Abuse
Gereral Janis L. Karpinski has said she was unaware of torture while she ran the infamous Abu Ghraib prison but a torturee has testified she witnessed his torture and even laughed. (source)  The testimony was in relation to a Alien Tort Claims Act suit against two defense dept. contractors involved in the torture.  (source)

Among the obvious truths that were documented but unarticulated were the  facts that the Bush administration did little on terrorism before 9/11, and that by invading Iraq the administration has left us less safe as a nation.....      What the commissioners did clearly state was that Iraq had no collaborative relationship with Al Qaeda and no hand in 9/11. They also disclosed that Iran provided support to Al Qaeda, including to some 9/11 hijackers. These two facts may cause many people to conclude that the Bush administration focused on the wrong country. They would be right to think that.

A Robert Scheer column on the report includes info showing Shrub asleeep at the helm and Rice (as usual) lying:

As early as May 2001, the FBI was receiving tips that Bin Laden supporters were planning attacks in the U.S., possibly including the hijacking of planes. On May 29, White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke wrote national security advisor Condoleezza Rice that "when these attacks [on Israeli or U.S. facilities] occur, as they likely will, we will wonder what more we could have done to stop them." At the end of June, the commission wrote, "the intelligence reporting consistently described the upcoming attacks as occurring on a calamitous level."   In early July, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft was told, "that preparations for multiple attacks [by Al Qaeda] were in late stages or already complete and that little additional warning could be expected."   By month's end, "the system was blinking red" and could not "get any worse," then-CIA Director George Tenet told the 9/11  commission.

It was at this point, of course, that George W. Bush began the longest presidential vacation in 32 years.   On the very first day of his visit to his Texas ranch, Aug. 6, Bush received the now-infamous two-page intelligence alert titled, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack in the United States." Yet instead of returning to the capital to mobilize an energetic defensive posture, he spent an additional 27 days away as the government languished in summer mode, in deep denial.
.....
In her public testimony to the commission, Rice argued that the Aug. 6 briefing concerned vague "historical information based on old reporting," adding that "there was no new threat information." When the commission forced the White House to release the document, however, this was exposed as a lie: The document included explicit FBI warnings of "suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York." Furthermore, this  briefing was only one of 40 on the threat of Bin Laden that the president received between Jan. 20 and Sept. 11, 2001.
.....
So, before 9/11, incompetence and sloth. And after? Much worse: a war without end on the wrong battlefield.

George Tenet directly contacted National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and her deputy Stephen Hadley in October 2002 to tell them the President should not say that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa because "the evidence was weak."   Nevertheless, just two months later, the President publicly declared "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from
Africa."

The CIA reported to the Administration that Iraq and al-Qaeda did not have "an established formal relationship."  In fact, the Iraqi government actively sought "to prevent Iraq youth from joining Al Qaeda."  Yet, Vice President Dick Cheney continues to tell the American people that Saddam Hussein had "an established relationship with al Qaeda."

Of course, the regime wouldn't furnish the commission with important and damaging info such as the one-page summary of prewar Iraq intelligence which was prepared for Shrub.

From a 7/31/04 NY Times article:

The Senate report says that a highly classified report prepared by the C.I.A. in September 2002 on "Iraqi Ties to Terrorism" described the claims that Iraq had provided "training in poisons and gases" to Qaeda members, but that it cautioned that the information had come from "sources of varying reliability."   By contrast, it noted that unclassified testimony to Congress in February 2003 from George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, had not included any caveats and thus "could have led the recipients of that testimony to interpret that the C.I.A. believed the training had definitely occurred."

Based on a record-breaking gross of $94 million through last weekend, theaters already have sold an estimated 12 million tickets to "Fahrenheit 9/11." A Gallup survey conducted July 8-11 said 8 percent of American adults had seen the film at that time, but that 18 percent still planned to see it at a theater and another 30 percent plan to see it on video.... More than a third of Republicans and nearly two-thirds of independents told Gallup they had seen or expected to see the film at theaters or on video.   The Gallup survey found that nearly half of the Republicans and independents who expect to see the film said they were likely to view it on video.    (It's to be released in video in the weeks before the Nov. elections)

Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey,  a senior government advisor on intelligence and national security issues, works for two private companies that do business in Iraq and is a partner in a company that invests in firms that provide security and anti-terrorism services.  In an interview he said he was not directly involved with the companies' Iraq-related ventures.  But as a vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm, he was a featured speaker in May 2003 at a conference co-sponsored by the company at which about 80 corporate executives and others paid up to $1,100 to hear about the economic outlook and business opportunities in Iraq.   Before the war, Woolsey was a founding member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, an organization set up in 2002 at the request of the White House to help build public backing for war in Iraq. He also wrote about a need for regime change and sat on the CIA advisory board and the Defense Policy Board, whose unpaid members have provided advice on Iraq and other matters to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

A CIA official who claims in a book that the West is losing the war on terror said in an interview Tuesday night that the war in Iraq was actually helping al-Qaida.  The 23-year veteran of the CIA, who also has spoken with the U.S. media, is releasing the book  "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror," anonymously.  "Iraq was a gift of epic proportions to Osama bin Laden and those who think like him," the man said during the interview on the British Broadcasting Corp. "Newsnight" show.   In the interview the official dismisses two arguments that have been made by the Bush administration: that bin Laden and al-Qaeda are "on the run" and that the Iraq invasion has made America safer.   Criticizing the intelligence information used about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction before the war, the CIA official said: "Currently, we're in a lose-lose situation in Iraq and Afghanistan. If we stay, we bleed. If we go, the problem festers even worse."

Asked how bin Laden views the war in Iraq specifically, Mike said bin Laden looks on it as proof of America's hostility toward Muslims; that America "is willing to attack any Muslim country that dares defy it; that it is willing to do almost anything to defend Israel. The war is certainly viewed as an action meant to assist the Israeli state. It is a godsend for those Muslims who believe as bin Laden does."

Even Rummy has doubts about the current regime's policy-  in Singapore on 6/6/04, he said "The troubling unknown is whether the extremistsare turning out newly trained terrorists faster than the United States can capture or kill them. It is quite clear to me that we do not have a coherent approach to this."

Ray McGovern (a CIA analyst for 27 years) posted a good summary in Counterpunch article.

The true goal of the Islamists is to take power in Muslim countries, and their problem until recently was that they could not win over enough local people to make their revolutions happen.  Getting the United States to march into the Muslim world in pursuit of terrorists was a potentially promising stratagem, since such an invasion would produce endless images of American soldiers killing and humiliating Muslims. That, in turn, might push enough people into the arms of the Islamists to get their long-stalled revolutions off the ground.

Former Ambassador Joe Wilson can sum up his opinion of President George W. Bush's post-Sept. 11 administration quite simply.  "Everything they have put into play since Sept. 11 has come up horse turds," Wilson said when he spoke Sunday at the Sopris Foundation State of the World Conference.  The crowd of more than 400 people at the annual conference clapped, cheered and laughed when they heard his opinion, but the events that justify it are sobering.   The ambassador said that by practicing "radical reactionary" politics to push their own agenda, the current  administration "has taken the party so far outside the parameters of political behavior they have ruined the reputation of the United States."

A number of trial balloons have been floated in recent days, from Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge specifically, about canceling or postponing the national election because of a terrorist attack.   DeForest B. Soaries Jr., the Bush-appointed chairman of the newly minted U.S. Election Assistance Commission, apparently got the ball rolling with Ridge by writing a letter to him.   In it, he bade Ridge ask Congress for the power to put off the November election in the event of an attack.

There are wild cards shuffled all through this deck. The simple fact, however, is that no national election has ever been cancelled in all of American history.  This is not a streak to be broken under any circumstances.   In the darkest hours of the Civil War, when the continued existence of the nation was gravely in doubt, Abraham Lincoln wrote, "We can not have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us."
.....
It is the rare person who praises Mr. Bush for his ability to craft the spoken word with eloquence. On November 8, 2001, however, less than two short months after the attacks of September 11, Bush spoke before the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta.   On that day, he said, "In the face of this great tragedy, Americans are refusing to give terrorists the power.   Our people have responded with courage and compassion, calm and reason, resolve and fierce determination.   We have refused to live in a state of panic or a state of denial. There is a difference between being alert and being intimidated, and this great nation will never be intimidated."

An ethics complaint, filed by Texas Representative Chris Bell states that DeLay laundered illegal corporate contributions for use in Texas elections- including contributions from Enron.   According to a 7/12/04 Washington Post article Enron lobbyists in Washington informed Ken Lay in a May '01 e-mail that Mr. DeLay was seeking $100,000 in additional donations to his political action committee, with the understanding that it would be partly spent on "the redistricting effort in Texas."   The Post says it has "at least a dozen" documents showing that Mr. DeLay and his associates directed money from corporate donors and lobbyists to an effort to win control of the Texas Legislature so the Republican Party could redraw the state's political districts.   A 100-year-old Texas law bars corporate financing of State Legislature campaigns.  Mr. DeLay has hired two criminal defense lawyers.

Of course, the regime chose the right guy for the job.  A 7/17/04 Sydney Morning Herald report says he personally executed suspects and concludes with this:   "It sounds like Saddam-Lite in the making; and in it all there's an odour of the Arab authoritarianism that the Bush men say they came to eradicate".

Another Herald report said, "... he shot each young man in the head as about a dozen Iraqi policemen  and four Americans from the Prime Minister's personal security team watched in stunned silence".  A witness reported that, "They were happy to die because they had already been beaten by the police for two to eight hours a day to make them talk."

It was the second Wednesday of September 2001. Terrorist attacks had grounded all commercial and private aviation throughout the entire United States for the first time in history. Former vice-president Al Gore was stranded in Austria because his flight to the United States was cancelled. Former president Bill Clinton was stuck in Australia. Major League Baseball games were postponed. American skies were nearly as empty as they had been when the Wright brothers first flew at Kitty Hawk. America was paralysed by terror, and for 48 hours, virtually no one could fly.

No one, that is, except for the Saudis. [In Washington] Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, was orchestrating the exodus of more than 140 Saudis scattered throughout the country. They included members of two families: One was the royal House of Saud, the family that ruled the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and which, thanks to the country's vast oil reserves, was without question the richest family in the world. The other family was the Sauds' close friends and allies, the Bin Ladens, who in addition to owning a multibillion-dollar construction conglomerate had spawned the notorious terrorist Osama bin Laden.

Speaking at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan in Tokyo, City University of New York prof. Yoshihiro Tsurumi said, "I always remember two groups of students. One is the really good students, not only intelligent, but with leadership qualities, courage. The other is the total opposite, unfortunately to which George belonged."
....
He recalled a conversation with Bush when he met him soon after he arrived at Harvard.  "I asked him, 'What have you been doing? How about Vietnam?' and he said, 'Well, I've been in the National Guard in Texas.' I said, 'How did you get that? There's a 10-year waiting list.' And he said, 'Well, my dad has connections.' "

"In my class, he (Bush) declared that 'people are poor because they are lazy.' He was opposed to labor unions, social security, environmental protection, Medicare and public schools. To him, Franklin D Roosevelt's New Deal was 'socialism,"' Tsurumi said.

On the same day that President Bush announced plans to investigate Iran for ties to terrorism,[1] Halliburton acknowledged that "a U.S. grand jury issued a subpoena to the company seeking information about its Cayman Islands unit's work in Iran,[2] where it is illegal for U.S. companies to operate." Earlier this year, CBS News reported that Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO of the company "during which time Halliburton Products and Services set up shop in Iran."[3] In fact, Cheney was so adamant about doing business with terrorist nations like Iran, he even went abroad to publicly attack American foreign policy after meeting with top officials from a foreign government.

Despite economic sanctions on Iran because of its ties to terrorists, Cheney openly bragged about Halliburton's business dealings there during the 2000 campaign.[4]   Cheney argued that it was ethical for Halliburton to use "independent foreign subsidiaries" that exist in tax shelter countries like the Cayman Islands to skirt U.S. law. He also went abroad to attack American policy: According to the Malaysian News Agency, Cheney publicly attacked U.S. sanctions on terrorist countries after a meeting with top Malaysian government officials in Kuala Lampur.

During the 2000 campaign, Cheney also claimed that, as Halliburton CEO, "I had a firm policy that we wouldn't do anything in Iraq,[6] even arrangements that were supposedly legal."   Yet, earlier this year, The New Yorker [7] reported "during Cheney's tenure at Halliburton the company did business" in Iraq as well. The Washington Post reported [8] that despite strict economic sanctions, Halliburton did up to $73 million in business with Iraq while Cheney was heading the company.

Here's $2,340,000 why:

The Southern Company  has given almost a half million dollars to Republicans congressional candidates since 2000; has given more than $1.1 million in soft money to the Republican Party; and whose executives and political action committee have given more than $79,000 directly to the Bush-Cheney campaign.

American Electric Power Company, a company that has given more than $550,000 to Republican congressional candidates since 2000 and whose executives and political action committee have given $24,000 to the Bush-Cheney campaign.

Cinergy Corporation, a company that has given almost $200,000 to Republican congressional candidates since 2000; has given more than $360,000 in soft money to the Republican Party; and whose executives and political action committee have given more than $27,000 to the Bush-Cheney campaign.

Former KBR logistics specialist Marie de Young said  she decided to go before the committee because she believed the company was letting down soldiers and not for personal gain.   "Every dollar that is squandered because of waste, fraud, or abuse, is a dollar we do not have for critical  equipment and supplies for our troops," said de Young.   De Young's said KBR staff were housed in five-star hotels while troops stayed in dusty tents and that sub-contractors overcharged for laundry and supplies.  Moreover, she said the company lacked proper documentation when it handed out sub-contracts, which made it difficult to manage these deals.

Former KBR truck drivers complained that $85,000 trucks were abandoned because there were no spare tires while others were torched and some cargo looted at night.

Democratic lawmaker Rep. Henry Waxman of California, an ardent critic of Halliburton's work, said government audits showed the company's two major contracts in Iraq were plagued by mismanagement and inflated billings.  He reiterated earlier accusations that he believed Halliburton got work in Iraq because of its political connections, which the Republicans denied.  "The decision to give Halliburton the sole source Iraq work was made by a political appointee, not career procurement officials.  And the Vice President's chief of staff received an extensive briefing," Waxman said.

A GAO report lists significant problems in almost every area of Haliburton operations in Iraq, including ineffective planning, inadequate cost control, insufficient training, and a
pattern of recurring problems with controlling costs, meeting schedules, documenting purchases, and overseeing subcontractors.

An 7/22/04 Independent UK article reports that there are now 5 probes of Haliburton's bribery, kickbacks and overcharging.

Asscroft told the 9/11 Commission that 1995 guidlines issued by Clinton's deputy Attorney General Gorelick were "the single greatest structural cause for the September 11 problem."   The Commisions report states that his testimony  did not "fairly or accurately reflect the significance of the 1995 documents and their relevance to the 2001 discussions"  and, "The Gorelick memorandum applied to two particular criminal cases, neither of which was involved in the summer 2001 information-sharing discussions."  In addition, Ashcroft failed to mention that guidelines issued by his own deputy Attorney General, Larry Thompson, were more restrictive because they affirmed the Gorelick memo and added additional requirements.

The website refusingtokill.net features both parents and soldiers from around the world speaking up against war.

The A.F.L.-C.I.O. has an advocacy group "Working America" which is encourging non-union citizens to send President Bush letters and e-mail messages opposing changes in overtime rules and urging an end to tax breaks that encourage companies to send jobs overseas.

The Service Employees International Union's Purple Ocean group is encourging members to join the union's campaigns for universal health insurance and for adequate staffing levels at hospitals.

Strom Thurmond's daughter from his sex with a black maid has applied for membership in the United Daughters of the Confederacy. (source)

Documentaries I want to see:

"Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism"   It features interviews with former Fox employees, leaked policy memos written by Fox executives and extensive footage from Fox News  (Amazon-used and new)

"Uncovered- The Whole Truth About the Iraq War"  A critique of the regime's hype for invading Iraq which features interviews with former intelligence analysts, weapons inspectors and Foreign Service officers   (Amazon)

'Unprecedented,'' a 2002 documentary about how the Bush campaign prevailed in that contest.  (Amazon- used )

"Strong at the Broken Places" by former US Senator Max Cleland.  It focuses on the human cost of the war in Iraq as expressed in the words and faces of the soldiers themselves and their families.

Operation Truth will educate the American public about the truth of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from the perspective of the soldiers who have experienced them first-hand.  We will provide returning veterans with national, regional, and local podiums from which they will expose the preventable hardships that they endured as a result of failures at the top levels of leadership.  We intend to publicize how poorly-planned policies and approaches have manifested themselves as problems on the front lines and back at home.

Paul Rieckhoff fought with the division and has since left the Army. This week, he is launching Operation Truth, a nonpartisan group dedicated to telling the public about the war in Iraq from the perspective of those who fought there.

"People can deal with it if it's honest and up-front," he says about the deployments. "But they've broken their word so many times it gets frustrating. Everyone says they love George W. Bush, but when you get over there and see your buddies blown up and then think: 'What the hell are we doing over there?' You start to think: 'Who do I hold responsible?'

"My overall encapsulation is that the public will be overwhelmingly surprised at how many people coming back from Iraq will not vote for George W. Bush."

The International Committee of the Red Cross said yesterday it suspects the United States is secretly holding detainees in prisons around the world, since alleged terrorists mentioned by the FBI have not turned up in known detention centers and Washington has failed to provide a complete list of the people it is holding. Human Rights Watch made similar allegations last month, but there has been little media coverage or follow-up about what is, if nothing else, an illegal and dangerous human rights situation. An ICRC spokeswoman said that a January request for information has gone unanswered.

Under military order No 1, issued by President Bush in November 2001, the president gave himself the right, in defiance of national and international law, to detain indefinitely any non-US citizen anywhere in the world. Many ended up in Guantánamo where at least some of their names were discovered. Others simply vanished. They became in the US euphemism, "ghost prisoners", an unrecorded host held in secret, their detention denied, hidden from the Red Cross, legal or family access barred, their fate in the hands of unaccountable and unnamed US personnel.   When disappearance became state practice across Latin America in the 70s it aroused revulsion in democratic countries where it is a fundamental tenet of legitimate government that no state actor may detain - or kill - another human being without having to answer to the law. Not only has President Bush discarded that principle, he even brags about it. In his state of the union address in February 2003, he said: "More than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. Many others have  met a different fate. Put it this way, they're no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies."
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Maher Arar, though, is not a terrorist. He is one of the few "ghost prisoners" who have emerged to testify to the reality behind extraordinary rendition.  A Syrian-born Canadian, Arar was detained while changing planes in New York in 2002. His name was on a terrorist watch-list but he was not charged in the US or even extradited to Canada, a friendly country with an inconvenient regard for the rule of law. Instead he was flown to Jordan, then sent on to Syria, a state that the US categorises as one that practises torture.   His crime was that his mother's cousin had joined the Muslim Brotherhood long after Maher moved to Canada. After 10 months of torture and incarceration in a cell the size of a grave, he was allowed to resume his journey home. Now he is suing the US government.
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Torture is illegal in the US. Facilitating torture elsewhere is also illegal under the convention against torture, to which the US is a signatory.