The arrogant Idiot-in-Chief struted aboard an aircraft carrier under a "Mission Accomplished" banner in May '03 and two months later, in true chicken hawk fashion, taunted the Iraqi insurgents with his "bring them on!" BS. Boy, have they- since then, 812 US troops have been killed and over 6,000 wounded.
My summer reading included A Just Response: On Terrorism, Democracy, and 9/11/01- a collection of articles and letters which appeared in The Nation in the months following 9/11. Many of the authors said, in essence, that they hoped 9/11 would encourage us to quit being a global bully. One of the best items was a 11/7/01 letter from Howard Zinn arguing against an article by Richard Falk. Falk's article outlined what he considered a "just war" in response to 9/11. Zinn's letter concludes with this bit of wisdom: "Let us be a more modest nation. The modest nations of the world don't face the threat of terrorism, Let us pull back from being a military superpower and become a humanitarian superpower. We, and everyone else, will then be more secure".
I perfered a bit of both approaches- much like the last decent Republican president's advice to "walk soft but carry a big stick": 1) A "just war" to neutralize bin Laden and crew. 2) Helping the Afgans rebuild combined with (the important part!) foreswearing our past policies of geo-political meddling such as installing up bad regimes while overthrowing decent ones, being the lackey of corporations, unilaterly voiding and violating treaties and generally behaving like an arrogant global bully.
But the Bush regime did neither. It left Afganistan further devastated, shirked its responsibility for rebuilding the country and, utterly amazingly, allowed bin Laden and most of his supporters to escape. Why? So the Bush chickenhawks could do what they'd been planning long before 9/11- attack Iraq- a country which had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11 and, further, a country whose leader detested bin Laden and his ilk.
Finally, this baldface lie by Bush in a '00 presidential debate:
"Our nation stands alone right now in the world in terms of power, and
that is why we've got to be humble and yet project strength in a way that
promotes freedom."
------
Dick "go fuck yourself" Cheney, said that a Democratic win in November
would invite a "devastating" terror attack. Given 1) the domestic
and global destruction wrought by his regime so far and 2) even more of
the same if they are re-elected/selected (since they won't face re-election
in '08); I'm definitely going with risking a terror attack!
One can only hope Cheney's threatened terror attack targets the right folks-
starting with Cheney himself. Alas, the demented chickenhawk
will be hiding in his secured location. As is usually the case, it'll
be us peons that suffer for their stupidity....
(More below)
-----
On 9/21/04 the idiot-in-chief told the UN his attack on Iraq was justified
and then had the nerve to ask the UN/its members to help with stablizing
Iraq (never mind rebuilding it....). I reluctantly have
to give the guy credit for something- being astoundingly audicious!
In his rush to attack Iraq, he thumbed his nose at the UN and most
of the the world and, now that it's turned into a quagmire, he has the
utter stupidity to ask for their help. The entire UN assembly should
have arrisen in unison and given him the one finger salute while hollering
"go fuck yourself" (copyright Dick Cheney).
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called the regime's invasion
of Iraq illegal.
-----
The regime is offering soldier "incentives" to re-enlist for 3 more
years- re-up or they be sent to Iraq. (more)
The really sad thing is most of them will vote for another 4 years of the
regime running amok. My hope is that those in the military
who vote for the regime are promptly sent to Iraq or wherever country the
regime attacks next.
-----
Tom Schaller posted
that more troops have been killed in the Iraq quagmire (body
count) so far in '04 than in all of last year.
The '04 death rate this year is 2.04/day- up from 1.68/day in '03.
And Shrub declared "mission accomplished" in May '03!
I guess he was right in one respect- the mission to enrich
his regimes' cronies has been certianly been accomplished.
Schaller also poses a very good questions: "How long will it take the media
to report this indisputable fact? I mean, can they take even
five minutes time from the latest, breathless Swift Boat twist to report
the fact that more Americans have died in Iraq this year than last?"
------
Before a joint session of congress, the regime's puppet prime minister
in Iraq parroted the regime's line that things are going well in Iraq.
About the only folks things are going well for in Iraq are Haliburton and
the other corporate vultures. Both the Iraqi and the US regimes
are lying.
------
The text
of George Soros' excellent speech "Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush
" to the Nation Press Club is well worth a read.
------
A article
on what's leaked out reguarding about the CIA's July National Intelligence
Estimate (NIE) indicates three possibilities for Iraq. They
range from bad- "an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous" to horrid-
a civil war. Although the CIA's been grossly and dangerously
wrong in the past, a review of the statistics in the Iraq
Index indicates they may have gotten this one right. Adding
further credence is the regime's refusal to release the NIE.
The NIE must be even more damning than what's leaked out...
MoveOn.org has more info/links and an on-line petition
demanding release of the NIE.
Bush summarized
the NIE on Sept. 21 thusly: "It said that life could by lousy. Life
could be okay. Life could be better. And they were just guessing
as to what the conditions might be like." It's extremely doubtful
Shrub even read the NIE's executive summary and hence is relying on what
his puppetmasters have attempted put in his feeble and shallow brain.
At least he got one thing right- based on the CIA's "intelligence" on Sadam
before the regime's attack on Iraq, the NIE is likely a guess.
That's the good news. The bad news is that the Iraq quagmire will
likely get even worse than the CIA has "guessed".
-----
Rumsfeld bragged
in Feb. of Iraqi security forces having 210,000 members. Now,
he says the number is only 105,000.
Have Iraqi "insurgents" killed or caused 105,000 of them to flee
or is Rummy lying yet again?
------
"What is clear is that whenever political debate turns to Mr. Bush's
actual record in office, his popularity sinks. Only by doing whatever it
takes to change the subject to the war on terror - not to what he's actually
doing about terrorist threats, but to his "leadership," whatever that means
- can he get a bump in the polls.... Iraq, in particular, is a slow-motion
disaster brought on by wishful thinking, cronyism and epic incompetence.
If I were running the Kerry campaign, I'd remind people frequently about
Mr. Bush's flight-suit photo-op, when he declared the end of major combat."-
from Paul Krugman's must-read column, "A
Mythic Reality"
------
The local paper reports (buried on page A7...) that the regime's Selective
Service is enlisting 10,000 "volunteers" to reactivate 2,000 local draft
boards. They tried this in the run-up to their attack on Iraq
but the hue and cry forced them to abandon the project. "Selective"
Service will be an even more appropriate name than it was in the Nam era-
Shrub's hand-picked "volunteers" prime job will be to select spoiled brats
of the rich/well-connected for plum deferments while sons and daughters
of us "peons" to die in Shrub's stupid wars. Besides, Shrub's
(ab)use of the Guard in his Iraq quagmire has assured the rich/well-connected
won't be sheltering their spoiled brats there. Anyhow, deferments
are a tradition with the regime- Cheney got at least five deferments and
has even had the sheer gall to state he had "better things to do" than
fight in Viet Nam.
------
"How pathetic is it that he's playing defense on Vietnam when W. didn't
even serve?"- Maureen Dowd on Kerry's feeble response to Bush's Swift
Boat stooges.
-----
"The real debate is neither Bush nor Kerry, but the system they exemplify;
it is the decline of true democracy and the rise of the American 'national
security state'"- from a great article by John Pilger, The
Warlords of America. The article vividly illustrates that the
choice on 11/2/04 is beween the lessor of two evils which operate using
the same playbook provided to them by the corporations.
-----
Democracy
must begin at home by Noam Chomsky has this lead: "The US presidential
campaign only points up the severe democratic deficit in the world's most
powerful state. Americans can choose between major-party candidates
who were born to wealth and political power, attended the same elite university,
joined the same secret society that instructs members in the style and
manners of the rulers, and are able to run because they are funded by the
same corporate powers. The inescapable irony is that the United States,
long involved in "democracy-building" adventures around the world, desperately
needs to revitalise the democratic process at home. "
What Chomsky fails to mention in his otherwise good article is that
it takes an aware citizenry to revitalise the democratic process at home-
something the US apparently sadly lacks. (e.g., see above)
------
Bush recently said
the mayhem in Iraq was limited to just a few areas. Maybe he should
read a secret report
prepared for his regime by Kroll Security International (nay, the idiot
doesn't even read the newspapers...). The report shows the violence
is both wide spread and is increasing. Instead of reading the
Kroll report, he should get his sorry cowardly ass over there and experience
the violence himself. More on the regime's Iraq quagmire
below.
------
"It makes sense for W. to use surrogates to do his fighting, just as
he did when he slid out of Vietnam and just as he did when he sent our
troops to fight his administration's misbegotten vanity war in Iraq."-
Maureen Dowd re: Bush's use of the Swift Boat stooges (more
below)
------
Citing evidence in the Schlesinger report, Kerry has called
for Rummy's resignation for the prisioner abuses. How weak- he at
least should call for Bush's impeachment and ouster for is all of his lies.
Based just on what he's done to Iraq, he richly deserves to be tried, convicted
and executed as a war criminal. Alas, if Kissinger has beaten
the rap for all these years, Shrub, Rummy is probably safe.
------
The poverty rate has climbed every year Bush has been in office according
to Census Bureau stats.
A disgraceful 12.5% of our citizens live in poverty. Worse still,
even more (17.6%) of kids live in poverty. Yet another Bush
accomplishment- the percentage of folks without health insurance has increased
every year he's been in power.
------
"President Bush promised to create five million new jobs, and
so far he's six million short."- John J. Sweeney, AFL-CIO
president
------
"Our armies do not come as conquerors, but as liberators." - British
Gen. Maude, 1921, Baghdad, as quoted in John Pilger article Now
We Are the Extremists. Pilger notes that within 3 years of the
general's claim, "10,000 had died in an uprising against the British,
who gassed and bombed the 'terrorists'. Nothing has changed,
only the names and the fine print of the lies".
------
"The Iraqi insurgents - whether one agrees with them or not - believe
they are fighting for their homeland, their religion and their families.
The Americans are not at all clear what they're fighting for. Saddam is
gone. There were no weapons of mass destruction. The link between Saddam
and the atrocities of Sept. 11 was always specious and has been proven
so." Bob Herbert in his 9/10/04 column on Bush's Iraq quagmire, "How
Many Deaths Will It Take?"
-----
A shocking 42% of Americans are absolute
morons. This is extrapolated from a Newsweek poll which found that
42% of those polled still believing that Saddam Hussein was directly
involved in 9/11. Utterly amazing....
as is this:
USNewsWire reports
that a black employee of the Republican Party has sued the party and Bush/Cheney
for racial discrimination. Well, DUH! What did
she think- that they are the party of Linclon? They will likely
beat the rap by saying they fire her for stupidity- i.e. a black working
for them!
Other "stupid americans" news: In a September 7-9 national poll,
Bush led Kerry on who the people believed would keep the United States
safe by 23 points. I have doubts about Kerry but no one should have
any doubts about the current idiot-in-chief who was repeatly told of an
impending attack before 9/11 and did essentailly nothing.
------
"The League of Frightened Gentlemen" - what an unnamed US solider
calls the contractors and other vultures who are now fleeing Iraq.
-----
Justice may be metted out to the chickenhawks who, instead of capturing
bin Laden "dead or alive", attacked of Iraq. Alas, it's just the
regime's British lap dog Tony Blair who is now facing impeachment.
A Guardian
article
reports it will be the first time in over 150 years that Parliment has
even considered impeachment of a Prime Minister.
------
The BBC reports
that, while Rummy has denied any dealings with the recently convicted US
thugs who tortured their prisioners in Afganistan, one of Rummy's top honchos
spoke repeatly with the lead thug. As the lawyer for the thug
(the one in Afganistan; not Rummy) pointed out, if Rummy's office had rebuffed
his client, why did they keep talking with him? Hell, if the truth
was actually known, the thugs probably worked for Haliburton.
------
David Letterman had a top ten list of Bush tax proposals- some really
pointed ones: 8. Under the simplifed tax code, your refund check
goes directly to Haliburton. 6. Ashcroft gets to
write off the entire US Constitution (more like what's left of
it). And, best of all, 1. Bush gets a deduction
for mortgaging our entire future (and our kids' and grandkids'
per the info below)
------
Ripublican copy-cats: Not bright enough himself to think of it,
gambling addict and hypocritical moral scold Bill Bennett is helping establish
an 527 group named (in their "new speak" fashion) Freedomworks which is
nothing more than a rip-off of MoveOn.
Bennett should stick with what he does best- losing millions at the gaming
tables.
-----
It is reported that Porter
Goss was a member of a CIA/Mafia/Cuban Exile "Murder Inc" group while he
was with the CIA. There's even a photo
of him seated at a nightclub meeting of the group which included notorious
CIA pilot and drug smuggler Barry Seal, the equally-notorious CIA assassin
Felix Rodriguez (a Cuban vice cop under the corrupt mob-run Batista regime
who later became an Iran Contra operative and a confidant of the first
George Bush, and Frank Sturgis who is most famous as one of the Watergate
burglars. It's bad enough Shrub's choice for intellegence czar
is a rabid republican/right-wingnut....
-----
The Sierra Club reports
that 766,872 miles of our rivers are so contaminated with mercury that
fish from the rivers aren't safe to eat. That's a 60% increase
since '02. And what does Bush propose? A plan that would
delay
cleaning up mercury emissions from power plants for at least a decade and
setting targets so weak that the industry will be allowed to emit THREE
TIMES MORE more mercury after 2018. What I propose is that
he and the rest of his environmental rapists be fed a steady diet of fish
from said rivers. On second thought, that's a bad idea- they are
acting too much like mad hatters already!
-----
A Washington Post Weekly article, "A Rising
Tide of Red Ink" reports on the CBO's estimate of the debt Shrub is leaving
for our kids and grandkids. The new red ink (I've included
per person debt figure to put the enormity of the debt Shrub's added on
a more human scale):
| Amount of new debt over the next 10 years: |
$2.3 trillion
|
$8,500
|
| Amount of new debt if Shrub's plan to make his tax cuts permanent is enacted: |
$3.6 trillion
|
$13,000
|
| Amount of new debt if Shrub's planned diversion of money from Social Security is enacted: |
$2.0 trillion
|
$7,500
|
| Total new debt (if Ripublicans remain in power...) |
$7.9 trillion
|
$29,500
|
The CBO study also says Shrub's Iraq quagmire will cost an additional
$179 billion over the next 10 years if things go well (HA!) and
over $392 billion if they don't. That's $700 to $1,450 per
american man/woman/child added to the above tab- a best case total of over
$30,000 per person debt Shrub has added!
-----
The regime and most of the mainstream press are billing the tax package
passed by Congress on 9/24/05 as a "middle class tax-cut." That is
yet another lie. Per a Brookings Tax Policy Center
report,
the new law is more of the same: tax cuts that greatly favor the greedy
rich. Analysis shows that the middle 20% will receive an average
tax cut of $162 in '05 while the top 20% will get an average cut of $1,317.
This means the top 20% will receive two-thirds of all benefits.
Adding insult to injury, the bill excluded extending the child tax credit
to four million low-income families who currently don't qualify and instead
gives $12 billion in tax cuts to corporations. (more details)
-----
The Army War College issued a scathing report criticizing the regime's
war on terrorism. It calls the attack on Iraq an "unnecessary war"
and a detour in the war on terror. It also warns that as a
result of those mistakes, the Army is "near the breaking point" and
recommends, among other things, scaling back the scope of the "global war
on terrorism" and instead focusing on the narrower threat posed by al Qaeda.
(more info)
-----
The field is packed but Clarence Thomas is a definite top contender
for idiot-of-the-year based on his outlandish opinion in the "under god/pledge"
case. The idiot wrote that the 1st Admendment establishment
clause (a.k.a. the wall of church/state separation) was never intended
to apply to the states! His "reasoning"- some of the
states had official religions at the time the Bill of Rights was adopted
hence, the intent must have been to protect those state-sponsored
religions. Amazingly, it gets even worse- although he conceeds
the establishment clause prohibits Congress from establishing a national
religion, he contends it does not "purport to protect individual rights"!
This "reasoning" is utterly and completely astounding! He must
have been eating too many mercury laced fish from
US rivers.
-----
Alas, the supreme court apparently isn't right-wing enough for 247
idiots in congress who also have on respect for Constitution's the balance
of powers . They voted for the "The Pledge Act". In July, the
same idiots voted for another court-stripping law- their homophobic
"Defense of Hetrosexual Marriage Act".
-----
A house ethics panel admonished Tom DeLay on Thursday, saying
he improperly offered a bribe to another representative- to endorse
the reps. son in return for the reps. vote on a Medicare prescription drug
bill. Two other ripublicans were also found to be lacking in
ethics for their role in the shameless affair. (more)
-----
Shrub's alledged "economic recovery"- how the pie's divided:
An Economic Policy Institute report, The
State of Working America, notes that the fruits of the alledged economic
"recovery" when where one might suspect- 47% of the growth in national
income growth went to corporate profits while a meger 15% went to wages
and salaries. I suspect the remaining 38% went to corporate
CEOs. It would be interesting to compare this astounding level
of corporate/CEO greed with that of previous economic recoveries.
I'd bet CEO pay and their piece of recovery pie could be plotted as the
same curve on a graph- an exponential curve....
Then there's the Citizens for Tax Justice's report
of the top 5 percent of income earners will get more than half the regime's
tax cuts while the bottom half of Americans will receive less than 8 percent.
-----
Guantanamo
Farce is a LA Times editorial on the "justice" being metted
out by the regime; e.g. "The opening round of detainee military tribunals
at Guantanamo Bay last week resembled something between a Mel Brooks farce
and the kangaroo courts of former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin."
Methinks Shrub's "justice" at Gitmo, in addition to being hypocritical
since he's alledged the US is such a "beacon of freedom", is yet more prime
recruitment fodder he's provided for anti-American terrorists....
-----
In addition to investigating a spy in the
office of a top DOD neocon, the FBI is investigating
how the Iraqi National Congress, a former exile group rabidly backed by
the regime, received highly classified U.S. intelligence on Iran.
(more
info)
------
If you are aware of plots to prevent others from voting or are hassled
on election day, call 1-866-OUR VOTE - the Election Protection Coalition
hotline. They expect to have 25,000 volunteers and 5,000
lawyers come election day to help prevent thief of another election.
For more on the theif tactics, read the PFAW/NAACP study, "The
Long Shadow of Jim Crow" or volunteer
to help the coalition.
-----
Remeber when many, if not most, republicans thought Bush I a wimp for
not taking out Sadam in Gulf War I? I recall one of his
advisers saying that removing Sadam would have left Iraq a basket case
which we and our allies (lots of them then...) would find very difficult
to stablize. Hasn't that turned out to be most prophetic?
Instead of wise advisers, Shrub has a flock of warmoungering chickenhawks.
Other than Shrub himself, probably the worst is Paul Wolfowitz who
told congress, "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its
own reconstruction, and relatively soon." So far the chickenhawks'
war and subsequent quagmire has cost us $140 billion.
Wolfowitz also said "the oil revenues of that country could bring
in between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three
years". Lawrence Lindsey, Shrub's economic advisor at the time,
glibbly predicted oil prices would drop due to all the Iraq oil.
Well, the oil hasn't materialized and oil prices have dramatically increased.
-----
Has anyone else noted that the vast majority of hoggish SUV owners
are regime supporters? Around here, Based on the number with Bush
stickers on their bumpers relative the number with Kerry stickers?
Then again, the Kerry family has one (a hoggish SUV, likely not a Bush
sticker). Yet again, the choice on 11/2/04 is a selection of the
lessor evil...
-----
On 9/20/04, terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi group beheaded yet another
American. Bush claims
he's after Zarqawi and crew yet he has refused to approve any of the three
operations the military presented '02 and '03 for attacking Zarqawi's camp
in Iraq. According to an NBC report,
"Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi's operation
was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp
in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam."
I'm sure things would have been done differently if Zarqawi had a bunch
of oil....
-----
The noose may be finally tighening around arch rightwing nut Tom DeLay's
neck. Three of his political aides were indicted
in Texas on 9/22/04 for raising funds from the ripublican's supporters-
corporations, for their take-over of the Texas legislature. Surprisingly
for such a regressive state, it's currently against the law in Texas for
politicians to take corporate contributions (better described as bribes).
I surmise gutting that law is a prime reason the ripublicans wanted control
of the legislature.
-----
Maureen Dowd's column "Cheney Spits Toads" is a good read- e.g. "These guys figure, hey, these scare tactics worked in building support for the Iraq war, maybe they can work in tearing down support for John Kerry. It's like that fairy tale where vipers and toads jump out of the mouth of the accursed mean little girl when she tries to speak. Every time Mr. Cheney opens his mouth, vermin leap out..... The vice president and president did not even mention Osama at the convention because of the inconvenient fact that the fiend is still out there plotting. Yet they denigrate Mr. Kerry as too weak to battle Osama, and treat him as a greater threat."
A great Misleader.org article provides a good indication of how the Nov. election will go:
President Bush has opined about the need for democracy to be preserved, and for U.S. elections to be fair. In 2002, he said "Every registered voter deserves to have confidence that the system is fair and elections are honest."[1] In 2003, he gave a speech to the National Endowment for Democracy claiming he had a "commitment to democracy."[2] But, as a new report shows, Bush and the Republican Party are doing everything they can to reduce democracy at home as the election approaches.As an article in In These Times notes, in August 2003 the CEO of one of the biggest manufacturers of new voting machines wrote a fundraising letter saying he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."[3] In June 2004, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) tried to remove 48,000 traditionally Democratic voters from the Florida voter rolls,[4] prompting the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to demand an investigation. In July, a top GOP official in Michigan indicated his party's effort to reduce minority voter turnout, saying that the GOP will have "a tough time [in this election]" if "we do not suppress the Detroit vote."[5] In August, Jeb Bush's political appointee tried to hire two top Bush fundraisers to represent the election office in Broward County in the case of a recount.[6]
A GAO report says that the regime's new private Medicare plans haven't saved the government any money- instead they have actually increased the amount of money flowing from senior citizens to corporations. Worse yet, the regime illegally waived restrictions to allow some private health plans to limit Medicare recipients' choices on health providers. So, the regime's "solution" costs more while reduces recipient's choices. While many health care experts foresaw this result when the regime was ramming it's agenda through congress, congress didn't (not that most members would have given a damn anyway...). They didn't see it coming because the regime hid data which showed their plan would increase costs to taxpayers but illegally hid the damning data from congress as per another GAO report.
Any senior who votes for Bush deserves exactly what they are going to
get- worse health care and more of their money going to greedy corporations.
-----
A 9/29/04 Misleader.org post reports
on the regimes refusal to allow us to buy drugs abroad because it's "unsafe".
A marketing VP of Pfizer has now come forward saying
that "The safety issue is a made-up story" and that imported drugs are
safe. Even the regime's FDA can't
provide any evidence that medicines from Canada are unsafe.
Such drugs would only be unsafe alright- unsafe with respect to the drug
industry's obscene profits and to the bribes they give ripublicans.
Per a Public Campaign report,
the drug industry has given ripublican candidates more than $36 million
since 1999 and Bush has raked in more than $418,000 from the pharmaceutical
industry.
Ain't it interesting how the regime touts the free market and free trade as the answers for every problem except when it's their corporate sponsors' that stand to lose?
The above would also explain why, although he found time to get his teeth worked on via the Guard, he skipped his mandated medical exam. At that time the military had started testing for drugs. I guess he figured his daddy couldn't get is spoiled ass out of a flunked drug test.
Then this from the article Why Bush Left Texas by Russ Baker in the 9/15/04 the Nation
Even more significantly, in a July interview, Linda Allison, the widow of Jimmy Allison, the Alabama campaign manager and a close friend of Bush's father, revealed to me for the first time that Bush had come to Alabama not because the job had appeal or because his presence was required but because he needed to get out of Texas. "Well, you have to know Georgie," Allison said. "He really was a totally irresponsible person. Big George [George H.W. Bush] called Jimmy, and said, he's killing us in Houston, take him down there and let him work on that campaign.... The tenor of that was, Georgie is in and out of trouble seven days a week down here, and would you take him up there with you." Allison said that the younger Bush's drinking problem was apparent. She also said that her husband, a circumspect man who did not gossip and held his cards closely, indicated to her that some use of drugs was involved. "I had the impression that he knew that Georgie was using pot, certainly, and perhaps cocaine," she said.------Now-prominent, established Texas figures in the military, arts, business and political worlds, some of them Republicans and Bush supporters, talk about Bush's alleged use of marijuana and cocaine based on what they say they have heard from trusted friends. One middle-aged woman whose general veracity could be confirmed told me that she met Bush in 1968 at Hemisphere 68, a fair in San Antonio, at which he tried to pick her up and offered her a white powder he was inhaling. She was then a teenager; Bush would have just graduated from Yale and have been starting the National Guard then. "He was getting really aggressive with me," she said. "I told him I'd call a policeman, and he laughed, and asked who would believe me."
The family that rented Bush a house in Montgomery, Alabama, during that period told me that Bush did extensive, inexplicable damage to their property, including smashing a chandelier, and that they unsuccessfully billed him twice for the damage--which amounted to approximately $900, a considerable sum in 1972.
Announcer: If you have any questions about George Bush's National Guard service record, just ask the men who didn't serve with him. John Maguire: I did not serve with George Bush. Ted Brody: I did not serve with George Bush. Michael Jansen: I did not serve with George Bush.------
Maguire: I know George Bush is lying about his service, because I was skiing with him in Aspen the whole time.
Brody: His accounts of where he was and where he wasn't are as different as being at a frat party and being in the military. Literally.
Maguire: George Bush is a deserter. But he does like to party."
Brody: We got so drunk.
Maguire: George Bush was more than willing to put himself in harm's way- every time he got behind the wheel.
Brody: Most of us went all the way to Canada. George Bush shirked his duties right here in America and now he's denying it.
Texans for Truth previously
put out a TV ad in swing states featuring former Lt. Col. and Guardsman
Bob Mintz saying he never saw Bush during the time Bush claims he was serving
at the Alabama Guard base despite the fact that he was looking for Bush.
They also have posted a $50,000 reward to anyone who can prove Bush fulfilled
his drills and duties in Alabama. No legitimate witnesses have
come forward.
-----
Per Jay Leno: "60 Minutes featured documents that they say proved
President Bush did not fulfill his requirements for National Guard service.
Well, now there's talk that the documents are forged. Well, of course
Bush is stunned. He said, 'You mean I did show up for duty'"
For more details on the regime's support of the Swift Boat liars, check out this US Newswire article. For more on the obsession of the Bush regime with secretcy: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6
The inspector general of the CPA reported in July (shortly after it's chief, Paul Bremmer, fled the country in the dark of night) that one-third of the items purchased were missing and at least $1.9 billion or more of "Iraqi" (HA!) oil revenue had also mysteriously disappeared. It turned out that Halliburton had most of the equipment and money and had alledgely "forgotten" to account for them. What utter BS! But it get worse- neither the Congress nor the Iraqi government authorized transfer of any of the "Iraqi" oil money to Halliburton. It was Paul Bremmer who illegally OKed the transfer. Methinks Bremmer's Swiss bank accounts should be audited!
The Bremmer regime also (mis)managed to spend just 2 percent of the $18.4 billion Congress earmarked for the immediate reconstruction of Iraq. And not a penny was spent on the areas where the Iraqi people were suffering the most: healthcare, water and sanitation. (Worse yet, Bush recently announced he wants to use billions of the "reconstruction" money for military purposes).
Halliburton's own auditor, Marie de Young, told Congress that Halliburton's internal "auditors" audited contracts by simply making checking folders to see if they contained the required forms- they did not assess if the charges on the forms were correct much less reasonable. Further, auditors who started doing actual audits got moved and the managers overseeing the bogus "audits" got promoted. (Hell, the now deceased Arthur Anderson accounting firm could have done better!)
A NY Times article reports even a few (too few...) republicans critizing the regime's record in Iraq: Sen. Lugar, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, calls it "exasperating for anybody look at this from any vantage point." Sen. Hagel said of the relative pittance spend on reconstruction: "It's beyond pitiful, it's beyond embarrassing. It is now in the zone of dangerous." The regime has (mis)managed to spend only $1 billion of the $18.4 billion approved so now they want to divert over $3 billion to "security" work. There's a silver lining tho'- at least $17.4 billion hasn't been stolen by Haliburton and other greed corporations (yet...)
Another good article on the quagmire is CIA Pessimistic About Iraq: Worse Than Portrayed. The regime is trying mightly to keep a lid on the CIA's dire report on Iraq but, like pus from a boil, the bad news is slowly oozing out.
Here's John Pilger's take on a little covered aspect of the regime attack on Iraq (from the 09/20/04 New Statesman):
The occupation of Iraq is presented as "a mess": a blundering, incompetent American military up against Islamic fanatics. In truth, the occupation is a systematic, murderous assault on a civilian population by a corrupt American officer class, given licence by its superiors in Washington. In May, the US marines used battle tanks and helicopter gunships to attack the slums of Fallujah. They admitted killing 600 people, a figure far greater than the total number of civilians killed by the "insurgents" during the past year. The generals were candid; this futile slaughter was an act of revenge for the killing of three US mercenaries. Sixty years earlier, the SS Das Reich division killed 600 French civilians at Oradour-sur-Glane as revenge for the kidnapping of a German officer by the resistance. Is there a difference?These days, the Americans routinely fire missiles into Fallujah and other dense urban areas; they murder whole families. If the word terrorism has any modern application, it is this industrial state terrorism.
Retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency: "Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse, he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It's lost..... Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends..... This is far graver than Vietnam. There wasn't as much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went ahead with the war that was not constructive for US aims. But now we're in a region far more volatile, and we're in much worse shape with our allies." Maybe there is some hope- Odom says, "I've never seen it so bad between the office of the secretary of defence and the military. There's a significant majority believing this is a disaster".Retired general Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command: "The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong."
Jeffrey Record, professor of strategy at the Air War College, said: "I see no ray of light on the horizon at all. The worst case has become true.... We've been down that road before. It's called Vietnamisation. The idea that we're going to have an Iraqi force trained to defeat an enemy we can't defeat stretches the imagination. They will be tainted by their very association with the foreign occupier."
Andrew Terrill, professor at the Army War College's strategic studies institute - and the top expert on Iraq there - said: "I don't think that you can kill the insurgency". He also says the anti-US insurgency, holds many cities and towns and is expanding and becoming more capable as a consequence of US policy. He states that The longer we stay, the more insurgents we create since "Most Iraqis consider us occupiers, not
liberators."
Alas, neither the Fay or the Schlinger report hold any of the regime leaders responsible for the prisioner abuse crimes. As is especially the case under a regime for the rich led by a spoiled rich brat, the well-connected escape any sanctions while the lowly peons get the book thrown at them.
Is it any wonder most of the Muslim world hates us? No - not just the regime installed by 5 idiots on the supreme court- but the collective US! Although the vast majority of this hatred is due to the regime behaving like an arrogant global thug, the Muslim world apparently makes no distinction between the unelected idiot cowboy currently in the White House and those of us who also hate the vile idiot. On the other hand, considering recent polls which show most americans still supporting the thug, I can definitely see much validity to Muslims' hatred of "us".
Yet another spy for the Israelis is under investigation for supplying them with secret poop on Iran. This time the spy was in the Pentagon office of Douglas Feith. In addition to being a rabid Israel fanatic and warmoungering chickenhawk, Feith also oversaw much of the manufacture of the regime's lies about Iraqi WMDs, support of al Queda and other BS. Given this source of the intellegence provided to the Israelis, I don't dobt they discarded it upon receipt! Hell, since Feith is a rabid supporter of the regime in Israel, it would not surprise me if the spy turns out to have been acting on orders of Feith. Further thickening the spying plot are Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar- a key figure in the Reagan/Bush illegal and amoral Iran-Contra caper, and rabid neocon warmounger Michael Ledeen. (more info)
Adding insult to injury, the US gives more money to Israel than to any other country on a per capata basis. Israel should have been yanked from the public teat long ago- i.e. after they repeatly attacked a Navy ship in '67 killing scores of US sailors.
Additional reading: Radiation in Iraq Equals 250,000 Nagasaki Bombs and a BBC in-depth report. A google news search and news search will turn up hours of informative reading
The article documents the disaster that's going to occur in Florida on 11/2/04- another botched election. Some highlights: Theresa LePore, who blew off the election recount in 2000, is still the elections supervisor of Palm Beach County. Told by the state of Florida that the infamous punchcard machines would have to be replaced, she flew to Riverside county in California to check out their Sequoia Pacific machines. She apparently didn't do much checking before spending $14.4 million for them- the machines had botched elections in Riverside county. When used in Palm Beach in 2002, they also botched elections- a former mayor of Boca Raton was flabbergasted to finish third in a city council race since a poll before the election showed him with a 17 point lead. Voters reported that when they tried to touch the screen to light up his name, the machine registered the name of an opponent. 15 cartridges containing the vote totals from machines in his home precinct had disappeared on election night and wre later found but were empty Two weeks later, something even stranger happened. In the town of Wellington, a run-off election for mayor was decided by just four votes - but 78 votes did not register on the machines at all. This meant - assuming for a moment that the machines were not lying - that 78 people had driven to the polls, not voted, and gone home again. In January, yet more phantom non-voters showed up in an election- 137 of them.
12 of the largest Fla. counties bought another brand of electronic voting machines which are horrid. First used in Sept. '02, they were found to take 5 hours to boot-up! One Miami precinct reported a 900 per cent turnout; another showed just one ballot cast out of 1,637 registered voters. Even worse, when the head of the county technology department tested the internal audit trail in the computers, he found key data scrambled, creating discrepancies in the secondary vote totals. He said, "I believe there is a serious 'bug' in the programs that generate these reports, making the reports unusable." Of course it's these audit trails which supporters of electronic voting machines say make printouts unnecessary.
Think things might be better now that Katherine Harris is gone? Nada- her unelected replacement is a clone, hand-picked by Jeb Bush. According to a congressman, "She is the political mouthpiece of Jeb Bush, a true partisan using her office to the best possible advantage of the Republican Party. She is the mechanism Jeb and George Bush have employed to do everything in their power to make Florida a Bush state." She was responsible for an attempt at denying alledged ex-felons the right to vote. She hired Accenture (a spin-off of the infamous Authur Anderson accounting firm- and contributor of $25,000 to Republican candidates in Florida) to purge the rolls. She fought mightly to keep the list of purgees secret. Tis no wonder- it was top-heavy with blacks (who usually vote Democratic) while only 61 of the 48,000 on the list were Hispanics who usually vote for ripublicans. (A LA Times article reports that 2,100 names on the list had received executive clemency and hence could vote).
More games being played by Bush regime flunkies: At least 20 per cent of people who register to vote through the DMV are not receiving voter cards in the mail. Voters have received new voter cards in the mail without there asking from them, only to discover that the party registration had been surreptitiously changed from Democrat to either Republican or Independent. A Cuban columnist reported recently that absentee ballots were being sold in Miami for $25. The NAACP found that a Republican operative had trashed a large number of voter registration forms they'd collected and turned in.
Neocons Target Russia
An excellent Guardian article
reports that the neocon American Committee for "Peace" in Chechnya (ACPC)
is using Chechnya as a club against Putin. The article lists
ACPC members:
Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fameNot surprisingly, many of the above are also members of the PNAC and all rabid were cheerleaders for the regime's attack on Iraq.
Kenneth Adelman, the former US ambassador to the UN who egged on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be "a cakewalk"; Midge Decter, a director of the rightwing Heritage Foundation
Frank Gaffney, CEO of the warmoungering Centre for Security Policy
Bruce Jackson yet another warmounger, past weapons VP for Lockheed Martin and now on Shrubs Council on Foreign Relations
Michael Ledeen - a certifiable moron of the neocon/corporate front group the American Enterprise Institute, an admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading cheerleader for regime change in Iran
James Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one of the leading cheerleaders behind George Bush's plans to re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines.
The article says that the ACPC "heavily promotes the idea that the Chechen
rebellion shows the undemocratic nature of Putin's Russia, and cultivates
support for the Chechen cause by emphasising the seriousness of human rights
violations in the tiny Caucasian republic". Gee, couldn't the
same be said for Bush and Iraq? But it gets worse- the ACPC
supports terrorists: "In August, the ACPC welcomed the award of political
asylum in the US, and a US-government funded grant, to Ilyas Akhmadov,
foreign minister in the opposition Chechen government, and a man Moscow
describes as a terrorist." Reckon what the idiots would say
if the table was turned and Russian awarded asylum and money to, say,
bin Lauden? What a bunch of flaming hypocrits!
Why is George Walker Bush so
Pro-Israel provides much of the same as the above and the jewel
below:
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Bush Marking 3 Month Anniversary of 9/11 Attacks, 12/11/2001 In Front of Israeli Flag in The White House East Room. From Why is George Walker Bush so Pro-Israel |
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Shrub's title should be "Clown Prince Dumbella".
From Internet Weekly Report |
Luwak
coffee, the world's rarest and most expensive coffee, is made from
beans that were ingested and then excreted by a bobcat-like animal.