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

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

Honor? He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention. Just as he would not honor the United Nations, international treaties, the
opinions of our allies, the role of Congress and the courts, or what Jefferson described as "a decent respect for the opinion of
mankind." He did not honor the advice, experience and judgment of our military leaders in designing his invasion of Iraq. And now
he will not honor our fallen dead by attending any funerals or even by permitting photos of their flag-draped coffins.
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John Dilulio, who said, "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus.  What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis."
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Now the White House has informed the American people that they were also "all wrong" about their decision to place their faith in
Ahmed Chalabi, even though they have paid him 340,000 dollars per month. 33 million dollars (CHECK) and placed him adjacent to
Laura Bush at the State of the Union address. Chalabi had been convicted of fraud and embezzling 70 million dollars in public
funds from a Jordanian bank, and escaped prison by fleeing the country. But in spite of that record, he had become one of key
advisors to the Bush Administration on planning and promoting the War against Iraq.

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

Now they are telling the American people that he is a spy for Iran who has been duping the President of the United States for all
these years.
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A policy based on domination of the rest of the world not only creates enemies for the United States and creates recruits for Al
Qaeda, it also undermines the international cooperation that is essential to defeating the efforts of terrorists who wish harm and
intimidate Americans.

Unilateralism, as we have painfully seen in Iraq, is its own reward. Going it alone may satisfy a political instinct but it is dangerous
to our military, even without their Commander in Chief taunting terrorists to "bring it on."
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It is now clear that their obscene abuses of the truth and their unforgivable abuse of the trust placed in them after 9/11 by the
American people led directly to the abuses of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison and, we are now learning, in many other similar
facilities constructed as part of Bush's Gulag, in which, according to the Red Cross, 70 to 90 percent of the victims are totally
innocent of any wrongdoing.
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They have launched an unprecedented assault on civil liberties, on the right of the courts to review their actions, on the right of the
Congress to have information to how they are spending the public's money and the right of the news media to have information
about the policies they are pursuing.

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

The president episodically poses as a healer and "uniter". If he president really has any desire to play that role, then I call upon
him to condemn Rush Limbaugh - perhaps his strongest political supporter - who said that the torture in Abu Ghraib was a "brilliant
maneuver" and that the photos were "good old American pornography," and that the actions portrayed were simply those of "people
having a good time and needing to blow off steam."
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The abhorrent acts in the prison were a direct consequence of the culture of impunity encouraged, authorized and instituted by
Bush and Rumsfeld in their statements that the Geneva Conventions did not apply. The apparent war crimes that took place were
the logical, inevitable outcome of policies and statements from the administration.

The day the world learned that American soldiers had tortured Iraqi prisoners belongs high on the list of worst things that ever happened to our country. It's a black mark that will be in the history books in a hundred languages for as long as there are  history books. I hate to think of it.

The image of one bad young woman with a naked man on a leash did more to damage America's reputation than all the good things we've done over the years ever helped our reputation.

In the history of the world, several great civilizations that seemed immortal have deteriorated and died. I don't want to seem dramatic tonight, but I've lived a long while, and for the first time in my life, I have this faint, faraway fear that it could happen to us here in America as it happened to the Greek and Roman civilizations.

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.

He (Richard Clarke) paints a sad tale of both arrogance and ignorance: repeated warnings by both Clarke and George Tenet apparently made no impression on an administration obsessed with Saddam Hussein.

This thesis is born out by the eerily prescient and tragically ignored Hart-Rudman report on terrorism, presented on Jan. 31, 2001. (And let me point out that the media deserve much blame here, as well: All the networks ignored it entirely save for CNN, which did it justice. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal never printed a line about it, though The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times both did thorough jobs.)

That commission concluded, "Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers." They recommended a series of practical and effective steps. Of the various institutions, Congress deserves some credit for trying to pick up on the report, which clearly would have moved us ahead by six months on terrorism planning. Donald Rumsfeld, not one of my favorites, also deserves credit for vigorously backing the report. Congress scheduled hearing for May 7, 2001, but according to reports at the time, the White House stifled the move because it did not want Congress out in front on the issue.

True, the report was initiated by President Clinton, but the commission was bipartisan and included former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other Republicans. On May 5, the White House announced that rather than adopt Hart-Rudman, it was forming its own committee on terrorism headed by Vice President Cheney. That group never met....

Then we come to the White house campaign to discredit Clarke. What a travesty. The man is a registered Republican who worked for Ronald Reagan and Bush the Elder, as well as Clinton and George W. As to the supposedly "political" timing of the book, the White House held up its publication by three months before clearing it....

The Bush administration's record of sliming its critics is getting to be a scandal in itself. Joe Wilson's wife was outed as a CIA agent. Poor former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill (who was the focus of a book that certainly confirms the administration's obsession with Iraq) was dismissed as a nutcase. And now it's Clarke's turn. I suppose we should all be grateful no one is investigating anyone else's sex life.

Then there's the case of Richard Clarke, the top adviser on counter-terrorism to both Clinton and Bush. In his stunning interview on "60 Minutes," I thought the most chilling moment was what he said took place immediately after 9-11: "Well, Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq. And we all said, 'But no, no. Al Qaeda is in Afghanistan.' And Rumsfeld said, 'There aren't any good targets in Afghanistan, and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.' I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.'

Clarke said it was as though after Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt had wanted to attack Mexico.

General Anthony Zinni, former commander-in-chief of the United States Central Command and Bush administration special envoy to the Middle East said:

"I blame the civilian leadership of the Pentagon directly.    Because if they were given the responsibility, and if this was their  war, and by everything that I understand, they promoted it and pushed it - certain elements in there certainly - even to the point of creating their own intelligence to match their needs, then they should bear the responsibility."

"But regardless of whose responsibility I think it is, somebody has screwed up. And at this level and at this stage, it should be evident to everybody that they've screwed up. And whose heads are rolling on this? That's what bothers me most."

"Look, there is one statement that bothers me more than anything else.  And that's the idea that when the troops are in combat, everybody has to shut up. Imagine if we put troops in combat with a faulty rifle, and that rifle was malfunctioning, and troops were dying as a result"

"I can't think anyone would allow that to happen, that would not speak up. Well, what's the difference between a faulty plan and strategy that's getting just as many troops killed?"

I've had an impeccable career. I chose to get out. And you know who I blame?   I blame the president of the U.S.   It's not the grunt.   I blame the president because he said they had weapons of mass destruction. It was a lie.
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There was an incident with one of the cars. We shot an individual with his hands up. He got out of the car. He was badly shot. We lit him up. I don't know who started shooting first. One of the Marines came running over to where we were and said: "You all just shot a guy with his hands up."
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Q: You fired into six or ten kids? Were they all taken out?
A: Oh, yeah. Well, I had a "mercy" on one guy. When we rolled up, he was hiding behind a concrete pillar. I saw him and raised my weapon up, and he put up his hands. He ran off. I told everybody, "Don't shoot." Half of his foot was trailing behind him. So he was running with half of his foot cut off.
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Q: Did the revelations that the government fabricated the evidence for war affect the troops?
A: Yes. I killed innocent people for our government. For what? What did I do? Where is the good coming out of it? I feel like I've had a hand in some sort of evil lie at the hands of our government. I just feel embarrassed, ashamed about it.

Bush takes a contrived bus tour touting his economic plan which promises more jobs in the hard hit states of Michigan and Ohio.  Of course the bus was made in Canada!  That jibes with an economic plan he recently signed which endorsed outsourcing of our jobs.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the administration has announced its intention to make John Negroponte our first ambassador to postwar Iraq, to take up residence in what will be the world's largest embassy after June 30. Negroponte was one of the key figures in the Iran-Contra scandal, the cockeyed plot that sold American arms to Iran and used the money to finance an illegal war in Nicaragua. So, our first ambassador will be a man who armed Iraq's enemy during that war.

 Negroponte speaks no Arabic, he is a specialist in covert operations in Latin America, and he has no Middle East experience aside from the Iran-Contra insanity. He is, however, a bona fide, certified,  chicken-fried neo-con. Is anyone else appalled?

A NY Times article reports that on 5/25/04, Asscroft stated that he had credible intelligence suggestingthat Al Qaeda is planning to attack the United States in the next several months.   Again, he's lying-  officials at the Department of Homeland Security said just a day before Mr. Ashcroft's announcement that they had no new intelligence pointing to the threat of an attack.

Who gave Ahmed Chalabi classified information about the plans of the US government and military?

The Iraqi neocon favourite, tipped to lead his liberated country post-invasion, has been identified by the CIA and Defence Intelligence Agency as an Iranian double-agent, passing secrets to that citadel of the "axis of evil" for decades. All the while the neocons cosseted, promoted and arranged for more than $30m in Pentagon payments to the George Washington manque of Iraq. In return, he fed them a steady diet of disinformation and in the run-up to the war sent various exiles to nine nations' intelligence agencies to spread falsehoods about weapons of mass destruction. If the administration had wanted other material to provide a rationale for invasion, no doubt that would have been fabricated. Either Chalabi perpetrated the greatest con since the Trojan horse, or he was the agent of influence for the most successful intelligence operation conducted by Iran, or both.

The CIA and other US agencies had long ago decided that Chalabi was a charlatan, so their dismissive and correct analysis of his lies prompted their suppression by the Bush White House.

In place of the normal channels of intelligence vetting, a jerry-rigged system was hastily constructed, running from the office of the vice president to the newly created Office of Special Plans inside the Pentagon, staffed by fervent neocons. CIA director George Tenet, possessed with the survival instinct of the inveterate staffer, ceased protecting the sanctity of his agency and cast in his lot. Secretary of state Colin Powell, resistant internally but overcome, decided to become the most ardent champion, unveiling a series of neatly manufactured lies before the UN.

 On April 21 1961, President Kennedy held a press conference to answer questions on  the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban exiles that he had approved. "There's an  old saying," he said, "that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan ... I am  the responsible officer of the government and that is quite obvious."

 On Wednesday, President Bush held only his third press conference and was asked  three times whether he accepted responsibility for failing to act on warning before  September 11. "I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press  conference with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn't [sic]  yet," he said. "I just haven't - you just put me under the spot here and maybe I'm not  quick - as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one."

Indeed, a majority of Canadians doubt the line out of Washington. A poll conducted for the non-profit inquiry (http://www.911inquiry.org) this month shows that 63 per cent of us believe the U.S. government had "prior knowledge of the plans for the events of September 11th, and failed to take appropriate action to stop them."

U.S. troops wanted Jeanan Moayad's father. When they couldn't find him, they took her husband in his place.  Dhafir Ibrahim has been in U.S. custody for nearly four months. Moayad insists that he is being held as a bargaining chip, and military officials have told her that he will be released when her father surrenders. Her father is a scientist and former Baath party member who fled to Jordan soon after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.  "My husband is a hostage," said Moayad, 35, an architect who carries a small portrait of Ibrahim in her purse. "He didn't commit any crime."
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The tactic, Moayad said, reminded her of Hussein's regime. "The Americans promised us that they would bring democracy and freedom. They talked about the prisoners in Saddam's time, and we expected them to do something better," she said. "But now they're doing the same thing, or even worse."
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In a little-noticed development amid Iraq's prison abuse scandal, the U.S. military is holding dozens of Iraqis as bargaining chips to put pressure on their wanted relatives to surrender, according to human rights groups.  These detainees are not accused of any crimes, and experts say their detention violates the Geneva Conventions and other international laws. The practice also risks associating the United States with the tactics of countries that it has long criticized for arbitrary arrests.
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In the 1970s and '80s, Washington frequently criticized the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries for making arbitrary arrests and for using relatives to exert pressure on fugitives and political prisoners. In its latest report on human rights conditions around the world, the State Department singled out several countries -- including Uzbekistan, Pakistan and  Syria -- for using such tactics to pressure people to surrender or to force confessions.
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In a recent report, the International Committee of the Red Cross quoted military intelligence officers as saying that between "70 and 90 percent" of the nearly 8,000 Iraqis detained by occupation forces had been arrested "by mistake." In some cases, the report found, U.S. troops continued to hold people for several months after they had been cleared of any wrongdoing.

iraqbodycount.net gives the bady count resulting from Bush's war in Iraq.  It reports more than 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, including many women, children, and elderly.

costofwar.org - reports that Bush's war has cost US taxpayers more than $100 billion in actual current expenditures and future interest payments.

The Century Fondation contains many very good reports.  The best is their report ""The New American Economy: A Rising Tide that Lifts Only Yachts"
It discusses the rapidly rising economic gap between the weathly and the middle class and poor in the US.

A graph from the report showing the gap in income:

Even worse than the difference in income, a graph showing the disparity in wealth as great than than in income:

A graph showing the heavy taxes imposed on the poor in the US in comparision with other countries:weathly countries (someone has to pay for Bush's tax cuts for the rich...):

 

Other info from the report:

Edward Wolff of New York University has calculated that,among households headed by people between twenty-five and fifty-four years of age,the 40 percent with the least wealth would exhaust all their financial assets (excluding homes) in less than one week if they lost their income.

The top 5 percent of income ecipients have on average 5.5 times the income of the emaining 95 percent, but in terms of wealth, the top 5 percent of households have on average 23 times the wealth of the emaining 95 percent.And the wealthiest families also  enjoyed the greatest increases in wealth between 1989 and 2001.  In fact,the increase in wealth of the top 1 percent over that period ($5,151,836 per household)is three times the 2001 level of wealth of the next 9 percent and nearly 40 times the level of wealth of the bottom 90 percent of households.

Among the company's former directors is ex-CIA director James Woolsey, one of the architects of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a friend of Ahmed Chalabi and a prominent pro-Israeli lobbyist in Washington.

P.W. Singer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, estimates it is a $100 billion industry with several hundred companies operating in more than 100 countries.

Spying a growth business, some big defense contractors are scooping up PMCs, many of which -- especially in the security sector -- are small and privately held. Computer Sciences (CSC ) acquired DynCorp, Northrop Grumman (NOC ) bought Vinnell, and L-3  communications nabbed Military Professional Resources Inc. "[Defense giants] have been buying up these companies like mad," says Deborah D. Avant, a professor at George Washington University who is writing a book about military contractors. "This is where
they think the future is."
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A report by Major General Antonio M. Taguba concluded that two interrogators-for-hire, one from CACI and one from Titan Corp. (TTN ),  in conjunction with military officers, "were either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib." Titan says the individual worked for a subcontractor.

A bit of history might have suggested skepticism.  It might have been recalled that President James Polk took us into war with Mexico in 1846, and William McKinley took  us into war with Spain in 1898, and Congress authorized war in Vietnam in 1964, all  based on deceptions.

Another suggested principle: When a calamity occurs - such as the killing of soldiers on  the Mexican border, or the sinking of the battleship Maine, or the blowing up of the Twin Towers, should Congress, the media and the public not be wary that the calamity might  be made an excuse for going to war, with the real reasons concealed from the country?

In The New Pearl Harbor, David Ray Griffin compiles the evidence that every single assertion in the official story is implausible or impossible, and that something other must explain the inconsistencies and contra-factual assertions.
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How is it, Griffin asks, that even the first airplane was not intercepted -- given standard procedures, operating normally many times a year, for off-course or otherwise anomalous aircraft? The FAA, NORAD, and the NMCC (National Military Command Center at the Pentagon) have a clear and working set of standard operating procedures which on September 11th, and on that day only, failed to operate. Griffin lays them out, along with the strange, and changing official excuses for their "failure".

The story becomes even more bizarre for the second plane to hit the WTC. By that time, it was known that three planes had been hijacked, and were heading back eastward (the fourth plane was 41 minutes late in taking off, so at this point was not part of the story). Still there was no normal scrambling of protective aircraft. By the time of the Pentagon incident, the details become grotesque. It was clear to the entire nation, fixed to the TV, that America was under a coordinated attack, and that a third plane was headed towards Washington. Yet though Cheney and Rice were evacuated to the White House bunker, still, no protection aircraft scrambled, and when it finally did, was sent from a base far from DC, travelling at half-maximum speed or less, arriving too late to prevent the attack.

With official statements compared to a detailed timeline of events, the most likely conclusion is that on that day, the air defense system was ordered to stand down from its normal protective procedures -- even after it was clear to all what was happening.   Who could have ordered such a stand down?
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Relegated to a footnote is the fact that Marvin P. Bush, the president's younger brother, was a director for a security company involved in three of the four attacks. Securacom covered the WTC, United Airlines, -- whose flights hit the WTC and crashed in Pennsylvania -- and Dulles Airport -- from which the Pentagon flight took off. What are we to make of testimony from WTC personnel that five days before 9/11, heightened security requiring 12-hour days and bomb-sniffing dogs was abruptly called off? What committee will chase that down?

It's now indisputable that most Iraqis oppose the U.S. occupation. According to a new USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup poll of Iraqis, only a third of the Iraqi people now believe the U.S.-led occupation of their country is doing more good than harm. 71% of Iraqis view U.S. forces as "occupiers," not liberators, and 57% say occupation troops should leave their country "in the next few months."

Asked whether the United States had done the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, 47 percent of respondents said it had, down from 58 percent a month earlier and 63 percent in December, just after American forces captured Saddam Hussein. Forty-six percent said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq, up from 37 percent last month and 31 percent in December.

It now stands at 46 percent, the lowest level of his presidency in The Times/CBS News Poll, down from 71 percent last March and a high of 89 percent just after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

At this point in his winning re-election race in 1996, President Bill Clinton's approval rating in The New York Times/CBS News Poll was 48 percent.   Mr. Bush's approval rating for his handling of Iraq was 41 percent, down from 49 percent last month and 59  percent in December.

"I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well-placed... managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units...Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country."      --Colin Powell's autobiography, My American Journey, p. 148

Here is a tip for President Bush: Next time you endeavor to justify the violent occupation of Iraq, you might want to avoid using phrases like, "We're not an imperial power. We're  a liberating power."

That was the line the president adopted in the prime time press conference that was organized this week as part of the latest of his administration's uninspired attempts to  calm concerns about the killings, kidnappings and related crises in Iraq.

Unfortunately, the old rule applies: When you have to say you aren't an imperialist, you almost certainly are one. And when you have to say that you are a liberating power, you  almost certainly are not in the liberation business.

Under the heading of "civil disturbance planning", the U.S. military is training troops and police to suppress democratic opposition in America. The master plan, Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2, is code-named, "Operation Garden Plot". Originated in 1968, the "operational plan" has been updated over the last three decades, most recently in 1991, and was activated during the Los Angeles "riots" of 1992, and more than likely during the recent anti-WTO "Battle in Seattle."

Authored by the Executive Director of AskQuestions.org, Cheryl Woodard, the full  report is available online, along with the public questions and comments that prompted  the article at http://www.askquestions.org/details.php?id=39

Recent news articles about skyrocketing tax fraud and corporate tax dodging have  prompted a high level of public concern about the overall fairness and effectiveness of  our current tax system. AskQuestions.org – an online news site that addresses issues  raised by public demand – released a report today on "Who Really Pays Taxes in  America?"

Drawn primarily from government statistics, the report describes not only how the tax  burden has shifted from corporations to private citizens over the past 20 years, but also a  disturbing new twist: the richest American households pay about 30 percent less tax –  which includes federal, state, and local taxes combined -- than middle-income  households pay.
.....
Yesterday, David Cay Johnston reported in The New York Times that corporate audit  rates have dropped by half in recent years, and noted that in 2003 the IRS conducted  face-to-face audits with only seven out of 1000 corporations (compared to 29 per  thousand in 1992).

There are some choice statements made by Powell's aides on the Bush Regime in a recent GQ article.   Powell's chief of staff Larry Wilkerson describes US sanctions policy against countries such as Pakistan and Cuba as "the dumbest policy on the face of the Earth".   As to Richard Perle, Wilkerson says: "Thank God [he] tendered his resignation and no longer will be even a semi-official person in this administration."   Powell's good friend and mentor Harlan Ullman describes the US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, as a "jerk".    Richard Armitage says Bush's deceit and flipflopping at Powell's expense were "a source of great distress for the secretary."

On 10/8/03, Bush declared: "Iraq is free of rape rooms and torture chambers."   As recently as 5/3/04, Bush declared: "Because we acted, torture rooms are closed, rape rooms no longer exist, mass graves are no longer a possibility in Iraq." Slate.com has the full list of Bush's torture chamber lies.

Many of the prisoners abused at the Abu Ghraib prison were innocent Iraqis, picked up at random by US troops .Torin Nelson, who served as a military intelligence officer at Guantanamo Bay before moving to Abu Ghraib as a private contractor last year, alleged that [private security] companies were so anxious to meet the demand for their services, they sent 'cooks and truck drivers' to work as interrogators. He claimed many of the detainees are 'innocent of any acts against the coalition'. 'One case in point is a detainee whom I recommended for release and months later was still sitting in the same tent with no change in his status.'

Louis Nevaer identifies two security contractors working in Iraq: "[Frans] Strydom was a member in the Koevoet, Afrikaner for 'Crowbar,' an outlaw group that paid bounty for the bodies of blacks seeking independence during the 1980s. The Koevoet terrorized blacks in Namibia and northern South Africa for more than a decade. Hundreds of deaths are attributed to its members.  More notorious is [Deon] Gouws' past. A former police officer, Gouws was a member of the notorious Vlakplaas death squad that terrorized blacks under apartheid. Only after South Africa established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and Col. Eugene de Kock, a former death-squad leader who supervised Gouws, applied for amnesty, did the activities of the Vlakplaas come to light. Gouws faced a choice: repent by confessing, or be charged with crimes. He applied for amnesty, confessing on his application for absolution to killing 15 blacks and firebombing the homes of 'between 40 and 60 anti-apartheid activists.'"

"Bush has created what is in effect a gulag. It stretches from prisons in Afghanistan to Iraq, from Guantanamo to secret CIA prisons around the world. There are perhaps 10,000 people being held in Iraq, 1,000 in Afghanistan and almost 700 in Guantanamo, but no one knows the exact numbers. The law as it applies to them is whatever the executive deems necessary. There has been nothing like this system since the fall of the Soviet Union. The US military embraced the Geneva conventions after the second world war, because applying them to prisoners of war protects American soldiers. But the Bush administration, in an internal fight, trumped its argument by designating those at Guantanamo 'enemy combatants'. Rumsfeld extended this system - 'a legal black hole', according to Human Rights Watch - to Afghanistan and then Iraq, openly rejecting the conventions."

According to a new USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup poll of Iraqis, only a third of the Iraqi people now believe the U.S.-led occupation of their country is doing more good than harm. 71% of Iraqis view U.S. forces as "occupiers," not liberators, and 57% say occupation troops should leave their country "in the next few months."

According to a New York Times/CBS News poll, a record 58 percent of the U.S. population now believe the invasion of Iraq was not worth the cost in lives and resources, and 46 percent say the United States should withdraw as soon as possible.

Last April, President Bush visited a Timken Company manufacturing plant in Ohio to press for passage of new tax cuts that he said would spur the economy. During the speech Bush said that "the future of this company is bright and therefore, the future of employment is bright for the families that work here"¹. Less than a year after the tax cuts for the wealthy passed, that same factory is shutting down -- putting about 1,300 people out of work² and inflicting a "devastating" blow to the Canton community³. With the White House pushing even more tax cuts for the wealthy⁴ and supporting outsourcing of American jobs⁵, Ohio has lost more than 200,000 manufacturing jobs since President Bush took office⁶.

Of course, one person who will not be feeling the pain of the President's economic policies is W.R. "Tim" Timken - a top Bush fundraiser and the man who decided to shut down the factory. Having earned more than $2.6 million last year, Timken stands to receive $59,000 in new tax breaks from President Bush this year⁷ - Timken also happens to have raised $600,000 for the President in one night⁸. By contrast, 89% of Ohio residents will receive less than $100 by 2006 from the latest Bush tax cuts⁹.

According to a new report, the Bush Administration has taken its strong support for outsourcing further than previously thought -- opting to move key political operations offshore.   India's Hindustan Times reports that, during a 14 month period from 2002 to 2003 when the Republican Party was playing up patriotism, its fund-raising and vote-seeking campaign was performed in part by two call centers located in India¹.

According to the report, the Republican National Committee shipped the India operation its voter database for 125 local staff to use to "solicit political contributions ranging between $5 and $3,000 from thousands of registered Republican voters."   While the contract for running the campaigns was originally awarded to Washington-based Capital Communications Group, "for cost and efficiencies gains, the company outsourced the work to HCL Technologies that in turn sent it offshore."

Public pressure has forced President Bush has to downplay his support for outsourcing.   But this new story is consistent with his Administration's actions in support of shipping American jobs overseas.   Late last year, the New York Times reported that the Bush Commerce Department co-sponsored a conference at the lavish Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York that was designed to "encourage American companies to put operations and jobs in China"².   Then, this year, the President's top economic adviser said outsourcing was "a plus for the economy"³.

• Stonewalling on Bin Laden/Saudi Flights After 9/11 (5/20/2004)
• Bush Pretends He Never Gave Secret Prison Order (5/19/2004)
• Bush Distorts Education Record in 3-State Tour (5/12/2004)
• White House Misled America About Cost of War (5/6/2004)
• Bush Diverting Enviro Funds Into Fossil Fuels (4/28/2004)
• Bush Budget Antics Causing More Iraq Casualties (4/26/2004)
• On Earth Day, EPA Plots to Weaken Clean Air Laws (4/22/2004)
• Bush Still Has Not Explained Ties to Saudi Arabia (4/21/2004)
• Bush Stiffs Workers on Overtime (4/20/2004)
• Bush Contradicts Self At His Own Press Conference (4/14/2004)
• Ashcroft's Record of Lying to Congress About 9/11 (4/13/2004)
• Bush Denies Info Clearly Contained in PDB (4/12/2004)
• Rice Yet to Answer For Two Dishonest Statements (4/8/2004)
• New Evidence Bush Pushed Iraq War Right After 9/11 (4/6/2004)
• Reversing Pledge, Bush Lets OPEC Bilk Americans (4/2/2004)
• SPECIAL MIS-LEAD: Bush Threatened to Fire Official for Telling Truth (3/12/2004)
• NEW REPORT: Why Bush Supports Outsourcing (3/10/2004)
• Reversing Position, Bush Uses 9/11 in Political Ad (3/4/2004)

THE HORRIFIC abuses by American interrogators and guards at the Abu Ghraib prison and at other facilities maintained by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan can be traced, in part, to policy decisions and public statements of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. Beginning more than two years ago, Mr. Rumsfeld decided to overturn decades of previous practice by the U.S. military in its handling of detainees in foreign countries. His Pentagon ruled that the United States would no longer be bound by the Geneva Conventions; that Army regulations on the interrogation of prisoners would not be observed; and that many detainees would be held incommunicado and without any independent mechanism of review. Abuses will take place in any prison system. But Mr. Rumsfeld's decisions helped create a lawless regime in which prisoners in both Iraq and Afghanistan have been humiliated, beaten, tortured and murdered -- and in which, until recently, no one has been held accountable.

The lawlessness began in January 2002 when Mr. Rumsfeld publicly declared that hundreds of people detained by U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan "do not have any rights" under the Geneva Conventions. That was not the case: At a minimum, all those arrested in the war zone were entitled under the conventions to a formal hearing to determine whether they were prisoners of war or unlawful combatants. No such hearings were held, but then Mr. Rumsfeld made clear that U.S. observance of the convention was now optional. Prisoners, he said, would be treated "for the most part" in "a manner that is reasonably consistent" with the conventions -- which, the secretary breezily suggested, was outdated.

The Taguba report and others by human rights groups reveal that the detention system Mr. Rumsfeld oversees has become so grossly distorted that military police have abused or tortured prisoners under the direction of civilian contractors and intelligence officers outside the military chain of command -- not in "exceptional" cases, as Mr. Rumsfeld said Tuesday, but systematically. Army guards have held "ghost" prisoners detained by the CIA and even hidden these prisoners from the International Red Cross. Meanwhile, Mr. Rumsfeld's contempt for the Geneva Conventions has trickled down: The Taguba report says that guards at Abu Ghraib had not been instructed on them and that no copies were posted in the facility.

The abuses that have done so much harm to the U.S. mission in Iraq might have been prevented had Mr. Rumsfeld been responsive to earlier reports of violations. Instead, he publicly dismissed or minimized such accounts. He and his staff ignored detailed reports by respected human rights groups about criminal activity at U.S.-run prisons in Afghanistan, and they refused to provide access to facilities or respond to most questions. In December 2002, two Afghan detainees died in events that were ruled homicides by medical officials; only when the New York Times obtained the story did the Pentagon confirm that an investigation was underway, and no results have yet been announced. Not until other media obtained the photos from Abu Ghraib did Mr. Rumsfeld fully acknowledge what had happened, and not until Tuesday did his department disclose that 25 prisoners have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. Accountability for those deaths has been virtually nonexistent: One soldier was punished with a dishonorable discharge.

On Monday Mr. Rumsfeld's spokesman said that the secretary had not read Mr. Taguba's report, which was completed in early March. Yesterday Mr. Rumsfeld told a television interviewer that he still hadn't finished reading it, and he repeated his view that the Geneva Conventions "did not precisely apply" but were only "basic rules" for handling prisoners. His message remains the same: that the United States need not be bound by international law and that the crimes Mr. Taguba reported are not, for him, a priority. That attitude has undermined the American military's observance of basic human rights and damaged this country's ability to prevail in the war on terrorism.

"It is time now for Mr. Rumsfeld to go, and not only because he bears personal responsibility for the scandal of Abu Ghraib. That would certainly have been enough. The United States has been humiliated to a point where government officials could not release this year's international human rights report this week for fear of being scoffed at by the rest of the world." - The New York Times, May 7, 2004

"It is time for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to prepare the final document of a long and sometimes illustrious public career: his letter of resignation." - The Plain Dealer, May 7, 2004, Cleveland, Ohio

"The reality is that, if Bush is going to clean house, it makes no sense to stop with Rumsfeld. Considering how the Bush administration has made a mess of the situation in Iraq - from the wrong intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to the incredible lack of planning for the post-war situation to the entirely unnecessary alienation of allies - the whole national security team should be fired." - Newsday, May 7, 2004, New York

"Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, should resign immediately. If they do not, they should be fired." - Star Tribune, May 7, 2004, Minneapolis, Minnesota

"This is not the first time we've called for the removal of Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary. Only Rumsfeld or the president can assure that it's the last." - Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 6, 2004

"Donald Rumsfeld has to go. The secretary of Defense should tender his resignation to President George W. Bush, and if he doesn't, the president ought to fire him." - Detroit Free Press, May 7, 2004

"Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should resign and take his top deputies with him. That includes Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and  undersecretary Douglas Feith." - St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 6, 2004

Because of the police restrictions on protesters, Bush's motorcade met only signs of support from the time it left the airport to the time it returned.  People with no signs and some with pro-Bush signs lined the motorcade route unchallenged by police.

The rhetoric I hear today sounds like an echo from my painful past. We are being told that we have to 'stay the course.' It's necessary for some Americans to die for Iraqi democracy. The biggest lie of all is that it is unpatriotic to oppose further suffering, further maiming and further death in Iraq.

We now live in a bumper sticker world where the only truths we accept are those simplistic enough to fit on an 18-inch adhesive placard.   More and more I seem to be seeing 'Support Our Troops' stickers. That is advice well taken by me and by everyone. Support our troops indeed--bring them home now.

A Georgetown resident and former Kentucky National Guardsman is angry that the military is denying his claims that he suffered brain injury while being severely beaten by U.S. soldiers during a training exercise at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in January 2003.  Sean Baker says that while serving as a member of the 438th Military Police company in Guantanamo Bay during Operation Iraqi Freedom, he was ordered to pose as the enemy for a training exercise. Baker said he received a severe brain injury because of the subsequent beating he received.

An Environmental Protection Agency Inspector  General's report released today admits that the Bush Administration failed to adequately fund the clean up of hazardous toxic waste sites in FY2003.   The report, a response to inquiries from U.S. Senators Barbara Boxer and Jim Jeffords and U.S. Representatives John Dingell and Hilda Solis, admits to a $174.9 million shortfall in clean up funding and underscores the Bush Administration's willingness to leave communities at risk from toxic waste at Superfund toxic waste sites around the country instead of holding polluting companies accountable....    President Bush has refused to push for the renewal of  the "polluter-pays tax" that expired in 1995, becoming the first  president not to support the principle that polluters should pay to clean up the messes they create since President Reagan signed the Superfund reauthorization into law in 1986....   American taxpayers are projected to pay about $1.1 billion for the Superfund program this year, an increase of about 400 percent since the fee expired in 1995.

The United States was originally blanketed with a billion acres of forest. Now only 40 million acres remain uncut.  We have destroyed 96 percent of our original forests.

Half of the trees cut in the US are exported as minimally processed wood, pulp, and chips.  Log exports alone cost 60,000 timber jobs per year.

The US Forest Service routinely loses $1.2 billion per year for the taxpayers, since they spend more money building logging roads and administering timber sales for timber companies than they receive from the sale of public trees.

The cost for a rancher to use public land for grazing is a mere $1.35 per month for a head of cattle, compared to approximately $10 per month on private lands.

For a mere $5 per acre, anyone can stake a mining claim on American public land. The Mineral Policy Center estimates that between 1872-1992 the federal government gave away $231 billion in royalty-free mineral reserves to private mining companies on public land. For example, a Canadian company named American Barrick Resources paid less than $10,000 to the Federal Treasury to mine about 2000 acres of public land in Nevada.  The mine is estimated to contain $10 billion worth of gold.  Not only do we give away our mining assets for a pittance, but the public is left with cleaning up the toxic mess. Sixty-six Superfund clean-up sites are abandoned mines on public lands. It's estimated that the cost to clean up the current waste left by private mining on public land will be over $1 trillion.

The Bush administration is proposing that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) have final authority on "scientific and technical evaluations - known as peer reviews - of all major government rules, plans, proposed regulations and pronouncements."

Twenty former agency officials co-signed a letter to the OMB "asking the White House watchdog agency to withdraw its proposal, saying it 'could damage the federal system for protecting public health and the environment.'"   Lest you think this is some partisan attack on the current administration, you need look only to Michael Taylor, former deputy commissioner at the FDA under the first President Bush and among the most critical voices of the OMB's proposal.

Further troubling is the fact that the OMB, which cites inconsistent peer-review policies and practices as the primary reason for this change, has not presented a single example of the type of abuse or unnecessary precautions necessitating the office's co-opting of the review and approval process.  Instead, OMB simply refers "reporters to the comments of the American Chemical Council," a business association for the chemical industry.

A lawsuit filed last week asserts that the Bush Administration is allowing a special task force from the chemical industry to lobby secretly and illegally inside the Environmental Protection Agency. The task force aims to circumvent current protections for endangered species

The industry strategy, according to internal documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, is to eliminate the role of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries, whose biologists currently serve as oversight experts as to whether a pesticide poses a risk to wildlife.

It appears the industry is succeeding. Last year the EPA, which has no measures in place to protect most endangered animals and plants, began a process whereby the agency could assume full control over these decisions with little or no oversight from federal biologists.

The industry taskforce includes Monsanto, Dupont Ag Products, Dow AgroSciences and UniRoyal Chemical Co. The group, known as the FIFRA Endangered Species Task Force, was set up in 2000 to help research data on the locations of endangered species. But under the Bush Administration it has taken on a mission to alter the rules of the Endangered Species Act.

At the industry's behest, EPA is also considering rule changes that would allow greater risks to wildlife from pesticides before any expert review is initiated. Another change would restrict the type of evidence that can be introduced to determine the level of risk. A third change would allow EPA officials simply to ignore conclusions of expert scientists from other federal agencies.
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In December the Interior Department finalized a ruling that allows logging operations to move forward without any consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency that administers the ESA.

President Bush has appointed crusading opponents of the ESA to key positions, including Craig Manson, the assistant Interior Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks, who told the Los Angeles Times in an interview: "If we are saying that the loss of species in and of itself is inherently bad, I don't think we know enough about how the world works to say that."

The ESA lists 1,363 U. S. plant and animal species and 558 foreign and animal species as threatened or endangered. Since taking office, the administration has listed no additional species on its own accord.
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In 2002, the administration essentially repealed a longstanding provision of the Clean Water Act prohibiting the dumping of mining wastes in streams.
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On January 7, 2004, the Bush administration announced its plan to  eliminate a 20-year-old policy that says land within 100 feet of a stream cannot be disturbed by mining activity unless a company can prove that the work will not affect the stream's water quality and quantity.   The Bush administration's proposal represents the first time in the 25 years since the federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act was adopted in 1977 that any administration has even suggested that the law would allow coal companies to destroy streams by burying them with their wastes.
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On November 3rd, the Bush administration announced a new draft policy that would allow partially treated sewage to be "blended" with treated sewage and discharged into the nation's waterways during heavy rain and floods.  This policy change means that viruses, parasites and other pathogens would be discharged into our waterways and more Americans will get sick from waterborne illnesses.
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A study by an international research team, published in Nature, warned that unabated warming could drive 15 to 37 percent of 1,103 living species the team studied toward extinction by 2050.  Shortly thereafter came an ominous report by The Times's Andrew Revkin on warming's impact in the Arctic, where the sea ice is in rapid retreat, and its potentially devastating effect on Alaska's fragile tundra.
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A Washington Post survey found that only a tiny number of American companies, 54 at last count, have agreed to participate in Mr. Bush's program of voluntary reductions of global warming gases - the strategy Mr. Bush chose when he rejected the mandatory emissions caps called for in the Kyoto Protocol.

18% of Sierra Club members like to fish or hunt.
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In 2002, Great Smoky Mountains National Park was named America's most polluted national park.   Views that extended for more than 100 miles have been reduced to 25 miles or less.
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With just 5 percent of the world's population,  we consume one third of the world 's energy resources.
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It's 14 years after the Exxon Valdez Oil spill, and only two of 28 species almost obliterated by the accident are recovering.  ExxonMobil has thus far wiggled out of paying the $5 billion fine levied against the corporation for its negligence, and seeks to reduce the fine to $25 million, or $17.5 million less than its CEO Lee Raymond made in 2002.
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Simply closing the so-called S.U.V. loophole, and making light trucks as efficient as ordinary cars, would save a million barrels of oil a day.

More than 60 leading scientists-including Nobel laureates, leading medical experts, former federal agency directors and university chairs and presidents-issued a statement calling for regulatory and legislative action to restore scientific integrity to federal policymaking. According to the scientists, the Bush administration has, among other abuses, suppressed and distorted scientific analysis from federal agencies, and taken actions that have undermined the quality of scientific advisory panels.

"Science, to quote President Bush's father, the former president, relies on freedom of inquiry and objectivity," said Russell Train, head of the Environmental Protection Agency under Nixon and Ford, who joined the scientists in calling for action. "But this administration has obstructed that freedom and distorted that objectivity in ways that were unheard of in any previous administration."