"It is instead the mark of a narrow mind overwhelmed by large events"-  the Washington Post on Bush

"He said Iraq is now the  central front in the war on  terror.  If that is true, it is  because he made it so"- Post-Gazette on Bush

Anticipating he's gonna be investigated by the grand jury which is looking into his regime's outing of a CIA agent, Bush is looking for an attorney to represent his lying self.  I say haul his ass off to Gitmo.

Lawyers Decided Bans on Torture Didn't Bind Bush- (full text)
The article reports that a March 2003 memo from the regime's legal eagles states that the regime was not bound by either an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal antitorture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation's security.

The article reports the memo as stating that any torture committed at Guantánamo would not be a violation of the anti-torture statute because the base was under American legal jurisdiction and the statute concerns only torture committed overseas. That view is in direct conflict with the position the administration has taken in the Supreme Court, where it has argued that prisoners at Guantánamo Bay are not entitled to constitutional protections because the base is outside American jurisdiction.

Here's a link the the WSJ memo article.
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As word of the regime's memos leaked, Asscroft appeared before a Senate committee on 6/8/04 and, as usual, lied and otherwise evaded telling the truth.   From a www.bushrecall.org piece:

In a move that is all too common by Bush administration officials, Ashcroft refused to release three memoranda regarding interrogation tactics, claiming that was the prerogative of the executive branch to keep it secret. But only the president can claim executive privilege, and Ashcroft was forced to recant and admit that he was not invoking the privilege. When pressed on the issue by Kennedy, Ashcroft harrumphed that "we are at war. And for us to begin to discuss all the legal ramifications of the war is not in our best interest and it has never been in times of war."
In other words: Check your traitorous questions at the door - we're the Bush administration.

But Mr. Rumsfeld, his top deputies and the highest-ranking generals could not explain to the Senate what the rules were, or even who was in charge of the prisons in Iraq.

"There is no justification, legal or moral, for the judgments made by Mr. Bush's political appointees at the Justice and Defense departments. Theirs is the logic of criminal regimes, of dictatorships around the world that sanction torture on the grounds of 'national security."' - Washington Post more

"Each new revelation makes it more clear that the inhumanity at Abu Ghraib grew out of a morally dubious culture of legal expediency and a disregard for normal behavior fostered at the top of this administration." - New York Times more

"The Bush administration's Justice Department turned the Constitution on its head by telling the White House in an August 2002 memo...not only that torture 'may be justified' but that laws against torture 'may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations in the US war on terror. These are the words of out-of-control government servants willing to discard the most fundamental values of this nation." - Los Angeles Times more

The top human rights official for the United Nations said Friday that the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers could constitute a war crime, and he called for the immediate naming of an international figure to oversee the situation.  ...the White House's top lawyer warned two years ago that U.S. officials could face prosecution for war crimes because of the unorthodox tactics of detaining Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects in Afghanistan.  The confidential Jan. 25, 2002 memo, first reported this month by Newsweek magazine, was written by the attorney, Alberto Gonzales. It urged Bush administration officials to declare captives in the war on terror exempt from the Geneva conventions. It said that otherwise, Americans might be subject to "unwarranted charges" of committing or fostering war crimes.

Driving the terror network out of Afghanistan in late 2001 appears to have benefited the group, which dispersed to many countries, making it almost invisible and hard to combat...

The Iraq conflict 'has arguably focused the energies and resources of al-Qaida and its followers while diluting those of the global counterterrorism coalition that appeared so formidable'...

The U.S. occupation of Iraq brought al-Qaida recruits from across Islamic nations...Up to 1,000 foreign Islamic fighters have infiltrated Iraqi  territory, where they are cooperating with Iraqi insurgents...

General Zinni calls the administration's course "a failure" in a CBS interview.

Israel is not contributing to the peace process, is killing women and children indiscriminately and destroying Palestinian houses, in short, treating the Palestinians as they themselves were treated 500 years ago, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in an exclusive interview with Haaretz.  In his first interview to a member of the Israeli media following growing tensions in bilateral relations sparked by Israel Defense Forces operations in Gaza, Erdogan says there is is no way to describe such actions except as "state terrorism."

Cheney has gone underground again, hoping to bury all his baggage with him. But an internal Pentagon e-mail saying Halliburton contracts were "coordinated" with the vice president's office provided fresh material for Cheney's critics on Capitol Hill. Asked about the e-mail, Chellie Pingree, who heads the reform group, Common Cause, made a face and groaned in disgust. "Much of the world thinks we went to war over oil, and to boost the profits of the big corporations. This just gives validation to the terrorists."  Pingree points out that Cheney, when he was secretary of Defense in the first Bush administration, commissioned a $9 million study from Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, on privatizing the military. When he left government, he went to work for Halliburton and built it into a huge conglomerate that takes advantage of the privatization of services he put in place.   A fifth of the personnel on the ground in Iraq are private contractors without the accountability of the U.S. military. "Cheney is the godfather of this policy," says  Pingree, adding that the vice president collects more than $100,000 a year from Halliburton in stock options while serving in the White House.

One Ripublican Senator is finally coming around
Jim Lobe in his article  Neo-Con Collapse in Washington and Baghdad reports this from  Senator Pat Roberts, a conservative Kansas member of Bush's Republican Party and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee:

"We need to restrain what are growing U.S. messianic instincts - a sort of global social engineering where the United States feels it is both entitled and obligated to promote democracy - by force if necessary."

It has long been clear that the Bush administration's claim that it can simultaneously pursue war, large tax cuts and a "compassionate" agenda doesn't add up. Now we have direct confirmation that the White House is engaged in bait and switch, that it intends to pursue a not at all compassionate agenda after this year's election.

That agenda is to impose Dooh Nibor economics - Robin Hood in reverse. The end result of current policies will be a large-scale transfer of income from the middle class to the very affluent, in which about 80 percent of the population will lose and the bulk of the gains will go to people with incomes of more than $200,000 per year. ....

Three years ago George Bush claimed that he was cutting taxes to return a budget surplus to the public. Instead, he presided over a move to huge deficits. As a result, the modest tax cuts received by the great majority of Americans are, in a fundamental sense, fraudulent. It's as if someone expected gratitude for giving you a gift, when he actually bought it using your credit card.

1. We would go to war.
2. The national debt would soar.
3. The US economy would plummet.
4. The stock market would plunge.
5. Unemployment would be rampant.
6. The US dollar would quickly decline in value.
7. We would have a huge budget deficit.

A Pentagon e-mail said Vice President Dick Cheney's office "coordinated" a multibillion-dollar Iraq reconstruction contract awarded to his former employer Halliburton, Time magazine reported on Sunday.  The e-mail, sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official on March 5, 2003, said Douglas Feith, a senior Pentagon official, provided arrangements for the RIO contract, or Restore Iraqi Oil, between Halliburton and the U.S. government, Time said.  The email states,  "We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VP's (vice president's) office."

"I ordered first a substantial increase in the training and equipment of South Vietnamese forces. . . . The primary mission of our troops is to enable the South Vietnamese forces to assume the full responsibility for the security of South  Vietnam."
--President Richard M. Nixon, on his Vietnamization policy, Nov. 3, 1969.

"Eventually [Iraqi forces] must be the primary defenders of Iraqi security, as American and coalition forces are withdrawn. . . . At my direction, and with the support of Iraqi authorities, we are accelerating our program to help train Iraqis to defend their country."
--President George W. Bush, U.S. Army War College speech, May 24, 2004.

We spend $50 billion a  year on K  through 12 schooling and three times that this year alone on the Iraq war  (from a Nation article)

Earlier this week Attorney General John Ashcroft warned of an attack planned on America for sometime in the coming months. That may happen, but NBC News has learned one of Ashcroft’s sources is highly suspect.

In warning Americans to brace for a possible attack, Ashcroft cited what he called “credible intelligence from multiple sources,” saying that “just after New Year's, al-Qaida announced openly that preparations for an attack on the United States were 70 percent complete.… After the March 11 attack in Madrid, Spain, an al-Qaida spokesman announced that 90 percent of the arrangements for an attack in the United States were complete.”

But terrorism experts tell NBC News there's no evidence a credible al-Qaida spokesman ever said that, and the claims actually were made by a largely discredited group, Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, known for putting propaganda on the Internet.

"...the timing of the announcement appeared intended in part to distract attention from  Mr. Bush's sagging poll numbers and problems in Iraq"

TWO DAYS after President Bush declared Iraq "the central front in the war on terror," Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that major terrorist attacks are possible this summer -- not from Iraq but from operatives of Al Qaeda who are already inside the United States.

"Disturbing evidence indicates Al Qaeda's specific intention to hit the United States hard," Ashcroft said in a news conference on Wednesday.   Ashcroft and Mueller could be right. But their presentation reminded the nation how much their boss has lied to the American people.

Osama bin Laden remains at large;

At least three senior al Qaeda operatives who helped plan the 9/11 attacks, including the suspected mastermind of the plot, are in U.S. custody, but there has been no attempt to bring any of them to justice;

The Moussaoui prosecution has bogged down because the prosecution refuses to let the defense interview witnesses in U.S. custody;

A German court acquitted two 9/11 co-conspirators, in part because the U.S. Government refused to provide evidence for the cases;

Three defendants who you said had knowledge of the 9/11 attacks did not have such knowledge; the Department retracted your statement, and then you had to apologize to the court for violating a gag order in the case;

The man you claimed was about to explode a "dirty bomb" in the U.S. had no such intention or capability, and because he has been held for two years without access to counsel, any crimes he did commit might never be prosecuted;

Terrorist attacks on Capitol Hill and elsewhere involving the deadly bioterror agents anthrax and Ricin have yet to be solved, and the Department is defending itself in a civil rights action brought by a man who you publicly identified as a "person of interest" in the anthrax investigation;

U.S. citizens with no connection to terrorism have been imprisoned as material witnesses for chunks of time -- with an "Oops, I'm sorry" when a "100 percent positive" fingerprint match turns out to be 100 percent wrong;

Non-citizens with no connection to terrorism have been rounded up on the basis of their religion or ethnicity, held for months without charges and, in some cases, physically abused;

Interrogation techniques approved by the Department of Justice have led to abuses that have tarnished our nation's reputation and likely given strength and driven hundreds, if not thousands, of new recruits to our enemies

Your Department turned a Canadian citizen over to Syria who was tortured;

Documents have been classified, unclassified, and reclassified to score political points rather than for legitimate national security reasons;

Statistics have been manipulated to exaggerate the Department's success in fighting terrorism; and

The threat of another attack on U.S. soil remains high, although how high depends on who, in the Administration, is talking and what audience they are addressing.

Mr. Attorney General we all know that your style is to come to attack.  You came before this Committee shortly after 9/11 to question our patriotism when we sought to conduct congressional oversight and ask questions.  You went before the 9/11 Commission to attack a Commissioner by brandishing a conveniently declassified memo in so unfairly slanted a presentation that the President himself disavowed your action.

One of America's biggest problems in Iraq is its enormous credibility gap with Iraqis. Unfortunately, President Bush widened that disconnect this week by promising "full sovereignty" to an interim government on June 30. On that date, he declared, "the occupation will end."

Put yourself in the sandals of an Iraqi. Will it look as if the occupation is over and the nation has full control of its affairs when the US plans to keep more than 130,000 troops there?  When Washington's ambassador to Baghdad will command the largest US embassy in the world?  When US advisers will populate government ministries, and an international body will check on Iraq's use of its oil revenues?

While the Bush administration has been distracted by the invasion and occupation of Iraq, it has neglected the far more urgent threat to American security from dangerous nuclear materials that must be safeguarded before they can fall into the hands of terrorists. That is the inescapable conclusion to be drawn from a new report that documents the slow pace of protecting potential nuclear bomb material at loosely guarded sites around the world.

Some news organizations, including The New York Times, are currently engaged in self-criticism over the run-up to the Iraq war. They are asking, as they should, why poorly documented claims of a dire threat received prominent, uncritical coverage, while contrary evidence was either ignored or played down.

But it's not just Iraq, and it's not just The Times. Many journalists seem to be having regrets about the broader context in which Iraq coverage was embedded: a climate in which the press wasn't willing to report negative information about George Bush.

The horrors of American military conduct are being documented every day. But one aspect of the leaked US report into prison abuse in Iraq has been little noticed. General Taguba, head of the investigation, painted a picture of an army which can be not only brutal, but is also riddled with incompetence.

Some of the details in his dossier read dismayingly like a chapter from Catch-22, Joseph Heller's second world war black comedy about the lunatics and shysters who held men's lives in their hands at a fictional military base.

What is one to make, for example, of the way Captain Leo Merck is said to have behaved? Captain Merck, in charge of a military police unit, is alleged to have spent his time in Iraq taking "nude pictures of female soldiers without their knowledge"

During today's trip to Tennessee, President Bush will hold a photo-op at a children's hospital and then attend a $2,000-per-person fundraiser at the home of a top health insurance executive 2. The two events provide a perfect display of how the President has misled America on health care policy: at the same time that he has tried to slash funding for children's hospitals, his budget lavishes billions of dollars on health insurance companies who fund his campaign.

The Washington Post revealed this morning (article) that George Bush plans to cut a number of popular and politically-sensitive programs if he wins the election this year. A leaked memo advises administration planners to prepare for cuts in education, veterans affairs, the EPA, the National Science Foundation, the Small Business Administration, Head Start, and the Social Security Administration.

The $1.7 billion increase in education for 2005 will be reduced by $1.5 billion in 2006. The Department of Veterans Affairs, which gains $519 million in 2005, gets a cut of $910 million in 2006. Most of the increase in a home ownership program will be reversed in 2006.   When Democrats complained that the cuts were being used to pay for "oversized tax cuts" Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation argued that "the public is ready to make sacrifices during the war on terror."

Despite recent good news on employment growth, the current economic recovery, now approaching its third year, remains the most unbalanced on record in respect to the distribution of income gains between corporate profits and labor compensation. Essentially, rapid gains in productivity have been translating into higher corporate profits without increasing the wage and salary income of American workers.

One of the ideological architects of the Iraq war has criticized the U.S.- led occupation of the country as "a grave error."   Richard Perle, until recently a powerful adviser to U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, described
U.S. policy in post-war Iraq as a failure.

"I would be the first to acknowledge we allowed the liberation (of Iraq) to subside into an occupation. And I think that was a grave error, and in some ways a continuing error,"

A survey of federal agencies has found more than 120 programs that collect and analyze large amounts of personal data on individuals to predict their behavior.  The survey, to be issued Thursday by the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, found that the practice, known as data mining, was ubiquitous.

In press conferences, TV ads, and interviews this year, President Bush has manifested a series of psychopathologies: an abstract notion of reality, confidence unhinged from facts and circumstances, and a conception of credibility that requires no correspondence to the external world. Tonight, as he vowed to stay the course in Iraq, Bush demonstrated another mental defect: incomprehension of his role in history as a fallible human agent. Absent such comprehension, Bush can't fix his mistakes in Iraq because he can't see how—or even that—he screwed up.

Among the Farsi translators working for the FBI, she said, it was common knowledge that a longtime, highly regarded FBI "asset" placed in Afghanistan told the agency in April 2001 that he had information from his contacts there that bin Laden was planning a major attack, involving the use of planes, in one or another of big American cities—Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York among them. The agents who took down the information from the spy wrote up reports and sent them to their superiors. That was the last the agents heard of the matter.

In January, 2003, the EPA and Corps of Engineers issued instructions to agency officials to stop applying Clean Water Act protections to all so-called "isolated" waters.  The EPA itself estimated that the directive removes Clean Water Act protection from as many as 20 million acres of the nation's remaining wetlands.   At the same time, the agencies issued an "Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking", seeking comment on plans to deny protections to an even larger category of non-navigable streams, lakes, ponds, and other waters.

The EPA and the Army Corps received overwhelming opposition to their announcement.  The vast majority of the 133,000 comments were highly
critical of the directive and of the agencies' plans to narrow federal authority even further.  A large majority of state agencies, as well as water and wildlife experts, sportsmen and women, floodplain managers, many conservation organizations and several EPA regional offices wrote in opposition.  Half the members of the U.S. House of Representatives and a number of Senators sent letters to the Bush administration opposing the rulemaking and calling for the directive to be rescinded.

The Bush administration responded to the outcry by canceling its plans to change the rules, but it has left the directive in place.

He tripled the federal debt, supported James Watt in his rape of our public lands, sold arms to Iran, illegally gave our money to the brutal contras in Nicaragua, threw away billions of our tax dollares on his Star Wars program, supported both Sadam and the terrorists who later became the Taliban.  GOOD RIDDANCE!   For more:

David Corn's Nation piece on 66 things to remember about Reagan- a paragraph:

The firing of the air traffic controllers, winnable nuclear war, recallable nuclear missiles, trees that cause pollution, Elliott Abrams lying to Congress, ketchup as a vegetable, colluding with Guatemalan thugs, pardons for F.B.I. lawbreakers, voodoo economics, budget deficits, toasts to Ferdinand Marcos, public housing cutbacks, redbaiting the nuclear freeze movement, James Watt.

We are asked to forget the Iran-Contra Scandal, an event that he evidently "could not recall" in response to more than one hundred questions during the Congressional hearings.

We are asked to forget that Reagan presided over the worst recession since the Great Depression.

We are asked to forget the enormous cuts to social welfare programs and the Veterans Administration, moves that led to such an enormous rise in the homeless population, especially evident on the streets of Washington, D.C., that even comedians felt that they had to do something to stop the bleeding with "Comic Relief."

We are asked to forget that he slashed taxes for the wealthiest, raised taxes on the poor, and then bailed out the corrupt Savings and Loan industry at taxpayer expense.

We are asked to forget that his SEC presided over such a corrupt and over-inflated stock market that the Dow saw the largest one-day crash in its history, greater than in 1929.

"In my view, the Reagan administration's support and collaboration with it is equally immoral, evil, and totally un-Christian. . . . You are either for or against apartheid and not by rhetoric. You are either in favor of evil or you are in favor of good. You are either on the side of the oppressed or on the side of the oppressor. You can't be neutral."

Things you have to believe to be a Republican today

Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you’re a conservative radio host. Then it’s an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.

The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iraq.

Government should relax regulation of Big Business and Big Money but crack down on individuals who use marijuana to relieve the pain of illness.

“Standing Tall for America” means firing your workers and moving their jobs to India.

A woman can’t be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multi-national corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.

Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.

The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches while slashing veterans’ benefits and combat pay.

Group sex and drug use are degenerate sins unless you someday run for governor of California as a Republican.

If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won’t have sex.

A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our long-time allies, then demand their cooperation and money.

HMOs and insurance companies have the interest of the public at heart.

Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism.

Global warming and tobacco’s link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.

Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush’s daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a “we can’t find Bin Laden” diversion.

A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense. A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.

Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.

The public has a right to know about Hillary’s cattle trades, but George Bush’s driving record is none of our business.

You support states’ rights, which means Attorney General John Ashcroft can tell states what local voter initiatives they have a right to adopt.

What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the ’80s is irrelevant.

Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.

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It's really very simple when you get right down to it-- Democrats want to use the power of government to help everyone; Republicans want to use the power of government to help themselves.


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