It's been 16 months since the arrogant warmoungering Idiot-in-Chief strutted aboard an aircraft carrier under his "Mission Accomplished" and 14 months since, in true chicken hawk fashion, he taunted Iraqi insurgents with his  "bring them on" BS.   Boy, have they!  Since then, around 900 US troops have been killed and over 6,000 wounded is his needless war/quagmire.  It's sad that armies are no longer led into battle by the leaders who declare the wars.  If this was still the case, the cowardly Bush never  would have sent soldiers to attack Iraq- even if he actually believed his regime's lies about the threat Saddam posed to us.   Since he is intent on amending the Constitution for assinine purposes (banning gay marriages, flag burning, posting the zealots' 10 commandments, ad nauseum....), I support this amendment for a valid purpose: all elected officials who support a war must promptly enlist as grunt soliders and be assigned to the most hazardous duty.   Methinks decisions on war would then be made on a bit more rational basis.

I hope the Bush regime is overthrown on 11/2/04, but I further hope it remains a close race.   I firmly believe the neocon chicken hawks will gleefully attack another country or engage in other serious mayhem should their puppet slip in the polls.   The regime knows Shrub's approval rating jumped 13 points immediately after they attacked Iraq and they are spinning him as the "war president".  They also know they can lie about another country being a "grave threat" and having WMDs, attack it and then get away with it, again...
------
I'm sick and tired of college-age idiots spouting off about how they support the warmongering Bush regime.  If they think the idiot is so damn great, they should promptly drag their sorry asses down to the Army recuiting station and sign-up for their leader regime's needless and stupid Iraq quagmire.   Alas, they are bunch of miserable chicken hawks- just like their idiot leader.
------
Support 20% of Our Troops.   That's the percentage of the military that plan on voting against the Bush regime.  I sincerely hope the other 80% are afforded an oppurtunity to show their support for their leader by being assigned to the highest risk missions in their leader's Iraq quagmire.  If they are lucky, maybe they will see the error in their beliefs as they recover from their wounds.
------
Cheney's outrageous lie in the VP debate that he'd never met Edwards before vividly illustrates just how downright evil the SOB is.   If he'll tell such an easily disproven lie about such a inconsequental matter, it is obvious there is nothing the utterly evil bastard will not lie about.   I could understand Shrub telling such a baldfaced lie given his meger IQ, but not Cheney.    He is evil and/or psychotic, but he is not dumb.   He is a very frightening person to have a "heart beat" away from the presidency.
------
"Cheney made no effort to hide his sense of unaccountability.   Facts that did not serve him were treated like unruly underlings. His self-assurance in lying even when politically unnecessary revealed why he is the power in the vacuum."  A well written take on Dr. Doom's MO in his debate with Edwards from Sidney Blumenthal's The Day That Dick Cheney Was Silenced.  A most revalent snippet:
------
Just 96,000 jobs were added to the economy in Sept. while the "offical" unemployment rate held steady at 5.4%.  On average there are 250,000 folks entering the job market on an average month, so, that makes a deficit of about 150,000 jobs.   So, why did the "offical" unemployment figure remain unchanged?   In accords with the old adage that figures don't lie but liars will figure, folks that become so discouraged they have given up searching for a job, those who have exhausted meager unemployment benefits and those who have taken grossly unpaid, temporary or part-time jobs are not included is "unemployed".  Studies indicate that the actual unemployment rate is at least twice the bogus "official" rate.

The dollar dropped sharply against the euro in Sept. due to concerns about the U.S. economy and the trade deficit soared to a new high due in large measure to imports of goods.  Of course most of these goods were once made in the US by workers who earned a decent wage and had decent benefits.
------
When Shrub was asked to three mistakes he'd made in office, and what he had done to remedy the damage, he didn't list even one.      Instead, he dragged in the red herring of how great his attack of Iraq was.  Not only did he completely fail to answer the question, he failed (another mistake) to read about the report of his ever own weapons inspectors who stated there were no WMDs in Iraq- his prime reason for attacking Iraq.    I reckon he was goofing off and missed his own Secretary of Offensive Attacks said there was no serious evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda- another of Shrub's reasons for attacking Iraq.   What a dummy!   The guy is an utter and complete disgrace.
------
In response to it's botching of the flu vaccine, the regime says it's going to import some vaccine from Canada.   This occurred mere days after Shrub said he won't permit importation of drugs from Canada because, "I want to make sure it cures you and doesn't kill you."   That makes it a flip-flop-flip since when the idiot was running in '00 he said importing drugs from Canada sounded like a good idea.   I suspose that was before the drug industry upped it's bribes (a.k.a. campaign contributions) to his regime.   Other regime stupidity:  Bush spent billions "fighting terrorism" in Iraq- a country that has been responsible for far few american deaths than the 36,000 who die in the US from the flu and the 200,000 that will be hospitalized.  The regime has also spent hundreds of millions on antrax and small pox vaccines which may protect maybe a thousand folks instead of spending a few million ensuring enough vaccine is available to protect against the flu- which, on average, kills 36,000 every year.  Their screwup also allowed them another oppurtunity to drag out another of their favorite red herrings- banning "frivolous" lawsuits (i.e. any suit by a peon).    They've also touted encouraging the "free market" as a solution.   Wake up idiots!  It's the "free market" that's ensured there is a vaccine shortage.  Very few other first world countries entrust greedy capitalists with ensuring an adequate supply of flu vaccine.   It wouldn't surprise me if the regime awarded Haliburton a no-bid, multibillon dollar contract to screwup the vaccine supply next year!   Then there's the congress idiots who ensured their own ample supply of vaccine.  The local paper quoted First as saying 1/3 of his fellow reps. in the high risk population.  That makes 2/3 of them greedy pigs who could give a shit about the "little people".
------
"John Kerry has crippled his campaign by his all-too-calculated contradictions, especially when he stated that he would have voted for the congressional resolution that granted power to initiate war to the President even if he had known in October 2002 what is known now. He should simply have observed instead, as Senator Hillary Clinton did, that had we known then what we know now, there would have been no resolution and no vote."    (From Out of Iraq By Stanley Hoffmann)    Once again, voting is a matter chosing the lessor of two evils.
------
Ex-regime flunky Paul Bremmer said  "We never had enough troops on the ground" in Iraq" then, just a few days later, flip-flopped in a NY Times peice entitled he wrote "What I Really Said About Iraq".  Does any member of the regime not lie?  My guess is that Bremmer crawfished when Shrub's minions threatened to bust him and confiscate the Iraq oil and aid money he stole and stashed in his off-shore bank account.
------
From a review of Greg Palast's scorching new film about the evil Bush family, "Bush Family Fortunes"-   "It's made that much more revolting by being true."
------
Overcompensating for being a slacker, Bush used the phrase "working hard" or words to that effect at least 10 times in first debate (see a video compliation).  This is one of the few totally true statements he's uttered.   Given his charmed existence as a spoiled rich brat, being president is the first job he's been given that's required any thing approaching actual work.  Not  that he's actually done much work mind you.  For example, he's taken much more vacation time that any other president, held the fewest press conferences and obviously doesn't even read intellegence reports- hell, the lazy idiot has even bragged that he doesn't even read newspapers.

He even said in the debate that looking at casuality reports was hard.   I sincerely wish it was a hellva alot harder for him.   A good start would be for him to send his spoiled rich brat kids to serve as front-line grunts in his Iraq quagmire.   Knowing their names could appear on the casuality reports might give the idiot more appreciation of how "hard" his quagmire has made his job- and an pointed appreciation for the consequences of his own stupidity.    Hell, I'd wager not a single person in or closely associated with the House of Bush is risking his/her neck as a front-line  grunt solider in his Iraq quagmire.   After all, only one of the 500 plus members of congress has a offspring serving as a enlisted member of the armed forces.  All of which further proves the wisdom in the old saw, "Rich man's war, poor man's fight".

On a more humorous note, I read of a couple who, after hearing the first few of Bush's "working hard" claims, decided to toast each of these lies with shots of booze.  They were plastered by the end of the debate.   My guess is that being plastered is as good a way as any of enabling one to tolerate the utterances of such an obvious  fool.
------
One of two (in)famous christians are lying....   In one of his very few interviews, Bush told Tim Russent in Feb. that he was not surprised by the level and intensity of Iraqi resistance while another serial liar, Pat Robertson, told CNN on 10/19/04 that he'd warned Bush to expect casualties before the war to which Bush replied, ""Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties".    Casting further doubt on Robertson credibility and sanity is another quote from Robertson: "I mean, the Lord told me it was going to be A, a disaster, and B, messy, I warned him about casualties."
------
 "If we could hear the inner deliberations of this administration, it would scare us.  They know they've been caught. Their strategy is to throw up enough monkey dust to get through the next four weeks."  - a  former Republican operative.   I just hope the "monkey dust" isn't another needless "preemptive" attack of yet another country that poses no danger to us...
------
"The Two Americas" by Jacques Julliard (source)  states that the US election is more important than any in his native France.  He predicts that if Bush is elected, he will attack Iran and thereby cause all of Europe to turn against his regime.   He calls it "A Rupture in Civilization".   That is a mild description in my opinion of what will happen if the regime is allowed four more years to run amok.
------
The regime can't (or, more likely doesn't want to) find bin Laden, but it can prevent untold thousands of innocent folks from flying.   The 'No-fly' system is so defective, it snared ripublican Donald E. Young by mistaking him for a " Donald Lee Young" who was on their 20,000 entry  'No-Fly'  list   Although Young is a member of the regimes right wingnut faction and has created much domestic mayhem, even I don't think he's a terrorist.  It seems that the regime's system uses the antique soundex algothrim to match up folks with their 20,000 entry 'No-Fly' list.   When/if the truth oozes out, we'll find the regime has paid one of their greedy/criminal corporate supporters millions for the grossly defective "system".    Finally, the "No-Fly" system is also appropriately- I for one won't fly!
------
Shrub has dispatched his alledged national security advisor Condi Rice to stump for him in battleground states.   No previous prez. has ever done this.  Bill Maher on his excellent HBO show "Real Time" pointed out  that she should be back in D.C. botching security breifings and not read intellegence reports.   Maher has a point- the country is much safer with the incompetent, coniving and lying warmounger as far away from national security matters as possible.   Maher also noted that god alledgely commanded that swords be beat into plowshares and declared (echoing bush's BS) that "god was wrong on national defense and wrong for America".  AMEN!
------
A 10/8/04 Reuters report says a regime "precision strike" on an alledged insurgent safe house in  Falluja killed 11 people and wounded 17 at a  wedding party- including women and children.  That's 28 more innocent victims to add to the indictment of Bush and his fellow chicken hawks as war criminals....

"This is not Desert Storm,'' one of the Joint Chiefs is reported to have told Rumseld. "We don't have the backing of other Middle Eastern nations. We don't have the backing of any of our allies except Britain and we're advocating a policy that says we will invade another nation that is not currently  attacking us or invading any of our allies.''. . .  "We have a dangerous role reversal here,'' one Pentagon source tells Capitol Hill Blue. "The civilians are urging war and the uniformed officers are urging caution.''

"The President considers this nation to be at war,'' a White House source says,'' and, as such, considers any opposition to his policies to be no less than an act of treason.''

In one debate, Shrub claimed that, contrary to Sen. John Kerry's assertion, he never said he was not that concerned about Osama Bin Laden.    At one of his rare press conferences (3/13/02) he said "So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him... I truly am not that concerned about him."     I suspose that vividly illustrates why his puppet masters minimize press conferences, debates and any ad hoc questioning of their stupid puppet.  He is so stupid that own folks don't trust him to keep to the bullshit they've given him.   If they don't trust him, what does it say of the millions of americans who plan to give him and his regime another four years to run further amok?
---
The Idiot-in-Chief also repeated his obvious  lie that most of his tax cuts "went to low- and middle-income Americans."   The top 20 percent of earners received 69.8% of his tax cuts.  The top 20 percent received an average tax cut of $5,055 while the middle 20 percent of earners received an average tax cut of $647.  As a result, members of the middle class are paying a greater share of the federal taxes today than they were four years when Bush's regime stole the election four years ago.
---
Debate Transcripts: First debate transcript and video, Second debate transcript  and video, VP debate transcript and video

1. It was bad enough when a CBS / NY Times poll taken just before the regime's attack on Iraq showed that 45% people believed Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11.   Now a Gallup poll shows 62% of ripublicans still believe Saddam was behind 9/11.    A previous poll taken by Princeton Survey Research Associates showed that 50% of the American people believed that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis. (source)
2. A (now former) aquantance's reason she is voting for Bush:  she doesn't like Kerry's wife!   If the Bush is re-selected (or, to her, Thresa Kerry is defeated), her oldest child will be draft age by the end of Laura Bush's his term.  I sincerely hope the child is drafted and sent to whatever country the Bush regime's has falsely attacked.   Since all of the mayhem wrought by the regime has not convinced enough citizens of the utter incompetence of the Bush regime, they should have to experience their loved ones' being drafted for service in needless wars of their leader's chosing.   Alas, it'll will take
3. Folks who say the soldiers Shrub has sent to his quagmire in Iraq are fighting for our freedom.   Saddam never, ever even threatened any of our freedoms.    No, it's the Bush regime which has done more to attack our previous freedoms that Saddam ever could.   In the long list of freedom erroding acts of the regime, exhibit A is the grossly misnamed "Patroit Act".  The only freedom the soldiers are fighting for is the freedom of the warmoungering neocons and greedy crony capitalists to further their agenda.  As per the info below, the soldier are definitely not even fighting for their own freedom.

1. An astounding 72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMDs
2. 57% believe he had at least a major WMD program.
3. 75% continue to believe that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda and 63% believe that clear evidence of this support has been found.

This is a very good article about the DVD, "George W. Bush: Faith in the White House," which is being hawked to and by more than a few christian churches.   Some snippets from the article:

As for the actual president, he is shown with a flag for a backdrop in a split-screen tableau with Jesus. The message isn't subtle: they were separated at birth.
...
It's not just Mr. Bush's self-deification that separates him from the likes of Lincoln, however; it's his chosen fashion of Christianity. The president didn't revive the word "crusade" idly in the fall of 2001. His view of faith as a Manichaean scheme of blacks and whites to be acted out in a perpetual war against evil is  synergistic with the violent poetics of the best-selling "Left Behind" novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins and Mel Gibson's cinematic bloodfest. The majority of Christian Americans may not agree with this apocalyptic worldview, but there's a big market for it. A Newsweek poll shows that 17 percent of Americans expect the world to end in their lifetime. To Karl Rove and company, that 17 percent is otherwise known as "the base."
...
In this spring's classic "South Park" parody, "The Passion of the Jew," in which Mr. Gibson's movie tosses the community into a religious war, one of the kids concludes: "If you want to be Christian, that's cool, but you should focus on what Jesus taught instead of how  he got killed. Focusing on how he got killed is what people did in the Dark Ages, and it ends up with really bad results."
...
 "George W. Bush: Faith in the White House" must be seen because it shows how someone like General Boykin can stay in his job even in failure and why Mr. Bush feels divinely entitled to keep his job even as we stand on the cusp of an abyss in Iraq. In this pious but not  humble worldview, faith, or at least a certain brand of it, counts more than competence, and a biblical mission, or at least a simplistic,  blunderbuss facsimile of one, counts more than the secular goal of waging an effective, focused battle against an enemy as elusive and  cunning as terrorists. That no one in this documentary, including its hero, acknowledges any constitutional boundaries between church and state is hardly a surprise. To them, America is a "Christian nation," period, with no need even for the fig-leaf prefix of "Judeo-."

 Far more startling is the inability of a president or his acolytes to acknowledge any boundary that might separate Mr. Bush's flawed actions battling "against the forces of evil" from the righteous dictates of God. What that level of hubris might bring in a second term is left to the imagination, and "Faith in the White House" gives the imagination room to run riot about what a 21st-century crusade might look like in the flesh. A documentary conceived as a rebuke to "Fahrenheit 9/11" is nothing if not its unintentional and considerably more nightmarish sequel.

During the 90-minute encounter (the Edwards/Dr. Doom debate), Cheney made it eminently clear that the administration has only one card to play in  this campaign -- terrorism. By keeping the country scared, the administration hopes to be safely ensconced for another  four years.

To his credit, Edwards quickly zeroed in on the administration's dishonest propaganda line that we invaded Iraq because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.  These words that Edwards directed at Cheney should be emblazoned on every wall:

"Mr. Vice President, there is no connection between the attacks of Sept. 11 and Saddam Hussein. The 9/11 commission has said it. Your secretary of state has said it. And you've gone around the country suggesting that there is some connection. There is not."
....
Rumsfeld was in more hot water -- as if he needed any more trouble -- for telling the Council on Foreign Relations in New York that he had "not seen any strong, hard evidence" of links between Saddam and the terrorists who attacked  the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11. (Dick Cheney, please note.)
....
The White House was so rattled by this bam-bam that it issued a statement several hours before the vice presidential debate proclaiming that "there were disturbing similarities" between Saddam and the al Qaida before the war.  (Yeah, like they're Arab!)

It's no wonder the administration is trying to hold the line on the fleeting reasons for going to war with so much at stake. After all, the voters could decide they were misled.

Is al-Qaeda quite as fearsome an adversary as both Bush and Kerry now paints it?  Does it really take four years of supposedly 'intense surveillance' to mount a truck bombing in Newark, New Jersey?

The peril for Bush is too much continuing strife in Iraq, too many body bags - and too much empty hysteria about terror alerts at home. He could grossly mishandle it. Tom Ridge - anxious to quit at the end of the year to make some money - is a bumbler. Scepticism and cynicism will stalk him through the coming months. But Osama bin Laden, where is he?

The Clinton Democrats were sourer on Saudi Arabia than Bush, and Kerry makes jibes at the House of Saud which Osama so despises. You can see a malign logic in sitting this one out. But you can also see an empty stage and a curtain rising. It's an almost operatic challenge - and it beggars certainties till the last hanging chads drop.

The article documents more of Cheney's lies in his debate with Edwards.  He said  Zarqawi had "migrated to Baghdad" after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 and "set up shop" there, overseeing a  "poisons facility" at Kurmal, in northern Iraq.

Intelligence officials told Newsweek that, after the attack on Afghanistan, Zarqawi went first to Iran- a country that many officials have long believed had far more consequential relationships with terrorist groups, including Al  Qaeda, than Saddam's regime.   Iran was also a country with whom Haliburton, under Cheney's command, did business with in violation of international sanctions.  Iran was also the nexus for Cheny's demand that trade sanctions be lifted.     A new CIA report does report that Zarqawi moved later to Baghdad but, it was so he could receive medical treatment and, echoing other reports, that there is no evidence Saddam supporting him.    But there's more!  "The alleged poisons facility that Zarqawi allegedly oversaw was in a part of northern Iraq not controlled by Saddam's government".

More info from this excellent article:

Cheney, challenged by Edwards, insisted last night that "I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and   9/11." But that claim is belied by an array of interviews and public comments in which Cheney has done precisely   that-by repeatedly invoking claims that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence agent.   That allegation was also debunked by the 9/11 commission after the panel found abundant evidence that Atta was  actually in the United States at the time the rendezvous supposedly took place.

Cheney, for example, called the claim of an Atta meeting with an Iraqi official in Prague "pretty well confirmed" in a  Dec. 9, 2001, "Meet the Press" interview. In a Sept. 8, 2002, "Meet the Press" appearance, just weeks before the  congressional vote on authorizing President Bush to go to war, Cheney again returned to the issue: "We've seen in  connection with the hijackers, of course, Mohammed Atta, who was the lead hijacker, did apparently travel to Prague on  a number of occasions. And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi  intelligence official a few months before the attack on the World Trade Center." Even after CIA and FBI officials had  already concluded the claims of the meeting were almost certainly false, Cheney was still referring to it in a Sept. 14,  2003 "Meet the Press" appearance. "The Czechs alleged that Mohammed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a  senior Iraq intelligence official five months before the attack, but we've never been able to develop anymore of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don't know."
....
   In last night's debate, Cheney largely skirted the administration's prewar claims about Iraqi WMD, although he did at one point refer to a presumed nexus between terrorists and Iraqi unconventional weapons. "The point is that that's the place where you're most likely to see the terrorists come together with weapons of mass destruction, the deadly technologies that Saddam Hussein had developed and used over the years," he said. The claim that Saddam's agents had instructed Al Qaeda terrorists in making "poisons and gasses" had in fact been a prominent feature of the administration's prewar assertions, highlighted by Powell in his Security Council speech and Cheney repeatedly in his TV appearances and speeches. But the allegation was almost entirely based on the claims of one high-level Al Qaeda detainee- first identified by NEWSWEEK as Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi-who, according to the 9/11 commission, has since recanted his story. Asked if Duelfer's team had found any evidence that Iraq had provided such training for terrorists, the U.S. official familiar with Duelfer's report shook his head and said simply: "No.

3. Cheney: "We heard Senator Kerry say the other night that there ought to be some kind of global test before U.S. troops are deployed preemptively to protect the United States."

In reality (something Dr. Doom obviously has a severe problem keeping in touch with), during the first presidential debate-as well as on many other occasions-Kerry has made clear that he would   not give any foreign government the right to block the United States from moving preemptively against a perceived   threat. Kerry has emphasized, however, that he would make a far more serious effort than has the current administration   to demonstrate to the international community that such use of force was for a legitimate reason.

----
6. Cheney: "Twenty years ago we had a similar situation in El Salvador. We had-guerrilla insurgency controlled roughly a third of the country, 75,000 people dead, and we held free elections. I was there as an observer on behalf of the Congress. The human drive for freedom, the determination of these people to vote, was unbelievable. And the terrorists would come in and shoot up polling places; as soon as they left, the voters would come back and get in line and would not be denied the right to vote. And today El Salvador is a whale of a lot better because we held free elections."

First of all, the United States was not supporting freedom in El Salvador twenty years ago. According to the United Nations Truth Commission and independent human rights organizations, the vast majority of those killed in El Salvador during this period were civilians murdered by the U.S.-backed junta and its allied paramilitary organizations.

Secondly, the Salvadoran elections Cheney observed in the 1980s were not free elections. The leading leftist and left-of-center politicians had been assassinated or driven underground and their newspapers and radio stations suppressed. The election was only between representatives of conservative and right-wing parties.

Thirdly, despite threats from some of the more radical guerrilla factions, there were very few attacks on polling stations.

Fourthly, people repeatedly lined up to vote because they were required to. Failure to get the requisite stamp that   validated the fact that you had voted would likely get one labeled as a "subversive" and therefore a potential target for   assassination.

Lastly, El Salvador finally did have free elections in 1994, only after Congress cut off aid to the Salvadoran  government and the peace plan initiated by Costa Rican president Oscar Arias-which was initially opposed by the Republican administrations then in office in Washington- was finally implemented.

The U.S.-led 1991Gulf War coalition included more than twice as many non-American troops, all of which were  assembled prior to the launching of the war in January 1991. By contrast, troops from all but four members of the current  coalition arrived after U.S. forces had marched on Baghdad, toppled the Iraqi regime and began the occupation. Their  role is ostensibly that of peace keepers and the vast majority of these forces serve in non-combat roles.

First of all, the Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his followers were not based in Baghdad, but in the far  northeastern corner of the country inside the Kurdish safe havens established by the United Nations in 1991, well   beyond the control of Saddam's government. The only evidence the Bush administration has been able to put forward   linking the al-Zarqawi terror network to the Iraqi capital was a brief stay that al-Zarqawi had in a Baghdad hospital at the   end of 2001, apparently having been smuggled by supporters into the country from Iran and smuggled out days later.

Secondly, not only was the Khurmal area in Kurdish areas far outside of Saddam's reach, but journalists who visited   the supposed poisons factory within hours of it being identified by Bush administration officials from satellite photos   found nothing remotely resembling such a facility. U.S. Special Forces that seized control of the area weeks later came   to a similar conclusion.

Finally, Zarqawi and his followers established a presence in Baghdad only after U.S. forces overthrew the Iraqi   government in March 2003.

Saddam Hussein did provide money to a small Palestinian faction known as the Arab Liberation Front which passed  it on to some families of terrorists killed in suicide bombings. Money was also given to families of other Palestinians  killed in the fight against Israel, such as militiamen shot while defending Palestinian towns under Israeli siege and  unarmed teenagers shot during demonstrations. The vast majority of the funding for Hamas and other radical   Palestinian groups responsible for suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism in recent years has come from Saudi  Arabia and other Gulf monarchies, governments supported by the United States. In any case, the families of suicide bombers normally have their homes destroyed by Israeli occupation forces in retaliation for the terrorist attacks, and $25,000 does not come close to recouping their losses.

The Bush administration has endorsed Sharon's plan to annex up to half of the West Bank into Israel and leave the  remaining Palestinian areas divided into a series of non-contiguous cantons surrounded by Israel. This would give the  Palestinians barely 12% of historic Palestine. Furthermore, according to this plan, Israel would have control over all   border crossings, the air space, and the water resources, with an unrestricted right to militarily intervene in Palestinian   areas at any time. This would no more constitute a viable "state" than did the infamous Bantustans of apartheid South  Africa.

"He Just Doesn't Get It" was created by Win Back Respect and features their Band of Sisters, a courageous group of women whose family members served or died in Iraq and who are speaking out. It seizes on outrageous footage of President Bush joking about not being able to find the WMDs in Iraq, with a slide showing him looking under tables in the Oval Office. "My brother died in Baghdad on April 29th," Brooke Campbell says in the spot. "I watched President Bush make a joke, looking around for weapons of mass destruction. My brother died looking for weapons of mass destruction."

Recently on Michael Feldman’s National Public Radio show "Whaddya Know?" a high school junior told the audience how he and his friend had recently been stopped on a city bus by the Secret Service.

The two high school students had obtained tickets from an insurance company to attend a pro-Bush campaign rally. Evidently, before the students could get off the bus, the Secret Service already knew who they were and that they had worked for John Kerry’s campaign. That was enough for the students to be labeled "national security risks." Unless they turned around and went home, they would be arrested, warned the Secret Service agents.

Carrying out President George W. Bush’s violation of American citizens’ civil rights is something of a cottage industry for the Secret Service, abbreviated SS.

These unfortunate initials recall Nazi Germany’s defensive security organization, der Schutzstaffein, abbreviated SS. Adolf Hitler’s Waffen SS units became the backbone of the ruling Nazi party’s private military force. Hitler put them in charge of suppressing his regime’s opponents within Germany (and eventually abroad). Now the American SS is running Bush’s police state.

"Police state?" Think I’m exaggerating? Is it too harsh .... too off the wall ... to suggest that America is becoming a police state like Nazi Germany? Think again. The Bush process had its beginnings long before the 2004 election campaigns began. Moreover, creation of a police state is a gradual process [see footnote].. . .

Footnote: Historian Alan Bullock describes it: "Hitler came to office in 1933 as the result, not of any irresistible revolutionary or national movement sweeping him into power, nor even of a popular victory at the polls, but as part of a shoddy political deal with the ‘Old Gang’ whom he had been attacking for months.... Hitler did not seize power; he was jobbed into office by a backstairs intrigue." At the time, most Germans couldn’t imagine that Hitler would last long because his bombastic and swaggering manner and his overly simplistic speeches about Germany’s social, economic, and political problems were a "joke." Politically sophisticated Germans dismissed Hitler as an inept caricature, but he and his accomplices consolidated their power by passing national security legislation supported by a stacked court. During these critical times of concentrating power, der Schutzstaffein (SS) made sure that Hitler’s critics and opponents were kept far away and silenced so that it would appear as though he had complete national support and, indeed, a mandate. Thus peacefully began Nazi totalitarianism.

George W. Bush, still smarting from his embarrassing performance in the Florida debate, decided on Friday night in St. Louis that volume was a good substitute for strength, that yelling would be mistaken for gravitas. The result was an ugly, disturbing, genuinely frightening show.

Exactly 30 minutes into the debate, Bush became so agitated by Kerry's description of the "back-door draft," which is literally bleeding the life out of our National Guard and Reserve forces, that he lunged out of his chair and shrieked over moderator Charles Gibson, who was trying to
maintain some semblance of decorum.  "You tell Tony Blair we're going alone," Bush roared. "Tell Tony Blair we're going alone!" The disturbed murmur from the crowd was audible. Bush, simply, frightened them.

• Sadam destroyed his WMDs after the attack by Shrub's daddy due to pressure from the inspections.
• He had no factories for producing WMDs.
• His ability to resume production was growing weaker every year.
• The sanctions had prevented him from getting the material needed to build WMDs
• He destroyed his WMDs and didn't rebuild a capability much less develop plans to do so because he wanted the sanctions lifted.
• He hoped to build WMDs after sanctions were lifted but didn't even have formal plans (or, per regime spin, a "WMD program")
• Sadam wanted WMDs for protection against Iran- not for use against the US or to give to terrorists.
• Even if he reconstituted his nuclear "program", it would have taken many years to build nuclear weapons.
• There is no evidence that he shared weapons with other countries or groups

Here are just a few of the regime's subsequent spins and lies:

In the VP debate, Cheney said the report indicated that "delay, defer, wait wasn't an option."

In the second Kerry - Bush debate, Bush said of Kerry, "He keeps talking about, 'Let the inspectors do their job.'  It's naive and dangerous to say that. That's what the Duelfer report showed."    No, the report plainly indicates Saddam disarmed long before the regime's attack.

Bush, speaking in reference to Kerry said, "That's the kind of mindset that says sanctions were working. That's the kind of mindset that said, 'Let's keep it at the United Nations and hope things go well.' Saddam Hussein was a threat because he could have given weapons of mass destruction to terrorist enemies.  Sanctions were not working."   It's every ironic that Bush trapsied his sorry ass to the same UN he slammed in the debate to ask it to help bail his ass out of the mess he's made in Iraq.  What an utterly hypocritical asshole!

When the United States was gearing up to invade, United Nations arms inspectors were in Iraq. If they had been allowed a few more months to complete their work, they would have discovered what the post-invasion inspectors now report - that Iraq had no stockpiles or active programs involving weapons of mass destruction. But President Bush insisted the invasion couldn't wait. He described a "grave and immediate threat" from Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. During the futile search for weapons after the invasion, the words changed in an Orwellian rewriting of the justification. "Immediate threat" was downgraded to just a "threat" and then to a "gathering threat." Now it's clear there was no threat, gathering or otherwise.

Similarly, the words about weapons changed. The president and his advisers asserted with absolute certainty that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. When no weapons turned up, they insisted Iraq had weapons programs . When no evidence of programs was found, they spoke of "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities." Orwell must have been grimacing in his grave.

For more info, see the Washington Post article "Report Discounts Iraqi Arms Threat"

MoveOn  has documented a few of the many outright lies by Cheney during the 10/5/04 VP debate.  Here they are:

CHENEY'S MISLEAD: "I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11"

THE TRUTH: As the Washington Post reports today, Cheney has repeatedly insinuated and "strongly suggested" that Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks on September 11th.(2) And in its fact check column today, the Boston Globe says "Cheney has consistently asserted strong prewar links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, even after the 9/11 Commission definitively concluded that there had not been a collaborative relationship between the two. In a radio interview in January 2004, Cheney said: 'I think there's overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi government.'"(3)

On December 9, 2001, Cheney went on "Meet the Press" to perpetuate the now entirely debunked theory that one of the 9/11 hijackers met with an Iraqi official.(4) He went back on a year ago to describe Iraq as part of ""the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11."(5)

Most recently, Cheney has claimed that Iraq harbored the terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi, and said Zarqawi "is an al Qaeda associate who took refuge in Baghdad, found sanctuary and safe harbor there before we ever launched into Iraq."(6) But yesterday, a report Cheney himself requested found that there is no conclusive evidence to support that claim. An administration official said, "The evidence is that Saddam never gave Zarqawi anything."(7)

CHENEY'S MISLEAD: "900,000 small businesses will be hit" by the Kerry-Edwards plan to roll back tax cuts for people in the top income bracket.

THE TRUTH: As the Washington Post writes this morning: "This is misleading. Under Cheney's definition, a small business is any taxpayer who includes some income from a small business investment, partnership, limited liability corporation or trust. By that definition, every partner at a huge accounting firm or at the largest law firm would represent small businesses. According to IRS data, a tiny fraction of small business "S-corporations" earn enough profits to be in the top two tax brackets. Most are in the bottom two brackets."(8)

CHENEY'S MISLEAD: "We have added 1.7 million jobs to the economy."

THE TRUTH: On November 2nd, George Bush will be the first president in 70 years to lose jobs. There will be about a million fewer jobs than there were when Bush took office -- and about 7 million fewer than Bush's own post-9/11 estimate. Cheney's using fuzzy math: 1.7 million jobs have been added, but millions more have been lost.[9]

CHENEY'S MISLEAD: "The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight."

THE TRUTH: This one-liner was one of Cheney's best zingers of the night, but even it isn't true: Cheney and Edwards have met in public at least twice. They met when Edwards escorted Elizabeth Dole to be sworn in by Cheney as Senator and at the National Prayer Breakfast. At the Breakfast, he even called Edwards out by name, starting his remarks with the words, "Thank you very much. Congressman Watts, Senator Edwards, friends from across America and distinguished visitors to our country from all over the world, Lynne and I are honored to be with you all this morning."[10] You can actually watch video of the two of them shaking hands at www.democrats.org.

If Cheney's willing to flat-out lie about whether or not he's met John Edwards -- a rather objective question -- it's clear he won't be straight with the American people on more important issues.

As Edwards mentioned last night, Cheney's record is pretty scary: "When he was one of 435 members of the United States House, he was one of 10 to vote against Head Start, one of four to vote against banning plastic weapons that can pass through metal detectors. He voted against the Department of Education. He voted against funding for Meals on Wheels for seniors. He voted against a holiday for Martin Luther King. He voted against a resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela in South Africa." Let's make sure we vote him out on November 2nd.

Cheney, who has called Iran "the world's leading exporter of terror," pushed to lift U.S. trade sanctions against Tehran while chairman of Halliburton Co. in the 1990s. And his company's offshore subsidiaries also expanded business in Iran.

Halliburton's foreign subsidiaries did about $65 million in business with Iran last year, company documents say. A federal grand jury is investigating whether Halliburton or its executives deliberately violated the U.S. ban on trade with Iran.

Much of Halliburton's business with Iran comes through Halliburton Products & Services Ltd., a subsidiary incorporated in the Cayman Islands and based in the United Arab Emirates. Halliburton Products & Services opened a Tehran office in early 2000, before Cheney left Halliburton to become Bush's running mate.

I wish Iran wouldn't build nuclear weapons, but, given that rouge regimes (Bush's and Sharon's) already have such weapons and have threatened them, I sure don't blame them for taking N. Korea's approach and building a nuclear deterrent as fast as they can.

If the Israeli regime attacks, I hope the Iranian response is well targeted at the true villians- the warmonger Sharon and members of his regime.  Maybe when leaders of such warmoungering, thuggish regimes  instead of innocents start getting killed, they'll at least think twice about "preemptive" or attacks.

Say, I'd bet Karl Rove could spin some good BS out of an Israeli attack just before the elections.  Maybe a flight suited and strutting Bush visting the Israeli attackers.
 

For further reading on the wired dummy:
Bush's mystery bulge by Dave Lindorff on Salon.com
-------
From  http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=321 :
If you notice at the 18 minute and 53 second mark, Kerry is asked a question about Homeland Security. If you are watching the split screen debate, you’ll notice that Bush is writing something down and blinking and nodding into the audience. The first time I watched the debate the thought occured to me that he was communicating with someone in the audience with all the blinking.  I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an earpiece judging by how Bush appeared before the 9/11 commission.

To watch the split screen debate and judge for yourself, go to: http://c-span.org/ and click on the FIRST PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE BETWEEN BUSH AND
KERRY - PODIUM WATCH STYLE
-------
Joseph Cannon's 10/10/04 blog: e.g. "At least he no longer has a monkey on his back" ...  "what I call the "Promptergate" controversy"
-------
Is Bush literally a dummy?
-------
This site discusses Bush's use of a prompter in 12/03:

Thirdly, it could not be more clear that Bush was provided the words with which to answer. At first, Bush stumbles about, repeating his previous line that "there's a time for politics." During this time, he's avoiding eye contact, shrugging, and delaying. Then, the answer is given to him, presumably through a wireless ear piece. Bush then suddenly delivers his line that "it's an absurd asinuation." The suddenness of his reply, after having been speechless, the smile in his eyes when he's given the correct answer, and his incorrect pronunciation of the word "insinuation" all lead to [the] conclusion that he was prompted to provide this answer.

While watching a re-broadcast of the debate, my ladyfriend noted something odd: Bush seemed to have a wire, or an odd protrusion of some sort, running down his back.  Apparently, Fearless Leader used an earpiece during the confrontation. This site presents a persuasive audio demonstration.  At one point, Bush said: "And that's not how a commander-in-chief acts..." Then he stumbled over himself, sputtering incomprehensible sounds. Then, in an annnoyed tone, he snarled: "Now let me finish!"  (video)  Two points about that "Now let me finish!": 1. He seems genuinely irritated, as though someone had just interrupted him. 2. In fact, no-one had interrupted him.   Was he addressing Jim Lehrer? No, because the odd interjection came long before the flashing lights warned that his 90 seconds were up. Neither Lehrer nor Kerry had  attempted to jump in. Bush's expression of irritation appears to have been directed at someone speaking to him, someone unheard by anyone else in the room.  This theory goes a long ways toward explaining the president's consistently odd speech patterns -- the cavernous pauses punctuating sharp volleys of sound.

Thirdly, it could not be more clear that Bush was provided the words with which to answer. At first, Bush stumbles about, repeating his previous line that "there's a time for politics." During this time, he's avoiding eye contact, shrugging, and delaying. Then, the answer is given to him, presumably through a wireless ear piece. Bush then suddenly delivers his line that "it's an absurd asinuation." The suddenness of his reply, after having been speechless, the smile in his eyes when he's given the correct answer, and his incorrect pronunciation of the word "insinuation" all lead to [the] conclusion that he was prompted to provide this answer.

• The bulge in his back - he put his codpiece on backwards.
• Never attribute to subterfuge what can best be explained by incompetence. Sure, Bush may not have been speaking to Kerry or Lehrer, but that’s no reason why he might not have been talking to imagined voices in his head rather than real ones.
• I am sure it was his battery pack
• Maybe that’s where the WMD have been all the time.
• It’s either a hump, or a huge wart.   All demons have them.
• It is painfully obvious that this “bulge” is the upper end of the stick Cheney & K. Rove, to keep GWB in line, planted up his kazoo so far it is protruding thru his skin, .
• As everybody knows, Bush is in direct contact with The Almighty. If you don’t believe me, just ask him.   Now, Bush’s 64K of cerebral ROM is barely enough to produce intelligible human speech sound, much less to permit him to think while he is speaking. And it certainly isn’t enough to let him listen while he talks.  Hell, he has a hard time listening while he stares into space.
• Bush has available more widgets and gidgets than Agent 007 ever dreamed of having. Anyone who is as inept, ignorant and as evil as Bush has to be wired like a Christmas Goose.
• As is the case with all other insects, invertebrates are by definition spineless; the President’s hard crusty exo-skeleton (which compensates having no backbone) is probably moulting. Or else barnacles have developed, in which case he should consult a professional in the field of Pest Control. Like Tom DeLay.
• Wanna be President? Wanna wow your friends with your political palavering? Then the “CHENEY PACK” is a MUST HAVE! Fits under any coat ! Practically  invisible! Your DIRECT LINE to Success! Just $19.95 plust S&H (RFID subscription required). ORDER NOW and receive our exclusive CHENEY FEED econo-pack: War, Corporate Piracy, Secrets to World Domination. All you have to do is Move yer lips … WE do the talking! Regular price $49.95 … Yours  FREE if you ORDER NOW!!!
• First of all, the Commander In Chief is not a robot. A robot would have better command of the situation.
• If he can’t do better in a debate with a staff of pros whispering replies int his ears, then just how stupid is this guy?
• YOU ARE ALL WRONG!!!  This was installed to blow the pmf up, had he said the wrong thing!
• There is no doubt, our president has been infested by an alien creature that attached to his back and puts its tentacles through the spine up to the brain.
• I would presume the bulge in his back is actually where the on-off switch was installed by his controllers.
• Actually the bulge in the back is easily explained. All life size ventriloquist dummies have a door in the rear where the manipulator can put his hand.
• It´s a GPS transmitter. Should the Pres. be kidnappet by aliens then Secret Service could track his voyage through universe. If he ended up on a planet with superior intelligence he would be left there to convince them that earth was no theat to the galactic peace.
• Even if he did cheat, he still lost the debate. That’s the most damning part of it. His arguments are so bad he can’t win when he cheats.
• And He still F*cked up!!!!!
• Let’s just say that GW wasn’t wearing the earpiece when he kept on reading “My Pet Goat” during the attack on our country.
• The bulge in his back is where his pull string is. Cheney pulls that puppy back and Dubya can say any one of 53 digital terms and phrases…..

• The bulge on Bush's back is not a radio device...Buffy fans know it is really a "Bad Egg".
• A wire? Nah. Typical Repug scales protruding, is all; his handlers must have taped them down or something and they came loose...

Victor Marreo ruled in favor of the ACLU and against the Bush regime and  FBI has to demand confidential financial records from companies that it can obtain without court approval as part of terrorism investigations.  The legislation bars companies and other recipients of these subpoenas from ever revealing that they received the FBI demand for records. Marreo held that this permanent ban was a violation of free speech rights.  In his ruling, Marreo prohibited the Department of Justice and the FBI from issuing special administrative subpoenas, known as national security letters. But he delayed enforcement of his judgment pending an expected appeal by the  government. The Department of Justice said it was reviewing the ruling.

"I have come to the conclusion that we cannot win here for a number of reasons. Ideology and idealism will never trump history and reality," wrote Lorentz, who gives four key reasons for the likely failure: a refusal to deal with reality, not understanding what motivates the enemy, an overabundance of guerrilla fighters, and the enemy's shorter line of supplies and communication....   "Instead of addressing the reasons why the locals are becoming angry and discontented, we allow politicians in Washington DC to give us pat and convenient reasons that are devoid of any semblance of reality,"....  "It is tragic, indeed criminal, that our elected public servants would so willingly sacrifice our nation's prestige

A retired Marine judge advocate thinks that the regime is just bluffing in hopes that the officer will shut up.  Unfortunately, their ploy has worked-  the officer has posted nothing else.  I reckon the regime thinks what happens to the officer will disuade others from speaking out against the war also.

Finally, it's an extremely sad commentary that those "fighting for freedom" in Iraq have no freedom of speech.

The Pentagon said yesterday it was investigating cockpit video footage that shows American pilots attacking and killing a group of apparently unarmed Iraqi civilians.  The 30-second clip shows the pilot targeting the group of people in a street in the city of Fallujah and asking his mission controllers whether he should "take them out". He is told to do so and, shortly afterwards, the footage shows a huge explosion where the people were. A second voice can be heard on the clip saying: "Oh, dude."   The existence of the video, taken last April inside the cockpit of a US F-16 fighter has been known for some time, though last night's broadcast by Channel 4 News is believed to be the first time a mainstream broadcaster has shown the footage.  At no point during the exchange between the pilot and controllers does anyone ask whether the Iraqis are armed or  posing a threat. Critics say it proves war crimes are being committed.

A Channel 4 News U.K. reports the American military as confirming it's a genuine cockpit video of an attack which occurred in April.

One of the uncommitted voters in the audience sensibly asked President Bush to name three mistakes he'd made in
  office, and what he had done to remedy the damage. Mr. Bush declined to list even one, and instead launched into an
  impassioned defense of the invasion of Iraq as a good idea. The president's insistence on defending his decision to go
  into Iraq seemed increasingly bizarre in a week when his own investigators reported that there were no weapons of
  mass destruction there, and when his own secretary of defense acknowledged that there was no serious evidence of a
  connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

.....
    Mr. Bush was deeply unpersuasive when asked why he had not permitted the importation of cheaper prescription
  drugs from Canada. He claimed that the reason was "I want to make sure it cures you and doesn't kill you." Mr. Kerry
  cleanly retorted that four years ago in a campaign debate, Mr. Bush had said importing medicine from Canada
  sounded sensible.

--------
Profits in Sale of Iraqi Oil Under Hussein- a 10/9/04 NY Times article
Although she gleefully published the regime's lies in the run-up to their attack on Iraq,  this article by Judith (and Eric Lapton) appears to have a bit of truth.   But, since it's based on a CIA report, maybe it doesn't :-)   It details the bountiful profits "earned" by ever greedy corporations and capitalists under the oil-for-aid sanctions.  I trust a future article will report on their profits from the oil that they've stolen subsequent to their regime's attack on Iraq.
--------
Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum Dependency - a new book by  Michael T. Klare
From a review: "The world's rapidly growing economy is dependent on oil, the supply is running out and the U.S. and other great powers are engaged in an escalating game of brinkmanship to secure its continued free flow."   A direct consequence is that the US military is becoming a global oil-protection service.
And not just in Iraq where the regime has freed the oil "for the Iraqi people"- the regime has oil protection troops in Colombia, Saudi Arabia, and the Republic of Georgia and sailors in the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, the South China Sea, and along other sea routes that deliver oil to the United States.   Worse yet, the author forecasts that more and more oil will have to coem from even more unstabe regions in the future- regions which have a strong distaste for anything even appearing to be imperialism.  Of course, this is a accurate (but methinks mind) description  of the regime's apporach to the rest of the world.

Oil Wars is a good article based on the book's theses.

--------
Ignorance Isn't Strength - an 10/8/04 column is a good take on Bush's ignorance and infalliblity complex.  Some snippets:

I first used the word "Orwellian" to describe the Bush team in October 2000. Even then it was obvious that George W. Bush surrounds himself with people who insist that up is down, and ignorance is strength. But the full costs of his denial of reality are only now becoming clear......

The point is that in the real world, as opposed to the political world, ignorance isn't strength. A leader who has the political power to pretend that he's infallible, and uses that power to avoid ever admitting mistakes, eventually makes mistakes so large that they can't be covered up. And that's what's happening to Mr. Bush.

Some of the 20 reasons:

HE is being investigated by federal prosecutors about the leak of the identity of an undercover CIA officer, the wife of a vocal critic of the US government in the build-up to the war in Iraq.

HE has twice been arrested for drink driving.

AS boss of Halliburton he struck lucrative deals with Saddam Hussein and Colonel Gaddafi.

DESPITE the fact that Cheney should have  relinquished his links because of a conflict of interest he still gets £100,000 a year from Halliburton. And, surprise, surprise, the Bush-Cheney administration awarded Halliburton £5.5billion in contracts for work in Iraq.

AS vice president, Cheney has been THE decisive  force pushing America into war.

HIS biggest failure as vice president was in 2002 when he visited nine Arab and Muslim countries six months after 9/11. He anticipated securing the countries' support to remove Saddam Hussein. But not one provided troops for the war.

HE was one of just 21 members of Congress to oppose the Safe Drinking Water Act

------
How Bush turned into another Nixon by Frank Rich, 10/10/05, is a good piece on Bush's 9/30/04 debate "performance".  Some snippets

No one at the White House seemed to realize that if you want to keep a puppet from being  viewed as a puppet you don't put him on  camera to deliver sound bites (some 16, by  the calculation of Dana Milbank of The  Washington Post) that are paraphrases of the  president's much-replayed golden oldies. The  whole long charade played out like a lost reel  of "Duck Soup."
.....
If anything, the first Bush-Kerry confrontation  has given split-screen television a new vogue.  Having defied the efforts of both campaigns  to squelch its use on Sept. 30, emboldened  TV news organizations can run with it at will.  So we saw on the Sunday after that debate,  when Condoleezza Rice appeared on ABC's  "This Week."
There she was quizzed about the report in that  morning's New York Times saying that in  2002 she had hyped aluminum tubes as  evidence of Saddam's nuclear threat a year  after her staff was told that government  experts had serious doubts. Rice kept trying  to talk over the soft-voiced George  Stephanopoulos' questions, but he zapped  her with a picture: a September 2002 CNN  interview in which she had not, shall we say,  told the whole truth and nothing but.
As the old video played, ABC used a split  screen so we could watch Rice, "This Is Your  Life" style, as she watched the replay of her  incriminating appearance of two years earlier.  Maybe, like Bush at the first debate, she knew  her reaction was being caught on camera. But  even if she did, the unchecked rage in her  face, like that of her boss three days earlier,  revealed that her image and her story, like the  war itself, had spun completely out of her  control.