tBlog - Anti-Neoconservative Weblog

Anti-Neoconservative Weblog

Blog For Free!

Archives
Home
2005 January
2004 December
2004 November
2004 October
2004 September
2004 August
2004 July
2004 June
2004 May
2004 April
2004 March
2004 February

My Links
Project for the OLD American Century
Winston Smith's Daily Journal
Sam Adams' CounterPoint

tBlog
My Profile
Send tMail
My tFriends
My Images

Sponsored
Blog

In the Age of George Bush, We Have Lost Our Way

08.31.04 (8:08 pm) [edit]

"I'm the commander - see, I don't need to explain - I don't need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation" - George W Bush, August 2002

Making his final decision to launch an invasion of Iraq, President George W Bush did not seek the advice of his father, a veteran of the second world war and a former president who had gone to battle with the same foe a decade earlier. Nor did he seek the overall final recommendation of his secretary of defence, or of his secretary of state, the only man in his cabinet who had been decorated for military service in wartime with the medals befitting a national hero. Instead, as Bob Woodward wrote in his book, Plan of Attack, Bush consulted his God, a God who the president presumes takes sides in disputes between peoples.

I am an American by choice rather than by birth. I'm a white, 55-year-old Episcopalian. Born in Canada, I've lived in America for half my life. I've raised four children here, have done reasonably well professionally, and am by most measures a happy man. I've followed politics all my life, but politics has never been my life, if you know what I mean. To be honest, I really never had much truck with politicians of any stripe.

But I love this country, its land, its soul, and, above all, its people.

So what does it say about us that we let a man of such blind conviction and wilful ignorance lead us?

Bush's reckless, unnecessary decision to wage a war of choice with a country that was neither an enemy nor a real threat is at the very root of all we've lost during his presidency. We've lost our good reputation and our standing as a great and just superpower. We've lost the sympathy of the world following September 11 and turned it into an alloy of fear and hatred. We've lost lives and allies. We've lost liberties and freedoms. We've lost billions of dollars that could have gone toward a true assault on terrorism. It could fairly be said that in the age of George W Bush, we have lost our way.

The deceptions that took the United States into Iraq were the work of an administration without care for logic or truth. The aftermath, a war seemingly without end and one that is costing the country tens of billions of dollars and the lives of about 13 young American soldiers every week, is the work of an administration without judgment or foresight.

The sideshow in the Middle East proved in the end to be a convenient diversion for the Bush White House: it distracted Americans' attention from the administration's domestic agenda, its ideological war at home. Iraq also served as a shield for the administration, in the sense that the White House defined any opposition to or criticism of what it was up to in those early days as the work of the unpatriotic or the traitorous. With the country looking the other way, Bush and Cheney began dismantling decades' worth of advances in civil liberties, healthcare, education, the economy, the judiciary and the environment.

The Bush White House inherited a robust economy brimming with jobs and budget surpluses. It may well end its four years with a net loss of jobs during Bush's first term, a feat unsurpassed since the Hoover administration. In its desire to create tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, it created a horizon of budget deficits, crippling debt and trade imbalances.

The Bush White House inherited an education system that, while not perfect, was in many ways the envy of the world. Its unreasonable and underfunded No Child Left Behind programme hobbled state systems by placing rigid demands on school districts but pledging little money to meet those demands.

The Bush White House inherited an environment that had been all but saved by the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts of the 1970s. The administration, many of whose members were plucked from the oil and gas industries, turned its back on more than 30 years of advances in environmental legislation and global treaties to reward its campaign backers from the petrochemical industry. The Bush administration made it clear that it refused to live with any kind of restrictions on its energy use. When the White House officially pulled the United States out of the Kyoto Protocol in March 2001, it was the first in a series of defiant snubs to allies, trading partners and neighbours that began the dramatic decline of America's reputation around the world.

The Bush White House inherited a healthcare system that favoured the rich, then made it worse, turning it into a complex apparatus that will produce unprecedented profits for another set of major campaign backers - the health and pharmaceutical industries - all at the expense of regular patients, the elderly and the poor.

The Bush White House inherited a government of model transparency and purposefully bent it to the will of the most secretive administration in recent American history. It inherited a judicial system that was America's centrist, if not conservative, legal safeguard and turned it into an ideological, rightwing juggernaut.

At the heart of all of this loss were two unforgivable deceptions embedded in George W Bush's 2000 presidential campaign: that he was a "uniter and not a divider", and that he was a "compassionate conservative". This "uniter" became a president who has divided Americans more than at any time since the civil war. "Compassionate conservative" was a meaningless bit of public relations designed to appease the middle ground of the Republican party and the conservative flank of the Democratic party. Once in office, the Bush administration pursued not a compassionate course but rather a harsh, far-rightwing effort to roll back decades of liberal legislation.

Electing George W Bush was seen in many quarters of the world as a mistake, a voters' aberration. Now the goodwill that poured in from around the world after September 11 has dissolved in the president's hands. America has gone from being loved to being hated. His re-election would send those same quarters a message of intent and hostility on the part of the US that may take decades fully to recover from.

A second term would see more tax cuts for the wealthy. A second term would see further encroachment on civil liberties as the administration pushes for passage of Patriot Act II. A second term would see rightwing ideologues further transform the nation's health, education and environmental departments. A second term would see one, and possibly two, new rightwing justices on the supreme court, skewing the political balance in the US's most important judicial arena for decades to come.

America itself has been rent asunder, more divided along party lines than at any time in recent memory. It is safe to say that history will not be kind to the Bush administration. Long after it is out of office, after the investigations have run their course, after we examine the wreckage to our land and to our fragile but enduring democracy, only then will we fully comprehend all that the Bush presidency has done. And only then will we fully realise what we've lost.

[b]This is an edited extract from What We've Lost, by Graydon Carter, published by Little, Brown[/b] - http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa...,12271,1294012,00.html

Bush/Cheney's Iraqi Prison Horrors Still Pervasive ...

08.31.04 (4:04 pm) [edit]

[b]Iraqi Prison Horrors Pervasive, Says Attorney [/b]

While the latest reports investigating the widely condemned events at Abu Ghraib prison attempt to close the book on the Pentagon's culpability with a somber critique, new evidence gathered for a class action lawsuit filed against two U.S.-based private contractors could prove that the scandal at Abu Ghraib was far from an isolated series of incidents perpetrated by a few rowdy "bad apples" working the night shift during Ramadan.

An attorney representing former detainees says his recent fact-finding mission to Baghdad uncovered dozens of cases of physical and psychological abuse, sexual humiliation, religious desecration and rape in ten U.S.-run prisons throughout occupied Iraq.

The NewStandard spoke with Michigan-based attorney Shereef Akeel, who interviewed some 50 former detainees about their time and treatment in U.S. custody. Part of the legal team behind a class action lawsuit against the firms for their employees' involvement in prison abuse at U.S.-run facilities in Iraq, the former immigration lawyer found himself traveling to meet face-to-face with the people he is representing in the American court system.

His team has documented abuse dating from July 2003 to as recently as last month, when an Iraqi boy just 15 years old says his captors at an American facility raped him. "He was told to go on all fours naked and was sodomized from behind," Akeel conveyed the 15-year-old's testimony. "He said they made him dance and he was crying."

A number of the incidents Akeel and his colleagues have recorded took place between January and July of this year. Emerging evidence that torture in U.S. facilities continues months after the Abu Ghraib and other torture cases were revealed – most of those having taken place in late 2003 and dismissed as the results of oversights corrected since – could spell major problems for the U.S. government and military.

Akeel and his colleagues are working in concert with the Center for Constitutional Rights to sue the U.S. companies CACI International Inc. and Titan Corp., which were respectively contracted to provide interrogators and translators to support the American military's efforts to obtain information from "security detainees" – those thought to be involved in resisting the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The Center for Constitutional Rights is a privately funded legal center that litigates on behalf of social movements and causes.

For its part, CACI International said in a press statement issued about the case: "CACI rejects and denies the allegations of the suit as being a malicious recitation of false statements and intentional distortions." The company added in its defense, "CACI has never entered into a conspiracy with the government, or anyone else, to perpetrate abuses of any kind." CACI also called the allegations of abuse "ill-informed" and "slanderous."

Titan Corp. spokesperson Wil Williams told The NewStandard his company's employees at U.S.-run facilities in Iraq adhere strictly to their role as translators and are prohibited by company policy from engaging with prisoners in any other capacity. He said the class action lawsuit naming Titan is "baseless" and that Titan will "vigorously defend [against] it." He said it is "against company policy for any [employee] to engage in or observe" abusive behavior, and expressed confidence that had any Titan personnel so much as witnessed unlawful behavior, they would have reported it.

When asked if the witnesses identified the perpetrators as U.S. military, mercenaries, Iraqis, private translators or others, Akeel sighed. "Honestly, the line was so blurred, and they were crossed all the time," he said. According to the testimony Akeel has collected, interrogators often donned U.S. military uniforms, assailants entered cells naked or approached victims from behind, and at least one translator wielded an electrical stun device.

Williams was unaware that interpreters, whether representing Titan or not, were being accused of being in possession of any such devices. "A linguist is not supposed to be handling weapons," he said, adding that it is "beyond our imagination" that Titan employees would engage in abusive activities.

Regardless of the perpetrators' national or ethnic origins, Akeel and his clients hold the U.S. military personnel who were involved in unlawful incidents and the corporations named in the suit responsible for abuse carried out in prisons controlled by the U.S. military.

During the course of his investigation in Iraq, Akeel said, clear patterns emerged. According to Akeel, testimonials gathered individually from former captives held in U.S. prisons all over Iraq indicate many of the common methods came into use across disparate, geographically distant detention centers.

Perhaps the most disturbing evidence Akeel found suggesting an overarching policy of abuse comes in the form of firsthand accounts that captors singled out religiously observant prisoners for particularly harsh abuse.

Akeel said former detainees told him that upon arrival at a U.S.-run facility, they were each given a questionnaire asking them about their religious affiliation as well as their vices. In Akeel's words, the questions included: "Are you Sunni? Are you Shia? Do you drink? Do you not drink? Do you have a girlfriend?" Akeel said he found a consistent pattern among the cases: the stricter the religious observance a detainee reported to his captors, the more severe the treatment he would receive at their hands.

Akeel provided several examples of religious desecration, including stories of men who had purified themselves in an Islamic absolution ritual only to be subsequently doused with beer and alcohol by captors. At one prison, plaintiffs told Akeel, captors hung a picture of a pig on the wall toward which prisoners faced to worship and told them, "Pray to your pig."

In one horrific case recounted to Akeel, a naked woman wearing a strapped on sexual device raped an elderly man while he was fasting. The man said the woman came in silently behind him, "wearing a belt with a penis," Akeel relayed. The man told Akeel he could not determine whether his assailant was an American MP or a private contractor.

Akeel also uncovered a method, previously unknown to his legal team, by which captors were malicious in their matching of interpreters with the prisoners they would help interrogate. He said that in each interrogation case before him, the victim was assigned an interpreter with a "built-in-prejudice."

"All of the translators are of Arabic descent," Akeel said. "So they'd put an Egyptian Coptic [Christian] translator to look over the [Sunni Muslims]. It's like putting a Serb in charge of a Muslim [in the former Yugoslavia]. This is a pattern everywhere; [it was] very specific."

Akeel said he interviewed victims from across the social spectrum, "from lawyers to doctors, to kids, to the elderly, to housewives." He said U.S. jailers and their contractors subjected all the plaintiffs to similar mistreatment.

One woman told Akeel she witnessed an imprisoned man and woman raped on her first night of incarceration.

Other witnesses said a group of naked male detainees was forced to serve food to naked female prisoners who begged the men to cover their eyes.

In another account, a doctor first taken to a presidential palace and made to stand there for hours on end, told Akeel that he was then taken to the Abu Ghraib prison where he watched a naked prisoner forced onto the running engine of a Humvee, leaving the man with irreparable burns.

Witnesses also told Akeel the famous Tikrit area stables of Saddam Hussein's son, Uday, now house Iraqi prisoners who are forced to urinate and defecate in the same stalls where they sleep.

Akeel returned from his mission to Baghdad last week. He said he is still processing everything he learned, and has agreed to provide The NewStandard detailed documentation confirming these accounts once he has organized the material. All of it, he said, will be introduced as part of the case against CACI and Titan.

One witness Akeel had hoped to interview will not be part of the lawsuit. Akeel said he was expecting to speak with a woman who had been raped at one U.S.-run prison, and later discovered she was pregnant. Tragically, she killed herself before they could meet.

[b]Lisa Ashkenaz Croke is a Chicago-based writer and features editor for the fledging Third Coast Press. She’s spent the past year researching and drafting reports on Iraq’s post-war occupation for YellowTimes.org. Her work has appeared on various US and European-based IndyMedia.org websites and including, UNObserver.com, GlobalPolicy.org and OccupationWatch.org.[/b] - http://www.antiwar.com/orig/c...

Pictures From Iraq -- The Way The Bush/Cheney Neo-Con Regime Treats People ...

08.31.04 (3:49 pm) [edit]

[b]Maybe the neo-con neo-fascist pigs responsible for heinous war crimes including murder, torture, rape, abuse and sodomy of little children would like to put a caption on these pictures ... A US Army Report says tortures extend to the TOP http://csmonitor.com/2004/082...

A picture [i]is[/i] worth a thousand words:-- Take a good hard [i]look[/i] at what Bush/Cheney have done to our nation. Bush and Cheney are [i]despicable[/i]!!!

And we [i]haven't[/i] as yet seen the pictures of Bush/Cheney's thugs raping and sodomizing of little children because they are [i]covering-up [/i]their War Crimes!!!

Check-Out[/b]: "Abu Ghraib Cover-up Intensifies" on http://www.tblog.com/template...

[b]Torture and Abuse at Abu Ghraib Prison ... The Red Cross warned the Bush administration who knew over a year ago and did nothing to stop this ...[/b]

=http://img38.photobucket.com/...

=http://img38.photobucket.com/...

=http://img38.photobucket.com/...

=http://img38.photobucket.com/...

=http://img38.photobucket.com/...

[b]Its the "liberation" of the Iraqi people and it isnt pretty.[/b]

=http://img38.photobucket.com/...

[b]These are just some of the photos that led to an investigation into conditions at the Abu Ghraib prison, once Saddams torture palace, and now run by the occupation authorities, as revealed in a shocking report broadcast by CBS on[i] 60 Minutes II[/i][/b].

=http://img38.photobucket.com/...

[b]Brig. Gen. Janice Karpinski, in charge of the occupiers detention facilities throughout Iraq, has been dismissed from her post, and 6 U.S. soldiers face charges[/b].

=http://img38.photobucket.com/...

[b]"This is international standards," said Karpinski, in an earlier interview with CBS. "It's the best care available in a prison facility."[/b]

=http://img38.photobucket.com/...

[b]Anybody can see that.[/b]

=http://img38.photobucket.com/...

[b]Below, Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, who was responsible for military jails in Iraq, and has now been suspended in the abuse probe, meets with Donald Rumsfeld.[/b]

=http://img38.photobucket.com/...

[b]And even more disturbing screen shots made available from Global Free Press http://globalfreepress.com/ via [i]TheMemoryHole[/i] http://www.thememoryhole.org/... [/b].

=http://img38.photobucket.com/...

=http://img38.photobucket.com/...

[b]These images are from the [i]60 Minutes II [/i]broadcast. CBS says that it has twelve of these photographs, though there are dozens more. Among them:

The Army has photographs that show a detainee with wires attached to his genitals. Another shows a dog attacking an Iraqi prisoner[/b].

=http://img38.photobucket.com/...

=http://img38.photobucket.com/...

=http://img38.photobucket.com/...

=http://img38.photobucket.com/...

=http://img38.photobucket.com/...

=http://img38.photobucket.com/...

=http://img38.photobucket.com/...

Express Outrage at Chicken Hawk Republicans Laughing at Wounded Veterans!!!

08.31.04 (3:36 pm) [edit]

Republican National Committee member Morton Blackwell and his shadowy right wing groups - the Council for National Policy, the Leadership Institute, and the Conservative Leadership PAC - gave out "Purple Heart" band-aids at the RNC convention to mock John Kerry's wounds and medals. Several veterans don't find this amusing. They know this denigrates all who earned the Purple Heart in service to America. No shock, right wing chicken hawk Blackwell never served in the military. Still, he mocks those who did serve and suffered wounds to win a Purple Heart. Republicans ridicule troops risking their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you agree laughing at wounded Veterans isn't funny, hold Bush, Cheney and other chicken hawk Republicans accountable. Whether or not you're a veteran express your outrage at the laughing, mocking chicken hawk Republicans wearing "Purple Heart" band-aids. Write to Blackwell at blackwell.cnp@usii.net and denounce his front organizations (link below).

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.buildingequality.u...

Kerry's True Positions - and the Fraudulent Technique the RNC [and Media] Use to Distort Them ...

08.31.04 (1:41 pm) [edit]

[b]"We the People" must become tougher and more clever at spotting the mendacious Bush/Cheney Inc. [i]junta's[/i] neo-orwellian mis-representations of John F. Kerry's positions on issues ... It is clear that since Kerry has started to gain momentum in the polls, that an ugly, nasty "gloves-off" campaign by Bush's gutter neo-con neo-fascists has been ignited that involves smearing Kerry with gross fabrications, bold-faced lies, dishonorable deceptions and vile falsehoods-- Apparently these dirty neo-hitlerian tactics are the only way that Bush/Cheney Inc. are able to get their way ... Let's make sure that we don't fall for their neo-con-game and ergo, it will eventually backfire!!! ...[/b]

William Saletan writes "Does Kerry now agree with Bush's decision? Would Kerry have gone into Iraq? Would he have voted to give Bush the authorization had Kerry known what he now knows about the absence of WMD and about how Bush would use the authorization?" No, says Saletan. Yet the RNC, using the same fraudulent tactics as Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, et al, has compliled doctored clips of Kerry's statement - yielding the very soundbytes the media then uses. Ex: Kerry: '"I agree completely with this administration's goal of a regime change in Iraq." He calls Saddam a "renegade" who has betrayed the terms of his 1991 cease-fire. However, the RNC omits Kerry's next two sentences: "But the Administration's rhetoric has far exceeded their plans or their groundwork. In fact, their single-mindedness, secrecy, and high-blown rhetoric has alienated our allies and threatened to unravel the stability of the region." Saletan presents other examples as well of this fraud.

[b]Would Kerry Vote Today for the Iraq War?

[i]No.[/i]

By William Saletan[/b]

Last Friday, President Bush challenged http://www.whitehouse.gov/new... Sen. John Kerry: "My opponent hasn't answered the question of whether, knowing what we know now, he would have supported going into Iraq." On Monday, pressed by a reporter to answer Bush, Kerry said, http://www.washingtonpost.com... "Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it was the right authority for a president to have."

Bush argues that this is yet another Kerry flip-flop and that Kerry now endorses Bush's war. At a campaign rally on Tuesday, Bush asserted http://www.whitehouse.gov/new... ,

... "[i]My opponent has found a new nuance. He now agrees it was the right decision to go into Iraq. After months of questioning my motives and even my credibility, Senator Kerry now agrees with me that even though we have not found the stockpile of weapons we believed were there, knowing everything we know today, he would have voted to go into Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power[/i]." ...

Does Kerry now agree with Bush's decision? Would Kerry have gone into Iraq? Would he have voted to give Bush the authorization had Kerry known what he now knows about the absence of WMD and about how Bush would use the authorization?

The answer, if you look closely at Kerry's statements over the past three years, is no. But Kerry refuses to make this clear, http://www.johnkerry.com/pres... so let's go to the videotape—specifically, a 12-minute videotape of Kerry's statements, compiled by the Republican National Committee and posted on the Web http://www.kerryoniraq.com/ . These statements, in the RNC's judgment, make the strongest case that Kerry has flip-flopped on Iraq.

The first significant clip shows Kerry on[i] The O'Reilly Factor [/i]on Dec. 11, 2001. "We ought to put the heat on Saddam Hussein," he says. Kerry adds that when U.N. weapons inspector Richard Butler provided evidence that inspections should continue, "I criticized the Clinton administration for backing off of the inspections."

Summary: Kerry wants pressure and inspections.

The next significant clip shows Kerry on [i]Hardball[/i] on Feb. 5, 2002. The host, Chris Matthews, asks Kerry whether Iraq "can be reduced to a diplomatic problem—can we get this guy to accept inspections of those weapons of mass destruction potentially and get past a possible war with him?" Kerry answers: "Outside chance, Chris. Could it be done? The answer is yes. He would view himself only as buying time and playing a game, in my judgment. Do we have to go through that process? The answer is yes."

Summary: Kerry doubts Iraq would comply with inspections, but he thinks we have to go through the process of trying.

The next significant quote comes from Kerry's speech to the Democratic Leadership Council on July 29, 2002. "I agree completely with this administration's goal of a regime change in Iraq," Kerry says. He calls Saddam a "renegade" who has betrayed the terms of his 1991 cease-fire. However, the RNC omits Kerry's next two sentences: http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.c... "But the Administration's rhetoric has far exceeded their plans or their groundwork. In fact, their single-mindedness, secrecy, and high-blown rhetoric has alienated our allies and threatened to unravel the stability of the region."

Summary: Kerry agrees that regime change is a "goal." He doesn't clarify how he would pursue it. The part edited out by the RNC suggests that Kerry doesn't like the way Bush is pursuing the goal, particularly because it "alienated our allies."

The video then shows Kerry speaking at a Democratic presidential primary debate in South Carolina on May 3, 2003. Kerry tells moderator George Stephanopoulos, "I said at the time I would have preferred if we had given diplomacy a greater opportunity. But I think it was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein. And when the president made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm [Saddam]."

Stephanopoulos' question, http://www.washingtonpost.com...¬Found=true edited out of the video, was, "On March 19, President Bush ordered Gen. Tommy Franks to execute the invasion of Iraq. Was that the right decision at the right time?" Kerry takes the question in two parts: No to the timing ("I would have preferred if we had given diplomacy a greater opportunity"), yes to the "decision to disarm." But in his final sentence, Kerry conveys that his agreement with Bush on the decision is more important than their disagreement on the timing: "When the president made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm [Saddam]."

This appears to be the first time Kerry endorses the war as Bush conducted it.

It also appears to be the last. The next clip in the RNC video shows Kerry on [i]Meet the Press [/i]on Aug. 31, 2003. "In the resolution that we passed, we did not empower the president to do regime change," says http://msnbc.msn.com/id/30802... Kerry. That's consistent with Kerry's previous statements calling for "heat," "inspections," "process," and cooperation with "allies."

The video shows Kerry announcing his presidential candidacy http://www.boston.com/news/po... on Sept. 2, 2003. "I voted to threaten the use of force to make Saddam Hussein comply with the resolutions of the United Nations," he says. The video omits Kerry's next sentence: "I believe that was right, but it was wrong to rush to war without building a true international coalition and with no plan to win the peace."

No conflict here. Kerry thinks he was voting to turn up the heat and get compliance with inspections. He thinks Bush betrayed two of Kerry's principles: process and allies.

The video shows Kerry on ABC's [i]This Week [/i]on Oct. 12, 2003. The administration "rushed to war," Kerry complains. "They did not give legitimacy to the inspections. We could have still been doing inspections even today."

This is a telling remark. Take Kerry's stated principles: inspections, process, allies. Apply these to the trends of the winter of 2002-03: restored inspections and grudging Iraqi concessions. Combine the principles and the trend with the evidence we have today that Iraq's WMD programs had disintegrated. The most plausible conclusion is that if Kerry were president, we would still be doing inspections, as he suggests.

The video shows Kerry again on [i]Hardball[/i] on Jan. 6, 2004. Chris Matthews asks him, "Are you one of the antiwar candidates?" "I am, yeah—" says Kerry. The video cuts off the rest of the sentence, which continues: "in the sense that I don't believe the president took us to war as he should have, yes, absolutely."

This is classic Kerry: emphasizing the right half of his position when it's convenient, then the left half when that's more convenient. But it isn't a change of position.

At this point, the video takes us back to Kerry's appearance on [i]This Week [/i]on Feb. 22, 1998, when Saddam was harassing U.N. weapons inspectors. "We have to be prepared to go the full distance" to disrupt Saddam's regime, Kerry says. Cokie Roberts asks him, "Does that mean ground troops in Iraq?" Kerry replies, "I'm personally prepared, if that's what it meant." The RNC deletes the next seven sentences, so that Kerry's next words appear to be, "He can rebuild both chemical and biological, and every indication is because of his deception and duplicity in the past, he will seek to do that. So we will not eliminate the problem for ourselves or for the rest of the world with a bombing attack."

Sounds like a call for war. But let's read the whole quote, including the part the RNC left out:

... "[i]I am personally prepared, if that's what it meant. I don't think you have to start there. I think there are a number of other options. But what I hear from the administration, thus far, is if he doesn't comply, then we will hit him. The obvious question is, after you've hit him, have you opened up your inspections? Well, I think the answer is probably not, certainly not in the near term. After you've hit him, is he still in power, capable of building weapons again? Every bit of intelligence John [McCain] and I have says within various periods of time, he can rebuild both chemical and biological, and every indication is because of his deception and duplicity in the past, he will seek to do that. So we will not eliminate the problem for ourselves or for the rest of the world with a bombing attack[/i]." ...

This is the same position Kerry has stated all along: compliance, inspections, skepticism, process. He says we shouldn't start with an invasion. He rejects bombing not because it will fail to change the regime, but because it will fail to restore inspections. And look at the sentence the RNC cut in half, about Saddam having the ability to rebuild the chemical and biological weapons programs he had lost in the early 1990s. Notice what the RNC removed: Kerry's attribution of that assessment to the "intelligence" he had been shown.

If the basis of Kerry's concern about Iraqi WMD was the intelligence, and the intelligence turns out to be mistaken, does this change Kerry's view of the war?

That's the focus of the video's final clip. It shows Kerry's on 60 Minutes a month ago. Lesley Stahl tells him: "You voted for this war. Was that vote, given what you know now, a mistake?" Kerry answers: "What I voted for—Lesley, you see, you're playing here. What I voted for was an authority for the president to go to war as a last resort if Saddam Hussein did not disarm and we needed to go to war." Stahl persists, "But I'm trying to find out if you today, now that you know about [the absence of WMD], think the war was a mistake?" Kerry stonewalls, "I think I answered your question. I think the way he went to war was a mistake."

Kerry sticks to his position. He doesn't answer Stahl's question. But this time, somebody who can speak English is sitting next to Kerry: John Edwards. Seconds after the RNC cuts away from the interview, Edwards steps in to rescue his running mate.

[b]Edwards:[/b] I'm going to finish this. The difference is, if John Kerry were president of the United States, we would never be in this place. He would never have done what George Bush did. He would have done the hard work to build the alliances and the support system. …

[b]Stahl:[/b] Why build an alliance if they didn't have weapons of mass destruction?

[b]Edwards:[/b] We would have found out.

[b]Kerry:[/b] That is it.

[b]Edwards and Kerry (in unison): [/b]That's the point.

[b]Kerry:[/b] That is exactly the point.

There you have it. Edwards says if Kerry had been president, we would have found out Iraq had no WMD, and "we would never be in this place." Kerry emphatically agrees with this translation. It makes pretty clear that given Kerry's principles, and given what we now know about the absence of WMD, Kerry wouldn't have gone to war.

Last Thursday, Kerry gave the RNC more comic material. He told http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com... a conference of minority journalists,

... "[i]I voted to hold Saddam Hussein accountable, because had I been president, I would have wanted that authority, because that was the way to enforce the U.N. resolutions and be tough with the prospect of his development of weapons of mass destruction. … Now, might we have wound up going to war with Saddam Hussein? You bet we might have—after we exhausted those remedies and found that he wasn't complying, and so on and so forth. But not in a way that provides, you know, 90 percent of the casualties are American, and almost all of the cost[/i]." ...

This is the kind of endless, backside-covering nuance that earned Kerry two months of "Kerryisms" in[i] Slate[/i]. But it doesn't change his position: United Nations, WMD, compliance, process. And it includes a very important phrase: "Because had I been president, I would have wanted that authority."

Only when you remember that phrase does the meaning of Kerry's statement on Monday become clear. When Kerry says he would have voted for war authority because "it was the right authority for a president to have," the president he's thinking of—"a president," as he puts it—isn't Bush. It's himself.

So the question that now needs to be put to Kerry is this one: "Knowing what you know now—not only about the absence of weapons of mass destruction, but also about the way President Bush would use the authority given to him by that resolution—would you still have voted to give him that authority?" Good luck getting him to answer it.

[b]William Saletan is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of[i] Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War[/i][/b]. - http://slate.msn.com/id/21050...

[b]Courtesy of WinstonSmith http://winstonsmith.tblog.com... [/b]

Who is the Biggest Flip-Flopper??? It's NOT Kerry, It's LIAR Bush!!!

08.31.04 (1:39 pm) [edit]

[b]The next time someone criticizes John Kerry for being a flip-flopper remind them:[/b]

Bush was against campaign finance reform; now he's for it.

Bush was against a Homeland Security Department; now he's for it.

Bush was against a 9/11 commission; now he's for it.

Bush was against an Iraq WMD investigation; now he's for it.

Bush was against nation building; now he's for it.

Bush was against deficits; now he's for them.

Bush was for free trade; then he was for tariffs on steel, and now he's against them again.

Bush was against the U.S. taking a role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; now he pushes for a "road map" and a Palestinian State.

Bush was for states' rights to decide on gay marriage; now he is for changing the Constitution to outlaw gay marriage.

Bush said he would provide money for first responders (fire, police, emergency); then he doesn't.

Bush said that "help is on the way" to the military; then he cuts their benefits and health care.

Bush claimed to be in favor of environmental protection; then he secretly approved oil drilling on Padre Island in Texas and other places and took many more anti-environmental actions.

Bush said he is the "education president;" then he refused to fully fund key education programs and rarely does his homework, such as read position papers so he will be more knowledgeable on issues.

Bush said that him being governor of Texas for six years was enough political experience to be president of the U.S.; then he criticized Sen. John Edwards for not having enough experience after Edwards had served six years in the U.S. Senate.

During the 2000 campaign, Bush said there were too many lawsuits being filed; then during the Florida recount, he was the first to file a lawsuit to stop the legal counting of votes after Gore took advantage of Florida law to ask for a recount.

On Nov. 7, 2000, the Bush campaign supported Florida county officials drawing up new copies of some 10,000 spoiled absentee votes in 26 Republican-leaning counties that the machines did not read and marking them for the candidates when they showed "clear intent;" they opposed doing the same thing after Nov. 7 when Gore asked for such recounts. Bush dominated absentee balloting in Florida by a two-to-one margin.

Bush said during the 2000 campaign that he did not have a "litmus test" for judges he appointed to be against abortion; then he mostly appointed judges who were against abortion.

In the early 1990s, Bush led a campaign to raise taxes in Arlington, Texas, to build a new baseball stadium for the team he partly owned; he later criticized politicians for supporting tax increases ñ after he got rich by selling the team with the new stadium to a wealthy campaign contributor.

Bush opposed the U.S. negotiating with North Korea; now he supports it.

Bush went to the racist and segregationist Bob Jones University in South Carolina; then he said he shouldn't have.

Bush said he would demand a U.N. Security Council vote on whether to sanction military action against Iraq; later Bush announced he would not call for a vote.

Bush first said the "mission accomplished" Iraqi banner was put up by the sailors; he later admitted it was done by his advance team.

Bush was for fingerprinting and photographing Mexicans who enter the U.S.; after meeting with Mexican President Fox, he decided against it.

Bush was opposed to Rice testifying in front of the 9/11 commission citing "separation of powers;" then he was for it.

Bush was against Ba'ath party members holding office or government jobs in Iraq; now he's for it.

Bush said we must not appease terrorists; then he lifted trade sanctions on admitted terrorist Mohammar Quaddafi and Pakistan, which pardoned its official who sold nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya, and North Korea.

Bush said he would wait until after the Nov. election to ask for more money for the war effort; then he decided he needed it before the election, after all.

Bush said, "Leaving Iraq prematurely would only embolden the terrorists and increase the danger to America." His administration now says that U.S. troops will pull out of Iraq when the new provisional authority asks. Then he said they'll stay "as long as needed" again. Now he's

saying that the Iraqis can ask the troops to leave, and they will. Or is he?

The Bush administration officials said that the Geneva Conventions don't apply to "enemy combatants." Now they claims they do.

Bush officials said before the Iraq invasion that Iraq posed an "imminent threat" to U.S. security and that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and even nuclear weapons; after the invasion, they denied saying the word "imminent" and saying that Iraq had WMDs and nuclear weapons, even though they were caught on tape making such statements.

"The most important thing is for us to find Osama Bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him." - George W. Bush, Sept. 13, 2001

"I don't know where he is. I have no idea, and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." - George W. Bush, March 13, 2002

Are you getting tired of this? Well, some in the American military are getting tired of this, too: "The (Bush) administration has an overly simplistic view of how and when to use our military. By not bringing in our friends and allies, they have created a mess in Iraq and are crippling our forces around the world." -Retired Admiral William Crowe, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs under Ronald Reagan. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Neo-Con Nazi Wolfowitz Calls for "Tightening" Government Control Over the Internet!!!

08.31.04 (12:33 pm) [edit]

[b]Wolfowitz calls for "tightening control" over the internet

Translation: No more talk about Israeli spying, dammit! [/b]

The Pentagon has urged Congress to authorize 500 million dollars for building a network of friendly militias around the world to purge terrorists from "ungoverned areas" -- and warned Muslim clerics against providing "ideological sanctuary" to radicals.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a key architect of the Iraq war, told the House Armed Services Committee Tuesday the money would be used "for training and equipping local security forces -- not just armies -- to counter terrorism and insurgencies."

If approved as part of a larger defense bill, the package will "provide greater internal security in areas that are or could become sanctuaries for terrorists," he said.

No specific beneficiaries of the program were named, but US officials have repeatedly expressed concern about vast tracts of land along the Afghan- Pakistani border, in Iraq, the Caucasus, Horn of Africa and various islands in the Philippines where radical Islamic fighters could set up shop.

The strategy has already been tried in Afghanistan, where US special forces managed to forge alliances with some tribal warlords, who became instrumental in bringing down the Taliban government in 2001 and keeping its remnants at bay, said US military experts.

"Indeed, our most important allies in the war on terrorism will be Muslims who seek freedom and oppose extremism," Wolfowitz stated.

The request comes amid a concerted push by top Defense Department and other administration officials to develop new forms of "asymmetrical" warfare that would be more effective against small terrorist cells and would spare the United States the need to deploy large contingents of its own forces around the world.

Addressing the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke of the need for the Pentagon to adjust to the new reality of not having to confront big foreign armies, navies and air forces it was originally trained to fight.

"There are not a lot of them around at the moment," the secretary pointed out. "And we've got manhunts going on."

To help establish contact with local chieftains and get into their good graces, the Pentagon is considering hiring immigrants to serve as "bicultural advisors" in unfamiliar areas and implementing a number of economic aid projects there, according to defense officials.

In his testimony, Wolfowitz also suggested expanding the scope of the war on terror by including into the list of its possible targets radical Islamic clerics, who, in his words, provide "ideological sanctuary" to terrorism.

In addition, he called for tightening control over international communication networks, including the Internet.

He argued that extremist clerics provide cover to militants "by sanctioning terrorism, by recruiting new adherents, and by intimidating moderate clerics from speaking out against them."

However, there was no mention by name of Moqtada Sadr, a Shiite preacher that is leading an anti-American revolt in the Iraqi city of Najaf.

"There should be no room in this world for governments that support terrorism, no ungoverned areas where terrorist can operate with impunity, no easy opportunities for terrorists to abuse the freedom of democratic societies, no ideological sanctuary, and no free pass to exploit the technologies of communications to serve terrorist ends," Wolfowitz insisted.

He did not say what additional measures could be taken to prevent terrorists from exploiting freedoms in the United States, but pointed out it would involve "difficult decisions."

The USA Patriot Act passed by Congress in the wake of the September 11 attacks grants the FBI and other law enforcement agencies additional surveillance and investigative powers. But it has been under attack from civil libertarians, who call it an assault on the US constitution. - http://www.unknownnews.net/04...

'War Time President' Image Means Nothing to Americans Who Can't Pay their Bills

08.31.04 (7:54 am) [edit]

[b]Al Lewis writes:[/b] "George W. Bush's fate on Election Day hinges on the economy. But voters won't care about the chief measure of its strength, the gross domestic product, which is strong despite recent downward revisions. They won't care about the ballooning national debt. Or even rising inflation. What they'll care about is a job. As long as the national unemployment rate holds at its current 5.5 percent, or lower, Bush stands an excellent chance of re-election, according to John Challenger of Chicago-based outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas." However, Challenger is basing his projections on the pre-outsourcing world and failing to take into account that this is the FIRST TIME IN US HISTORY that American workers in a non-depression period have taken a cut in pay. So it is not just the job now, it's whether that job pays the bills.

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.denverpost.com/fra...,1413,36~130~2369718,00.html

Bush/Cheney's Betrayal of America: RNC Delegates Mock Wounded Soldiers ...

08.31.04 (7:52 am) [edit]

"Upon hearing of multiple news reports that GOP delegates are belittling the injuries soldiers sustained during service by wearing Band-Aids with purple hearts, DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe said: 'It is inexcusable for a Republican delegate to mock anyone who has ever put on a soldier's uniform. It is inexcusable to mock service and sacrifice. Our service men and women put their lives on the line every day. If they are wounded in the line of duty it is because they are fighting on the frontlines for freedom. Anything but complete respect for their service is unacceptable. 'Mindful of the fact that over 3,700 purple hearts have been issued during the Iraq war so far and none of us know how high that number will climb, I call on John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, before they speak, to tell their delegates to disavow these tactics... tell their delegates that service matters, sacrifice matters, and that no Republican delegate should ever mock the service of our soldiers.'"

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.democrats.org/blog...

What AWOL Dubya Really Thinks of Our US Soldiers: Cannon-Fodder To Kill for $$$$$$

08.31.04 (7:47 am) [edit]

[b]Veteran White House Correspondent Helen Thomas on Iraq: "We've really Damaged Our Psyche, Our Soul, Our Image"[/b]

Veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas joins us in our firehouse studio to talk about the convention, the media and the war in Iraq. Thomas has served as White House correspondent for some 57 years and has covered every President since Kennedy. [includes rush transcript]

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- -----

We are now joined by veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas. Commonly referred to as "The First Lady of the Press," Helen Thomas is the most senior member of the White House press corps. She has served as White House correspondent for United Press International for some 57 years and has covered every President since Kennedy.

President Gerald Ford once remarked, "If God created the Earth in six days, he couldn't have rested on the seventh - he would have had to explain it Helen Thomas."

AMY GOODMAN: We're now joined by veteran White House correspondent, Helen Thomas, commonly referred to as the First Lady of the Press. Helen Thomas is the most senior member of the White House Press Corps. She served as White House correspondent for United Press International for some 57 years and has covered every president since Kennedy. President Gerald Ford once remarked, “If God created the earth in six days, he couldn't have rested on the seventh. He would have had to explain it to Helen Thomas.” Helen Thomas went from U.P.I. to working for the Hearst newspapers, and we welcome you, Helen Thomas, to Democracy Now!

HELEN THOMAS: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: It's great to have you with us, we've spoken to you on the phone. You're here for the Republican National Convention. We bumped into you at the Time-Warner party. And your thoughts were not really right there in that corporate celebration. You were talking about Fallujah.

HELEN THOMAS: Yes. And in fact, on Saturday itself, 14 people were killed, in one story that I saw, and eight of them were children. I mean, why isn't every American upset? Our conscience.

JUAN GONZALEZ: In terms of the – as you’ve seen these conventions develop over the years, your thoughts on how they have evolved, especially the enormous impact now obviously that television has in either covering or not covering the events at the conventions.

HELEN THOMAS: Well, I think they're so cut-and-dried now since we do have the slate. And they’re basically a celebration, and everybody has been homogenized to a point where their unity, harmony is supposed to be the name of the game. And I must say that I don't think that that's America. We usually have a difference of opinion, and it's allowed to be spoken. I like the conventions that were contested, where you had real opinions cited. Except everybody has been dumbed down.

AMY GOODMAN: What is your assessment of the George W. Bush presidency? You've covered nine presidents moving on to, well, we'll see what happens in November.

HELEN THOMAS: Well, it's the most muscular foreign policy that we've ever had. I think that America doesn't invade countries without provocation, and that's what we've done. And I think that it has tainted us throughout the world. We've really damaged our psyche, our soul, our image. The very fact that Secretary of State Colin Powell couldn't go to Athens, because, I mean, which is the heart of democracy, because of our war policy. I never think of my country as being pro-war. I think it's a last thing that would happen to us. Of course, if you're attacked, it's different. But for us to invade a country? It's shocking to me.

JUAN GONZALEZ: How do you see then, given that reality, why is there still among the public, a considerable support for the war? Clearly it's been turning, but why so many Americans are still supportive of the president's policies?

HELEN THOMAS: He plays the fear card. From 9/11 on, everybody felt they had to be a patriotic American. And then it segwayed into a war where they continued that. And I think reporters contributed a lot by not rocking the boat. And afraid of being also tainted as called un-American. But I really think that we fell down on the job, from that aspect. In terms of the Americans, I think that the very fact that the president keeps saying that he had a right to go in and so forth, they want to believe him. But pure logic shows us that everything he said about going into war, the reasons, have proved to be untrue. And I don't know how that can be acceptable to any human being.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, what about the role that the press has played? We're seeing some mea culpas, or maybe kinda culpas. You have that New York Times A-10 box that says, letter from the editor.

HELEN THOMAS: But actually New York Times was a lot more reluctant to support the war than The Washington Post. Day after day for two years, they drummed up the war.

AMY GOODMAN: Now you're with your colleagues every day. What do they say to you about this? What do The Washington Post, The New York Times reporters say to you?

HELEN THOMAS: Well, after New York Times did the mea culpa with a couple of editorials, I went up to The Post reporter and said, when are you guys going to cave? And he looked at me as though I had dropped from Mars. Anyway, I guess each has to make their own decision. But The Post never came around. In 3,000 words they basically said, maybe we should have put the story on page 1, instead of page A-20, which showed that there was some doubt about what the President was saying, but, I mean, that's not a full-fledged apology. And I think the apologies are forthcoming. They should be. But more than that, you can't restore the lives. Thousands of people are dead.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, you’ve also, you’ve talked about the muscular foreign policy. What about the Bush administration's relations with and discussions with the press? Clearly, you have not been a favorite of the White House.

HELEN THOMAS: No, I'm on the black list. But that's ok. Just so the questions are asked. But the president has not held a full-fledged news conference since April. And if he's re-elected, I think there will be even fewer and far between. These people are so strange. They think they have the authority. I mean we are, we should be the power. We have the authority. And he thinks he's president, and therefore, he doesn't have to answer questions from the lowly press. And I think that even Kerry has some sort of strange idea about presidential authority. I mean, it's --presidents have to be questioned early and often. And this is the only accountability that we have for them. It's the only forum in our society where a president can be questioned is a press conference.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean?

HELEN THOMAS: Congress can subpoena a president, but they're not going to do that unless it's very dire.

AMY GOODMAN: You said even Kerry. What do you mean?

HELEN THOMAS: Well, when he's -- was supporting, he would still support the war, despite the fact that none of the facts stack up. And then he said the president should have the authority. Authority, you know, I mean, it was shocking. I think that’s very misplaced; dictators have authority.

JUAN GONZALEZ: But what about the current crop or generation of journalists who take this, who allow it to happen day in and day out and really don't raise much of a furor about it?

HELEN THOMAS: Well, I think that the hold, as I say, the onus of being a patriot and being on television and also the fear of jeopardizing the truth, worrying that you're not supporting the troops if you ask questions that seem to be penetrating or challenging.

AMY GOODMAN: You're unusual in the news corps over the last more than 50 years, close to 60 years. A woman --

HELEN THOMAS: I’m expressing my opinion now, which I didn't do for 57 years.

AMY GOODMAN: You're a woman --

HELEN THOMAS: I said I'm expressing my opinion now.

AMY GOODMAN: You're a woman, and you're Arab American. How --

HELEN THOMAS: I'm American. I don't like hyphens. It's true my parents came from Syria. But what does that go to do with? Everybody's parents came from somewhere else.

AMY GOODMAN: Does it have an influence for you, do you feel, that gives you a unique perspective?

HELEN THOMAS: Of course, I have a cultural background of knowing that, but I don’t think that -- anybody who knows me, throughout the Vietnam War, I was equally adamant against the war of our choice. I felt as equally passionate in the sense that I don't think you should go into anyone's country without any reason that you can justify or explain.

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to touch base with you throughout the week. Helen Thomas has been our guest. We'll also link to our previous interview with Helen Thomas, who has written the book Front Row at the White House: Thanks for the Memories, Mr. President. And we'll link to some of her questioning of the White House press secretary. Thank you very much, Helen Thomas. - http://www.democracynow.org/a...

Bush/Cheney's Treason: Neo-Con Repugs Fail to Get Rid of Pentagon Spy Putting USA in Grave Danger

08.31.04 (7:41 am) [edit]

[b]Spies in the Pentagon?[/b]

When I think of spies in the Defense Department, I think of the pitiful debt-ridden Ron Pelton, who worked for 14 years at the National Security Agency, quit in 1979, and began selling secrets to the Soviets until he was arrested in 1986. I heard it was to complete construction on a home he had been building for years and years. Construction projects can be like that.

I think of Jonathan Pollard, a case study in poor hiring practices within the federal government and the Defense Department’s even poorer supervisory habits. Pollard was also a case study in the delusional and incompetent ideologue who becomes a traitor in the Department of Defense.

More recently, I think of the high clearances granted to publicly and at times, rabidly, pro-Likud past and present political appointees with names like Douglas Feith and Richard Perle, and a host of younger Likudniks who march through the halls of the five-sided asylum to a composition unfamiliar to most Americans.

I don’t think of Larry Franklin, a guy I like and respect. When I was there in 2002 and 2003, Larry was the Iran desk officer with the Defense Under Secretary for Policy, Near East South Asia, moving later to the Office of Special Plans, where ostensibly Iraq policy was made.

Larry is an interesting and kind person with a lot of great stories. He came into our cubicle one morning feeling energetic, and demonstrated a Karate kick of some kind that to this day still impresses me. Here’s a little guy in a suit, over 50 years in age, and he can do the move. I asked him where he learned to do that. He said he had to learn self-defense because he grew up dirt poor, short and small, in a slum in Baltimore, one of the few white kids in his neighborhood. I believed him. He worked for everything he had, all the way to his Ph.D. Along the way, he got married and had a whole passel of kids, safely ensconced hours away from the superficialities and mean streets of Washington, D.C.

The pre-Republican National Convention weekend story is that Larry gave draft Iran policy guidance and other info to AIPAC representatives, in hopes of communicating a level of concern for what was going on in Iraq to his higher ups in the Pentagon, specifically Doug Feith and Paul Wolfowitz.

Somehow, having to go outside the system to get the Pentagon brass to show concern about what is really going on in Iraq doesn’t surprise me at all.

The story of spies in the Pentagon will percolate, no doubt. I have no answers, but perhaps the questions themselves will help explain what is going on in the current administration, and the administration that is sure to come.

Was the release of Larry’s name at this time politically motivated? And was that to hurt the Bush presidency or to save it, as Laura Rozen muses, with a "controlled burn"?

Why would Larry need to give draft documents on policy anywhere in the Middle East to AIPAC, when all the big decisions are already coordinated between Israel and the U.S. at far higher levels?

Why is Larry the result of FBI investigational success instead of the names of the Pentagon senior operatives who shared classified information with Ahmad Chalabi regarding American success in reading coded Tehran communications, specifically now as neoconservatives rage for war in Iran? Or instead of the names of senior White House operatives who revealed and destroyed the U.S. security mission of Valerie Plame?

Are there any advantages gained in front-page stories on a "spy for Israel" who is not one of the usual suspects? You know, a person with no business dealings dependent upon American (and Israeli) decisions, a person without an openly pro-Israel ideology or someone who was never known as a passionate advocate of U.S. power to promote Israel’s security and economic viability? A career-constrained professional rather than fly-by-night political appointees who have written widely and acted most consistently to advance the interests of Israel in American policy towards the Middle East? Qui bono?

Could it be, as so wisely noted by Chris Manion recently, that it is time for the neoconservatives to come home?

The neoconservative harvest has been plucked from the energies and wealth of an unsuspecting American public – a permanent and costly occupation of Iraq’s oil production infrastructure, a ringing of unnecessary military bases from Bosnia and Kosovo, to Uzbekistan to Afghanistan to Iraq, and the domestic acceptance of a siege mentality of national defense reminiscent of Machiavelli’s lesser princes, or perhaps the current political state of Israel.

The challenge may be simply to properly preserve the harvest – and what better way than to usher in a presidency that will do what Bush can never do – legitimize and normalize American militaristic hegemony, at least for several more years. As Gabriel Kolko writes,

Democrats' greater finesse in justifying these policies is therefore more dangerous because they will be made to seem more credible and keep alive alliances that only reinforce the U.S.' refusal to acknowledge the limits of its power. In the longer run, Kerry's pursuit of these aggressive goals will lead eventually to a renewal of the dissolution of alliances, but in the short-run he will attempt to rebuild them and European leaders will find it considerably more difficult to refuse his demands than if Bush stays in power – and that is to be deplored.

Dangerous, radically un-American, Machiavellian. It must be exciting these days to be a neoconservative, looking forward to the continued progress under a Kerry Presidency. But to preserve the harvest, sacrifice is required.

Predictably, the sacrifice will be as it always is for neoconservative strategists. Whether burned at home or in the desert, the neoconservative sacrifice requires only the lives of those most loyal, dispensable, and disposable.

[b]August 30, 2004

Karen Kwiatkowski is a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, who spent her final four and a half years in uniform working at the Pentagon. She now lives with her freedom-loving family in the Shenandoah Valley, and writes a bi-weekly column on defense issues with a libertarian perspective for militaryweek.com. [/b] - http://www.lewrockwell.com/kw...

Bush/Cheney's Treason: Neo-Con Repugs Fail to Get Rid of Pentagon Spy Putting USA in Grave Danger

08.31.04 (7:38 am) [edit]

All That Glitters Sure As Hell Ain't Gold: DUBYA'S LAST HURRAH!!!

08.31.04 (7:22 am) [edit]

[b]Bush's Last Hurrah[/b]

"They've seen me make decisions, they've seen me under trying times, they've seen me weep, they've seen me laugh, they've seen me hug," President Bush said this week as he headed into his second – and last – convention.

And they've seen him up and they've seen him down. In 2001, following 9/11, he had a job rating in the high eighties; this spring it went as low as 41 percent.

The president has taken a real beating in the press in the past few months. The continuing turmoil in Iraq, the Abu Ghraib prison scandals and job losses in key battleground states have all taken their toll. His job rating on Iraq is bad and his ratings on the economy are abysmal. And yet he goes into his convention even or slightly ahead of John Kerry.

"You know Democrats are pulling out their hair right now," a Democratic media consultant told me this week. "They think its 1988 all over again."

What they are losing hair and a lot of sleep over is that John Kerry's baby bounce from the Democratic convention, which put him anywhere from 2 to 5 points over President Bush, has evaporated. The[b] CBS News/New York Times poll [/b]conducted last week http://www.cbsnews.com/storie... had Kerry's lead shrinking to one point, and three other polls conducted this week have shown the race dead even or the president with a small lead.

Team Bush is breathing a sigh of relief. "No challenger has ever won going into the incumbent's convention behind," Matthew Dowd, senior strategist for the Bush-Cheney campaign told USA Today. He cited winning challengers, Ronald Reagan in 1980 and Bill Clinton in 1992, as evidence. Dowd is crafty enough to have spun a Bush poll deficit, but these new numbers and the perception that Kerry blew his convention by overstating his biography and underplaying his issue agenda makes Dowd's work a lot easier.

The polls also show that President Bush retains his status as a strong leader and the one who is best dealing with terrorism and taxes. But even on compassion, usually a Democratic strength, Bush only trails Kerry 48 percent to 42 percent as the person who cares most about average people.

Another Republican pollster Bill McInturff, however, told MSNBC that Bush is in a "precarious situation" with just a little more than two months to go to the election. "He is really frozen... It's a very difficult haul to get where he is on the ballot and get higher," he said. "We need a little more than a bump up to make this [something other than] a difficult race."

This may be why Matthew Dowd thinks that motivating the Republican base is the key. In an interview with Ron Brownstein from the L.A. Times, Dowd said last week that "motivating Republicans this year is as important or possibly more important than reaching the persuadable voters." His goal is to get the same number of Republicans as Democrats to vote in the general election. In 2000 Democrats outnumbered Republicans 39% to 35%.

To pull this off they have been advertising heavily on cable TV stations featuring fishing, hunting, golf, country music and NASCAR racing. While Kerry has been campaigning almost exclusively in swing areas, President Bush has been going to rock-ribbed Republican areas such as Sioux City, Iowa and the Florida Panhandle, as well as the big media markets in the battleground.

The Kerry campaign is putting on a brave face saying that they are not overly worried about their falloff in the polls or even by a bounce which Bush may get following the GOP convention. Kerry pollster Mark Mellman cites his own historical trend; he says that every incumbent who has been reelected has had a double-digit lead at this point.

Camp Kerry concedes that August did not go well for them and some inside the campaign say that they made a bad mistake not responding sooner and more aggressively to the swift boat ads and letting the Kerry get on the defensive on Iraq.

But Kerry pollster Diane Feldman points out that they were off the air in August, conserving money for the fall campaign and that soft and undecided voters tend to "drift away" when the candidate isn't visible. She believes that the undecideds are "structurally like the Democratic voters" – lower middle-income, anti-Bush and prioritizing health care and the economy. The challenge for Kerry is to break through on those issues. So far, he has not convinced these folks that he can do better on these issues than can Bush.

So President Bush starts his last convention holding his own. He has come back to New York where his advisors believe he had his finest moment as a leader and a healer. They want to portray him as a man "in the arena" who is strong and resolute. A lot of Democrats, especially New Yorkers, are going to do their best to knock down those plans and in 65 days the voters will decide which historical precedent, Dowd's or Mellman's is going to prevail. - http://www.cbsnews.com/storie...

... GOP CONVENTION: From The Heights Of Hypocrisy!!! ...

08.31.04 (7:16 am) [edit]

[b]From the heights of hypocrisy[/b]

Rudolph Giuliani, favoring his old wound from Gallipoli, said yesterday that Bush stands on the very pinnacle, the highest snowy peak, with historic war leaders so familiar to Giuliani that he mentioned them with authority, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt.

That Giuliani and Bush together never heard a shot fired is of no matter. If you can get up and say with confidence, "Churchill," you are universal on the topic of leadership during war.

Giuliani did not mention Osama bin Laden. If you do a thing like this, somebody might ask why he hasn't been caught yet.

And he did not dare go near mentioning the long, grim campaign of Clara Rivera and so many others in the Brooklyn neighborhoods. The enemy is the landlord. His weapon, the eviction notice. And now, the Republican administration's new federal housing laws which send the money from Brooklyn to Texas and Florida.

Yesterday, children, seven of them, came out of the dark rooms in their hot Bushwick apartment and padded into the neat clean kitchen where the mother, Clara Rivera, stood at the stove. The youngest, Manuel Rivera, one year and seven months, hugged her. The husband was still over in New Jersey, where he works as a gardener for $250 a week.

They are an interesting family to study. They could be evicted shortly. Their best move then would be to move into public housing. However, the Republican administration has just changed the funding for housing in New York, sending the money to where the Republicans feel it does the most good for America — Texas and Florida.

Public housing would be hurt so much that there could be no room for the Riveras. The Riveras would be left with no place to go. They are not alone. All over the neighborhoods of Brooklyn once thought of as dangerous and dilapidated, there now is a real estate wildfire.

The landlords in Bushwick have taken these six-family houses, that are rent stablilized, and cut one apartment out, giving them a five-family house that no longer is regulated. They then can slap paint around the halls and double the rent and if the tenants can't pay, then throw them out.

On the Rivera's kitchen wall was a chart for a junior high school study of North Korea. There were headings for religion, food, language. Simultaneously, it was a day when lessons on their own city were conducted from a place they never see, Manhattan. There, on the first night of the great Republican convention, a former mayor, Koch, and the present mayor, Bloomberg, told their city about how George W. Bush swooped into New York right after the World Trade Center attack, or as soon as he could see his way clear, and saved this whole city.

Then Giuliani came on with a worldwide view. He seemed to be painting a vision of Bush crossing the Rhine. He never mentioned housing. Which was sensible. The Republicans seated in the Garden had just found another way to smack the poor around by taking the roofs off them. And it didn't hurt them. They couldn't see the dark rooms of Bushwick, so how could it stab them?

Bushwick could see the Republicans, in their great gaudy meeting hall, but only as faces on a screen. Not one of these faces told them that Republicans have this new rule that is going to throw Bushwick people onto the street.

Among them, and dangerously close right now, is Clara Rivera and her brood.

"How much is the rent?" she was asked.

"Six hundred and forty six."

"A different landlord every year," the mother said in Spanish to John Powis, retired as a Catholic pastor and now spending his days with tenants in peril.

The present landlord has offered them $3,000 if they will move out of the apartment, so he can fix it and charge anything he can get, from $1,200 up.

Where do the Riveras go with their $3,000?

"They'll be in a shelter," John Powis said.

Clara Rivera said she and her husband would be at a meeting on Wednesday night to discuss with others the $3,000 offer. "Don't lose this apartment," Powis told her. "We'll talk about how to do it."

But $3,000 to a woman in a kitchen with seven kids looking at her is a fortune of money and the thought of it robs the ability to see anything past it.

They worry all over the neighborhood. On Harman Street, on Stockholm and on Stanhope, women sat on the stoops in the heat and talked about being chased out of their houses. One house had no lights or heat. They had a thick wire running up the stairs from some source. Rosa Lopez, 27, sat on the stoop and said the owner had abandoned the place seven years ago and now sudddenly somebody wanted to take it over and she said, "Pay nothing to nobody."

Antonio Martinez stood in the doorway and showed the hole in the corner of the entranceway. It went down tol the basement. "It's a little weak," he said of the floor under him.

And last night, with children in Bushwick packed into beds, Giuliani was in Madison Square Garden telling the world about all that his Republicans had done for his city.

They have done quite a lot, they have tens of thousands in fear of losing the roof over their heads. - http://www.newsday.com/news/c...,0,5863791.column?coll=ny-news-colum nists

... GOP CONVENTION: From The Heights Of Hypocrisy!!! ...

08.31.04 (7:13 am) [edit]

Why "Fuck-yourself" Cheney Deserves an "F" in History!!!

08.31.04 (7:10 am) [edit]

[b]Why Dick Cheney Deserves an "F" in History [/b]

[b]By Robert E. May

Mr. May, is a professor of History at Purdue University and a writer for the History News Service[/b].

In a critique of John Kerry's presidential candidacy, Vice President Dick Cheney invoked historical memory to mock Kerry's call for a "more sensitive" war on terrorism. Cheney told a Dayton, Ohio, gathering on Aug. 12 that none of America's victories in war can be attributed to "being sensitive."

To support his point, he summoned some of the heavy guns of America's wartime leadership: Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Generals U.S. Grant, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur.

It turns out that Cheney is dead wrong. It was their very sensitivity in conducting war that made Lincoln, Roosevelt, Grant and Eisenhower great wartime leaders.

Let's start with Lincoln. In the Civil War's early going, the Lincoln administration restrained its armies from all-out war in the hope that conciliatory policies might induce the Confederate states to rejoin the Union, or might at least ensure that the four border slave states still in the Union (Kentucky, Delaware, Maryland and Missouri) would not secede also.

Not only were orders issued for the protection of civilian property in the South, but Lincoln, always "sensitive" to the knowledge that effective war-making means much more than simply engaging the enemy, countermanded emancipation efforts by Union generals, despite his own hatred of slavery. Lincoln overruled Gen. John C. Fremont's declaration freeing the slaves of active enemy supporters in Missouri, a particularly telling move, given Fremont's stature as a former presidential candidate of Lincoln's party. Lincoln shrewdly waited to issue his Emancipation Proclamation until Union armies had substantially secured the four border states.

Cheney could learn much from Lincoln's sensitivity, as he presses today's war on terrorism, especially among Muslim populations who regard the United States with hostility. Not only did Lincoln manage to keep four slave states in the Union, gaining control of invaluable industrial and agricultural resources within their borders, but approximately 300,000 slave-state residents, including many thousands from states in the Confederacy, actually fought for the Union army.

Grant's record also reveals the baseless nature of Cheney's claim. When Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to Grant near the end of the war, Grant allowed Lee and his men to return to their homes on parole with their horses and provided the Confederates with rations. Rather than unnecessarily humiliate his Confederate enemies, Grant "sensitively" allowed Lee and his fellow officers to keep their side arms, even though the Civil War was still being waged by Confederate forces in other locales.

In World War II, the United States also fought more sensitively than Cheney suggests, despite the American record of relentless saturation bombing and resort to nuclear weapons, as well as the savage nature of much of the fighting in the Pacific against Japan. President Roosevelt talked about "total victory" in wartime pronouncements and demanded the "unconditional surrender" of Germany, Japan and Italy. Yet to end the fighting with Italy and obtain Italy's collaboration with the Allies, he abandoned his tough policy. Italy surrendered under an elaborate protocol from which the term "unconditional" had been intentionally removed.

Cheney also misrepresents Gen. Eisenhower, one of the most sensitive and successful coalition commanders of all time. Cheney forgets that Ike diverted U.S. and British forces approaching the German capital of Berlin from the west in 1945 to avert the possibility of an accidental collision with allied Soviet forces moving in on Berlin from the east. He also forgets that to accommodate their British allies' strategic interests (as well as for logistical reasons), Eisenhower and other U.S. military leaders deferred from 1942 to 1944 their desired cross-channel invasion against Hitler. Successful coalition warfare requires restraint and compromise -- "sensitivity," in Cheney's terms.

Many other chapters in our military history make the same point that successful commanders wage war by carefully weighing their options. For instance, Gen. Winfield Scott's American army was able to conquer the enemy capital, Mexico City, in 1847, effectually ending the U.S.-Mexican War, because Scott's campaign had been based on tactical finesse and restraint toward enemy civilians. Scott's army frequently bypassed enemy strongholds, thus isolating them, and marched under strict orders to protect civilian property, especially Catholic churches. As a result, Scott's vastly outnumbered forces of fewer than 7,000 effective troops never faced a mass uprising. Unlike U.S.commanders in Iraq today, Scott didn't offend the religious sensibilities of native peoples.

Only Douglas MacArthur merits Cheney's praise as being "insensitive." But did this make him effective? MacArthur almost lost the Korean War by his insensitive decision to cross the 38th parallel into North Korea, despite strong signals from Chinese leaders that they would enter the war on North Korea's side if that happened. Chinese troops nearly drove U.S. forces off the entire Korean Peninsula before the situation stabilized.

It's not surprising that the vice president should sample history for political advantage in a heated campaign. But his remarks suggest that his historical understanding is superficial. If Cheney's views reflect the Bush administration's perspective as a whole, they may go far to explain why the current administration has foundered so noticeably in Iraq, Afghanistan and other venues of its "war on terrorism." - http://hnn.us/articles/6936.h...

Why "Fuck-yourself" Cheney Deserves an "F" in History!!!

08.31.04 (7:09 am) [edit]

Why "Fuck-yourself" Cheney Deserves an "F" in History!!!

08.31.04 (7:06 am) [edit]

Bush Admits He Doesn't Have A Clue How to Win So-Called "War on Terror"!

08.31.04 (6:41 am) [edit]

[b]Bush on Terror War: We Can't Win

George W. Bush was on the Today Show today[/b]. http://www.guardian.co.uk/usl...,1282,-4461314,00.html

During the course of talking about how we mustn't dare end the war on terror... ever, because it'd make us look weak, he was asked "Can we win?".

In a rare moment of candor, Bush admitted no, "I don't think you can win it".

Of course, just because the threat of terror hasn't actually shrunk, and just because the US military is already stretched well past its limits, and just because civil liberties are increasingly a distant memory... and now we're also admitting that we're never actually going to win, that's no good reason to stop.

Waging wars in nations that have nothing to do with terrorism (e.g. Iraq) and pose no threat to us, like Bush/Cheney did is foolhardy, corrupt and dangerously stupid!

Bush Admits He Doesn't Have A Clue How to Win So-Called "War on Terror"!

08.31.04 (6:36 am) [edit]

The Facts Speak for Themselves: American Workers have Taken a Huge Hit Under Bush

08.31.04 (6:32 am) [edit]

[b]Here are the facts, ma'am, from the Bureau of Economic Analysis:[/b] Wages: Under Clinton: (plus 3.3 percent); Under Bush: (minus 0.6 percent): Private Industry Wages: Under Clinton: (plus 3.9 percent); Under Bush: (minus 1.1 percent); Personal Income: Under Clinton: (plus 4.0 percent); Under Bush: (plus 3.5 percent). However, Personal income measures the AVERAGE family, not the typical family.. If just one person gets much richer, the statistic will show that everyone's average income has increased. This is especially problematic under Bush because Census data show that higher quintiles have done better than lower quintiles in recent years. Thus Bush can use the windfalls of the rich to pad the stats for everyone.

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://releases.usnewswire.co...

The Facts Speak for Themselves: American Workers have Taken a Huge Hit Under Bush

08.31.04 (6:30 am) [edit]

Most Outrageous Fantasy of the Year: Bush is Like Churchill!!! ROFL!!!

08.30.04 (10:43 am) [edit]

Unless the Repugs who made this comparison are referring to Bugsy Churchill, owner of the Shady Deal Used Car Lot, this takes the prize as as the most delusional fantasy of the year! Reports the Scotsman: "George Bush is tackling international terrorists just as Winston Churchill took on Hitler, the Republican National Convention will hear today. The party convention opened in New York City, just a few miles from where the twin towers were destroyed by terrorists on September 11, 2001. Winston Churchill saw the dangers of Hitler when his opponents and much of the press characterised him as a war-mongering gadfly." Yeah, right - the 1930s/40s equivalent of Rupert Murdoch's Post, maybe! This is getting more pathetic by the hour! Because Bush himself is a big fat ZERO, the Repugs either have to tear better men down to make him look better, or make ridiculous comparisons between him and better men. Give it up, GOP! You have picked a turkey and you're stuck with him!

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://news.scotsman.com/late...

Neo-con Repugs Don't Want Freedom of Speech Except For Themselves!!!

08.30.04 (10:40 am) [edit]

[b]'The war on dissent'[/b]

When New York City was announced as the site of the Republican National Convention back in January 2003, it seemed an odd choice of location. The turf is staunchly Democratic, and Manhattan is so densely packed that conventioneers and protesters will inevitably clash. But the pageantry of George W. Bush returning to Ground Zero to trumpet his victories in the war on terrorism may have been too tempting for GOP media consultants to resist.

An unpopular war has since intervened, and today a majority of registered voters believe our nation is headed in the wrong direction. Bush needs a bounce from the convention and can ill afford the tarnish of being publicly charged by the September 11 families with having neglected terrorist threats while he has exploited their tragedy for his election bid. And surely he does not want the world to witness a quarter-million protesters demanding regime change in the United States, or to realize that opposition to his policies is so heartfelt that people have resolved as a matter of conscience to commit acts of nonviolent civil disobedience and subject themselves to criminal arrest and prosecution.

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

CNN REPORTS: BUSH DAUGHTERS BOOED on MTV AWARDS, TOO!!! [LOL!!! LOL!!! LOL!!!]

08.30.04 (9:50 am) [edit]

[b]Kerry, Bush daughters booed on MTV[/b]

[b]MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- Reaching out to young Americans at MTV's Video Music Awards Sunday night, the daughters of President Bush and his Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry were met by loud cheers and jeers[/b].

It was unclear exactly whom the cheers and the boos were meant for or why. They began immediately after radio and MTV personality Carson Daly introduced "from New York, Barbara and Jenna Bush and here in Miami, Vanessa and Alexandra Kerry."

The Kerry daughters were at the event in Miami; the Bush daughters appeared in a pre-recorded video.

"My sister and I are thrilled to be here tonight with you all in Florida," said Vanessa Kerry, "and to get this chance to suggest that you get involved in this election and vote -- and hopefully that you vote for our father."

MTV cameras showed some audience members apparently giving the women a standing ovation, but the mixture of boos and cheers continued.

Alexandra Kerry added that millions of young Americans can help determine the November election, "but we appreciate that in our democracy people are free to feel differently about who they vote for."

The Kerry daughters then turned around to watch, along with the MTV audience, the video of the Bush daughters.

"Hey Alexandra and Vanessa, and hey to everyone at the VMAs," said Barbara Bush.

"Jenna and I really wish we could be there, but we're in New York this week to support our dad and, as you might have guessed, we want to suggest that you vote for him in November." (Special report: America Votes 2004, the Republican convention - http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2... )

Jenna Bush said, "We can all agree on the importance of voting."

MTV's broadcast turned down sounds of the audience during the playing of the video, but the vocal audience could still be heard.

The Bush twins are 22 years old. Vanessa Kerry is 27; Alexandra turns 31 on Sunday.

The boos seemed to die down and cheers took their place toward the end of the segment, when the Kerry daughters took back the floor and encouraged people to support victims of Hurricane Charley, which devastated portions of Florida earlier this month.

Vanessa Kerry said, "Despite our differences, we all agree this election and this process are important. And we all agree that all of us are part of a greater American family."

Speaking to CNN afterward, Vanessa Kerry said the booing had "scared" her, but added, "We're fighting for something so strongly, I will go up there and hear the whole arena boo if it means connecting with one person."

She also said it was "surreal" to appear at the VMAs, known for having one of the most energetic and responsive crowds of any awards show. - http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPO...

American Patriots BOO Dubya!!! [Not Going After Bush Daughters, Although Plenty of Ammunition!!!]

08.30.04 (9:42 am) [edit]

[b]"We the People" ...

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism" - Thomas Jefferson[/b]

[b]'No more years!' chant Bush foes

Thousands of protesters march in N.Y. on eve of GOP gathering[/b]

NEW YORK - Bearing flag-draped boxes resembling coffins and fly-swatters with President Bush’s image, more than 100,000 protesters peacefully swarmed Manhattan’s streets on the eve of the Republican National Convention to demand that the president be turned out of office.

Flanked by police in riot gear, the protesters moved through the fortified city, loudly and exuberantly chanting slogans such as “No more years.” They accused the White House of waging an unjust war in Iraq, making the country poorer and undermining abortion rights.

There were no reports of major violence and about 200 scattered arrests.

Police gave no official crowd estimate, though one law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, put the crowd at 120,000; organizers claimed it was roughly 400,000.

Read article on http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5... ...

[b]More Photos ...[/b]

"I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won; there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall." - Mahatma Gandhi

[b]Hundreds of thousands march through NYC chanting "No More Years!' http://newsday.com/ [/b]

[i]The marchers were close to the site of the 11 September attacks[/i]

[i]Many in the march felt they had been misled in the 'war on terror'[/i]

[i]Protesters wanted the Republicans to know they were not welcome[/i]

[i]People of all ages and different backgrounds took part[/i]

[i]The marchers were unified by their opposition to President Bush[/i] - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/am...

[b]Huge Anti-Bush March Hits NY on Eve of Convention[/b]

NEW YORK - Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators toting colorful banners and shouting "no more Bush" took to Manhattan's streets on Sunday, the day before the Republican convention opens, to decry the Iraq war and President Bush's policies.

Organizers estimated 400,000 people turned out for the march, which led to more than 100 arrests and yielded at least one skirmish between self-styled anarchists and police. More than 400 people have been arrested in protests since Thursday.

[i]A crowd fills a Manhattan avenue during a protest march leading up to the Republican National Convention site sponsored by United for Peace and Justice, in New York[/i]

Chanting "Hey Ho, Bush Has Got to Go," the largely peaceful crowd marched past the Madison Square Garden convention site as Republicans and visitors arrived in the city for a four-day event where Bush will be nominated for another four-year term.

Read article on http://www.commondreams.org/h...

[b]Courtesy of WinstonSmith http://winstonsmith.tblog.com... [/b]

Unbelievable! Bush Calls Bloody Quagmire in Iraq a 'Catastrophic Success'

08.30.04 (6:28 am) [edit]

If anyone needed further proof that Dubya and his handlers have gone completely delusional, here it is! [b]AP:[/b] "Bush on Sunday defended the invasion of Iraq, calling it a 'catastrophic success' despite continued violence and the lack of weapons that drove the country to war. 'We did not find the stockpiles that we thought would be there,' Bush said at a rally in the northern part of West Virginia, [but added, in complete contradiction to himself] I want to remind you that Saddam Hussein had the capability of making weapons of mass destruction, and he could have passed that capability on." Incredibly, the media, led this week by AOL/Time-Warner, has pulled out the stops to shore this pathetic regime up. Time cranked out a new phony 'Bush leads' poll while printing an "apologia interview" with Bush designed to rationalize away all the evils of this empire.

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin...

Unbelievable! Bush Calls Bloody Quagmire in Iraq a 'Catastrophic Success'

08.30.04 (6:26 am) [edit]

Bush/Cheney Treason: Douglas Feith is at Center of 'Broader' Investigation of Israeli Spying

08.30.04 (6:24 am) [edit]

[b]Columbia Tribune:[/b] "An FBI investigation into the handling of highly classified material by Pentagon civilians is broader than previously reported and goes well beyond allegations that a single analyst gave a top-secret Iran policy document to Israel, three sources familiar with the investigation said yesterday. The investigation, which has been going on for more than two years, also has focused on other civilians in the secretary of defense's office. In addition, one said, FBI investigators in recent weeks have conducted interviews to determine whether Pentagon officials gave classified U.S. intelligence to a leading Iraqi exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, which might in turn have passed it on to Iran. INC leader Ahmed Chalabi has denied his group was involved in any wrongdoing. The link, if any, between the two leak investigations remains unclear. But they both center on the office of Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's No. 3 official" - and a top Neocon.

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.columbiatribune.co...

Follow the Money - How John Kerry Busted The Terrorists' Favorite Bank!!!

08.30.04 (6:22 am) [edit]

[b]Washington Monthly:[/b] "Two decades ago, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was a highly respected financial titan. In 1987, when its subsidiary helped finance a deal involving Texas oilman George W. Bush, the bank appeared to be a reputable institution, [but] that changed in early 1988, when John Kerry, then a young senator from Massachusetts, decided to probe the finances of Latin American drug cartels.... By the end, Kerry had helped dismantle a massive criminal enterprise and exposed the infrastructure of BCCI and its affiliated institutions, a web that [became] a model for international terrorist financing. As Kerry's investigation revealed [BCCI] had a fundamentally anti-Western mission. Among the stated goals of its Pakistani founder were to 'fight the evil influence of the West,' and finance Muslim terrorist organizations. In retrospect, Kerry's investigation had uncovered an institution at the fulcrum of America's first great post-Cold War security challenge."

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.washingtonmonthly....

Bush's Neo-con Ledeen Blocked the Handover of Al Qaeda Terrorists in Iran - That's Treason!!!

08.30.04 (6:17 am) [edit]

[b]Juan Cole:[/b] "MEK is a terrorist organization by any definition of the term, having blown up innocent people in the course of its struggle against the Khomeini government. MEK had allied with Saddam, who gave them bases in Iraq from which to hit Iran. When the US overthrew Saddam, it raised the question of what to do with MEK. The pro-Likud faction in the Pentagon wanted to go on developing their relationship with the MEK and using it against Tehran. So it transpires that the Iranians were willing to give up 5 key al Qaeda operatives in return for MEK members. Franklin, Rhode and Ledeen conspired with Ghorbanifar and SISMI to stop that trade. It would have led to better US-Iran relations, which they wanted to forestall, and it would have damaged their proteges, MEK. Since high al-Qaeda operatives like Saif al-Adil and possibly even Saad Bin Laden might know about future operations, or the whereabouts of Bin Laden, for Franklin and Rhode to stop the trade grossly endangered the US."

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.juancole.com/2004_...

Bush: A Failed Presidency

08.30.04 (6:16 am) [edit]

[b]The Nation opines[/b], "If the war were Bush's only failure, it would be enough to require his departure. But it is not. By withdrawing the US from international treaties and conventions, mishandling crises in the Middle East and North Korea and diverting resources from the pursuit of Al Qaeda, Bush has left America more isolated and less secure. And the detention camps made infamous by the crimes of Abu Ghraib have stripped America of the pride we once had in our country and the role it played, however imperfectly, as a champion of human rights, economic opportunity and the rule of law. At home, Bush's failures are equally manifest. He has amassed the worst jobs record of any President since the Great Depression, the worst budget deficits ever and the most precipitous decline in America's fiscal position--from $5 trillion in projected surplus to $4 trillion in projected deficit. Bush... exacerbates, with top-end tax cuts, the greatest inequality since the Gilded Age."

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Crowds protest as GOP gathers: Hundreds of thousands march against Bush, war

08.30.04 (6:13 am) [edit]

[b]NEW YORK [/b]-- As Republicans began converging on the city to renominate a wartime president, the largest protest ever at a political convention was staged yesterday in Manhattan, a largely peaceful march against President Bush and the Iraq war that underscored the deep divisions within the nation as the fall campaign approaches.

Five weeks after the Democratic convention in Boston, the antiwar protest in steamy Manhattan presaged a bitter contest between Bush and John F. Kerry and between two competing visions of America's role in the world after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The Republican National Convention opens tonight, and Bush accepts the party's nomination Thursday, marking the start of the final two months of campaigning before the Nov. 2 election.

Estimates of how many participated in the protest march neared 400,000 people, with the procession stretching for miles. But little of the predicted violence and unrest materialized. About 200 people were arrested, some for blocking roadways, others for assaulting police. The marchers followed a plan set by New York officials, snaking along a horseshoe-shaped route through New York's cordoned-off streets, then peacefully dispersing at the end.

Anger at Bush pervaded the gathering. Some signs read "Bush lied, thousands died" and "Bush: Empty Warhead." Protesters defaced photos of Bush and poked fun at his family and upbringing. "No more years," many chanted.

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Crowds protest as GOP gathers: Hundreds of thousands march against Bush, war

08.30.04 (6:10 am) [edit]

Neo-cons turn Cannibal!!!

08.30.04 (6:08 am) [edit]

[b]Neocon vs. neocon

It's every ideologue for himself as even the most hardcore Republicans try to distance themselves from the disaster in Iraq.[/b]

The Grand Old Party's "big tent" on foreign policy is flapping in tatters. Behind the Republicans' predictable show of Rambo bravado as they gather in Madison Square Garden Monday, they are reeling. The libertarians and isolationists have left in disgust. The respectable traditional internationalists of the James Baker-Brent Scowcroft school are holding their noses and saying nothing, but behind closed doors they are seething. President Bush and his fundamentalist evangelicals have left only the neoconservatives who plunged them into the nightmarish swamps of Iraq. And now even that notoriously disciplined group has gone rogue and is rioting wildly: The neocons have turned upon one another -- and on Bush himself.

The neoconservatives who dominate the civilian echelon in the Pentagon and on the National Security Council understandably remain silent. With their every prediction and assurance about Iraq discredited, there is little more they can do but hope for another war, this time with Iran, that will miraculously sweep away all their problems. It is like betting the second mortgage on red when you have already lost your shirt and the roulette wheel is rigged to turn up black.

Senior neocon administration officials like Lewis "Scooter" Libby and John Hannah at Vice President Cheney's right hand; Harold Rhode, the Islamic affairs advisor to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; and the Pentagon coteries led by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith are lying low in public, as well they might.

They would prefer that their longtime favorite, Ahmed Chalabi, the veteran head of the Iraqi National Congress who is now under indictment in Iraq for various crimes, were forgotten by the usually compliant mainstream media. But it is their own sympathizers and fellow conspirators on behalf of Chalabi in the media, led by the likes of Washington Post columnist James Hoagland and neocons Michael Ledeen and Michael Rubin in National Review Online, who will not let Chalabi's embarrassments die.

On Aug. 19, Rubin, formerly a midlevel advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad and now at the American Enterprise Institute, blasted Bush, noting that the president cannot escape the tainted legacy of his father. "There is little goodwill left in Iraq," he opined. "The United States government has managed to squander it. Bush may be sincere about his desire for democracy, but to Iraqis, family matters. Iraqis associate the president with his father, who is notorious among Iraqi Shia for his failure to support their March 1991 uprising."

Rubin went on to attack administration policy as incompetent. "The recent siege of Najaf reinforces the Shia belief that the U.S. government is anti-Shia. In recent days, I've spoken to a number of Iraqis from Najaf, Samawa, and Diwaniya. They are disgusted."

Bush's right hand in foreign policy, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who sided with the neocons against Secretary of State Colin Powell on almost every major Middle East issue, doesn't get any kinder treatment. On the contrary, Rubin lays the Iraq debacle firmly at her door. "In October 2003, the White House launched a major reorganization of its Iraq-policy team ... Rice became titular head of the Iraq Stabilization Group, but her deputy (and former mentor) Robert Blackwill, who is well known for his slash-and-burn management style, became chief for political transition. His influence on Iraq policy was quickly felt in both Baghdad and in Washington."

Chalabi's disinformation shaped the decision and planning to invade Iraq, including the assumption that Iraqi masses would embrace their American liberators in gratitude indefinitely. Today, these masses are openly calling for U.S. forces to be swept out of the country, and no one in the administration dares to say a word in defense of Chalabi. Yet Chalabi's hardcore defenders are still at it, slandering the U.S. intelligence community in defense of the convicted bank embezzler.

But as the death toll of U.S. troops in Iraq relentlessly climbs toward 1,000, the leading intellectual neoconservatives outside the administration have turned to feud viciously among themselves.

Francis Fukuyama, whose famous, absurd, but at the time eagerly acclaimed thesis of "The End of History" was a defining neocon text after the collapse of Soviet communism, has published an article in the summer 2004 issue of the conservative National Interest, energetically taking on columnist Charles Krauthammer for his idea of a "unipolar" American moment that, Krauthammer argued, would last for generations, or even a century.

"Krauthammerian unipolarity has increased hatred for the United States in the broader fight for hearts and minds," Fukuyama wrote. He took issue with Krauthammer's contention in a speech delivered to the American Enterprise Institute in February 2004, in which he described the United States as being in the midst of a long, grim war with an implacable enemy out to destroy Western civilization. "That kind of language is appropriate as a description of Israel's strategic situation since the outbreak of the second intifada," Fukuyama pointedly noted. "The question is whether this accurately describes the position of the United States as well ... I believe that there are real problems in transposing one situation to the other ... The United States faces a much more complex situation."

Fukuyama also has harsh words to say about the Bush administration's now-infamous September 2002 "National Security Strategy" report that asserted the policy of preemptive war. "Even talking about such a strategy, as we did in the National Security Strategy document, will tend to promote opposing coalitions and resistance to U.S. policies ... It is hard to see why we would want to put ourselves in this position. It is hardly an advantageous position from which to launch an idealistic Wilsonian crusade to reshape the Middle East."

Meanwhile, Krauthammer is preparing a counterblast at Fukuyama -- "breathtakingly incoherent," he has called him --for the next issue of the National Interest.

This neocon food fight is embarrassing enough for Bush, Cheney and Wolfowitz. After all, their every other source of intellectual talent on foreign policy has been alienated or thrown overboard. After four years of leaks, humiliations and endless media criticism by leading neocon columnists, Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, plan to step down, even if Bush is reelected. The last remnants of the proud, moderate and bipartisan internationalists -- stretching from the time of Dwight Eisenhower and Thomas Dewey to Baker and Scowcroft -- will go with them. The neocons, both inside and outside the administration, are all Bush has left. But they are now openly turning on their greatest patron, trying to blame Bush for the bungles in Iraq.

The neocons are acting as though they smell the sweet, sickly scent of defeat wafting over the Bush campaign. Indeed, they have already prepared what they imagine will be their lifeboat to escape its wreck and reclaim their political respectability. They recently thawed out, with the support of honorary chairmen Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., and Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., the old Committee for the Present Danger. Nothing better reflects the Jurassic antiquity of their conceptions. What worked to make them respectable and influential 30 or 40 years ago, in the last cycles of the Cold War, will now, they believe, make them the leaders of a united America against the global challenge of extreme, militant Islam.

The members of the new committee are the same hoary folks who were so eager to charge into Iraq in pursuit of those famous weapons of mass destruction that were never there in the first place: former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a close buddy of former Pentagon advisor Richard Perle and Wolfowitz who sits on the Defense Policy Board; Jeane Kirkpatrick of -- where else? -- the American Enterprise Institute; and former CIA Director James Woolsey, who did so little to anticipate the rise of al-Qaida and drew payments as the lawyer for Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress.

The committee's real purpose is obvious: to restore to the neocons a fig leaf of respectability and a claim to the bipartisanship they never practiced for a second when they were in power. One can guarantee that Wolfowitz, Feith, Libby and the rest of them will eagerly join the committee's board to suitable hosannas in press releases the day after Bush takes his one-way flight back to Crawford, Texas.

What is the reaction of the president, his national security advisor and his political master strategist, Karl Rove, to the necons' open and flagrant rebellion and the palpable contempt with which they are now treating their benefactors? It is, as usual, to bury their ostrich heads ever deeper in the sand. Bush, with the curious passivity that betrays his macho self-image, has not fired a single defense or national security official during his nearly four years in power despite the unprecedented catastrophes they have led him into. They know they can rely on Bush's predictable timidity to let their own closest associates in the media run wild with their tacit approval, even though this behavior only serves to further humiliate him.

For where else can Bush go? He has isolated himself with his own simplistic vision of the world and his pathological anti-intellectualism. Bush truly believes that by embracing the neoconservatives, he freed himself from the chattering classes. He does not realize that he thereby made himself the hapless and helpless puppet of the most irresponsible, incompetent and pretentious intellectual clique of all: the neocons themselves. And now he is stuck with them, even while they openly spit upon him and prepare to flee. - http://majority.com/news/salo...

Neo-con Traitors, Spies & Terrorists Turn Cannibal!!!

08.30.04 (6:03 am) [edit]

Neo-con Traitors, Spies & Terrorists Turn Cannibal!!!

08.30.04 (5:59 am) [edit]

THE AXIS OF TREASON

08.30.04 (5:55 am) [edit]

[b]The Axis of Treason

Israeli spies in the Pentagon [/b]

The death agony of the neoconservatives http://www.antiwar.com/orig/l... is going to be a prolonged and quite ugly procedure, painful not only for them but for the entire country – which will learn, to its chagrin and growing anger, how and by whom they were lied into war. It started late Friday, when Lesley Stahl of CBS News reported http://www.cbsnews.com/storie... that the FBI has "solid evidence" that a spy, embedded in the top echelons of the Pentagon's civilian leadership, handed over classified documents, including the draft of a presidential directive on U.S. policy toward Iran, to Israel. Such an investigation would have been politically explosive in any case, but add to this the news that Franklin had passed the documents to Tel Aviv via AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington, and the result is political dynamite.

Within hours the story had grown http://www.realcities.com/mld... from focusing on a single individual, Lawrence Franklin, http://66.102.7.104/search?q=...:0eLbDjin1dEJ:www.forward.com/issues/2000/00.03.03/featherman.html+%22lawrence+franklin %22+iran&hl=en described as a "mid-level desk officer," to include an entire nest of spies ensconced in the top echelons of the Pentagon, centered around the office of Douglas Feith, http://rightweb.irc-online.or... the Director of Policy:

"[i]An FBI probe into the handling of highly classified material by Pentagon civilians is broader than previously reported, and goes well beyond allegations that a single mid-level analyst gave a top-secret Iran policy document to Israel, three sources familiar with the investigation said Saturday.

"The probe, which has been going on for more than two years, also has focused on other civilians in the Secretary of Defense's office, said the sources, who spoke on condition they not be identified, but who have firsthand knowledge of the subject.

"In addition, one said, FBI investigators in recent weeks have conducted interviews to determine whether Pentagon officials gave highly classified U.S. intelligence to a leading Iraqi exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, which may in turn have passed it on to Iran. INC leader Ahmed Chalabi has denied his group was involved in any wrongdoing[/i]."

This Knight-Ridder report, by Warren Strobel, went on to note that "the linkage, if any, between the two leak investigations, remains unclear." But it couldn't be clearer to those of us who have been following the various scandals that have recently rocked the national security bureaucracy – Chalabi-gate, the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, the Niger uranium forgeries, and now the Franklin affair. They all involve the same cast of neoconservative characters: the inhabitants of the "policy shop" presided over by Feith, including the infamous Office of Special Plans http://www.newyorker.com/fact... – otherwise known as the Lie Factory http://www.motherjones.com/ne... – which produced a steady supply of utter falsehoods to justify the rush to war. Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson, commenting on MSNBC, http://atrios.blogspot.com/20... said his sources were telling him that the Franklin affair is also connected to the Niger uranium forgery investigation. As I wrote a couple of months ago http://www.antiwar.com/justin... :

"[i]The other day FBI agents paid a visit to the Pentagon, and subjected several top neocons to lie-detector tests. They wanted to know where neocon protégé (and Iranian spy) Ahmed Chalabi got his hot little hands on highly valued U.S. secrets. But what I want to know is this: How many different teams of investigators have to go through the same desks? Why not consolidate all these ongoing investigations – l'affaire Plame, the Niger uranium forgeries, Chalabi-gate, and the Abu Ghraib war crimes – into one big investigation? We can call it Neocon-gate.[/i]"

That's what the Franklin affair shows every sign of turning into: Neocon-gate. And it's about time. As regular readers of this column http://antiwar.com/justin/?ar... are aware, it's been a long time coming.

For over two years, the feds have put scarce law enforcement resources into this investigation, and it hasn't been for nothing: they've been watching and eavesdropping on Israel's American fifth column for at least that long, as Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball make clear enough in this[i] Newsweek [/i]piece http://msnbc.msn.com/id/58537... :

"[i]It was just a Washington lunch – one that the FBI happened to be monitoring. Nearly a year and a half ago, agents were monitoring a conversation between an Israeli Embassy official and a lobbyist for American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, as part of a probe into possible Israeli spying. Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, in the description of one intelligence official, another American 'walked in' to the lunch out of the blue. Agents at first didn't know who the man was. They were stunned to discover he was Larry Franklin, a desk officer with the Near East and South Asia office at the Pentagon."

"… FBI counterintelligence agents began tracking him, and at one point watched him allegedly attempt to pass a classified U.S. Policy document on Iran to one of the surveillance targets, according to a U.S. Intelligence official. But his alleged confederate was 'too smart,' the official said, and refused to take it. Instead, he asked Franklin to brief him on its contents – and Franklin allegedly obliged. Franklin also passed information gleaned from more highly classified documents, the official said. If the government is correct, Franklin's motive appears to have been ideological rather than financial.[/i]"

Yes, but what ideology are we talking about here? Hosenball and Isikoff don't say. However, unconditional support to Israel has always been a central tenet of neoconservative foreign policy doctrine, and never more so than today. Feith was a co-author, along with several prominent neocons, of "A Clean Break," a 1996 policy paper written for then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that proposed the elimination of Saddam Hussein as a primary goal: Baghdad was depicted as the gateway to Damascus, a byway on the road to Tehran.

The strategic utility of invading Iraq as a means to combat "terrorism" as represented by al-Qaeda has always baffled war opponents, and even a few reluctant supporters, because it was so strikingly counterintuitive. Osama was forgotten: Saddam was the new demon figure, and Iraq, not al-Qaeda, the target. The invasion and subsequent occupation created a terrorist recruitment and training center in the Sunni triangle that soon extended outward, to the Shi'ite south. Only two leaders have been well-served by the American conquest, and George W. Bush is not one of them. CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, writing as "Anonymous," put it well in the opening paragraph of his recent book, [i]Imperial Hubris[/i] http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob... :

"[i]U.S. forces and policies are completing the radicalization of the Islamic world, something Osama bin Laden has been trying to do with substantial but incomplete success since the early 1990s. As a result, I think it is fair to conclude that the United States of America remains bin Laden's only indispensable ally[/i]."

If bin Laden is the chief beneficiary of American policies in the Middle East, then Ariel Sharon runs a close second. His government has been given a free hand to do what it wills in the occupied territories, including increased settlement-building, increased state terrorism, and even U.S. acquiescence on the "Wall of Separation." Israeli agents are swarming over Kurdistan, fomenting rebellion, and threatening Iran. The old Zionist dream of extending Israel's hegemony from the Nile to the Euphrates suddenly seems close to realization.

Former Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/... who has firsthand experience with Franklin and his neocon comrades at the Office of Special Plans, described direct contacts with top-ranking Israeli officials. Jason Vest and Robert Dreyfuss http://www.motherjones.com/ne... also describe an Israeli component of the OSP, working in collaboration with their American counterparts. Stove-piping phony "intelligence," including forgeries such as the Niger uranium papers, and passing them off as "evidence" of Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction," what was essentially an Israeli covert action succeeded in lying us into war. Franklin is just a cog in a much bigger cabal.

We're not just dealing with an overzealous individual who somehow got confused that he shouldn't share sensitive intelligence with a good "ally" such as Israel. That's the line being put out by Franklin's defenders, who are even now mobilizing to support their new hero.

Franklin's defenders are moving quickly to downplay his importance: he's a "mid-level desk officer," supposedly in no position to make or even have much of an impact on American policy in the Middle East. But others point to his status as a favorite of his bosses, Feith and Paul Wolfowitz – both of whom are no doubt of interest to the FBI in the sense that they will be questioned. What did Franklin's bosses know about their trusted underling's activities? In any case, one official cited by Newsweek described the Franklin inquiry as "the most significant Israeli espionage investigation in Washington since Jonathan Pollard."

The raid on Chalabi's headquarters in Iraq was a first strike in the war against the neocons. The coming arrest of Franklin, and perhaps some of his confederates, rumored for this week, will bring the war home.

The reaction of the Israelis, and their amen corner in the U.S., has been uniformly and unintentionally comic: Who, us? Spy on America? It never happens, at least not since Pollard.

But the reality of Israeli covert agents in America, far from being something out of a cheap paperback spy thriller, is certainly borne out by the Franklin affair. Not since Pollard? Tell that to Carl Cameron of Fox News, whose four-part series on Israeli surveillance of targets in the U.S., including Mohammed Atta and the 9/11 hijackers, cited anonymous law enforcement and government officials. In Part I, broadcast on December 17, 2001, Cameron stated http://www.whatreallyhappened... :

"[i]There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9/11 attacks, but investigators suspect that the Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance and not shared it. A highly-placed investigator said there are – quote – 'tie-ins.' But when asked for details, he flatly refused to describe them, saying – quote – evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information[/i].'"

At the time, Cameron's report – and my columns on the subject – were derided as "conspiracy theories," and largely ignored. When Cameron's sources leaked an interagency report on the existence of an Israeli "art student" operation in the U.S. that was clearly an intelligence-gathering tool, a Justice Department spokeswoman described its thesis – that the Israelis had launched a massive covert action in on U.S. soil – as an "urban myth," and the Israel First crowd took up the cry. The respected German weekly news magazine, Die Zeit, reported that Israeli agents were living "next door to Mohammed Atta," but this, too, was ignored.

Now that we have uncovered a pro-Israeli cabal engaged in espionage operating at the very highest levels of the U.S. government, does it all seem so improbable? The whole story is told in my short book, [i]The Terror Enigma: 9/11 and the Israeli Connection[/i], http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob... which presciently concludes as follows:

"[i]This burgeoning scandal underscores why the two-sided Manichean view promoted by George W. Bush in his 'war on terrorism' is fundamentally false. 'You're either with us,' he intoned, 'or against us.' But what about the Israelis? When they were shadowing the hijackers and learning their secrets, were they with us – or against us[/i]?"

Israel's secret war against America http://www.antiwar.com/justin... – which you could only read about here, in this space, up until now – is out in the open, exploding into the headlines. The reason is because it looks like the Americans, or at least some of them, are beginning to fight back.

The Franklin affair is already being compared to the Pollard spy case, but a more apt historical analogy is the case of Alger Hiss. Like Franklin, Hiss was a top U.S. government official who didn't sell out for money, but because he was a true believer in the cause. Hiss saw himself, and was seen by his numerous American supporters, not as a traitor, but as an idealist, the advocate of an ideology that would, in the end, make for a better America – a Sovietized America. Franklin and his neocon comrades are no less committed to their vision of a neoconized America.

At this point we are lacking some essential information, including the identities of the "two or three" AIPAC employees involved. How far up in the organization did knowledge of these illegal activities go? What else have the feds got on AIPAC – after an extensive investigation, including electronic surveillance, ongoing for over two years?

We don't know the answers to these questions. But I do know that if this had been an Islamic or Arab group, they would have been shut down, their assets impounded, and their headquarters bolted shut. Will something even approaching that happen to AIPAC?

Of course not. But, if not, why not? Is Israel going to be allowed to openly operate a spy nest in Washington with impunity? It's an outrage, and it's time someone said so. Furthermore, those politicians who have taken money from AIPAC have a lot of 'splaining to do, especially if they don't return the dough. As Israeli spies in Washington steal our secrets, and feed us lies, our politicians are pigging out at the trough of AIPAC campaign contributions, raking in cash while their patrons take in classified documents.

When the American people find out what is going on, God help the neocons, because they are going to need it. The arrest and trial of Israel's fifth column in the Pentagon is going to unleash a lot of anger, because it is going to make Americans understand the nature and extent of the treason that entrapped them in Iraq. The very word "neocon" will become a synonym for treason, like Quisling. Moreover, the complexity of this war that we found ourselves in, as the smoke from the World Trade Center and the Pentagon began to clear, will perhaps begin to dawn on us.

The party line, coming out of Neocon Central, is that Israel has a right to classified material, since we're such good buddies and all: friends don't have any secrets from each other, now do they? This is all just a matter of a faction fight within the administration, between neocons and "old guard" Republican realists in the State Department.

That may well be true, but it may also be true that one of the factions has committed illegal acts – espionage – on behalf of a foreign power. The "AIPAC kerfluffle," as the Jerusalem Post smugly refers to it, is surely the result of an internecine struggle within the Bush administration, but that doesn't rule out the possibility that one side constitutes an axis of treason.

At any rate, grab some chips and dip, stock up on beer – heck, bring out the champagne! – put your feet up and get ready for the political trial of the new millennium, because it's going to be quite an entertaining and instructive show.

[b]POSTSCRIPT[/b]

The [i]New York Times [/i]is reporting that the CBS News story may have derailed efforts by law enforcement to follow the investigative trail from Franklin all the way "back to the Israelis." The result is that "several areas of the investigation remain murky."

That's just what the Israelis and their apologists in this country are hoping for: traitors can only operate under cover of night, and the murkier the better.

There was a great suspicion, voiced by Pat Buchanan the other night on MSNBC, and by Laura Rozen on her excellent blog, warandpiece.com, that this was a case of a "controlled burn," as Laura put it, and she was right. Friday night is the slowest news night of the week, and add to this the coverage eaten up by the Republican convention, and you have a classic tactic of bury-that-story. Add to that the usual victimological posturing and cries of "anti-Semitism," and the strategy of the Amen Corner is clear: deny everything, and go on the offensive. Will it work? I doubt it, but we shall see. Israel's fifth column in the U.S. government, and especially within the Justice Department, but the patriotic resistance is growing, both within the administration and the court of American public opinion. The axis of treason is fighting for its life, but the usual tactics – fear, smear, and obfuscation – may not be enough.

[b]– Justin Raimondo[/b] - http://www.antiwar.com/justin...

Bush/Cheney Inc.: THE AXIS OF TREASON [Feith, OSP & the Lie Factory]

08.30.04 (5:47 am) [edit]

Bush/Cheney Inc.: THE AXIS OF TREASON [Feith, OSP & the Lie Factory]

08.30.04 (5:42 am) [edit]

250,000 to 400,000 Americans March Through NYC to Protest the Bush Neo-Nazi Reich

08.29.04 (7:14 pm) [edit]

[b]Bloomberg:[/b] "Thousands of protesters marched past New York's Madison Square Garden, where the Republican National Convention starts tomorrow, to show their opposition to the Iraq war and President George W. Bush. An estimated 400,000 people participated, according to the organizing group, United for Peace and Justice. Police wouldn't give a figure, said Doris Garcia, a police spokeswoman. Mayor Michael Bloomberg called them a 'sizable crowd.' ... 'Tomorrow the Republican Party will meet just a few short blocks from here, and they will send their message of war and greed and hate,' said Leslie Cagan, the protest group's national coordinator. 'We want the immediate end of the occupation and we want the troops brought home now.'" Proving that Bush colluded with the media to smear protestors, there was no incidence of violence. Meanwhile - as expected, the networks are already downplaying, spinning, and suppressing the real story.

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://quote.bloomberg.com/ap...

Bush's Neo-Con Traitor Douglas Feith is at Center of 'Broader' Investigation of Israeli Spying

08.29.04 (7:10 pm) [edit]

[b]Douglas Feith is at Center of 'Broader' Investigation of Israeli Spying[/b]

Columbia Tribune: "An FBI investigation into the handling of highly classified material by Pentagon civilians is broader than previously reported and goes well beyond allegations that a single analyst gave a top-secret Iran policy document to Israel, three sources familiar with the investigation said yesterday. The investigation, which has been going on for more than two years, also has focused on other civilians in the secretary of defense's office. In addition, one said, FBI investigators in recent weeks have conducted interviews to determine whether Pentagon officials gave classified U.S. intelligence to a leading Iraqi exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, which might in turn have passed it on to Iran. INC leader Ahmed Chalabi has denied his group was involved in any wrongdoing. The link, if any, between the two leak investigations remains unclear. But they both center on the office of Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's No. 3 official" - and a top Neocon.

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.columbiatribune.co...

Unbelievable! Bush Calls Bloody Quagmire in Iraq a 'Catastrophic Success'!

08.29.04 (5:36 pm) [edit]

If anyone needed further proof that Dubya and his handlers have gone completely delusional, here it is! AP: "Bush on Sunday defended the invasion of Iraq, calling it a "catastrophic success" despite continued violence and the lack of weapons that drove the country to war. "We did not find the stockpiles that we thought would be there," Bush said at a rally in the northern part of West Virginia," but added, in complete contradiction to himself, "I want to remind you that Saddam Hussein had the capability of making weapons of mass destruction, and he could have passed that capability on." Incredibly, the corporate media, led this week by AOL/Time-Warner, has pulled out the stops to shore this pathetic regime up. Time cranked out a new phony 'Bush leads' poll while printing an "apologia interview" with Bush designed to rationalize away all the evils of this empire. "

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin...

Why Kerry will make a better Commander-in-Chief than Bush!!!

08.29.04 (4:08 pm) [edit]

[b]John F. Kerry will make a far better Commander-in-Chief than Bush because he is smarter[i] by far[/i]; is [i]able to work with others[/i]; and, has actually[i] fought for our nation [/i]and [i]understands[/i] what that means ...[/b]

John F. Kerry is actually [i]stronger[/i] on the defense of the United States of America and our National Security than Bush... [i]Why[/i]? [i]Because[/i]...

1. John F. Kerry served honorably in war-time while Bush did not. Bush doesn't even comprehend what war means. Bush jokes and smirks and prances around on Aircraft Carriers howling obscene buffooneries like "Mission Accomplished!" or "Bring 'em on" while our U.S. Soldiers are massacred in unnecessary wars. Bush squanders American lives and treasures recklessly and wantonly, not to safeguard us, but based upon lies and deceptions.

2. John F. Kerry has served on the Senate Foreign Relation and Intelligence Committees http://www.johnkerry.com/inde... and is respected for his ability to work with others in Congress and throughout the international community. The same cannot be said for Bush who is simply told what to do by neo-con thugs like Cheney, Rumsfeld and others who don't have our nation's interests at heart and who can't work with others here at home or abroad.

3. John F. Kerry has committed that he will only go to war if he must to defend our nation. Unlike Bush, Kerry will [i]not [/i]invade other nations pre-emptively and murder our US Soldiers and innocent civilians in order to enrich Halliburton, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, the House of Saud, Unocal and other corporate pimps of the whorish Bush Crime Family. Bush/Cheney's War Crimes including set-up of a US Concentration Camp at Guantanamo Bay and the heinous murders, tortures, rapes and abuses of prisoners as well as the sodomy of little children at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in the Middle East will [i]not[/i] occur on Kerry's watch.

[b]Moreover, Bush seems to be mentally unstable:--

"Is Bush using drugs to control depression, erratic behavior?" http://www.capitolhillblue.co...

"Sullen Bush retreats into private, paranoid world" http://www.capitolhillblue.co... [/b]

It is worthwhile reading the following speeches:

PRESIDENT CLINTON: "Making the right choices" ... Let's "Send John Kerry" to the White House!!! http://www.tblog.com/template...

PRESIDENT CARTER: "You can't be a war president one day- claim to be a peace president the next" http://www.tblog.com/template...

AL GORE: "Democracy Itself is in Grave Danger" ... http://www.tblog.com/template...

JOHN F. KERRY: "I'm John Kerry, and I'm reporting for duty."! http://www.tblog.com/template...

Refer also to [b]"Can All The Mad King George's Men Put Humpty-Dumpty-Dubya Back Together Again???" [/b] http://www.tblog.com/template...

Bush/Cheney War Crimes: US Soldier Says Torture Encouraged ...

08.29.04 (1:49 pm) [edit]

[b]Magazine: US Soldier Says Torture Encouraged [/b]

BERLIN - A U.S. soldier expected to plead guilty to charges of abusing Iraqi prisoners told a German magazine he deeply regretted his actions but said the abuses were encouraged by military intelligence services.

Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick told the weekly Der Spiegel conditions in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail were a "nightmare" with no clear line of command and conflicting demands placed on junior soldiers with insufficient training.

"I didn't know at all who was actually in charge," he said, according to a German translation of his remarks.

"The battalion wanted one thing from you, the company wanted something else and the secret service had their own ideas. It was just chaos," he said.

The abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib caused worldwide outrage when photographs of the incidents emerged earlier this year.

A special army investigation acknowledged last week that torture had occurred and more soldiers may face trial, although so far only Frederick and six other military police reservists serving at Abu Ghraib have been charged.

Frederick said after a pretrial hearing in Germany last week he would plead guilty to some charges including assault, cruelty and indecent acts at a court martial on October 20.

"I want to apologize to the victims and their families. And in the trial, I will accept responsibility for my actions. But I hope others will follow my example," he said.

He said a notorious incident in which he was involved where naked Iraqi prisoners were photographed piled up into a pyramid occurred after a female U.S. soldier was struck in the face with a stone by a prisoner.

"First we searched them, got them stripped naked and then pushed them into this pyramid -- and then everything got out of control," he said. "One of the methods was to humiliate them so that they would break down and talk."

"I know today that I was wrong. On the one hand I was full of rage that this prisoner had injured a soldier. And they'd told me 'humiliate them'. On the other hand, no one explained in detail, how we should do it."

Frederick, a prison official in civilian life, said he had received no special training in treating military prisoners and was encouraged by intelligence officers to break prisoners down for interrogation, by any means.

"The secret service set no limits at all. It was about concrete results and they weren't interested how they were achieved," he said, adding that many more people should be called to account for the abuses in Abu Ghraib.

"There are definitely more people responsible for what occurred in Abu Ghraib, and many of them have not been charged." - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Bush/Cheney War Crimes: US Soldier Says Torture Encouraged ...

08.29.04 (1:47 pm) [edit]

Protesters in NYC ...

08.29.04 (1:44 pm) [edit]

[b]'No more years!' chant Bush foes

Thousands of protesters march in N.Y. on eve of GOP gathering[/b]

[i]Protesters move through Manhattan on Sunday[/i]

NEW YORK - Bearing flag-draped boxes resembling coffins and fly-swatters with President Bush’s image, more than 100,000 protesters peacefully swarmed Manhattan’s streets on the eve of the Republican National Convention to demand that President Bush be turned out of office.

Flanked by police in riot gear, the protesters moved through the fortified city, loudly and exuberantly chanting slogans such as “No more years.” They accused the Bush White House of prosecuting an unjust war in Iraq, making the country poorer and undermining abortion rights.

There were no reports of major violence and about 100 scattered arrests.

Police gave no official crowd estimate, though one law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, put the crowd at 120,000; organizers claimed it was roughly 400,000.

The march snaked in a circular route around midtown Manhattan, shutting down dozens of blocks and bringing out hordes of police in a city already girded against terrorist attacks.

At its height, the march filled much of the route, forming an enormous horseshoe of dissent in the heart of an overwhelmingly Democratic city.

“They chose New York, where they’re universally hated,” said writer Laurie Russo, 41, of the New York borough of Queens. “They should have gone somewhere they’re more welcome. They exploited 9-11 by having it in New York at this time.”

In the largest set of arrests, some 50 protesters on bicycles who stopped near the parade route were carted away in an off-duty city bus. Also, 10 people were arrested after someone set a paper dragon float afire near Madison Square Garden, site of the convention, and nine demonstrators tried to prevent the arrest, authorities said. The nine were charged with assault.

“There’s been a few minor arrests,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. “It has been peaceful.”

Residents leaned from windows along the demonstration route to shout their support. Scattered opposition was visible only around Madison Square Garden, where the GOP convention opens Monday. Some early convention arrivals looked across police lines as demonstrators jeered them, shouting: “Go home!”

“I hope this shows the world that they’re not alone in their hatred of George Bush,” said Alan Zelenki of Eugene, Ore., who planned for three months to attend this week’s protests.

The causes varied as much as the people shouting support: immigrants’ rights, gay rights, universal health care, the Palestinian cause, an end to the killing in Sudan. Tracy Blevins, a biomedical researcher who recently left New York for Houston, dyed her Maltese pink and carried the little dog in a baby pouch to advocate peace.

Some demonstrators batted around a 6-foot-wide inflatable globe. “Dump Junior now,” said one sign. Another echoed Democratic nominee John Kerry’s Vietnam-era remark: “How do you ask a soldier to be the last person to die for a lie?”

“It’s to show the rest of the country that we’re against the Republicans, and the rest of the world that George Bush doesn’t represent everybody,” said Mike Markel, 54, of the New York City suburb of Westchester.

The protest organizers, United for Peace and Justice, had sued unsuccessfully to force the city to allow a rally in Central Park. City officials said such a rally would damage lawns.

Earlier, “Fahrenheit 9-11” director Michael Moore told demonstrators that “the majority of this country opposes the war.”

The majority never voted for the Bush administration,” he said, “and the majority are here to say, ‘It’s time to have our country back in our hands.”’

The protest followed several days of demonstrations throughout the city staged by an array of groups.

The most rancorous was Friday, when 264 people were arrested for disorderly conduct in a bicycle ride that snaked through the city and passed by Madison Square Garden.

Besides the United for Peace and Justice march, a number of other events were planned Sunday, including a gay rights demonstration and a vigil in Central Park by a group of Sept. 11 families opposed to the Iraq war.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in a radio address Sunday, acknowledged the intense feelings on both sides but said the convention was an important event for New York. He promised all-out efforts to ensure safety.

“We’ve put in place a security plan that is thorough, measured, and that protects the rights of convention-goers and protesters without unnecessarily getting in the way of New Yorkers as we go about our daily lives,” Bloomberg said. - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5...

More Than 100,000 Protesters in NYC Chant "NO MORE YEARS!" for Dubya!!! ...

08.29.04 (1:42 pm) [edit]

[b]'No more years!' chant Bush foes

Thousands of protesters march in N.Y. on eve of GOP gathering[/b]

More Than 100,000 Protesters in NYC Chant "NO MORE YEARS!" for Dubya!!! ...

08.29.04 (1:40 pm) [edit]

[b]'No more years!' chant Bush foes

Thousands of protesters march in N.Y. on eve of GOP gathering[/b]

Bush/Cheney's Treason: FBI Espionage Probe Goes Beyond Israeli Allegations, Sources Say

08.29.04 (1:25 pm) [edit]

[b]FBI espionage probe goes beyond Israeli allegations, sources say[/b]

WASHINGTON - An FBI probe into the handling of highly classified material by Pentagon civilians is broader than previously reported, and goes well beyond allegations that a single mid-level analyst gave a top-secret Iran policy document to Israel, three sources familiar with the investigation said Saturday.

The probe, which has been going on for more than two years, also has focused on other civilians in the Secretary of Defense's office, said the sources, who spoke on condition they not be identified, but who have first-hand knowledge of the subject.

In addition, one said, FBI investigators in recent weeks have conducted interviews to determine whether Pentagon officials gave highly classified U.S. intelligence to a leading Iraqi exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, which may in turn have passed it on to Iran. INC leader Ahmed Chalabi has denied his group was involved in any wrongdoing.

The linkage, if any, between the two leak investigations, remains unclear.

But they both center on the office of Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's No. 3 official.

Feith's office, which oversees policy matters, has been the source of numerous controversies over the last three years. His office had close ties to Chalabi and was responsible for post-war Iraq planning that the administration has now acknowledged was inadequate. Before the war, Feith and his aides pushed the now-discredited theory that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was in league with al-Qaida.

No one is known to have been charged with any wrongdoing in the current investigation. Officials cautioned that it could result in charges of mishandling classified information, rather than the more serious charge of espionage.

The Israeli government on Saturday strenuously denied it had spied on the United States, its main benefactor on the global scene.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful pro-Israel lobby that top officials said is suspected of serving as a conduit to Israel for the mid-level analyst, also has denied any wrongdoing.

That analyst, Larry Franklin, works for Feith's deputy, William Luti, and served as an important - albeit low-profile - advisor on Iran issues to Feith and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

Franklin, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who lives in West Virginia, could not be reached for comment Saturday.

Investigators are said to be looking at whether Franklin acted with authorization from his superiors, one official said.

Two sources disclosed Saturday that the information believed to have been passed to Israel was the draft of a top-secret presidential order on Iran policy, known as a National Security Presidential Directive. Because of disagreements over Iran policy among President Bush's advisors, the document is not believed to have ever been completed.

Having a draft of the document - which some Pentagon officials may have believed was insufficiently tough toward Iran - would have allowed Israel to influence U.S. policy while it was still being made. Iran is among Israel's main security concerns.

Two or three staff members of AIPAC have been interviewed in connection with the case. In a prepared statement, AIPAC said any allegation of criminal conduct was "false and baseless." It is "cooperating fully," with investigators, AIPAC's statement said.

Israeli officials insisted they stopped spying on the United States after the exposure of Jonathan Pollard, who was arrested in 1985 and sentenced to life in prison for spying for Israel.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan declined to discuss the continuing investigation.

"Obviously any time there is an allegation of this nature, it's a serious matter," he told reporters traveling with Bush in Ohio.

In a statement issued late Friday, the Pentagon said it "has been cooperating with the Department of Justice on this matter for an extended period of time. It is the DoD (Department of Defense) understanding that the investigation within the DoD is limited in its scope."

But other sources said the FBI investigation is more wide-ranging than initial news reports suggested.

They said it has involved interviews of current and former officials at the White House, Pentagon and State Department.

Investigators have asked about the security practices of several other Defense Department civilians, they said.

Franklin's name surfaced in news reports last year when it became known that he and another Pentagon Middle East specialist, Harold Rhode, met in late 2001 with Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms merchant who played a role in the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said publicly last year that nothing came of the meeting, which reportedly was brokered by former National Security Council official Michael Ledeen.

Rhode could not be reached for comment Saturday.

Feith has long been close to Israel. In 2000, he helped author a paper, "A Clean Break," that advised incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to adopt a much tougher approach to the Palestinians and Israel's Arab neighbors.

A former Feith employee, Karen Kwiatkowski, has described how senior Israeli military officers were sometimes escorted to his Pentagon office without signing in as security regulations required. - http://www.realcities.com/mld...

Bush/Cheney's Treason: FBI Espionage Probe Goes Beyond Israeli Allegations, Sources Say

08.29.04 (1:23 pm) [edit]

F A H R E N H E I T - 2 0 0 4 : - - A WASTE OF BLOOD . . .

08.28.04 (5:20 am) [edit]

[b]A Waste of Blood [/b]

When you look at the Vietnam War Memorial, with those 57,000 names of dead Americans on it, you should feel anger.

All of those young lives were sacrificed by blundering civilian politicians and bureaucrats who made their deaths meaningless. They died because of the posturing and ineptness of politicians in Washington who sent them to war for no logical reason and with no grand strategy for winning. Then, after so many deaths, the American politicians lost their nerve and pulled out, leaving the South Vietnamese government as easy prey for the North.

Vietnam today is a communist country. It could have become a communist country without 57,000 Americans dying in its jungles, mountains and rice paddies. At no time were the communists in Vietnam a threat to the United States.

Now we have Americans dying in another country that was not and never could have been a threat to the United States. Iraq had a bad dictator. Lots of countries have or have had bad dictators. Some of the dictators were installed by the United States, and others were aided by it. Merely toppling a foreign dictator is not a legitimate use of the U.S. military.

Nor is the world safer for the absence of Saddam Hussein, as the present administration keeps saying. That's because Saddam was never a threat to the world in the first place. American politicians so demonized Saddam, you would think that he was a genius in charge of a large industrial country. He is not a genius. Iraq is not a large country. The only war Saddam ever won was against Kuwait, which is the geographical equivalent of a postage stamp. Saddam was a ruthless, but not overly bright, thug who held power in a small country with a divided population. He was a threat only to his own people.

Militarily, he was nothing but a straw man. Defeating Iraq in both wars was the equivalent of a heavyweight boxer beating up a 3-year-old. There was no contest. There was never any chance of a contest. Iraq never recovered from its unsuccessful war with Iran and was growing weaker and weaker under sanctions and bombing. It had no air force. It had no air defenses worthy of the name. Its equipment was obsolete; the discipline of the forces was weak to nonexistent.

Americans should not be deluded by the fact that the American news media made it seem like the defeat of Hannibal or a second Normandy invasion. It was barely more than a live-fire exercise. The majority of the American casualties are from the resistance, not from the war.

And you tell me: What is being accomplished by these young Americans dying in Iraq? It's not saving Americans from weapons of mass destruction. There aren't any. It's not saving America from al-Qaeda. Saddam and Osama bin Laden hated each other and never cooperated. Are these young people dying just to do a favor for the Iraqis? The Iraqis don't want us in their country. It's pretty hard to justify the claim that Iraqis are grateful when they are busy killing their so-called liberators.

It might not be on the same scale, but it's Vietnam all over again. A war in a foreign country that was no threat to the United States. No strategy for victory. A complete misreading of both the country and its people. In the end, the Americans who die in Iraq will, like their brothers who died in Vietnam, have died for nothing. We'll end up installing a replacement dictator. But even if the Iraqis have elections, those elections should not be purchased with American blood.

I would hope that the American people would be (expletive deleted) tired of politicians (expletive deleted) away the lives of our sons and daughters for stupid or hidden reasons. No American soldier should ever die, except in defense of his or her own country. Period. End of story. And every politician who wastes American blood should be thrown out of office. - http://www.antiwar.com/reese/...

[b]Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years, reporting on everything from sports to politics. From 1969-71, he worked as a campaign staffer for gubernatorial, senatorial and congressional races in several states. He was an editor, assistant to the publisher, and columnist for the Orlando Sentinel from 1971 to 2001. He now writes a syndicated column three times a week for King Features, which is carried on Antiwar.com. Reese served two years active duty in the U.S. Army as a tank gunner. [/b]

DUBYA'S - O B S E S S I O N - WITH: "M Y - P E T - G O A T" ON 9 / 11!!!

08.28.04 (5:14 am) [edit]

[b]Watch 5-Minute Video of Dry-Drunk-Dubya on 9/11 Sitting There with his "Thumb-Up-His-Butt"!!![/b ]

[b]Dubya[i] didn't have a clue [/i]what to do on 9/11. Instead of acting like a real leader (o[i]r even like a sane person[/i]), the Dry-Drunk Imbecile http://www.tblog.com/template... sat dumbfounded in a classroom with his proverbial "[i]thumb-up-his-butt[/i] "! Dubya [i]didn't even seem to consider [/i]that he should [i]get up off his poxxy-ass [/i]and see what had to be done to [i]protect[/i] our nation-- (At the time none of us knew, [i]unless the corrupt Bushies really knew in advance & let 9/11 attacks happen[/i], the potential extent of the attacks!) [/i][/b]

Somebody [i]with brains [/i]would have canceled the classroom photo-op and calmly told the Teacher and Kids that he had some important business to attend to. [i]Jesus Christ![/i] I've seen people far less powerful and important than the Prez of the USA do [i]that much[/i]! The [i]stupid propaganda tale [/i]perpetuated by Karl[i] 'Joseph Goebbles' [/i]Rove & their neo-con toadies is that Dubya didn't want to[i] "panic" [/i]people and it is a load of horse-shit. People with [i]even half-a-brain [/i]can calmly excuse themselves without causing panic, and if Dubya can't do [i]that much[/i] then he's so mentally unstable that he should be diagnosed as clinically incompetent and removed from office [i]ASAP[/i]-- What a [i]bunch of fools [/i]the neo-cons and their mad-dog toadies are to[i] think [/i]that they can bamboozle[i] all[/i] of us!

What an incompetent and stupid asshole Dubya truly is:-- The Dry-Drunk-Dubya goes into the classroom knowing the 1st WTC tower has been hit-- When told by Andy Card that the 2nd WTC tower has been hit and that the USA is under attack, the buffoon-boy sits there with a mindless look on his imbecilic smirking-face and[i] waits until they tell him [/i]that [i]it's time to go[/i]! But then Cheney and Rove [i]weren't there to give [/i]Dubya his script, [i]so he didn't act, but just sat there [/i]with a foolishly blank expression on his dumb-bell face during the worst attack upon America in modern times. This idiot[i] ain't fit [/i]to be called president of[i] anything[/i]!

[b]I guess Dubya thought reading "My Pet Goat" http://s89194761.onlinehome.u... was the most important thing in the world although millions of us might have been wiped-out!!![/b]

Go to [i]5-Minute Video of George W. Bush on the Morning of 9/11[/i] http://www.thememoryhole.org/...

CIA BREAKS-the-LAW-- So Dubya Gives CIA MORE Power ... Oh, Goodie, Goodie!!!

08.28.04 (5:10 am) [edit]

[b]Connect-the-Dots between (1) & (2):

(Could it be Dubya needs plenty of "friends" to cover-up his lies and crimes for which he could be impeached???)[/b]

[b](1) [u]CIA Spurned Prison Rules, Report Says[/u][/b]

WASHINGTON — CIA (news - web sites) operatives hid inmates, flouted rules and played a corrosive role at Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi facility where prisoners were brutalized and humiliated, according to a military report released Wednesday.

The report does not implicate the intelligence agency in the sexually demeaning treatment of prisoners, which triggered an international scandal when photos of the abuse surfaced in April.

The bulk of the report focuses on the role of military intelligence soldiers and officers in the abuse.

But CIA agents often behaved as if they were above the rules and beyond reproach, ignoring bans on bringing weapons into interrogation booths and bypassing basic requirements on registering prisoners they had taken to the facility, the investigators found.

Agents insisted that at least eight of their prisoners be kept off the books and out of reach of Red Cross inspectors, becoming so-called ghost detainees.

The report disclosed new details about a case in which CIA operatives had interrogated a captive who was later found dead in a shower stall.

In a previously undisclosed case, agency employees locked up three Saudis who were working with the U.S.-led coalition as part of a medical team.

The men weren't released, military investigators said, until after the help of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was enlisted, apparently by the Saudi government.

In another instance, a CIA officer brought a weapon into the interrogation booth with him to intimidate a detainee he was questioning.

The officer "drew his weapon, chambered a round and placed the weapon in his holster," violating strict rules against bringing firearms into the facility, the report said.

Overall, "CIA detention and interrogation practices led to a loss of accountability, abuse, reduced interagency cooperation and an unhealthy mystique that further poisoned the atmosphere at Abu Ghraib," the report said.

A CIA spokesman declined to comment, but a U.S. intelligence official rejected the findings.

"The report makes broad allegations about the CIA that are not supported by either the text of the report or the material contained in the annexes," the official said.

But the Army investigation — led by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay and Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Jones — uncovered new information that suggested a broader pattern of abuse by the CIA, often referred to in the report as an "other government agency," or OGA.

At a news conference Wednesday, Fay indicated that investigators had been blocked from pursuing allegations against CIA employees.

He said he had "some specific conversations with the CIA about the issues that we wanted to explore … and they made it very clear to me that they're going to conduct their own, thorough, detailed investigation."

A CIA spokesman declined to say whether the agency had cooperated.

The CIA inspector general's office in May launched a broad investigation into agency involvement in detention and interrogation abuses in Iraq (news - web sites).

The agency has also referred at least three cases to the Justice Department (news - web sites) involving detainees who died in CIA custody, apparently including one at Abu Ghraib.

In some sections of the Army report, investigators scolded the more seasoned CIA operatives for setting a bad example for typically younger military troops engaged in intelligence work. But even senior officers were susceptible to the agency aura, the report said.

Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, head of the joint interrogation facility at Abu Ghraib, "became fascinated" with the CIA operatives who frequented the prison outside Baghdad. The agency officers took advantage, the report said, convincing Jordan and his superiors "that they should be allowed to operate outside the established local rules and procedures."

This led to the much-criticized practice of the CIA delivering so-called ghost detainees, who were incarcerated at Abu Ghraib but never formally entered on the prison rolls.

The report, which called for further investigation, said the practice "caused confusion and acrimony between the Army and OGA, and in at least one instance, acrimony between the U.S. and Saudi Arabian entities."

In that case, the CIA delivered three "Saudi national medical personnel working for the coalition in Iraq" and asked that they be kept at Abu Ghraib under false names, the report said. The Saudi general in charge of the men asked U.S. authorities to check records for them, but searches using the men's names repeatedly came back negative.

Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, then the senior U.S. representative in Iraq, subsequently requested a search, as did the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.

"Ultimately, the secretary of State, Colin Powell (news - web sites), requested a search, and, as with the other requestors, had to be told that the three men were not known to be in U.S. custody," the report said.

Only after a military official at the compound recalled that the CIA had recently brought in three Saudi men did prison administrators check with the detainees and learn their real identities.

"The men were eventually released," according to the report, which did not elaborate on why they had been detained.

The CIA spokesman declined to comment on the matter.

The Army investigation also provides fresh details on previously reported alleged CIA abuses, including the death of a prisoner being interrogated by an agency officer in November.

The man, identified in the report only as "Detainee 28," was suspected of having been involved in an attack against the Red Cross and had been captured by a Navy SEAL team working with agency operatives.

The prisoner "reportedly resisted arrest, so a SEAL team member butt-stroked Detainee 28 on the side of the head to subdue him."

A CIA official brought the prisoner to Abu Ghraib early in the morning of Nov. 4 and placed him in a shower room used for interrogations.

Hours later, he was found dead in the stall, "facedown, handcuffed with his hands behind his back," the report said.

The prisoner was kept on ice and taken out the next day on a gurney "as if he were only ill, so as not to draw the attention of the Iraqi guards and detainees."

The prisoner was later determined to have died of a blood clot in the brain, probably from the injuries he sustained when he was captured.

"Had the CIA followed established Army procedures" when bringing the detainee into the prison, he "would have been medically screened," the report said, leaving unstated the possibility that his injuries might have been diagnosed and he might have survived.

That death is among those currently under investigation by the CIA inspector general's office, according to the U.S. intelligence official, and is also reportedly among the three cases referred to the Justice Department.

In another case, a former Iraqi general, Abed Hamed Mowhoush, died in western Iraq in November, several days after being interrogated by agency operatives.

The third incident involved a detainee who died in Afghanistan (news - web sites) last year in CIA custody. A CIA paramilitary contractor, David A. Passaro, has been charged in the case, accused of using a large flashlight to beat the prisoner, who was suspected of taking part in rocket attacks on U.S. forces. - http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...

[b](2) [u]Bush gives CIA chief new powers[/u][/b]

[i][b]US President George W Bush has given the CIA director new powers, including some control over other intelligence agencies, the White House says[/b][/i].

He signed executive orders that would also launch a national counter-terrorism centre.

Spokesman Scott McClellan said the CIA chief would have temporary authority to act as national intelligence director.

But the orders do not create the post itself - a key recommendation by the independent 9/11 commission.

The announcement follows calls for an intelligence overhaul after the commission published its findings on the 11 September attacks.

Correspondents note there is also a political angle to the timing of the executive orders, which do not need Congressional approval to be implemented.

It is no coincidence that Mr Bush signed the presidential orders just days before a Republican Party convention in New York where national security will be a key issue, the BBC's Nick Childs in Washington says.

He says Mr Bush has been facing growing pressure to act after the independent 9/11 Commission published its recommendations earlier this year.

Both Republican and Democrats have embraced the wide-ranging recommendations of the 9/11 bipartisan commission in general, but they have been arguing about how best to implement them, analysts say.

[b]'Protecting Americans' [/b]

Mr McClellan said at a briefing in Washington earlier on Friday the president would "sign some executive orders and issue some presidential directives that will help us take additional steps to improve our ability to find, track and stop terrorists".

He said one executive order would give acting CIA Director John McLaughlin "interim" authority to perform many of the functions of a proposed intelligence tsar in overseeing 15 intelligence agencies.

Mr McClellan said this would also include some budgetary authority, adding that President Bush would continue to work with Congress to create the position of national intelligence director.

Earlier this month Mr Bush nominated Republican Congressman Porter Goss to be the new director of the CIA, the agency that gathers foreign intelligence as opposed to the FBI with its domestic focus.

Mr Goss, who heads the House of Representatives intelligence committee, must gain Senate approval to replace George Tenet, who resigned as CIA director last month.

Mr McClellan said that another executive order would set up the National Counter-Terrorism Center, while a third order would spell out guidelines for the sharing of intelligence among agencies.

"The president is committed to doing everything in his power to make sure that we are protecting the American people," Mr McClellan said.

After the announcement, Democrat's minority leader in Congress Nancy Pelosi said in a statement: "Finally, President Bush is doing part of what the joint inquiry of the congressional intelligence committees and the 9/11 commission have long recommended. But more must be done."

[b]9/11 report [/b]

Last month, the 9/11 commission blamed US leaders for failing to comprehend the gravity of the threat posed by al-Qaeda and failing to avert the 2001 attacks.

Chairman Thomas Kean spoke of a failure of "policy, management, capability and, above all, imagination".

The commission recommended a wide-ranging overhaul of US intelligence services and congressional oversight.

Earlier this week, Senate intelligence committee chairman Pat Roberts proposed to break up the CIA as part of a general intelligence overhaul.

About 3,000 people died when the hijacked airliners were crashed in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on 11 September 2001. - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/am...

FBI Investigating AWOL Bush-Plant Neo-Con (Feith, 3rd Highest Official) Traitor Betraying the USA

08.28.04 (5:08 am) [edit]

[b]FBI Probes Pentagon Spy Case [/b]

CBS News has learned that the FBI has a full-fledged espionage investigation under way and is about to - in FBI terminology - "roll up" someone agents believe has been spying not for an enemy, but for Israel from within the office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon.

60 Minutes Correspondent Lesley Stahl reports the FBI believes it has "solid" evidence that the suspected mole supplied Israel with classified materials that include secret White House policy deliberations on Iran.

At the heart of the investigation are two people who work at The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington.

The FBI investigation, headed up by Dave Szady, has involved wiretaps, undercover surveillance and photography that CBS News was told document the passing of classified information from the mole, to the men at AIPAC, and on to the Israelis.

CBS sources say that last year the suspected spy, described as a trusted analyst at the Pentagon, turned over a presidential directive on U.S. policy toward Iran while it was, "in the draft phase when U.S. policy-makers were still debating the policy."

This put the Israelis, according to one source, "inside the decision-making loop" so they could "try to influence the outcome."

The case raises another concern among investigators: Did Israel also use the analyst to try to influence U.S. policy on the war in Iraq?

With ties to top Pentagon officials Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, the analyst was assigned to a unit within the Defense Department tasked with helping develop the Pentagon's Iraq policy.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been made aware of the case. The government notified AIPAC today that it wants information about the two employees and their contacts with a person at the Pentagon.

AIPAC told CBS News it is cooperating with the government and has hired outside counsel. It denies any wrongdoing by the organization or any of its employees.

An Israeli spokesman said, "We categorically deny these allegations. They are completely false and outrageous." The suspected spy has not returned repeated phone calls from CBS News. - http://www.truthout.org/docs_...

GOP TO DUBYA: ...---... S.O.S. ...---... HOUSTON, WE'VE GOT A PROBLEM ...---... S.O.S. ...---...

08.27.04 (9:29 pm) [edit]

[b]GOP voice of dissent on Iraq

Retiring congressman Doug Bereuter joins growing ranks of those who dare to question[/b]

At the end of this month, Congressman Doug Bereuter will retire. Beginning in September, the Representative of Nebraska's First District will become the new president of the Asia Foundation.

The Asia Foundation, located in San Francisco, is a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization committed to the development of a peaceful, prosperous and open Asia-Pacific region.

For 25 years, Bereuter established his conservative bona fides as a member of the House of Representatives, especially in the area of foreign affairs.

Since 1984, he has served on the House International Relations Committee. In this capacity, Bereuter has served as chairman of the Asia and the Pacific Subcommittee, as well as ranking majority member on the Human Rights, International Operations and Environment Subcommittee.

Bereuter served on the Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired the Subcommittee on Intelligence Policy and National Security and also served as vice chair of the Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security.

He voted in support of the emergency $78 billion for war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is a staunch supporter of defense spending, as well as the deployment of the Strategic Defense Initiative. He also has opposed U.S. troops being put under U.N. command.

That said, in one of his final acts as a member of the House of Representatives, Bereuter stated in a letter to his constituents that the U.S. military action in Iraq was a mistake.

I realize that a member from the president's own party regretting his vote on the war in Iraq does not compare with Swift boat veterans debating John Kerry's Vietnam record, but I found it somewhat noteworthy.

The Iraq war was a "costly mess" with no quick way out, wrote Bereuter, who at the time was vice chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

"I've reached the conclusion, retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are being revealed, that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch that military action especially without a broad and engaged international coalition," he said in the letter, dated Aug. 6.

It comes as no surprise that his Republican cohorts are challenging Bereuter's motivations. Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Illinois, a member of the intelligence panel, described Bereuter as "very bitter" about being passed over in recent years to head the intelligence and international relations committees.

Bereuter's bitterness caused him to quit Congress, move to San Francisco and send a letter challenging the reasons for going to war to roughly 350,000 of his closest friends? Would not such bitterness be cause for a therapist's couch rather than a new job?

With the possible exception of Lazarus, "better late than never" can be a somewhat empty cliche, but Bereuter's comments, albeit at the 11th hour of his political career, may provide at least some clarity for the families of those serving in Iraq, especially those who have made the ultimate sacrifice.

Sadly, our government, led by this president, may have co-constructed the greatest foreign policy debacle in U.S. history. Sure there were more casualties in Vietnam and our policies were indeed misguided, but who can justify this?

Those who still support the occupation of Iraq as part of the ongoing war on terror must do so with untreated glaucoma. The measure for support of this policy must withstand partisan politics. Could those who support the existing policies of this president do so had Bill Clinton followed the exact course? If not, the policy must be questioned.

As Molly Ivins aptly wrote in a recent column, "What. A. Mess."

Now that Bereuter has morphed into Benedict Arnold incarnate to the president's surrogates, he is the newest member of the Disloyal Fraternal Order of Those Who Dare to Question. This distinguished group includes former disgruntled administration officials, some retired generals, Democrats not running for president or vice president and the 60 percent of the American people who believe the evidence leading to war with Iraq was "misleading."

While a "bitter" congressman who voted for the war now questions the mission, we continue to be preoccupied by whether John Kerry deserved the medals awarded him for service in Vietnam 30 years ago.

Houston, we've got a problem. - http://www.workingforchange.c...

Even GOPpers Deserting AWOL Dubya & Neo-Cons Disastrous Fiasco in Iraq!!!

08.27.04 (9:26 pm) [edit]

FBI Investigating AWOL Bush-Plant Neo-Con (Feith) Traitor Betraying the USA!!!

08.27.04 (9:12 pm) [edit]

A MUST-READ: The Failed Presidency of George (AWOL Silver-Spoon) Bushy-boy!!!

08.27.04 (9:07 pm) [edit]

[b]A Failed Presidency [/b]

As Republicans gather in New York City, the Bush campaign will undergo a drastic makeover, camouflaging gutter tactics with a veneer of moderation calculated to help the President win another four-year term. But the hard truth of this campaign is that George W. Bush, while attempting to impose an extremist right-wing agenda on this country and the world, has compiled a record of staggering failure.

The debacle in Iraq has already claimed close to 1,000 American and 10,000 Iraqi lives. Far from making America safer or the Middle East more democratic, it has turned out to be what this magazine warned it would be: a reckless abuse of power that has damaged US security, destabilized the region and undercut America's position in the world. The high cost of the war is evident not just in the number of deaths but also in burgeoning federal budget deficits (the war has cost more than $200 billion) and in the record gasoline prices Americans now pay. It is also evident in the reported swelling of the ranks of Al Qaeda-inspired groups and in the rising hatred of America reflected in public opinion polls which show that even among traditional allies like Jordan and Egypt, as much as 95 percent of the population view the United States with disfavor. Meanwhile, the war has diverted resources from urgent international problems ranging from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the widening AIDS pandemic.

And there's no end in sight. The US occupation grinds on with both Bush and his Democratic opponent, John Kerry, ignoring the only intelligent alternative: a phased US withdrawal. Iraqi opposition to the occupation remains fierce-expressed even by Iraqi soccer players at the Olympics-while the country's appointed leaders display authoritarian tendencies that undermine the democracy Bush and his aides claim is being built.

If the war were Bush's only failure, it would be enough to require his departure. But it is not. By withdrawing the United States from international treaties and conventions, mishandling crises in the Middle East and North Korea and diverting resources from the pursuit of al Qaeda, Bush has left America more isolated and less secure. And the detention camps made infamous by the crimes of Abu Ghraib have stripped America of the pride we once had in our country and the role it played, however imperfectly, as a champion of human rights, economic opportunity and the rule of law.

At home, Bush's failures are equally manifest. He has amassed the worst jobs record of any President since the Great Depression, the worst budget deficits ever and the most precipitous decline in America's fiscal position-from $5 trillion in projected surplus to $4 trillion in projected deficit. Bush's Administration responds to a corporate crime wave with calls for more regulation, embraces the flight of jobs abroad as good for the economy, and exacerbates, with top-end tax cuts, the greatest inequality since the Gilded Age.

This Administration has also undermined the rights and policies that social movements labored for a century to achieve. Bush has nominated to the federal bench ideologues with a history of antiunion and antichoice decisions. He signed into law the blatantly unconstitutional "partial-birth" abortion ban, and then watched as his Attorney General sought access to women's private medical records to defend the ban in court. He imposed the policy known as the global gag rule, which forbids foreign groups receiving US aid from even mentioning abortion, and vastly expanded a misinformation campaign about the dangers of sex that has been shown to encourage risky behavior among young people. And to secure his place forever in the hearts of cultural conservatives, he endorsed the gay-baiting federal marriage amendment, framing it as a response to the activism of liberal judges rather than what it was: an attempt to deny civil rights to millions of Americans and to enshrine that discrimination in the Constitution. Civil liberties, too, have suffered, as the "war on terror" has been used to justify acts ranging from detention without trial to snooping into citizens' library records.

The list of failures goes on. The Bush years have seen a steady increase in the number of Americans without healthcare while drug company profits have soared. Bush's prescription drug bill prohibits Medicare from negotiating a better price for seniors and bars importing cheaper drugs-with the result, according to Consumer's Union, that most older Americans will end up paying more for drugs.

Bush's vaunted No Child Left Behind education law actually leaves most children behind. Not only has the law earned the ire of educators; Bush's failure to provide promised funding for his "reforms" has prompted rebuke even from Republican state legislatures from Utah to Virginia. Bush also broke his promise to increase the amount of money eligible students could receive in college scholarship grants, even as soaring tuition puts college out of the reach of ever more families. His post-election budget calls for yet more cuts to education funding.

The Bush Administration has also failed to protect the environment, giving us new laws written by polluters, oil lobbyists and Enron executives. And it has politicized and distorted basic scientific and medical research.

But this President does not admit error. When asked at a press conference whether he had ever made a mistake in office, he couldn't think of one.

If Bush wins in November, given this record of misfeasance, American democracy is in much greater trouble than even the most alienated citizens imagine. A President so out of step with the needs of the American people can only rule by sowing division and fear. Americans have one recourse: to ignore the costume ball in New York City and fire the worst President in modern history on November 2. - http://www.truthout.org/docs_...

Even Repugs Wall St Fundraisers Shy Away from Reckless AWOL Dubya-the-DimWit!!!

08.27.04 (9:02 pm) [edit]

"Wall Street's enthusiasm for US President George W. Bush appears to have cooled as the presidential race tightens and concerns grow about foreign policy and fiscal deficits. Some leading fundraisers of Mr Bush's re-election bid have stopped active campaigning and others privately voice reservations... One senior Wall Street figure, once talked of as a possible Bush cabinet member, said that he and other prominent Republicans had been raising money with increasing reluctance. 'Many are doing so with a heavy heart and some not at all.' He cited foreign policy and the ballooning federal deficit as Wall Street Republicans' main concerns... One New York dinner in June 2003 raised more than $4m, partly thanks to the efforts of Stan O'Neal, chief executive of Merrill Lynch. Yet Mr O'Neal has done no fundraising for the campaign at all since then and friends say he is not supporting Mr Bush."

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://news.ft.com/cms/s/ce66...

Roots of Abu Ghraib Traced to Texas Prisons under Herr Fuhrer George W. Bush War Criminal

08.27.04 (8:59 pm) [edit]

ABC Nightline reports "Consider the following scenario: Some rather frightening prisoners - ones that might not elicit your sympathy - are placed in a situation where many are abused. Complaints are made to the proper authorities; it remains unclear if any of them made their way to chief executive George W. Bush. Those complaints largely go nowhere. Then months later, photographic evidence of the abuse emerges, whipping up a media outcry and a promise by Bush to get to the bottom of the atrocities. This scenario is not just the story of Abu Ghraib circa 2004. It was also a prisoner abuse scandal from 1997 in Brazoria County, Texas, when Bush was governor... Because of a prison abuse case in 1972, Judge William Wayne Justice eventually ruled that a sentence to a Texas prison amounted to cruel and unusual punishment and therefore unconstitutional. 'It's like a picture of the second circle of hell that emerges from that judgment,' Elsner said."

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://abcnews.go.com/section...

AWOL Deserter Bush an Imposter Wearing Holloween-style Medals He Didn't Earn!!! LOL!!!

08.27.04 (8:53 pm) [edit]

[b]In 1969-70, Lt. Bush wore a medal he never earned - the Air Force Outstanding Unit Award. Walt Starr has the proof! Call EVERYONE in the media until this is FRONT PAGE NEWS![/b] http://www.democraticundergro...

Here is a photograph published on the Presidential Library site of George H.W. Bush. We can clearly see that in this photograph taken sometime before his promotion to 1st Lt. in 1970, George W. Bush is wearing an Air Force Outstanding Unit Award (AFOUA) and a Small Arms Expert Marksmanship Ribbon (SAEMR) just below his pilot wings. According to a just-completed investigation by Walt Starr, Bush's unit (the 111th Fighter Intercept Squadron / 147th Fighter Intercept Group) did not receive its first AFOUA until 1975. For weeks, the media has put John Kerry's 5 medals under a microscope. Now we learn that George Bush was so ashamed of his undistinguished service record that he had himself photographed with a ribbon he NEVER earned. That makes Bush an IMPOSTOR. Help us DEMAND the media give as much coverage of Bush's fraudulent ribbon as it has given to John Kerry's genuine combat medals.

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.democraticundergro...

Watch 5-Minute Video of Dry-Drunk-Dubya on 9/11 Sitting There with his "Thumb-Up-His-Butt"!!!

08.27.04 (8:51 pm) [edit]

[b]Dubya[i] didn't have a clue [/i]what to do on 9/11. Instead of acting like a real leader (o[i]r even like a sane person[/i]), the Dry-Drunk Imbecile http://www.tblog.com/template... sat dumbfounded in a classroom with his proverbial "[i]thumb-up-his-butt[/i] "! Dubya [i]didn't even seem to consider [/i]that he should [i]get up off his poxxy-ass [/i]and see what had to be done to [i]protect[/i] our nation-- (At the time none of us knew, [i]unless the corrupt Bushies really knew in advance & let 9/11 attacks happen[/i], the potential extent of the attacks!) [/i][/b]

Somebody [i]with brains [/i]would have canceled the classroom photo-op and calmly told the Teacher and Kids that he had some important business to attend to. [i]Jesus Christ![/i] I've seen people far less powerful and important than the Prez of the USA do [i]that much[/i]! The [i]stupid propaganda tale [/i]perpetuated by Karl[i] 'Joseph Goebbles' [/i]Rove & their neo-con toadies is that Dubya didn't want to[i] "panic" [/i]people and it is a load of horse-shit. People with [i]even half-a-brain [/i]can calmly excuse themselves without causing panic, and if Dubya can't do [i]that much[/i] then he's so mentally unstable that he should be diagnosed as clinically incompetent and removed from office [i]ASAP[/i]-- What a [i]bunch of fools [/i]the neo-cons and their mad-dog toadies are to[i] think [/i]that they can bamboozle[i] all[/i] of us!

What an incompetent and stupid asshole Dubya truly is:-- The Dry-Drunk-Dubya goes into the classroom knowing the 1st WTC tower has been hit-- When told by Andy Card that the 2nd WTC tower has been hit and that the USA is under attack, the buffoon-boy sits there with a mindless look on his imbecilic smirking-face and[i] waits until they tell him [/i]that [i]it's time to go[/i]! But then Cheney and Rove [i]weren't there to give [/i]Dubya his script, [i]so he didn't act, but just sat there [/i]with a foolishly blank expression on his dumb-bell face during the worst attack upon America in modern times. This idiot[i] ain't fit [/i]to be called president of[i] anything[/i]!

[b]I guess Dubya thought reading "My Pet Goat" http://s89194761.onlinehome.u... was the most important thing in the world although millions of us might have been wiped-out!!![/b]

Go to [i]5-Minute Video of George W. Bush on the Morning of 9/11[/i] http://www.thememoryhole.org/...

Americans to Bush: You Can Fool Some Of The People Some Of The Time...

08.27.04 (8:48 pm) [edit]

When the Swift Boat Liars for Bush first ran their ads attacking John Kerry's military record, some of the American people were actually fooled by them. But now that the truth is coming out, the percentage of people who believe the lies has dropped drastically. And the percentage of people who recognize the Swifties as a typical Bush Campaign Tactic is rising. Don't you just love the smell of "blowback" in the morning?

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...

EYEWITNESS, GOPs McCain & Warner: KERRY DESERVES MEDALS-- Swift Sluts=LIARS!!!

08.27.04 (8:41 pm) [edit]

[b]Another vet backs Kerry's war record [/b]

A Vietnam veteran who had served with Sen. John Kerry in a Swift boat group broke a 35-year silence this weekend to back Kerry's version of events from one of their missions together and to chastise veterans critical of the senator as having "splashed doubt on all of us."

The veteran, William B. Rood, is now an editor at the Chicago Tribune, which ran a first-person article in which he recounted the mission. The article ran on its Web site on Saturday and in today's Tribune.

His account added to a growing debate over the most serious claims from the group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. And it ensured that questions swirling around the veracity of its charges, and the Kerry campaign's charges that the group was a front for President Bush, would dominate the campaign for yet another day.

[b]Check-out-full-article [/b] http://www.startribune.com/st...

[b]Republican Sen. John McCain[/b], a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, called an ad criticizing John Kerry's military service "dishonest and dishonorable" and urged the White House on Thursday to condemn it as well. - http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/art...

[b]The Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Navy Secretary under President Nixon,[/b] said Sunday that John Kerry deserved his combat medals for heroism in Vietnam.

Sen. John Warner of Virginia defended the process by which Kerry won his highest honor, the Silver Star.

"I'd stand by the process that awarded that medal, and I think we best acknowledge that his heroism did gain that recognition," Warner told CNN's "Late Edition."

Kerry was awarded a Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Hearts as a Navy Swift boat commander in the Mekong Delta in February and March 1969.

"We did extraordinary, careful checking on that type of medal [the Silver Star], a very high one, when it goes through the secretary," Warner said. "I feel that he deserved it." Like Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Nixon - both Navy vets of World War II whose war service was later questioned - Kerry has had to face recent allegations in TV ads from others serving near him in Vietnam claiming that he lied about his combat heroism.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a Vietnam prisoner of war, has condemned the ads and called on President George W. Bush to do the same but President Bush has refused. - http://www.capitolhillblue.co...

[b]'Bobby-boy" Dole is a Bush Crime family slut [/b]who has gone senile and slobbers over Britney Spears in embarrassing Coke-Ads on which the asshole prostitutes himself! Dole is a known cheater, fraud and liar-- http://www.perkel.com/politic...

CIA BREAKS-the-LAW-- So Dubya Gives CIA MORE Power ... Oh, Goodie, Goodie!!!

08.27.04 (8:07 pm) [edit]

CIA BREAKS-the-LAW-- So Dubya Gives CIA MORE Power ... Oh, Goodie, Goodie!!!

08.27.04 (8:00 pm) [edit]

Watch 5-Minute Video of Dry-Drunk-Dubya on 9/11 Sitting There with his "Thumb-Up-His-Butt"!!!

08.27.04 (3:00 pm) [edit]

Poverty Rate Has Climbed Every Year of Bush's Reign [But Neo-Pigs Say Focus on Swift Slut Lies]!!

08.27.04 (2:42 pm) [edit]

[b]Poverty Rate Has Climbed Every Year Bush Has Been in Office[/b]

Xinhuanet: "One out of every eight Americans now lives below the poverty line, as the percentage of the US population living in poverty rose for the third consecutive year in 2003, the US Census Bureau reported Thursday. The number of Americans living in poverty last year increased by 1.3 million to 35.8 million, accounting for about 12.5 percent of the nation's population. The rise is particularly noticeable among children, with 12.9 million living in poverty last year, or 17.6 percent of the under-18 population. That represented an increase of about 800,000 from 2002, when 16.7 percent of children lived in poverty. Meanwhile, nearly 45 million people lacked health insurance --or 15.6 percent of the population -- up from 43.5 million in 2002,or 15.2 percent of the population, the Bureau said. The number of those who lacked health insurance also rose for three consecutive years." Bush has brought us to a sad pass - having China report pityingly on the plight of the US poor!

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://news.xinhuanet.com/eng...

For Neo-con Fascists, "Civility" Means 'Rolling-Over-&-Playing-Dead' to Bush/Cheney!!!

08.27.04 (2:31 pm) [edit]

[b]'MOB-sters' Cross The Brooklyn Bridge [/b]

NEW YORK (CBS) -- More protestors made their voices heard on Friday morning, ahead of next week’s Republican National Convention. Dozens of women who call themselves 'MOB-sters' took their anti-Bush message to the Brooklyn Bridge.

The group 'Mothers Opposing Bush,' http://www.mob.org/ also known as 'MOB,' marched across the bridge with their children and strollers in tow.

They're rallying against president bush's positions on education, healthcare, environment and civil rights. They claim the policies endanger their children's future.

The protesters Friday were equipped with buttons that said "Join the MOB." They also carried diapers, baby food and red, white and blue balloons.

"I'm not a mother, but I don't want Maya to grow up in a world where the only solution to problems is war," said Noah Haiduc-Dale, who was marching with his 3-month-old daughter.

The grassroots group that claims 10,000 members nationwide - including Republicans, Democrats and independents - was started in Annapolis, Md. by mother-of-four Iris Krasnow.

"We want to reclaim the soul of America, which we feel has been doused by this dangerous administration. We want to protect what's closest to a family's heart - health care, education, the economy and the environment," Krasnow said in a telephone interview from Annapolis, where she was busy organizing her group's activities in 160 cities before the November election.

Friday's MOB march in New York was led by a pair of 4-year-olds with their "Kids for Kerry" banner.

"He's the president _ but not right now," said Tiber Worth, holding one end while his classmate Isabella Stevenson clutched the other as they headed across the bridge. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

[b][u]Just watch[/u]: THOSE WHO PROTEST AGAINST THE NEO-CON FASCISTS BUSH/CHENEY WILL BE VILLAINIZED, ATTACKED & MALIGNED BY THE REPUGS NAZI-STYLE!!![/b]

The Truth About AWOL Dubya's Neo-Nazi Policies Have Leaked Out Already [Unless You're Brain-dead]

08.27.04 (2:22 pm) [edit]

[b]A Failed Presidency[/b]

As Republicans gather in New York City, the Bush campaign will undergo a drastic makeover, camouflaging gutter tactics with a veneer of moderation calculated to help the President win another four-year term. But the hard truth of this campaign is that George W. Bush, while attempting to impose an extremist right-wing agenda on this country and the world, has compiled a record of staggering failure.

The debacle in Iraq has already claimed close to 1,000 American and 10,000 Iraqi lives. Far from making America safer or the Middle East more democratic, it has turned out to be what this magazine warned it would be: a reckless abuse of power that has damaged US security, destabilized the region and undercut America's position in the world. The high cost of the war is evident not just in the number of deaths but also in burgeoning federal budget deficits (the war has cost more than $200 billion) and in the record gasoline prices Americans now pay. It is also evident in the reported swelling of the ranks of Al Qaeda-inspired groups and in the rising hatred of America reflected in public opinion polls which show that even among traditional allies like Jordan and Egypt, as much as 95 percent of the population view the United States with disfavor. Meanwhile, the war has diverted resources from urgent international problems ranging from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the widening AIDS pandemic.

And there's no end in sight. The US occupation grinds on with both Bush and his Democratic opponent, John Kerry, ignoring the only intelligent alternative: a phased US withdrawal. Iraqi opposition to the occupation remains fierce-expressed even by Iraqi soccer players at the Olympics-while the country's appointed leaders display authoritarian tendencies that undermine the democracy Bush and his aides claim is being built.

If the war were Bush's only failure, it would be enough to require his departure. But it is not. By withdrawing the United States from international treaties and conventions, mishandling crises in the Middle East and North Korea and diverting resources from the pursuit of al Qaeda, Bush has left America more isolated and less secure. And the detention camps made infamous by the crimes of Abu Ghraib have stripped America of the pride we once had in our country and the role it played, however imperfectly, as a champion of human rights, economic opportunity and the rule of law.

At home, Bush's failures are equally manifest. He has amassed the worst jobs record of any President since the Great Depression, the worst budget deficits ever and the most precipitous decline in America's fiscal position-from $5 trillion in projected surplus to $4 trillion in projected deficit. Bush's Administration responds to a corporate crime wave with calls for more regulation, embraces the flight of jobs abroad as good for the economy, and exacerbates, with top-end tax cuts, the greatest inequality since the Gilded Age.

This Administration has also undermined the rights and policies that social movements labored for a century to achieve. Bush has nominated to the federal bench ideologues with a history of antiunion and antichoice decisions. He signed into law the blatantly unconstitutional "partial-birth" abortion ban, and then watched as his Attorney General sought access to women's private medical records to defend the ban in court. He imposed the policy known as the global gag rule, which forbids foreign groups receiving US aid from even mentioning abortion, and vastly expanded a misinformation campaign about the dangers of sex that has been shown to encourage risky behavior among young people. And to secure his place forever in the hearts of cultural conservatives, he endorsed the gay-baiting federal marriage amendment, framing it as a response to the activism of liberal judges rather than what it was: an attempt to deny civil rights to millions of Americans and to enshrine that discrimination in the Constitution. Civil liberties, too, have suffered, as the "war on terror" has been used to justify acts ranging from detention without trial to snooping into citizens' library records.

The list of failures goes on. The Bush years have seen a steady increase in the number of Americans without healthcare while drug company profits have soared. Bush's prescription drug bill prohibits Medicare from negotiating a better price for seniors and bars importing cheaper drugs-with the result, according to Consumer's Union, that most older Americans will end up paying more for drugs.

Bush's vaunted No Child Left Behind education law actually leaves most children behind. Not only has the law earned the ire of educators; Bush's failure to provide promised funding for his "reforms" has prompted rebuke even from Republican state legislatures from Utah to Virginia. Bush also broke his promise to increase the amount of money eligible students could receive in college scholarship grants, even as soaring tuition puts college out of the reach of ever more families. His post-election budget calls for yet more cuts to education funding.

The Bush Administration has also failed to protect the environment, giving us new laws written by polluters, oil lobbyists and Enron executives. And it has politicized and distorted basic scientific and medical research.

But this President does not admit error. When asked at a press conference whether he had ever made a mistake in office, he couldn't think of one.

If Bush wins in November, given this record of misfeasance, American democracy is in much greater trouble than even the most alienated citizens imagine. A President so out of step with the needs of the American people can only rule by sowing division and fear. Americans have one recourse: to ignore the costume ball in New York City and fire the worst President in modern history on November 2. - http://www.truthout.org/docs_...

Another Swift Boat Veteran Backs Kerry & Sinks The Swift Slut Liars!!!

08.27.04 (2:20 pm) [edit]

Ronald "Lambert, now 64, was a crew member on swift boat PCF-51 that day. The boat was commanded by Navy Lt. Larry Thurlow, a now-retired officer who questions why Kerry was awarded a Bronze star for bravery and a third Purple Heart for the March 13 incident. 'He and another officer now say we weren't under fire at that time,' Lambert said Wednesday afternoon. 'Well, I sure was under the impression we were.' Lambert's Bronze Star medal citation for the incident praises his courage under fire in the aftermath of a mine explosion that rocked another swift boat on that day 35 years ago. 'Anytime you are blown out of the water like that, they always follow that up with small arms fire,' he said." Watch the Nation's Ian Williams debate Larry Thurlow on MSNBC's Deborah Norville Show at 9pm EST.

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.mailtribune.com/ar...

AWOL Dubya Can't Stop Neo-con Nazis & Swift-Sluts From LYING About Kerry!!!

08.27.04 (2:18 pm) [edit]

[b]Bush Isn't Just Connected to the Swift Boat Smear Campaign - He's Totally Emeshed![/b]

The Kerry campaign has tracked down not just one or two tentacles connecting Bush and the Swift Boat Phonies, they've found a veritable octopus! "Karl Rove, Ken Cordier, Benjamin Ginsberg, Harlan Crow, Bob Perry, Kady Bailey Hutchinson, John O'Neill, Merrie Spaeth, Tex Lezar, Harriet O'Neill, Margaret Wilson, the Bush-Cheney campaign HQ in FLA, the Minnesota RNC, the DCI Group, Charles Francis, Tom Synhorst, and Chris Lacivita. All were involved in the Swift Boat smear Campaign and ALL have strong ties to Bush and/or the Bush campaign. So where's the "60 Minutes," "Front Line," "Date Line," or "48 Hours" expose? If this story doesn't make it onto at least one of these shows, it is proof positive that the networks are "owned" by Bush.

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://releases.usnewswire.co...

... PHOTO CAPTION CONTEST ...

08.27.04 (10:26 am) [edit]

AWOL Dubya is Not Just a Deserter, But Also an Imposter!!!

08.27.04 (10:22 am) [edit]

AWOL Dubya is Not Just a Deserter, But Also an Imposter!!!

08.27.04 (10:20 am) [edit]

The real issue: Bush is incompetent ...

08.27.04 (10:14 am) [edit]

[b]'The real issue: Bush is incompetent'[/b]

NEW YORK -- President Bush is coming to town. You better watch out, you better not shout -- unless you're a certified delegate inside Madison Square Garden. With protesters somewhere out of sight, the Republican National Convention will be a celebration of the ideology, values and interests served by this second Bush presidency.

Whether you agree or disagree with the words pouring from the podium over Americans who see reflections of themselves in George W. Bush, the real issue of this election will not be mentioned. The core issue is this: Our president is incompetent. He is not a good president.

Let me count the ways:

(1) He has divided the country; we are all part of a vicious little hissing match. We were united and humbled on Sept. 12, 2001. We are divided and humiliated now, telling lies about each other.

(2) He has divided the world. "We are all Americans now," headlined Le Monde on that Sept. 12. Now there are days when it seems as if they are all anti-Americans.

(3) He is leaving no child or grandchild without debt. He has taken the government from surplus into deficit in the name of national security and increased private investment. We can pay the debt in two ways: with more government revenues (taxation) or by borrowing -- against the sweat and income of new generations. The president has chosen to borrow.

(4) He campaigns as a champion of smaller government, but is greatly increasing the size and role of government. Ideological conservatism, it turns out, costs just as much or more than ideological liberalism. Conservative and liberal politicians are both for increasing the reach and power of government. The difference between them is which parts and functions of the state are to be empowered and financed. The choice is between military measures and order, or more redistribution of income. Money is power.

(5) He is diminishing the military of which he is so proud now as commander in chief. The invasion and occupation of Iraq have obviously not worked out the way he imagined -- naked torture was not the goal. But the far greater problem for the future is that our proud commander has revealed the hollowness behind the unilateral superpower. From the top down, we have not been able to win Iraq, much less the world. And going into Iraq has compromised or crippled the war on terror he declared himself.

(6) He is diminishing scientific progress, the great engine of the 20th century. Only the truly ignorant can believe that the proper role of government is to hinder medical research and environmental study in the name of God.

(7) He is diminishing the Constitution of the United States. Cheesy tricks like amending the great text of freedom to attack homosexuality can be dismissed as wedge politics. But it is worse to preach against an activist judiciary while appointing more activist judges who happen to hold different beliefs, particularly the idea that civil liberties are the enemies of patriotism, security and freedom itself.

(8) He has surrounded himself with other incompetents. The secretary of state is presiding over the rape of diplomacy and its alliances. The secretary of defense has sent our young men and women into situations they were never meant or trained to handle, and now they are being ordered into battle by an appointed minister in a faraway land. The national security adviser does not seem to know that her job description includes coordinating defense and diplomacy. And then there was our $340,000-a-month local hire, Ahmed Chalabi, sitting in the gallery of our House.

(9) He has been unable or unwilling to deal with declining employment and the rising medical costs of becoming an older nation.

(10) He is, as if by design, destroying the credibility of the United States as a force for peace in the world -- an honest broker -- particularly in the Middle East.

The list is longer, miscalculation after miscalculation. President Bush has not been able to function effectively at this pay grade. He may mean well, but this has been a difficult time, and he is in over his head. We and our kids will pay the price for his blundering, blunderbuss adventure in Washington. He has been tested in a difficult time -- and, unhappily for all of us and the world, he has not been up to the job. - http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...%2Fucrr%2F20040827%2Fcm_u crr%2Ftherealissuebushisi ncompetent

THE REAL ELECTION ISSUE:-- George W. Bush is Incompetent!!!

08.27.04 (10:11 am) [edit]

High crimes and misdemeanours - Brits to Impeach Blair ... USA should Impeach Dubya!!!

08.27.04 (10:05 am) [edit]

[b]High crimes and misdemeanours[/b]

[i][b]All the evidence shows that the Prime Minister misled Parliament and the people on the eve of the Iraq war. Now, as Peter Oborne reveals, a group of MPs are determined to impeach him [/b][/i]

Next month a group of British MPs will launch impeachment proceedings against Tony Blair. This is a very dramatic and powerful act, rooted deep in British history. Though once a commonplace sanction against abuse of power by the executive, the instrument of impeachment has not been used since 1848, when it was alleged that Lord Palmerston, while foreign minister, had entered into a secret treaty with Russia.

Nevertheless, impeachment remains part of parliamentary law, a recourse for desperate times. Many MPs feel certain that the moment critique has now arrived. They remain in a state of despair at the way the Prime Minister systematically misled the House of Commons and the British people over the Iraq war. For several weeks a powerful draft document — provisionally entitled ‘A Case to Answer: A Report on the Possibility of the Impeachment of the British Prime Minister Tony Blair for High Crimes and Misdemeanours in relation to the Invasion of Iraq’ — setting out the charges, has been in private circulation. It is powerful and compelling, and will soon be published. It sets out with great clarity the numerous falsehoods and misrepresentations made by Tony Blair, both to the British people and within the House of Commons.

It has only been possible to write this document since the publication of the Butler report in July. Though Butler’s conclusions were insipid and in one or two cases contradicted the evidence he himself presented, his report has nevertheless brought a great many fresh intelligence documents into the public arena. When these documents are compared with contemporaneous statements made by the Prime Minister, the audacious scale of the deception perpetrated against Parliament and the British people becomes very clear.

Tony Blair was not merely wrong about Iraqi WMD in retrospect. Thanks to Butler, it is now possible to show that his statements clashed with the state of knowledge within the intelligence community at the time. It is possible to demonstrate that the Prime Minister was guilty of at best a culpably negligent failure to acquaint himself with the true state of affairs, at worse mendacity and bad faith. Tony Blair at no stage gave the British people the chance to make up their minds ahead of the war, because the relevant evidence was manipulated and in some cases suppressed.

The Prime Minister made numerous assertions about weapons of mass destruction that were contradicted by his intelligence assessments. On 3 April 2002 he made the following confident assertion to NBC news: ‘We know that he [Saddam Hussein] has stockpiles of major amounts of chemical and biological weapons.’ Compare this (and numerous other pronouncements of equal certainty made by Tony Blair around the same time) with what the Prime Minister was being told by the Joint Intelligence Committee. Its assessment of 15 March 2002, brought to light by Butler, stated that ‘intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction is sporadic and patchy ...from the evidence available to us, we believe Iraq retains some production equipment, and some small stocks of chemical warfare agent precursors, and may have hidden small quantities of agents and weapons.’ The discrepancy between the Prime Minister’s version of events (‘we know he has stockpiles of major amounts of chemical and biological weapons’) and the JIC’s cautious view that Iraq ‘may have hidden small quantities of [chemical] agents and weapons’ beggars belief.

There was a similar massive discrepancy between Tony Blair’s apocalyptic claims about the threat posed by Iraq in the wider Middle East, and the sober guidance he was receiving from the intelligence services. The resolution before the House of Commons on 18 March 2003, supporting the war on Iraq, read as follows: ‘This house recognises that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles, and its continuing non-compliance with Security Council Resolutions, pose a threat to international peace and security.’

Today we can see that this statement was nonsense, and in no way calibrated with the intelligence available to the Prime Minister. Two conditions needed to be in place for Tony Blair’s claim about Iraq’s ‘severe threat to the wider world’ to be even faintly plausible: namely, evidence that Iraq possessed the necessary weapons along with the accompanying delivery capability, and some proof that Saddam Hussein intended to use them on his neighbours. The Butler report demonstrates that both propositions were tested, and found wanting, by the intelligence services. In sharp contrast to the Prime Minister’s statement to the Commons, intelligence assessments during 2002–3 make no reference to any Iraqi intention to employ WMD outside its borders. The only situation in which British experts envisaged Saddam making use of these weapons, supposing they existed in the first place, was if he himself was attacked. Lord Butler quotes one piece of interdepartmental advice to ministers, drawing heavily on JIC assessments, which makes this view quite explicit: ‘Saddam has not succeeded in seriously threatening his neighbours ...Saddam has used WMD in the past and could do so again if his regime was under threat.’

This remained the JIC view right up to the eve of publication of the notorious dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction of September 2002. So overwhelming was this conclusion that Jonathan Powell, the Downing Street chief of staff, emailed JIC chairman John Scarlett that ‘we will need to make it clear in launching the document that we do not claim that we have evidence that he [Saddam] is an imminent threat.’ This piece of advice was ignored, and the final version of the dossier gave no indication of any kind that Tony Blair’s lurid assertions about the looming menace of Saddam Hussein was unsupported by evidence.

There is no space here to do more than summarise the numerous other false assertions and mendacious claims made by the Prime Minister over Iraq. Downing Street asserted that the UN inspectors ‘proved’ that illicit weapons existed inside Iraq. Actually they merely said that the materials were unaccounted for; the distinction was clearly made in intelligence reports but not by the Prime Minister to Parliament. Tony Blair told the House of Commons on 24 September 2002 that Saddam’s WMD programme was ‘active, detailed and growing’, in flat contradiction to intelligence assessments showing that programmes had been frozen or ‘hindered’. He claimed that material found in Iraq after April 2003 was part of a covert weapons programme, despite lack of intelligence to support these claims.

The greatest deception of all relates to the way that Tony Blair presented intelligence material. On 24 September 2002, while presenting his Iraq dossier to the Commons, he told MPs, ‘I am aware, of course, that people are going to have to take elements of this on the good faith of the intelligence services. But this is what they are telling me, the British Prime Minister, and my senior colleagues. The intelligence picture they paint is ...extensive, detailed and authoritative.’ In fact, as the Butler inquiry demonstrated with great clarity, the Prime Minister was in a position to know that this statement was false: over four fifths of the intelligence about Iraqi deception and concealment came from just two sources, both of which have since been recognised as dodgy. Furthermore, the Prime Minister was aware of this shameful paucity of material. As Butler records, ‘the Chief of SIS had a meeting with the Prime Minister on 12 September to brief him on SIS operations in respect of Iraq. At the meeting he briefed the Prime Minister on each of the SIS’s main sources.’ As Butler himself remarked, in a rare moment of criticism: ‘We were struck by the relative thinness of the intelligence base supporting the greater firmness of the JIC’s judgments on Iraqi production and possession of chemical and biological weapons.’

There is no graver charge that could be laid against a serving Prime Minister than that he misled the British people on the eve of conflict. The impeachment document, written by Dan Plesch and Glen Rangwala for Adam Price, the Plaid Cymru MP, makes a potent case with great intellectual clarity. It charges that the Prime Minister was forced to resort to such a flimsy and fallacious justification for war because he had already entered into what amounted to an arrangement with President George Bush to invade Iraq well before Parliament voted for war in March 2003. The document cites the powerful testimony of Clare Short, Chris Meyer and the author Bob Woodward in this regard. The allegation of a secret treaty is hard to prove; nevertheless these three individuals could be called to give evidence as to whether Tony Blair entered into a private agreement to take Britain to war. This, along with deceiving the Commons, is an impeachable offence.

The trouble is that none of the currently used mechanisms of Parliament has proved capable of holding the Prime Minister to account. Indeed MPs are unable to make even the allegation that Tony Blair has lied for fear of being rebuked for using unparliamentary language. When the MP John Baron claimed during the Butler debate last July that the country was ‘misled by the Prime Minister’ over the 45-minute claim, he was cautioned by the Speaker.

So MPs have been banned from making the fundamental case against Tony Blair over his conduct of the war. The effect of this convention has been crippling: the Prime Minister has not been judged even by the fairly lax standards he applies to his own ministers. Last winter the Home Office minister Beverley Hughes resigned her portfolio following charges that she lied to MPs. Hughes told the Commons that she accepted that she ‘may have given a misleading impression’ to MPs over immigration controls. That, for her, was grounds to leave office. By any criteria the case against Tony Blair is far stronger than the case against Hughes, and the issue — a war in which tens of thousands have died — of infinitely greater importance. Yet the Speaker bans discussion of the Prime Minister’s integrity on the floor of the Commons.

By contrast it will be hard for Speaker Michael Martin to resist debate on an impeachment motion. It is true that in Britain we think of impeachment as part of the American, rather than the British, constitution. But the United States inherited the practice from this country, where for many centuries it was used as the ultimate response to attempts to subvert the structure of government or undermine the integrity of office. Far from being archaic, impeachment remains soundly based in British law. William Holdsworth, whose work is still used to train British lawyers, concluded his analysis of impeachment with an urgent call for its revival, stating that it ‘does embody the sound principle that ministers and officials should be made criminally liable for corruption, gross negligence, or other malfeasances in the conduct of the affairs of the nation. And this principle requires to be emphasised at a time when the development of the system of party government pledges the party to defend the policy of its leaders, however mistaken it may be, and however incompetently it may have been carried out; at a time when party leaders are apt to look indulgently on the most disastrous mistakes because they hope that the same indulgence will be extended to them when they take office; at a time when the principle of the security of the tenure of higher permanent officials is held to be more important than the need to punish their negligences and ignorances. If ministers were sometimes made criminally responsible for gross negligence or rashness, ill-considered activities might be discouraged, real statesmanship might be encouraged and party violence might be moderated.’

Holdsworth could not have described more lucidly the case for impeaching Tony Blair over the Iraq war. - http://www.antiwar.com/specta...

High crimes and misdemeanours - Brits to Impeach Blair ... USA should Impeach Dubya!!!

08.27.04 (10:03 am) [edit]

"Ooopppsss, Miscalculations" Admits DimWit AWOL Dubya-- So Lots of People DIE for Nothing!!!

08.27.04 (10:01 am) [edit]

[b]Bush Admits Iraq 'Miscalculations' - NY Times[/b]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Bush acknowledged for the first time on Thursday that he had miscalculated post-war conditions in Iraq, the New York Times reported.

The paper quoted Bush as saying during a 30-minute interview that he made "a miscalculation of what the conditions would be" in post-war Iraq.

But he insisted that the 17-month-long insurgency was the unintended by-product of a "swift victory" against Saddam Hussein's military, the Times reported.

Bush said his strategy had been "flexible enough" to respond. "We're adjusting to our conditions" in places like Najaf, the paper quoted him as saying.

The Times said Bush deflected further inquiries as to what had gone wrong with the occupation.

According to the Pentagon, 969 U.S. troops have died in Iraq since the invasion, 828 of them since April 30, 2003. An additional 6,690 service members have been wounded, most of them during the occupation.

The president also discussed the issue of North Korea and Iran's nuclear ambitions, saying that he would not be rushed to set deadlines.

The newspaper said "Bush displayed none of the alarm about North Korea's growing arsenal that he once voiced regularly about Iraq."

It quoted him as saying about the leaders of North Korea and Iran: "I don't think you give timelines to dictators."

Bush told the newspaper he would continue diplomatic pressure. It said he gave no hint that his patience was limited or that at some point he might consider pre-emptive military action.

"I'm confident that over time this will work -- I certainly hope it does," the newspaper quoted Bush as saying of the diplomatic approach. - http://www.reuters.com/newsAr...

"Ooopppsss, Miscalculations" Admits DimWit AWOL Dubya-- So Lots of People DIE for Nothing!!!

08.27.04 (9:56 am) [edit]

Another Swift Boat Veteran Backs Kerry & Sinks AWOL Dubya's Swift-Sluts-n-Liars!!!

08.26.04 (7:42 pm) [edit]

[b]Another Swift Boat Veteran Backs Kerry on His Bronze Star[/b]

Ronald "Lambert, now 64, was a crew member on swift boat PCF-51 that day. The boat was commanded by Navy Lt. Larry Thurlow, a now-retired officer who questions why Kerry was awarded a Bronze star for bravery and a third Purple Heart for the March 13 incident. 'He and another officer now say we weren't under fire at that time,' Lambert said Wednesday afternoon. 'Well, I sure was under the impression we were.' Lambert's Bronze Star medal citation for the incident praises his courage under fire in the aftermath of a mine explosion that rocked another swift boat on that day 35 years ago. 'Anytime you are blown out of the water like that, they always follow that up with small arms fire,' he said." Watch the Nation's Ian Williams debate Larry Thurlow on MSNBC's Deborah Norville Show at 9pm EST.

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.mailtribune.com/ar...

AWOL Bush's 'Mission UnAccomplished': US Deaths in Iraq for 2004 Now Exceed 2003

08.26.04 (7:34 pm) [edit]

[b]US Deaths in Iraq for 2004 Now Exceed 2003[/b]

Tom Schaller blogs, "It happened this week almost without notice: The number of Americans killed in Iraq during 2004 now exceeds the number killed in 2003. More remarkably, the 488 killed thus far this year died in just 239 days (2.04 daily average), while the 482 killed last year died during fully 287 days (1.68 daily average), which means that not only has 2004 been bloodier than 2003 in absolute terms, but in relative terms as well. Is this progress? Is this stability and safety? Now, here's the question I really want to ask: 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?"

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.dailykos.com/story...

Neo-cons Are Like Rats Deserting a Sinking Boat of Bush/Cheney's Failures & Fiascos!!!

08.26.04 (7:31 pm) [edit]

[b]A Few Honest Neocons Turn Against Conquest of Iraq[/b]

Steve Weissman notes a small number of honest neocons who have turned against the Iraq conquest. "The biggest slam has come from one of the neo-cons' leading intellectuals, Francis Fukuyama, author of 'The End of History.' Confronting columnist Charles Krauthammer, who recently proposed that the United States pursue an interventionist policy of forcefully promoting global democracy, Fukuyama flat-out rejected the major neo-conservative arguments for going to war in Iraq. Saddam Hussein never posed an immediate threat to the United States, he declared. And the United States lacked the 'nation-building' know-how to make Iraq democratic. 'If the United States cannot eliminate poverty or raise test scores in Washington, D.C.,' he chided his neo-con colleagues, 'how does it expect to bring democracy to a part of the world that has stubbornly resisted it and is virulently anti-American to boot?'"

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.truthout.org/docs_...

FT.com: "Republican fundraisers on Wall St shy away from Bush" ...

08.26.04 (7:24 pm) [edit]

Wall Street's enthusiasm for US President George W. Bush appears to have cooled as the presidential race tightens and concerns grow about foreign policy and fiscal deficits.

Some leading fundraisers of Mr Bush's re-election bid have stopped active campaigning and others privately voice reservations.

The New York financial community is expected to give the Republicans a lavish welcome when the president's party arrives for its national convention next week. Wall Street has been a big contributor to Mr Bush's record-breaking re-election fund. But one senior Wall Street figure, once talked of as a possible Bush cabinet member, said that he and other prominent Republicans had been raising money with increasing reluctance. “Many are doing so with a heavy heart and some not at all.” He cited foreign policy and the ballooning federal deficit as Wall Street Republicans' main concerns.

A Republican in the financial services industry concurs. “Many of them may be maxed out,” he said, referring to campaign contributions that have hit the legal ceiling, “but they are backing away from Bush.”

The deficit has been criticised by Peter Peterson, chairman and co-founder of Blackstone Group, the New York investment firm, and former commerce secretary under President Richard Nixon. In his new book, Running on Empty, he accuses both parties of recklessness but attacks the Republican leadership for a “new level of fiscal irresponsibility”.

One New York dinner in June 2003 raised more than $4m, partly thanks to the efforts of Stan O'Neal, chief executive of Merrill Lynch. Yet Mr O'Neal has done no fundraising for the campaign at all since then and friends say he is not supporting Mr Bush. “He is best described as independent,” said one. Another senior Wall Street figure, who has given money to the campaign, said he was among many Wall Street bosses who were impressed with Mr Bush's handling of the September 11 attacks. “But since then, I have lost faith over foreign policy and tax,” he said.

Even those who are campaigning for Mr Bush sound increasingly defensive. “Whether or not you like him, you can't change leaders during a war,” said the head of one Wall Street firm. - http://news.ft.com/cms/s/ce66...

GOP Mounting Massive Effort to Block Black Vote - All While Touting their 'Diversity'

08.26.04 (6:54 pm) [edit]

Pentapost: "The NAACP and other civil rights leaders charged that recent events suggest the GOP is mounting a campaign to keep African Americans and other minority voters away from the polls this Nov. In a new report, the NAACP and People for the American Way cite incidents from FlA to Detroit. NAACP Chair Julian Bond said efforts at intimidation and suppression, once a tool of Democrats in the Jim Crow South, "have increasingly become the province of the Republican Party" as it seeks to counter the overwhelming advantage Democrats enjoy among black voters...as many as 4-6 million voters were disenfranchised in 2000...In Florida, the Civil Rights Commission found that black voters were 10 times as likely as whites to have their ballots rejected, a trend also found in other parts of the country. "

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.washingtonpost.com...

What Do AWOL Ne'er-do-Well Dubya & "Fuck-youself" Cheney Plan to Do to America???

08.26.04 (6:15 pm) [edit]

[b]An 'October Surprise'? Neocons have Iran in their Sights [/b]

An American presidential election campaign is an invitation to adventure. The candidates themselves - especially when they're sitting presidents - are tempted to produce October surprises to scare or stampede the electorate.

There has been much speculation about an October surprise this year. The American public, however, has grown cynical about terrorist scares and would need a pretty convincing one to overcome the skepticism provoked by the Bush administration's past exploitations of the terrorism risk, notably around the Democratic National Convention.

What about something that increases the violence in the Middle East? It is hard to imagine that the administration wants more trouble in the region since it is far from mastering the Iraq insurrection.

But one theory says that making the war bigger would make it better for U.S. forces, since what is going on now is "the wrong kind of war."

The U.S. has troops and tools for "real" wars, the kinds it wins, and should move on from today's disastrous affair of suicide bombers and kids with rocket-launchers.

The temperature has been rising between Washington and Iran over the latter's alleged efforts to develop nuclear weapons. Some former U.S. officials concerned with Middle Eastern policy suggest that when President George W. Bush must eventually explain what has gone wrong in Iraq, it might be convenient to blame Iran.

Bush could accuse Iran of fostering the Islamic extremism responsible for U.S. frustration in Najaf and elsewhere, and of encouraging Shiite resistance to the occupation force and the new Iraq government the United States is trying to install. Blaming Iran would be a step up the escalation ladder.

This scenario includes the possibility that escalation could get out of hand.

Pressure has already increased for "pre-emption" of Iran's nuclear-power program. The extent of Tehran's project has yet to be fully exposed to international inspection, but Iran's enemies insist it includes a covert nuclear military program.

And once again, this is a prominent theme of neoconservative publicists and organizations in Washington. The neoconservative godfather Norman Podhoretz put it suggestively in an interview last week: "I am not advocating the invasion of Iran at this moment, although. ..." Another moment will undoubtedly be along soon.

Israel has an interest in promoting, if not exaggerating, Iran's supposed strategic threat to the United States. Iran already threatens Israel's interest in remaining the unchallenged military power of the region.

The attack on Iraq had exactly the opposite result of what Israel expected. America's invasion of what was once considered the most powerful state in the Arab world, generally believed to possess weapons of mass destruction, turned into a fiasco.

Powerful Iraq is no more. But there is no sign of the peaceful and pro-American Iraq that was supposed to emerge from the invasion. That new Iraq was supposed to provide permanent military bases for the United States, recognize Israel and become a friend to Jerusalem, as well as to Washington. The invasion's advocates promised that the road to Israeli-Palestinian settlement ran through Baghdad.

Instead, what has come out of the Iraq invasion could strengthen Iran. Saddam Hussein's Iraq, after all, was Iran's enemy. It is now gone. The new Iraq could easily fall under the control of its Shiite majority and become Iran's ally, or possibly even an Iranian client-state. That is not what Israel wanted.

What can be done now?

Israel reportedly contemplates a unilateral attack on Iran's nuclear installations. It would want America's permission, so it needs to get it while it is sure Bush is president.

The recent decision in Israel to distribute antiradiation kits to people living in areas that might be contaminated by "an accident" at its own nuclear weapons facility is aimed at American opinion. The indirect message is that Israel is preparing for an Iranian attack on Israel's nuclear weapons manufacturing installations; hence, pre-emption is necessary.

Israel's basic position is forthright and simple to understand. Iran, like Iraq before it, is a major - and hostile - neighboring Islamic state. If the danger it potentially presents can be removed without disproportionate political or military costs, Israel - under Ariel Sharon - will probably do it.

The American case against Iran is entirely different. Its rests on the neoconservative notion that every society instinctively yearns to become an American-style democracy, and would do so if its despotic leaders were removed, by force if necessary. As the world's leading democracy, the United States has an obligation to propagate democracy. Overturning despots is therefore a duty, and the result will be a better world. The argument, of course, is familiar: It is why the United States invaded Iraq. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

What Have AWOL Ne'er-do-Well Dubya & "Fuck-yourself' Cheney Done to America???

08.26.04 (6:09 pm) [edit]

[b]Nearly 36 Million Americans Living in Poverty [/b]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some 1.3 million Americans slid into poverty in 2003 as the ranks of the poor swelled to 35.9 million, with children and blacks worse off than most, the U.S. government said on Thursday in a report sure to fuel Democratic criticism of President Bush.

Despite the economic recovery, the percentage of the U.S. population living in poverty rose to 12.5 percent -- the highest since 1998 -- from 12.1 percent in 2002, the Census Bureau said in its annual poverty report. The widely cited scorecard on the nation's economy showed one-third of those in poverty were children.

The number of U.S. residents without health care coverage also rose last year to the highest level since 1999 and incomes were essentially stagnant, the Census Bureau said.

The poverty line is set at an annual income of $9,573 or less for an individual, or $18,660 for a family of four with two children. Under that measure, a family would spend about a third of its income on food.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has argued Bush's economic stewardship, including three rounds of tax cuts since 2001, has done more to help wealthy Americans than the poor or middle class.

But analysts have said the poverty rate typically tracks the broad economy, rising during a recession and falling in boom times. America has struggled to recover from the 2001 slump, and job creation has lagged behind overall growth.

The poverty rate has risen each year since 2000, when it was 11.3 percent. It hit a record low 11.1 percent in 1973.

Children and most racial minorities again fared worse in 2003 than the overall population, according to the Census report. The rate of child poverty rose to 17.6 percent from 16.7 percent in 2002 -- boosting the number of poor children to 12.9 million.

The poverty rate of African Americans remained nearly twice the national rate, with 24.4 percent of blacks living below the poverty line in 2003, nearly unchanged from 24.1 percent a year earlier.

The report showed real median income for all races was unchanged at $43,318 in 2003, while the number of Americans with no health care coverage rose to 45.0 million from 43.6 million in 2002.

Democrats criticized the government's decision to release the highly anticipated report in mid-August -- when many people are on vacation -- rather than sticking to the usual September release. They also said the decision to release both the health insurance and poverty statistics in the same report was a bid to minimize media coverage of the worsening lives of the poor.

"Hmmmm. We wonder if these moves have anything to do with the fact that George Bush is running for re-election. Remember, the last time that the annual census figures were released in August was in 1992 to hide bad news in an election year," the Kerry campaign said in a statement. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

WE'VE Been "HAD" by Bush/Cheney Liars-n-Thieves ...

08.26.04 (6:06 pm) [edit]

[b]This is Dubya's America (For the Haves & Have Mores -- And Fuck the Rest of Us!!!)[/b]

[b]Ranks of Poor, Uninsured Rose in 2003 [/b]

WASHINGTON - The number of Americans living in poverty increased by 1.3 million last year, while the ranks of the uninsured swelled by 1.4 million, the Census Bureau (news - web sites) reported Thursday.

It was the third straight annual increase for both categories. While not unexpected, it was a double dose of bad economic news during a tight re-election campaign for President Bush (news - web sites).

Approximately 35.8 million people lived below the poverty line in 2003, or about 12.5 percent of the population, according to the bureau. That was up from 34.5 million, or 12.1 percent in 2002.

The rise was more dramatic for children. There were 12.9 million living in poverty last year, or 17.6 percent of the under-18 population. That was an increase of about 800,000 from 2002, when 16.7 percent of all children were in poverty.

The Census Bureau's definition of poverty varies by the size of the household. For instance, the threshold for a family of four was $18,810, while for two people it was $12,015.

Nearly 45 million people lacked health insurance, or 15.6 percent of the population. That was up from 43.5 million in 2002, or 15.2 percent, but was a smaller increase than in the two previous years.

Uninsured rates for children, though, were relatively stable at 11.4 percent, likely the result of recent expansions of coverage in government programs covering the poor and children, such as the state Children's Health Insurance Program, analysts said.

Meanwhile, the median household income, when adjusted for inflation, remained basically flat last year at $43,318. Whites, blacks and Asians saw no noticeable change, but income fell 2.6 percent for Hispanics to nearly $33,000. Asians had the highest income at over $55,000, while whites made $47,800 and blacks nearly $30,000.

Census Bureau analyst Dan Weinberg said the results were typical of a post-recession period. He said the increase in people without insurance was due to the uncertain job picture.

"Certainly the long-term trend is firms offering less generous (benefit) plans, and as people lose jobs they tend to lose health insurance coverage," he said.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) seized on the numbers as evidence the Bush administration's economic policies have failed. During the years Bush has been in office, 5.2 million people have lost health insurance and 4.3 million have fallen into poverty, he said.

"Under George Bush (news - web sites)'s watch, America's families are falling further behind," Kerry said.

Bush administration officials were quick to counter that the data didn't reflect more recent gains in the economy in the first half of 2004 and left some of the blame on Congress. Health and Human Services (news - web sites) Secretary Tommy Thompson said Bush was focusing on proposals that would reduce the costs of health insurance for businesses.

"The big failure is not what is happening in the administration," Thompson said. "Individuals in the Senate have failed to adopt the president's health care plan."

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton, R-Texas, noted that while more people lost insurance, the number of Americans who had coverage grew by 1 million last year. Overall, 243 million people had insurance in 2003.

"The bottom line is this: More people in America have health coverage today than at any time in our nation's history and I think that's a fact worth noting, but we can always do more," Barton said.

Even before release of the data, some Democrats claimed the Bush administration was trying to play down bad news by releasing the reports a month earlier than usual. The reports normally come out separately in late September — one on poverty and income, the other on insurance.

Releasing the numbers at the same time and not so close to Election Day "invite charges of spinning the data for political purposes," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (news, bio, voting record), D-N.Y.

Census Director Louis Kincannon — a Bush appointee — denied politics played any role in moving up the release date. The move, announced earlier this year, was done to coordinate the numbers with the release of other data.

Official national poverty estimates, as well as most government data on income and health insurance, come from the bureau's Current Population Survey.

This year the bureau is simultaneously releasing data from the broader American Community Survey, which also includes income and poverty numbers but cannot be statistically compared with the other survey. - http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...

Yet Another Poll Taken Today Shows War Hero Kerry Beating AWOL Dubya!!!

08.26.04 (6:02 pm) [edit]

[b]Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 280 / Bush 238[/b]

[b]Aug. 26 [/b]New polls: FL IN ME MI NJ WA

[b]Legend:[/b]

Blue / Strong Kerry (109)
Light Blue / Weak Kerry (83)
Blue Outline / Barely Kerry (88)
No Color / Exactly tied (20)
Red Outline / Barely Bush (56)
Light Red / Weak Bush (40)
Red / Strong Bush (142)

[b]News from the Votemaster[/b]

There are six new polls today, including Florida and Michigan. Rasmussen confirms Gallup's result that Bush is a fraction ahead there, 49% to 47%, with Nader at 2%. Kerry maintains his small lead in Michigan 48% to 45%. The other polls don't change anything either.

A number of Senate http://www.electoral-vote.com... races have been updated today. The most interesting result is in that always politically-fascinating state, Florida. With the senatorial primary coming up next Tuesday, it now looks like Betty Castor (D) vs. Bill McCollum (R), although the Republican race is still tight.

Quite a few people have looked at yesterday's map and observed that it is easy to devise a scenario in which the electoral college is tied. They have asked me what happens then? Since this question is asked a lot, I have added it to the FAQ http://www.electoral-vote.com... .

If you haven't seen the Jib Jab http://www.jibjab.com/ movie yet, by all means look at it. It is very funny and pokes fun at both Bush and Kerry.

Now some news about the site. Time for a contest. I am looking for a favicon.ico, the little icon next to a name on the IE Favorites list. With 80,000 to 90,000 visitors a day now, there are bound to be a few graphic designers among them. If you want to enter an icon into the Great Electoral Vote Predictor Icon Contest, send it to me in the standard Windows .ico format before midnight, Friday Sep. 3. The prize is a listing in the acknowledgments section of the Welcome http://www.electoral-vote.com... page. Thousands of people will see this and it will probably bring quite a bit of traffic to your site.

Finally, we have an improvement to the site. By popular demand, 'Grumpy' has added a linear regression line to the state polls http://www.electoral-vote.com... . Here are some important facts to know about the lines.

1. The lines are computed using the least squares http://mathworld.wolfram.com/... method
2. The lines are based on polls completed in the previous 90 days
3. Although the[i] points [/i]are plotted on the day we reported the poll, the lines use the actually polling dates
4. If fewer than three polls are available in the previous 90 days, the current value is extrapolated to November
5. When there are few polls available or they are inconsistent, the results will be weird
6. As we approach election day, the quality of the predictions will improve
7. Do not believe everything you see on the Internet

For each line, an error bar is shown on Nov. 2. Is was generated by computing the deviation of each poll from the line, squaring the deviation, adding up the squared deviations for al the polls, computing the average squared deviation, and then taking the square root of the average squared deviation. This metric is commonly used by statisticians and shows how well the line fits the data. A small error bar means a good fit. A large error bar means a bad fit. The error bars are NOT a margin of error as in the polls themselves and are certainly not a good measure of who is going to carry the state.

As an example of the pitfalls in this kind of modeling, consider Missouri http://www.electoral-vote.com... Currently it is tied. But in mid June, Kerry was way down. The computer (correctly) sees that Kerry has made huge progress in the past 2 months in Missouri and thus extrapolates he will continue to make huge progress there in the next 2 months. If you know that Kerry was polling 37% two months ago and is at 47% now, based only on this data, it is correct to predict that he will be at 57% in two more months. There is nothing wrong with the software. This kind of prediction is inherent when the data are sporadic, noisy, and rapidly changing. Of course one could make more sophisticated mathematical models, but there are an infinite number of possible models and one could have endless arguments about which is best. As we approach election day, the kind of effect will become much smaller. For the moment, don't take the extrapolations too seriously.

The volume of mail has increased to the point where I simply cannot answer it all any more. It was taking 4-5 hours a day. I will still read it all, though. Short, clear questions that are germane to the election have the best chance of getting an answer. E-mails starting "Dear Babykiller" have the least chance of getting an answer. Be sure to read the Welcome page http://www.electoral-vote.com... and the FAQ http://www.electoral-vote.com... . A lot of common questions are answered there. I do apologize for having to be so impolite.

NewsFlash! Iraqis Still Refuse to be Exploited by War Criminal Bush, Mass-Murderer of Iraqis ...

08.26.04 (9:54 am) [edit]

[b]Iraqi soccer players voice antipathy towards Bush[/b]

Judging from the reactions of Iraqi fans, the people of war-ravaged Iraq are proud and excited to be fielding a soccer team at the Summer Olympics in Athens. The team's members haven't been pleased, though, by the way George W. Bush has co-opted their participation in the Games and manipulated it for political purposes.

The problem: a Bush-campaign TV advertisement titled "Victory." The ad starts with footage from the Munich Olympics in 1972, when Palestinian terrorists killed 13 Israeli athletes. Then a narrator's voice, heard over an image of the fluttering flags of Iraq and Afghanistan, declares (and clearly suggests that it's thanks to Bush), "At this Olympics, there will be two more free nations and two fewer terrorist regimes." http://www.timesonline.co.uk/...,,15809-1229568,00.html (Times; subscription may be required)

The online edition of the American magazine Sports Illustrated broke the story of the Iraqi soccer players' discontent. They http://sportsillustrated.cnn.... "find it offensive that Bush is using their team for his own gain when they do not support his administration's actions in Iraq," Sports Illustrated reporter Grant Wahl wrote from Greece.

He quoted the team's coach, Adnan Hamad, who said, "My problems are not with the American people. ... They are with what America has done in Iraq: destroy everything. The American army has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the [national] stadium and there are shootings on the road?" Midfielder Ahmad Manajid told Wahl, "I want to defend my home. If a stranger invades America and the people resist, does that mean they are terrorists?"

Hamad's remarks http://www.washingtonpost.com... were picked up and echoed in other news-service and newspaper reports around the world. "You cannot speak about a team that represents freedom," he also said. "We do not have freedom in Iraq -- we have an occupying force. This is one of our most miserable times." (Reuters)

(Simultaneously, Bush's campaign was accused "of illegal use of Olympic symbols" http://www.timesonline.co.uk/...,,15809-1229568,00.html in its political ad. That's because "[o]nly the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC), or its sponsors and partners, are allowed to use the symbols in [advertisements], under American copyright law." A USOC representative said the organization had requested a copy of the TV spot. (Times))

The Iraqi athletes' comments http://www.smh.com.au/article... were reported http://www6.dw-world.de/en/17... to be an "embarrassment" for "their media handlers in Athens." (Guardian/Sydney Morning Herald) "Officials from the Iraqi Olympic delegation sought to downplay the political implications of the players' statements ..." and alleged that "journalists had deliberately provoked an angry response from the ... athletes." (Deutsche Welle)

Mark Clark, one of the American officials who have been working with the Iraqi team, said, http://www.abc.net.au/sport/c... "It seems the story was engineered. ... The players are not very sophisticated politically; they are a little naive. Whoever posed these questions knew ... the reaction would be negative." Still, Clark allowed, "It's a free, new Iraq and the players are entitled to their opinions, but we are disappointed." (Reuters/Australian Broadcasting Corp.)

Politically sophisticated or not, the players quoted by reporters certainly sounded impassioned. As Manajid told Wahl, http://sportsillustrated.cnn.... "How will [Bush] meet his god [after] having slaughtered so many men and women? ... He has committed so many crimes." - http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/art...

The Real Facts & Truth About AWOL Dubya's "Military" (Wink! Wink!) Desertion!!!

08.26.04 (9:08 am) [edit]

[b]A must-read comprehensive essay is "When Will The Feds Finally Put AWOL Deserter Coward Fraud Bushy-boy in Jail???" http://www.tblog.com/template... and also "AWOL Fraud Coward Dubya Wears Holloween-style Military Medals To Scam US Public!!!" http://www.tblog.com/template...

W. Overstated his "Military" "Service" ...[/b]

A group of veterans motivated by 30-years of resentment accuse John Kerry of exaggerating his Vietnam wartime service, and their attack makes the front pages and cable gabfests. But when a news report showed that George W. Bush had overstated his military experience, Bush escaped without a scratch.

I am not referring to the Bush's missing time in the Air National Guard. That episode did receive much attention--though only in the past year, not when the issue was first raised during the 2000 presidential campaign. Back then Bush was disingenuous about his Guard service. In his campaign autobiography, he wrote that he had completed his pilot training in 1970 while assigned to an air base in Houston and "continued flying with my unit for the next several years." But as the Boston Globe revealed, he stopped flying during his final 18 months of service in 1972 and 1973. Bush had been grounded after failing to take a flight exam, and had won permission to train with a unit in Alabama where he did no flying. There are no records proving he showed up for duty in Alabama, but Bush has insisted he did.

Putting aside the controversy over Bush's Air National Guard service (or dereliction of duty), there was another instance when Bush clearly did not speak truthfully about his military record. In 1978, Bush, while running for Congress in West Texas, produced campaign literature that claimed he had served in the US Air Force. According to a 1999 Associated Press report, Bush's congressional campaign ran a pullout ad in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal that declared he had served "in the US Air Force and the Texas Air National Guard where he piloted the F-102 aircraft."

Bush lost that congressional race, but twenty-one years later, the AP questioned him about the ad. The news outlet had a good reason to do so. Bush had never served in the Air Force. He had only been in the Air National Guard. But when AP asked Bush if he had been justified in claiming service in the Air Force, Bush, then the governor of Texas and a presidential candidate, said, "I think so, yes. I was in the Air Force for over 600 days." Karen Hughes, his spokeswoman, maintained that when Bush attended flight school for the Air National Guard from 1968 to 1969 he was considered to be on active duty for the Air Force and that several times afterward he had been placed on alert, which also qualified as active duty for the Air Force. All told, she said, Bush had logged 607 days of training and alerts. "As an officer [in the Air National Guard]," she told the AP, "he was serving on active duty in the Air Force."

But this explanation was wrong. Says who? The Air Force. As the Associated Press reported,

The Air Force says that Air National Guard members are considered 'guardsmen on active duty' while receiving pilot training. They are not, however, counted as members of the overall active-duty Air Force.

Anyone in the Air National Guard is always considered a guardsmen and not a member of the active-duty Air Force, according to an Air Force spokeswoman in the Pentagon. A National Guard member may be called to active duty for pilot training or another temporary assignment and receive active-duty pay at the time, but they remain Guard members.

The AP report said, "It may be a question of semantics." But today I checked with two spokespersons for the US Air Force, and each confirmed that an active-duty member of the Air National Guard is not considered a member of the US Air Force. "If a member of the Air National Guard is in pilot training," says Captain Cristin Lesperance of the US Air Force media relations office, "they would remain on the Guard books. They would be counted as Guard, not as an active-duty Air Force member."

So where was all the hollering about Bush's exaggeration of his military service? True, Bush was hyping his military record way back in 1978. But he repeated and defended the misrepresentation in 1999 while campaigning for the White House. And, no doubt, Kerry's critics would consider any remark Kerry made twenty-six years ago fair game. Admiral Roy Hoffman, a founder of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, recently said that his group is not politically motivated: "It would make no difference if John Kerry were a Republican, Democrat or an Independent, Swift Boat veterans would still be speaking the truth concerning John Kerry's military service record." But are any of Kerry's accusers willing to criticize Bush for falsely representing his service?

Kerry, who volunteered to go to Vietnam and won five medals, has made his Vietnam service a central element of his campaign for the presidency. So there is nothing improper about examining his account of his Vietnam days, as long as such scrutiny is done in an honest and accurate fashion. But Bush overstated his own military record (which involved no combat, no derring-do, no wounds, and no enemy fire) for political purposes, and when he was caught doing so he stuck to a phony story. Yet no firestorm ensued. Will Republican funders now underwrite a group called Air Force Veterans for Truth that will demand that Bush withdraw his claim of membership in the Air Force? Don't expect such a shot soon. - http://www.thenation.com/capi...

[b]Was Lt. Bush Sent to Alabama for Drug Rehab?[/b]

Citizens For Honest Fighter Pilots reports, "When the Bush-AWOL/deserter scandal first erupted months ago, I overheard [well, the person was talking loudly, so how could I help but hear?] an aide to a radical conservative congressperson run down exactly what happened to create this situation: Bush was 'acting inappropriately' on the base in Texas, then was picked up on a DUI for alcohol and marijuana. In order to 'create a break in the record,' he was shipped off to Alabama for rehab. That is why he never showed up for his Guard duty - he was in rehab. That also refutes the spin that he had gone there to work on a congressional campaign [note: the campaign workers have said he only appeared at headquarters a few times, and they called him the 'souffle' because of the 'hot air' he spewed when he did show up]."

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.buzzflash.com/cont...

The Stench of Politics as Seen Thru Bush/Cheney's Sordid Cover-up!!!

08.26.04 (9:00 am) [edit]

Neo-Cons Hate Truth:-- Bush, Kerry Even In U.S. Presidential Race ... NEW POLL!!!

08.26.04 (8:05 am) [edit]

[b]Bush, Kerry Even In U.S. Presidential Race [/b]

The top presidential candidates in the United States are tied, according to a poll by Investor’s Business Daily. 43 per cent of respondents would vote for Republican incumbent George W. Bush in the 2004 election, while 43 per cent would support Democratic nominee John Kerry.

Five per cent of respondents would back independent candidate Ralph Nader. The election is scheduled for Nov. 2.

Support for Bush increased by one per cent since early August, while backing for Kerry dropped by two per cent.

Yesterday, vice-president Dick Cheney apparently broke ranks with the Bush administration’s position on same-sex marriage. During an event in Iowa, Cheney—whose daughter Mary is openly lesbian—said "that’s appropriately a matter for the states to decide, that’s how it ought to best be handled, but the president makes basic policy for the administration, and he’s made it clear that he does, in fact, support a constitutional amendment on this issue." Bush and Cheney have not appeared together at campaign events because of security reasons.

In July, the U.S. Senate voted 50 to 48 to end deliberations on the issue of a federal constitutional amendment to block same-sex marriage. Democratic nominee Kerry supports the notion of civil unions for gay and lesbian couples, currently accessible only in the state of Vermont.

The election is scheduled for Nov. 2.

[u][b]Polling Data[/b][/u]

What candidate would you vote for in the 2004 U.S. presidential election?

[b]Aug. 17-23 Aug. 2-5[/b]

George W. Bush (R)
43% 42%

John Kerry (D)
43% 45%

Ralph Nader (I)
5% 5%

[b]Source:[/b] [i]Investor’s Business Daily[/i]

[b]Methodology:[/b] Interviews to 884 registered American voters, conducted from Aug. 17 to Aug. 23, 2004. Margin of error is 3.1 per cent. - http://www.cpod.ubc.ca/polls/...

Navy Documents from 1969 Add to Ballooning Mountain of Proof that Swift Boat Phonies are Liars!!!

08.26.04 (8:00 am) [edit]

[b]Swift Boat Phonies are Pathological Liars & Scumbags!!!

AP:[/b] "The Navy task force overseeing John Kerry's swift boat squadron in Vietnam reported that his group of boats came under enemy fire during a March 13, 1969, incident that three decades later is being challenged by the Democratic presidential nominee's critics. The March 18, 1969, weekly report from Task Force 115, which was located by The Associated Press during a search of Navy archives, is the latest document to surface that supports Kerry's description of an event for which he won a Bronze Star and a third Purple Heart. The document, part of thousands of pages of records housed at the Naval Historical Center, is one of several that say Kerry and other servicemen were shot at from the banks of the Bay Hap River on March 13, 1969. The Associated Press located the document Tuesday during a search of available records."

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.sacbee.com/24hour/...

Thousands of Laid Off Workers Will Line Streets of NYC to Wave Pink Slips at Bush/GOP

08.26.04 (7:56 am) [edit]

[b]AP:[/b] "Thousands of people waving pink slips will line Broadway for three miles, their jobless-in-America protest stretching from the site of the Republican National Convention to Wall Street. Near the Brooklyn Bridge, a mammoth red megaphone will amplify election-year opinions from a variety of people 24 hours a day, blasting them live into a square that's home to New York's courts of justice. While the Republicans meet at Madison Square Garden, America's biggest city will offer edgy spectacles in its streets, squares, parks and stages, with top names from Lauren Bacall, Robert Altman and Margaret Cho to Spike Lee, John Sayles, Marisa Tomei and eye-patched rapper Slick Rick."

[b]Check-it-out [/b] http://www.newsday.com/news/l...,0,5868608.story?coll=ny-ap-regional -wire

AWOL Fraud George Bush - War Criminal at Large

08.26.04 (6:32 am) [edit]

[b]George W. Bush was photographed wearing a ribbon he did not earn[/b] - http://www.democraticundergro...

[b]George W. Bush: Wanted for War Crimes[/b] - http://www.motherearth.org/bu...

[b]Rumsfeld-Bush/Cheney Should Be Put on Trial for Crimes Against Humanity[/b] - http://www.tblog.com/template...

... JOHN F. KERRY'S SILVER STAR vs. DIMWIT DUBYA'S SILVER SPOON ...

08.26.04 (6:11 am) [edit]

[b]'Silver Star vs silver spoon'[/b]

[i][b]Swift boat lies remind us of other truths [/b][/i]

Has any campaign smear ever collapsed factually as fast as the charges of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth?

Not collapsed on the talk radio circuit, or in the words of eager Bush mouthpieces like Bob Dole, who attacked his "good friend" John Kerry with two flat lies, then bleated he was just playing "hardball politics."

But utterly collapsed factually, as it became clear that Kerry's accusers had previously told very different stories, that their new memories were sharply contradicted by official Navy records, that several unexpected (but very angry) new figures emerged to bolster Kerry's account.

[b]Full story [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

AWOL Georgy-Porgy Gets Others To Do His "Dirty Work" ... Aka A Mafia Thug ...

08.26.04 (6:07 am) [edit]

[b]'George's dirty work'[/b]

[i][b]Once again, George W. Bush lets others fight his battles[/b][/i]

THE RECENT COMMERCIALS questioning John Kerry's war record put out by the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth provide just the latest example of how George W. Bush, throughout his life, has chosen to punk out while others do the heroic, hard or dirty work for him.

This pattern was first seen at the Andover prep school, where the adolescent W. performed not on the football field, where someone could actually get hurt, but as a frisky cheerleader yelling "fight team fight" and doing twinkle-toed somersaults while trying to impress the girls from Ethel Walker. Then it was on to Yale, where, at the same time others his age were slogging through the swamps of Southeast Asia or putting their skulls on the line protesting in the streets, Bush was giddily paddling the fluffy pink behinds of pledges in the basement of a sprawling fraternity house.

Next it was the Texas/Alabama National Guard, where our hero calmly checked the 'No' box about going to Vietnam, but bravely asserted his support of our fighting men and women -- better them than him -- on those rare occasions when he actually showed up for duty.

[b]Full story [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

DimWit DUBYA Flip-Flops & IS TOO STUPID TO KNOW HE IS DOING IT!!! LOL!!!

08.26.04 (6:00 am) [edit]

... ... THE BRITISH PEOPLE HATE BUSH ... ... READ THIS ... ...

08.26.04 (5:51 am) [edit]

[b]A Degree in Bullying and Self-interest? No Thanks

The Decline of American Studies reveals our Increasing Dislike of the US

by Polly Toynbee [/b]

Turn to the Guardian's university clearing pages and there are many vacancies for a subject that was once hugely popular. Until recently, American studies departments sprang up everywhere. But no longer. Now 28 universities still have American studies places unfilled, and they include many at well-regarded institutions - Essex, Keele, Kent and Swansea among them. Due to lack of demand, five universities have closed American studies departments while others have cut staff. Keele, traditionally the top-ranking American studies department, with a maximum, grade five ranking for research for the past few years, has had to fire half its staff. Professor Ian Bell at Keele says: "Students don't want to be branded by doing American studies. They still want to do American modules as part of English or history but, after Bush, they shy away from being labeled as pro-American - not after the obscenity of Iraq."

It's only a straw in the wind: student choices are notoriously fickle. But it fits the picture of a groundswell of anti-American feeling. Where in the world could you walk down the street and not collect overwhelmingly negative vox pops on Bush's America and its global impact? Last year's BBC/ICM poll, taken in a string of countries across the continents, found only Israel in support of Bush - with Canada, Australia and Korea least unfavorable, but still with a majority against.

That is not necessarily the same as anti-Americanism. The Bushites in their daily, foul-mouthed email assaults on Guardian writers try to portray current anti-American sentiment as racist, akin to anti-semitic. They try to pretend "old" Europe is just effetely snobbish about the Ugly Americans. They dismiss anti-Bush disgust in developing countries as envy and as ignorant support for terror.

But opinion polls make it clear that people are well able to separate their feelings about Americans from the politicians and policies now occupying the White House: 81% of the British say, "I like the Americans as people", according to Mori, but only 19% admire American society. They overwhelmingly reject the proposition "We would be better off if we were more like the Americans in many respects" - the view of the right and of younger Tories infatuated with US neo-conservatism.

How much wider the Atlantic has grown under Bush. A Mori poll for the German Marshall Fund examined European attitudes towards America. It found massive condemnation of US Middle East policy (among the British just as strongly) and equally strong opprobrium for US policies on global warming and nuclear proliferation. Most Europeans - the British too - want the European Union to become a superpower to match the US, with a strong leadership in world affairs. (Americans said they wanted to be the only superpower.) Yet there was also surprisingly strong support among two-thirds of Europeans for strengthening Nato - even in France.

However, President Bush's election pledge this week to withdraw 70,000 troops from Germany and Korea may bring an abrupt end to Europe's old doublethink on Nato. If the troops go, it may force Europe to confront the hypocrisy of detesting America while relying on it to provide the defense European nations refuse to pay for. The Bushite emailers are justified in sneering, "We pulled your sorry asses out of two world wars" (the printable version), and it's just as well Fox News hasn't covered celebrations in Paris this week that pretend France liberated it