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NEO-CON REPUG FANATICS: The GOP Doesn't Reflect America

08.31.04 (9:08 am) [edit]

[b]The GOP Doesn't Reflect America [/b]

[b]by Michael Moore

NEW YORK [/b]— Welcome, Republicans. You're proud Americans who love your country. In your own way, you want to make this country a better place. Whatever our differences, you should be commended for that.

But what's all this talk about New York being enemy territory? Nothing could be further from the truth. We New Yorkers love Republicans. We have a Republican mayor and governor, a death penalty and two nuclear plants within 30 miles of the city.

New York is home to Fox News Channel. The top right-wing talk shows emanate from here — Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly among them. The Wall Street Journal is based here, which means your favorite street is here. Not to mention more Fortune 500 executives than anywhere else.

You may think you're surrounded by a bunch of latte-drinking effete liberals, but the truth is, you're right where you belong, smack in the seat of corporate America and conservative media.

Let me also say I admire your resolve. You're true believers. Even though only a third of the country defines itself as "Republican," you control the White House, Congress, Supreme Court and most state governments.

You're in charge because you never back down. Your people are up before dawn figuring out which minority group shouldn't be allowed to marry today.

Our side is full of wimps who'd rather compromise than fight. Not you guys.

Hanging out around the convention, I've encountered a number of the Republican faithful who aren't delegates. They warm up to me when they don't find horns or a tail. Talking to them, I discover they're like many people who call themselves Republicans but aren't really Republicans. At least not in the radical-right way that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft and Co. have defined Republicans.

I asked one man who told me he was a "proud Republican," "Do you think we need strong laws to protect our air and water?"

"Well, sure," he said. "Who doesn't?"

I asked whether women should have equal rights, including the same pay as men.

"Absolutely," he replied.

"Would you discriminate against someone because he or she is gay?"

"Um, no." The pause — I get that a lot when I ask this question — is usually because the average good-hearted person instantly thinks about a gay family member or friend.

I've often found that if I go down the list of "liberal" issues with people who say they're Republican, they are quite liberal and not in sync with the Republicans who run the country. Most don't want America to be the world's police officer and prefer peace to war. They applaud civil rights, believe all Americans should have health insurance and think assault weapons should be banned. Though they may personally oppose abortion, they usually don't think the government has the right to tell a women what to do with her body.

There's a name for these Republicans: RINOs or Republican In Name Only. They possess a liberal, open mind and don't believe in creating a worse life for anyone else.

So why do they use the same label as those who back a status quo of women earning 75 cents to every dollar a man earns, 45 million people without health coverage and a president who has two more countries left on his axis-of-evil-regime-chang e list?

I asked my friend on the street. He said what I hear from all RINOs: "I don't want the government taking my hard-earned money and taxing me to death. That's what the Democrats do."

Money. That's what it comes down to for the RINOs. They do work hard and have been squeezed even harder to make ends meet. They blame Democrats for wanting to take their money. Never mind that it's Republican tax cuts for the rich and billions spent on the Iraq war that have created the largest deficits in history and will put all of us in hock for years to come.

The Republican Party's leadership knows America is not only filled with RINOs, but most Americans are much more liberal than the delegates gathered in New York.

The Republicans know it. That's why this week we're seeing gay-loving Rudy Giuliani, gun-hating Michael Bloomberg and abortion-rights advocate Arnold Schwarzenegger.

As tough of a pill as it is to swallow, Republicans know that the only way to hold onto power is to pass themselves off as, well, as most Americans. It's a good show.

So have a good time, Republicans. It could be your last happy party for awhile if all the RINOs and liberal majority figure it out on Nov. 2. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

A No-Win Situation: Dubya Sticking With Neo-Cons For More Bloody Disasters Like Iraq!!!

08.31.04 (9:04 am) [edit]

[b]A No-Win Situation[/b]

"Everyone wants to go to Baghdad; real men want to go to Tehran." That was the attitude in Washington two years ago, when Ahmad Chalabi was assuring everyone that Iraqis would greet us with flowers. More recently, some of us had a different slogan: "Everyone worries about Najaf; people who are really paying attention worry about Ramadi."

Ever since the uprising in April, the Iraqi town of Falluja has in effect been a small, nasty Islamic republic. But what about the rest of the Sunni triangle?

Last month a Knight-Ridder report suggested that U.S. forces were effectively ceding many urban areas to insurgents. Last Sunday The Times confirmed that while the world's attention was focused on Najaf, western Iraq fell firmly under rebel control. Representatives of the U.S.-installed government have been intimidated, assassinated or executed.

Other towns, like Samarra, have also fallen to insurgents. Attacks on oil pipelines are proliferating. And we're still playing whack-a-mole with Moktada al-Sadr: his Mahdi Army has left Najaf, but remains in control of Sadr City, with its two million people. The Christian Science Monitor reports that "interviews in Baghdad suggest that Sadr is walking away from the standoff with a widening base and supporters who are more militant than before."

For a long time, anyone suggesting analogies with Vietnam was ridiculed. But Iraq optimists have, by my count, already declared victory three times. First there was "Mission Accomplished" - followed by an escalating insurgency. Then there was the capture of Saddam - followed by April's bloody uprising. Finally there was the furtive transfer of formal sovereignty to Ayad Allawi, with implausible claims that this showed progress - a fantasy exploded by the guns of August.

Now, serious security analysts have begun to admit that the goal of a democratic, pro-American Iraq has receded out of reach. Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies - no peacenik - writes that "there is little prospect for peace and stability in Iraq before late 2005, if then."

Mr. Cordesman still thinks (or thought a few weeks ago) that the odds of success in Iraq are "at least even," but by success he means the creation of a government that "is almost certain to be more inclusive of Ba'ath, hard-line religious, and divisive ethnic/sectarian movements than the West would like." And just in case, he urges the U.S. to prepare "a contingency plan for failure."

Fred Kaplan of Slate is even more pessimistic. "This is a terribly grim thing to say," he wrote recently, "but there might be no solution to the problem of Iraq" - no way to produce "a stable, secure, let alone democratic regime. And there's no way we can just pull out without plunging the country, the region, and possibly beyond into still deeper disaster." Deeper disaster? Yes: people who worried about Ramadi are now worrying about Pakistan.

So what's the answer? Here's one thought: much of U.S. policy in Iraq - delaying elections, trying to come up with a formula that blocks simple majority rule, trying to install first Mr. Chalabi, then Mr. Allawi, as strongman - can be seen as a persistent effort to avoid giving Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani his natural dominant role. But recent events in Najaf have demonstrated both the cleric's awesome influence and the limits of American power. Isn't it time to realize that we could do a lot worse than Mr. Sistani, and give him pretty much whatever he wants?

Here's another thought. President Bush says that the troubles in Iraq are the result of unanticipated "catastrophic success." But that catastrophe was predicted by many experts. Mr. Cordesman says their warnings were ignored because we have "the weakest and most ineffective National Security Council in post-war American history," giving control to "a small group of neoconservative ideologues" who "shaped a war without any realistic understanding or plans for shaping a peace."

Yesterday Mr. Bush, who took a "winning the war on terror" bus tour just a few months ago, conceded that "I don't think you can win" the war on terror. But he hasn't changed the national security adviser, nor has he dismissed even one of the ideologues who got us into this no-win situation. Rather than concede that he made mistakes, he's sticking with people who will, if they get the chance, lead us into two, three, many quagmires. - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...

... THE NEW ROAD TO SERFDOM ...

08.31.04 (8:56 am) [edit]

[b]The New Road to Serfdom[/b]

There are four distinct ideological spheres that are dominant in one or more aspects of national life right now, and their ideologies, just "coincidentally," all involve establishing a ruling elite that will rule over a docile and acquiescent populace of serfs. All have a view of the general population that's highly negative - they're either "born evil," they're weak and pleasure loving and easily led, or they're motivated solely by greed and self-interest. Most of these ideologies advocate ruling the population by a combination of deceit and religious beliefs.

[i][b]1) The Neocons[/b][/i], followers of Leo Strauss of the University of Chicago, believers in Machiavellian politics, previously followers of Trotsky and believers in perpetual revolution, are now pushing perpetual war and world domination. They believe the world should be governed by a handful of wealthy elite using deceit to achieve their broader aims; they believe in US domination of the world, and they believe they, as the elite, are the only ones capable of determining the ultimate good of this country. They believe in using religion to control a population that's so weak and pleasure-loving that they can't be trusted with democracy, while exempting themselves and chosen leaders from any requirement that they be religious themselves - although they speak of the benefits of pretending to be so.

[i][b]2) The Dominionists[/b][/i], represented by Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and a host of other religious leaders, have been working for 20 years to establish a theocratic kingdom in this country, where secular laws would be illegitimate and only Biblical law, including stoning for a variety of offenses, is allowable. They, too, believe in an elite composed of a handful of religious leaders controlling the population through draconian law. They believe it's their religious mandate to take over the US on behalf of Dominionist Christianity, and after that, to take over the world and enforce conversion to Christianity on the world's population.

They also believe in Biblical economics. According to the Dominionists, God rewards the Godly here on earth by making them wealthy, and punishes the Ungodly by making them poor or striking them with disabilities and illness. God also believes in unfettered free markets and restricts taxation on the rich, according to this convenient version of Christianity that meshes so handily with free market ideology. This group is responsible for the myth that the US was established as a Christian nation and that it's only "liberals and atheists" who have "taken God out of the schools and public life." There's a bill in Congress now that would prevent the Supreme Court or perhaps any court, depending on how the law's interpreted, from reviewing any decision made by a judge who claims his decision was based on Biblical law. (The Constitution Restoration Act of 2004).

[i][b]3) The free market fundamentalists[/b][/i], who have warped the theories of Adam Smith and Friedrich von Hayek, plus theories from Ricardo and Schumpeter from 150 - 200 years ago that were fatally flawed even when they were proposed, and built them into a theory of free markets that amounts to corporate libertarianism. They believe that corporations should be free of regulation and taxation, and that their sole purpose is to make profits for investors by whatever means necessary, including corporate tax avoidance and off-shoring as many jobs as possible in pursuit of the cheapest labor. In their world view, the worker is the enemy, along with government regulation, taxation, and torts. Their goal is to eliminate unions and constantly put downward pressure on wages until the American work force is desperate enough to work for third world wages.

[i][b]4) The Federalist Society[/b][/i], whose members are the only candidates George Bush nominates to fill openings in the judiciary, also believes in free market economics, and takes the view that the government's only role is to wage war and govern interstate commerce. They see corporations as having rights under the Constitution, and individuals as having none that can, under the Constitution, be established or defended by Congress or the federal courts. (The recent Michigan decision and the Lawrence decisions were anomalies given the voting record of this U.S. Supreme Court). For the past ten years this Supreme Court and many of the federal courts have been rolling back individual rights and protections, workers' rights, and environmental protections in favor of corporate protections. Many of the Federalists also believe in eroding the wall of separation between church and state. Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas are members of Opus Dei, a group that is similar to the Dominionists in the desire to turn the US into a theocracy, as are Senators Santorum and Brownback and no doubt a number of other members of Congress.

All of these dominant ideological groups, as I mentioned, tend to be funded by the same handful of wealthy industrialists, and there's considerable overlapping membership among these groups and their ideologies. All tend to believe in establishing rule by a handful of elite over a population of what are to be, essentially, serfs. This confluence of ideologies is unique in the American experience and seems to me to be more dangerous, in combination, than anything the US has faced before, particularly since so much of their wish list has already been accomplished, and since much of it seems on a course to progress inexorably until the middle class is destroyed and our fates rest in the hand of a wealthy and powerful elite who will then use whatever draconian means necessary to control a restless and increasingly desperate populace.

This wealth and power, and their ownership of most of the media, combine to make this trend nearly unstoppable by others who see this trend more clearly than the average right-winger and the religious right. I suggest that George Bush, by managing to push through his corporate/religious/ war-making agenda so quickly and thoroughly, is doing more to wake up the American public than all of the efforts of progressives combined. Yet there are steps we can take to reach [i][b]some[/b][/i] of the religious right. Beginning right after Barry Goldwater's defeat in 1964, the far right realized that they could never achieve power by speaking openly of their agenda. At that point they began going underground, establishing think tanks and convincing religious leaders that they must begin taking a role in national politics. After 40 years, their control is greater than even the most idealistic of Goldwater followers could ever have imagined.

Aside from their ability to influence Congress, they've also adopted the increasingly sophisticated techniques of the advertising industry to convince the general public that the far right represents the "good" and progressives {"liberals") are responsible for all the ills of society. They've done so by rewriting the English language so completely that opponents have no language left with which to challenge these very dangerous ideas. We can work to take back the language, in a sense, by reframing the issues.

Family values are important to almost all Americans, yet the far right has seized the term and claims ownership. Liberals need to reframe the issue to point out that it's a family value for parents to have a job that pays a living wage so they can support their families and still have time to parent their children. It's also a family value for parents and children to have access to affordable health care; explained by the right candidates and civic leaders, this can be understood by some of the religious right, although anyone looking for a logical thinking among the religious right is looking in vain. The power of brainwashing is so strong, and any claims of "liberals" so equated with "evil," that at least 20% will never be moved.

The 20% figure I cite comes from Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," written in 1964 following Barry Goldwater's defeat. This book is still a "must read" today for anyone wanting to understand the far right. According to Hofstadter, approximately 20% of any population will be most comfortable on the far right. They're characterized by a seemingly innate need to feel themselves surrounded by enemies and constantly at war. They demand that public policy and laws conform exactly with their beliefs, and any departure from an exact parallel between the two makes them feel devalued, disrespected, and under attack. We see evidence of this when those on the right claim that any dissent or disagreement with the administration's policies is "hate America" speech or outright treason.

If Hofstadter is correct about there being 20% who tend toward the far right and paranoia, the 40% of the American public claiming to be fundamentalist Christians is evidence of the power of propaganda on that additional 20%. Perhaps a significant proportion of that extra 20% is reachable by reframing the issues, "taking back" the language, and focusing on the values the vast majority of Americans support - generally those values include help for the poor and elderly, support for the schools and for education, and in general policies that recognize the bind middle income (and lower middle income) families find themselves in and attempt to ameliorate the situation.

A new wrinkle in US politics now is the "fear factor," brought about by 9/11, the administration's constant "terror alerts" and focus on the supposed great danger posed by militant Islamists to the American people. For the presumably 20% of the population, or perhaps more, who are eagerly awaiting Armageddon and envisioning themselves raptured to heaven while the rest of us suffer the plagues of the damned before being whisked to the nether regions, there'll be little chance of offsetting their gleeful anticipation of our demise and their elevation, as portrayed for them in Tim LaHaye's "Left Behind" series. Yet presumably there are others who can be reached by a more rational discussion.

John Kerry is waging a clever campaign, given the time and the circumstances, by attempting to assure the average American that he can keep us safer than George Bush can. In another year and another time, he'd lose much of his base by sounding so militant, but in this time, he can safely ignore his base, knowing that we're so frightened of another GWB term that we'll vote for him no matter what he says.

The campaign that must be waged [i][b]after[/b][/i] what I hope is a Kerry win is one that I don't see even our most liberal leaders pursuing, and therefore one that others of us must take up. We need to discuss calmly and rationally the perceived dangers posed by terrorists and cite experts who will calmly and rationally talk us through the perceived risks, the actual likelihood of such an event coming to pass, and the difficulty any terrorist or "rogue government" would have in accomplishing such things as obtaining a nuclear weapon and the even greater difficulty (the near impossibility) of actually delivering one. Even obtaining and delivering a biological or chemical agent in such as way as to harm large number of Americans makes these overblown fears seem highly unlikely. Once Americans realize that the greatest dangers come from small truck bombs and other small-impact devices, perhaps we can hold a more rational discussion, even with a certain percentage of those who consider themselves fundamentalist Christians. It will be still later, I'm afraid, before we can begin a serious national dialogue about our foreign policy and how every danger we face today comes as a result of blowback from previous foreign policy decisions, many of them covert. I hope, but am not sanguine, that someday this will be a topic we can discuss in detail.

Finally, although I believe we have only ten weeks to reach enough people to save this country from another Bush administration and sheer disaster for all of us and for the world, we must continue to work patiently, just as the far right has done for 30 years, at the local, state and national level to reshape the national dialogue and take back our various levels of government from the far right, never forgetting that the wealth, power, and propaganda organs are in the hands of those who wish to establish in perpetuity a world ruled by a handful of wealth and powerful elite and reduce the rest of us to helpless serfdom - with our own complicity if possible, and if necessary, without it. None of us have all the answers as to how to do this, but I believe we have a two-fold effort ahead of us: to educate people, a few at a time, about what we're up against, and to involve ourselves in the political process at the grassroots level to promote and fund progressive candidates until we can replicate the takeover achieved by the far right. Working together, we can do it if we understand that the battle has just begun and that our work won't be completed for the rest of our lifetimes. - http://www.crisispapers.org/g...

....... BUSH/CHENEY'S NEO-CON BETRAYAL: The New Road to Serfdom .......

08.31.04 (8:54 am) [edit]

... THE NEW ROAD TO SERFDOM ...

08.31.04 (8:49 am) [edit]

....... BUSH/CHENEY'S NEO-CON BETRAYAL: The New Road to Serfdom .......

08.31.04 (8:45 am) [edit]

Swift Boat Scandal: Only 24% Now Believe Kerry is Lying, While 50% Believe its a Bush Smear

08.31.04 (8:39 am) [edit]

[b]AP:[/b] "Americans increasingly believe President Bush's re-election campaign is behind the ads attacking Democrat John Kerry's Vietnam experience, a [National Annenberg Election Survey poll found." Interestingly, the % of people who did not believe Kerry earned his medals was never that high - 30% at the peak, which has dropped to 24%. "In polling from Monday through Thursday, 46% said they believed the Bush campaign was behind the ads and 37% said they thought the ads were done independently." However, "After Ginsberg resigned from the campaign on Wednesday, 50% said in polling the next two nights that the Bush campaign was connected to the ads and 34% said it was not." And, as the full force of public response always lags by 7-10 days, we predict that this incident may be what does Bush in.

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.sacbee.com/24hour/...

Lying Leader of Swift Boat Liars Caught on Tape Telling Nixon: 'I Was in Cambodia, Sir' [A Lie!]

08.30.04 (2:10 pm) [edit]

[b]AP:[/b] "The chief critic of John Kerry's military record told President Nixon in 1971 that he had been in Cambodia in a swift boat during the Vietnam War - a claim at odds with his recent statements that he was not. 'I was in Cambodia, sir. I worked along the border,' said John E. O'Neill in a conversation that was taped by the former president's secret recording system. The tape is stored at the National Archives in College Park, Md. In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, O'Neill did not dispute what he said to Nixon, but insisted he was never actually in Cambodia [although he told Nixon he 'was in Cambodia']. Chad Clanton, a spokesman for the Democratic presidential candidate, said the tape 'is just the latest in a long line of lies and false statements from a group trying to smear John Kerry's military service. Again, they're being proven liars with their own words. It's time for President Bush to stand up and specifically condemn this smear.'"

[b]More[/b] ... http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...

The Real Issue: Bush is Incompetent (Top 10 Reasons Bush should be fired)!!!

08.30.04 (8:46 am) [edit]

[b]Not up to the job.[/b]

NEW YORK President George W. 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: America's president is incompetent. He is not a good president.

Let me count the ways:

1. He has divided the country; we Americans 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 America's proud commander has revealed the hollowness behind 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 that were never meant or trained to handle, and now they are being ordered into battle by an appointed sheik in a far 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, Ahmad 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 America 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://www.truthout.org/docs_...

Torture at Abu Ghraib: The Orders from the Top ...

08.30.04 (8:31 am) [edit]

[u][b]Documents Helped Sow Abuse, Army Report Finds[/b][/u]

[i][b]Top officials did not make interrogation policies clear.[/b][/i]

Early last September, attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq were spiking and an Army general dispatched from a military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, concluded in a classified study that the detention of Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad "does not yet set conditions for successful interrogations."

Under pressure to extract more information from the prisoners - to "go beyond" what Army interrogation rules allowed, as an Army general later put it - the senior U.S. military commander in Iraq sent a secret cable to his boss at U.S. Central Command on Sept. 14, outlining more aggressive interrogation methods he planned to authorize immediately.

The cable signed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez listed several dozen strategies for extracting information, drawn partly from what officials now say was an outdated and improperly permissive Army field manual. But it added one not previously approved for use in Iraq, under the heading of Presence of Military Working Dogs: "Exploit Arab fear of dogs while maintaining security during interrogations."

Sanchez's order calling on police dog handlers to help intimidate detainees into talking - a practice later seen in searing photographs - was one of a handful of documents written by senior officials that Army officials now say helped sow the seeds of prison abuse in Iraq. They did so, according to an Army report released Wednesday, by lending credence to the idea that aggressive interrogation methods were sanctioned by officers going up the chain of command.

But the issue of using dogs is also an example of how the U.S. military's ad hoc and informal decision-making in Iraq created confusion and allowed these harsh methods to infiltrate from Afghanistan to Guantánamo and finally to Iraq, despite Bush administration contentions that detainees in each theater of conflict were subject to different rules and that Iraqis would receive the most protections.

The text of the Sanchez cable was not included in public copies of the Army's report, but was obtained by The Washington Post from a government official upset by what Sanchez approved.

The authors of the Army report did not accuse Sanchez of directly instigating abuse, and they did not cite the contents of his memo in the unclassified version. But Army Gen. Paul J. Kern - who oversaw the drafting of the report - said in an interview last week that Sanchez "wrote a policy which was not clear," and that by doing so, he allowed junior officers to conclude mistakenly that they were following an official policy as they stepped over a legal line.

This interpretation of the role senior officials played - that they committed sins of omission, rather than commission, by writing ambiguous instructions and then failing to police the errant ways of subordinates - is likely to be challenged in court, according to lawyers for some of the soldiers on trial in connection with the prison abuse.

No one above the military grade of the top intelligence commander at Abu Ghraib was legally "culpable" for the abuse, the Army report concluded. But a separate report on the abuse released Wednesday by a panel appointed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld referred to Sanchez's memo on Sept. 14 as one of several documents that led "some soldiers or contractors who committed abuse" to believe "the techniques were condoned."

Other such documents cited by officials who participated in the two probes include a December 2002 memo signed by Rumsfeld that authorized harsh interrogation methods for prisoners at Guantánamo, and a controversial Feb. 7, 2002, memo signed by President Bush that declared that fighters detained in Afghanistan were not entitled as a matter of law to the protections afforded by the Geneva Conventions.

The Rumsfeld memo included authorization for the use of dogs; the Bush memo was cited by legal advisers to Sanchez as the basis for their determination that some Iraqi detainees were not entitled to the full legal protections provided by the Geneva Conventions, according to the independent panel. This "confusion" between interrogation rules devised for use at Guantánamo and Afghanistan and the protections mandated by international law in Iraq contributed to some of the abuse, according to the Army report's executive summary.

Kern said: "We found not culpability" among senior officers such as Sanchez, but "clear responsibility" for not deterring junior officers and enlisted men from inappropriate behavior. "They didn't clarify for those young interrogators what their responsibilities were."

Several abuses in particular are highlighted by the two reports released last week: the use of dogs to frighten detainees, the repeated stripping of detainees, and the use of extended isolation and sensory deprivation. Each clearly violated Army rules and violated Geneva Conventions that protect civilians under military occupation from threats of violence, isolation from visits by the Red Cross, and humiliating and degrading treatment, the Army report said.

The issue of using military dogs illustrates how a blizzard of memos from senior officials sowed an impression of tolerance, if not approval, for aggressive interrogations. It has been a particular embarrassment to the Pentagon since photos of dogs snarling and barking in front of cowering Iraqis - and in one case preparing to bite a detainee - were made public in June, about six months after soldiers there recorded the images.

It also illustrates how, as the independent panel's report concluded, the migration of lists and interrogators from one theater to another resulted in "policies approved for use on al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, who were not afforded the protection of the Geneva Conventions, [being] applied to detainees who did fall under the Geneva Conventions."

Army investigators probing the abuse in Iraq traced the initial idea of using dogs - a technique that does not appear in the service's standard field guide - to interrogation practices followed by U.S. intelligence officials and Special Forces teams deployed in Afghanistan. Kern said the officials there concluded that Afghans feared dogs because of religious beliefs that those bitten are unhealthy or condemned, and became convinced that this fear could be exploited to compel intelligence disclosures.

The technique migrated first from Afghanistan to Guantánamo Bay, via Washington. In late 2002, aides to Rumsfeld - responding to a request by officials at Guantánamo for approval of more aggressive interrogation methods - canvassed officers in Afghanistan and elsewhere. On Dec. 2, Rumsfeld approved techniques for use only at that site, which included "the use of dogs to induce stress and the removal of clothing as Counter-Resistance techniques," according to the Army report.

Rumsfeld rescinded his memo the following month, after a private protest by Navy general counsel Alberto J. Mora over its sanctioning of practices in violation of international law and military regulations. The independent panel's report faulted Rumsfeld for not obtaining "a wider range of legal opinions and a more robust debate" before he approved the rules. It also said his promulgation of these guidelines - even temporarily - contributed "to a belief that stronger interrogation methods were needed and appropriate."

By April, after a Pentagon review, Rumsfeld approved a new list of interrogation techniques that omitted the use of dogs. But U.S. Special Operations forces in Afghanistan, meanwhile, continued to use many of the practices on Rumsfeld's Dec. 2 list, including "isolating people for long periods of time, using stress positions, exploiting fear of dogs, and implementing sleep and light deprivation," the Army report concluded.

U.S. military commanders there urged the removal of clothing on grounds that "no specific written legal prohibition existed." The Pentagon has not released details of abusive Special Forces activities in Afghanistan. But the independent panel said an unreleased Defense Department report has found "a range of abuses and causes similar in scope and magnitude" to those involving interrogators at Abu Ghraib.

In Afghanistan, these tactics were also employed by members of the Army's 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, a unit transferred to Iraq in the summer of 2003. After Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the top official at the Guantánamo prison, visited Abu Ghraib from Aug. 31 to Sept. 9 and called for more rigorous interrogations there, some of these tactics - including the use of dogs - were incorporated in a memo drafted by Sanchez's legal office on Sept. 10 and sent to prison interrogators.

Sanchez's legal advisers subsequently drew on both this guidance and the legal justifications in Bush's 2002 directive while drafting the Sept. 14 cable from Sanchez to Lt. Gen. John P. Abizaid, the head of U.S. Central Command, the independent panel's report said.

"Enclosed is the policy modeled on the one implemented for interrogation conducted at Gitmo," Sanchez said in his cable, referring to Guantánamo Bay. It authorized not only exploiting prisoners' "fear" of dogs but also the use of isolation; "sleep management"; "yelling, loud music, and light control . . . to create fear, disorient detainees and capture shock"; deception, including fake documents and reports; and "stress positions," such as forced kneeling for as many as four hours at a time.

The cable placed no restrictions on the use of dogs on "detainees" and "security internees," but said any use involving enemy prisoners of war would require Sanchez's direct approval. In fact, as Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, an intelligence official who co-wrote the Army report, said in an interview last week, the use of this narrow qualifying phrase in Sanchez's memo reflected bad "staff work" by the lawyers who drafted it for Sanchez's approval, because U.S. military forces "did not have very many enemy prisoners of war at that point."

Within one month, Sanchez's cable was rescinded on instructions from senior officials at U.S. Central Command and replaced with a more cautious memo that allowed the use of muzzled dogs during interrogations only when Sanchez gave his direct approval - something he told investigators he was never asked to do.

His new memo was based in part on an outdated 1987 version of the Army Field Manual for interrogations, which was more permissive than the 1992 version then in effect because it allowed complete control of light, heat, food, clothing and shelter as interrogation techniques, the Army report concluded. Investigators attributed this error by Sanchez's office to the Army's failure to update a key Web site with the 1992 report.

But whatever Sanchez's intent or policy, the practice of "abusing detainees with dogs started almost immediately" after the Army, acting at Miller's urging, brought several dog teams to Abu Ghraib in November 2003.

The fact that at least three "confusing and inconsistent" interrogation directives were approved within a month-long period "contributed to the belief" that illegal interrogation techniques were condoned, the Army report stated. An absence of leadership and oversight also left room for what the Army report described as "word of mouth" techniques to be passed around and followed by interrogators deployed to Iraq.

The Army report quoted Sanchez as saying he "never approved use of dogs." Fay also said in the report that "no documentation was found" showing approval by the Combined Joint Task Force 7, headed by Sanchez, "to use dogs in interrogations."

Asked to explain the apparent conflict between language in the report and the text of Sanchez's cable, Kern said that what Sanchez meant is that he never specifically approved an interrogation plan submitted to him for review that involved the use of dogs, while Fay said that Sanchez believes he only endorsed the general presence of muzzled dogs at the time interrogations were being conducted, rather than inside prison interrogation booths - a practice that was clearly misunderstood.

Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the senior intelligence official at Abu Ghraib, told Army investigators that Miller, in addition to Sanchez, had authorized the use of dogs to "set the stage" for productive interrogations. But the authors of the report accepted Miller's contrary contention that he only recommended using dogs for detainee custody and control at Abu Ghraib. Miller is the head of U.S. military detainee operations in Iraq. - http://www.truthout.org/docs_...

GOP Wonders:-- How Did Bush Stature Change??? ...

08.30.04 (8:27 am) [edit]

WASHINGTON -- No gloating, President Bush warned his White House staff in November 2002. It was an order he strained to follow himself.

Flush with his success at leading Republicans to victory in congressional mid-term elections, Bush claimed the results as a mandate for his policies on terrorism, Iraq and tax cuts, and for his brand of trust-my-gut conservatism. "I think the way to look at this election is to say that people want something done," he told reporters. To skeptics at home and abroad, he declared: "I don't spend a lot of time taking polls ... to tell me what I think is the right way to act; I just got to know how I feel."

As Bush heads to the Republican National Convention in New York, the man who stood astride the political world at that news conference in 2002 is a distinctly more life-size figure. With the election just 65 days away, there is a puzzle: How did a leader who was so formidable become so vulnerable?

In small ways, the answer is an accumulation of miscalculations and missed opportunities that have marred the president's political operation this year, in the view of some Republicans inside that operation and others beyond it. In a large way, however, Bush's predicament is less a reversal of his 2002 success than a natural progression of it -- the consequence of two confrontations he sought that autumn.

To the dismay of Democrats, who suspected he was manipulating national security for political advantage, he invited the electorate two years ago to judge him over the then-looming confrontation with Iraq. To the delight of Democrats, it is precisely such judgments that polls say are shadowing his re-election campaign.

By the same token, his decision to confront Democrats directly and immerse himselfin partisan electioneering ensured that he would face reelection with little of the rally-behind-the-leader sentiment that flowed to him in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

To the contrary, Bush' s decisions and political style have virtually eliminated the political center -- sending all but a small percentage of Americans into fevered pro- and anti- camps -- and dictated a general election strategy organized around exciting core supporters and increasing turnout. This approach upends conventional re-election strategy, which holds that a president should mostly finish his base-tending the year before voting, and spend the general election softening his rhetoric and showering blandishments on independent voters in the ideological middle.

Matthew Dowd, the Bush-Cheney campaign's senior strategist, said the conventional strategy is obsolete in an election dominated by national security: "The same thing that appeals to our partisans appeals to those folks in the middle, which is: What are you going to do about terror?"

Drawing a contrast with former President Bill Clinton, Dowd added that both groups admire a president willing to take controversial actions to meet problems, rather than expending political capital on small-but-popular initiatives: "This is a president who decided to play big ball instead of small ball."

There are indications that, in the home stretch, Bush is planning to return to the milder brand of "compassionate conservatism" on which he ran in 2000. This week's GOP convention will feature such speakers as California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who hold clear appeal to moderates, even though they have views on abortion and other social topics that are anathema to the party's conservative base. Democratic strategists say they are surprised that Bush is making this pivot so late , and only this week planning to lay out details of a proposed second-term agenda.

Without question, it is real-world facts -- events in Iraq, the economy at home -- that are shaping Bush's re-election prospects more than any decision about strategy, in the view of campaign operatives with the president and the Democratic nominee, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

Even so, a variety of critical Democrats and anxious Republicans outside Bush's campaign believe that the long and mostly downward arc of Bush's political strength over the past year is also the result of some specific misjudgments. Two stand out as most important:

-- The enactment of a prescription drug benefit under Medicare in December. The expectation was that by delivering on this promise, which is the most expensive expansion of government social benefits in 40 years, Bush would take away an issue that historically had belonged to Democrats. As it happened, by passing a bill with mostly GOP support Bush did not reap much political gain. Polls show voters still strongly trust Democrats and Kerry more than Bush to protect senior citizens' health care, and many are wary of a benefit that is more complicated and slower to arrive than they wanted.

-- The missed opportunity of the State of the Union address last January. Bush spoke to a large national television audience, but polls showed little movement upward in his support. Critics said that in content and tone, much of his rhetoric seemed aimed at existing supporters of his Iraq and tax-cut policies rather than presenting new arguments to doubters. He foreshadowed his support for a constitutional amendment to block gay marriage, which polls say is the most important issue for social conservatives, at the risk of alienating more tolerant independents who think the issue should be decided by states.

These large events were reinforced by several smaller ones, including what even some Bush political aides acknowledge were middling performances in a high-profile "Meet the Press" interview on NBC last winter and a news conference in the spring in which he professed himself stumped when asked if he could think of any mistakes he had made.

In its own way, that answer was of a piece with the values Bush has followed at every major juncture of his presidency. It is a brand of politics that believes the assertion of power can create the reality of power -- and that it is preferable to act boldly and make other politicians accommodate Bush's agenda rather than try to accommodate their doubts. Bush did not offer coalition government after winning the contested 2000 election with a minority of the vote, nor did he offer to split the difference when Democrats complained that his tax cuts were too large. Instead, he corralled Republicans and a handful of Democrats and enacted the tax cuts into law.

A top official from a former Republican White House said Bush's governing operation created critical problems for his political arm by deciding to "divide and conquer rather than unite and win." This official, who refused to be named because he works with Bush's inner circle, said that largely because of Vice President Dick Cheney's influence, the White House adopted a confrontational style with Capitol Hill and with the Democratic Party that is endangering Bush's chance of re-election. "There's nobody over there saying, 'No,"' the official said. "It's all the same Kool-Aid. Instead of the art of governing, it's been, 'Are you for me or against me?"'

Steven Schier, a Carleton College political scientist, has edited a book on Bush's political style called "High Risk, Big Ambition." In pursuit of large goals, Schier believes, Bush and his political team are willing to take "audacious risks" with voters in the middle so long as the GOP base is secure; 2002 showed the rewards of this style, while 2004 has so far highlighted the perils.

"When you take risks, if your premises are wrong, you pay a price," said Schier, who noted that Bush might well be coasting to victory had he been proved right that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or that tax cuts would have an unambiguous stimulative effect on the economy. As it is, he has spent the year stroking his partisan base and pursuing an electoral strategy that amounts to "reaching the top of a low ceiling."

-0-

In 2000, Bush campaigned expressly inviting a comparison of his leadership style and President Bill Clinton's. "They have not led; we will," he declared at his first nominating convention. What has been striking about the past two years is the extent to which Bush has been a mirror image of Clinton.

The comparison worked to his advantage in the fall of 2002. Clinton's first mid-term elections resulted in a massive repudiation of his party and majority control that Republicans have yet to surrender. The GOP gains after two years of Bush contradicted long history dictating that a new president's party loses seats in mid-term elections.

Clinton's humiliation forced him to transform his strategy for reelection. He adapted a governing style in which he cast himself as unconcerned with partisan politics and relentlessly embraced policy positions that had been extensively polled and proved popular with large majorities. After the State of the Union address in 1996, when Clinton angered liberals in his party but captured the center with his declaration that "the era of big government is over," he never trailed in the race for reelection. By August, after Republican Bob Dole's convention but before his own -- exactly the point Bush is at now -- Clinton was leading by 10 points in the polls. Bush started the month a couple of points behind Kerry, but has nudged slightly ahead in several recent polls.

In contrast to Clinton's "near-death experience," Bush's experience apparently has emboldened him to believe that he can win by downplaying independents and "making Republicans come out of the woodwork," said Bruce Reed, a former Clinton administration official. The Clinton comparison is revealing of Bush's election strategy in other ways. Clinton's brand of campaigning involved regular policy pronouncements and proposals, sometimes several a week. Some, such as cell phones for neighborhood watch groups, were criticized as piddling, but collectively they presented a vision of a smaller-but-still-activis t government that proved popular with voters.

Ken Mehlman, Bush's campaign manager, said the president has no interest in such minutia, even if popular. "His goal is not week-to-week opinion polls," Mehlman said.

But critics says Bush has not filled out his policy agenda for a second term in ways big or small. White House communications director Dan Bartlett said the president made a decision to save many details about his vision for his acceptance speech. "We clearly made a decision early on that it was important that we have things to say in the fall," Bartlett said, and not unveil proposals when "all the oxygen" with the news media and public is being consumed by Iraq.

Mark Penn, Clinton's pollster, believes the shortcomings of Bush's political strategy on both domestic policy and Iraq were on vivid display at the state of the union. While no rhetorical formulation could offset bad news -- such as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal or mounting U.S. casualties in Iraq -- the political costs of these would have been lessened if Bush had presented "more of a flow of information and an explanation to state the case," Penn said. Bush has later made such acknowledgments, but his initial posture of refusing to admit error or surprise apparently caused many people to stop listening to him.

-0-

There were few indications that Bush hit panic buttons last January. This was the same month that one of the White House's 2003 assumptions about the campaign -- the president would be running against the anti-war Howard Dean -- was overturned by Kerry's comeback success in Iowa and New Hampshire. Even then, the assumption was that Bush's then- formidable financial lead could be used to fund advertising that would leave Kerry irrecoverably behind in polls by the time of his convention. This did not happen, though Bush aides say they are pleased at polls showing that ads depicting Kerry as weak-willed and a flip-flopper have influenced public opinion.

The public posture of unyielding optimism about Bush's prospects and insistence that his strategy has worked creates a dissonance. Top Bush operatives such as Mehlman say they have been surprised that Kerry has not offered more policy substance to date, and other Bush aides are even more blunt in bad-mouthing the Democrat as a weak candidate. In the next breath, they say the campaign is happy with the president's posture -- running even in the horse race, with job approval ratings under 50 percent in most polls.

Surely, though, it would have come as a rude surprise if Bush strategists had been told a year ago that two months before the election the president would be running even with a man they regard as a clumsy opponent. In fact, the numbers illuminate a steady decline. Bush's job approval in a Washington Post/ABC News poll this month was 47 percent, 11 points lower than a year ago. Even his core asset -- the public's confidence in how he is handling terrorism -- has dropped more than 20 points from the spring of 2003 to this summer, and stands in the mid-50s.

Privately, some White House officials acknowledge that they have not had a major success since the capture of Saddam Hussein in December, which provided a fleeting bump in polls. Some of these officials have begun what, for them, is the rare process of second-guessing themselves. For instance, some of Bush's senior aides now believe that they would be better off if they had preserved Medicare prescription drugs to use as a campaign issue.

But Dowd said that no strategy was going to prevent the election from being a narrowly fought and highly polarized contest. "The dominant parties occupy 90 to 92 percent of the landscape. There are very few people that swing in the middle anymore," he said. "We're playing within the 45 or 47-yard lines, so nobody's going to break away in this thing."

Bartlett predicted that Bush's aggressive posture will pay dividends this fall, as even people who disagree with him on particulars appreciate that "there's no ambiguity where he stands. Paraphrasing a voter, Bartlett said, "Do I agree with everything Bush is doing? No. But on the big things, I feel pretty good about him, or reassured about him. If things go wrong again, I feel good about him being there." - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Voting with one hand on Bible in Oklahoma [Poor dumb slobs :(]

08.30.04 (8:23 am) [edit]

TULSA, Okla. — They crowded into a cavernous auditorium in this hard luck city for their marching orders, more than 2,000 soldiers in what was described as the fight for "the most important issue facing Western civilization in our time": the preservation of marriage "as a holy covenant between God, a man and a woman."

Pray, they were told. Vote in November. Write your senator; here's the address. Men were advised to do the dishes at home, and women to hug their husbands, whether they wanted to or not. Equal parts religious revival, campaign event and counseling session, the greater Tulsa "pro-marriage rally" last week ) was living proof that a key way to influence the ballots of many Oklahomans is through their Bibles — not their billfolds.

The state has lost nearly 20% of its manufacturing jobs during the Bush administration, and has lagged the nation in recovery. Tulsa and its surrounding communities, for example, have lost about 24,000 jobs as three major industries — oil and gas, telecommunications, and aerospace — took hits.

In many areas, that would be a blueprint for change, a sign that the incumbent should be shoved out of the Oval Office. But not in Oklahoma, one of the reddest of the red states — the designation for places where support for President Bush is especially strong.

Read article on http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Hundreds of Thousands of Americans in NYC Say 'Hey, Ho, Bush Has Got to Go'!

08.30.04 (8:15 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]

Why the Youth Are Abandoning Bush in Favor of John F. Kerry!!!

08.30.04 (8:12 am) [edit]

[b]Youth Is Fleeting for Bush[/b]

Of course it would never happen like this, but it should: President Bush and political guru Karl Rove are enjoying a quiet evening together in the private quarters of the White House. Suddenly, Rove looks up in horror from his computer printouts and asks:

"George . . . where are the kids?"

Where, indeed. And we're not talking about Jenna Bush or her sister Barbara, but millions of other younger voters who supported Bush in 2000 but currently plan to vote for Democratic nominee John Kerry.

Surveys suggest that Bush's popularity has plummeted among 18- to 29-year-olds in the past four months, posing a new obstacle to the president's bid to win reelection and an immediate challenge to Republicans seeking to win over impressionable and lightly committed young people during their upcoming convention.

Four years ago, network exit polls found that Bush and Democrat Al Gore split the vote of 18- to 29-year-olds, with Gore claiming 48 percent and Bush getting 46 percent -- the best showing by a Republican presidential candidate in more than a decade.

But that was then. In the latest Post-ABC News poll taken immediately after the Democratic convention, Kerry led Bush 2-1 among registered voters younger than 30. Among older voters, the race was virtually tied.

Bush's problems with younger voters began months before the Democratic convention, Post-ABC polls suggest. The last time Bush and Kerry were tied among the under-30 crowd was back in April. In the five surveys conducted since then, Bush has trailed Kerry by an average of 18 percentage points.

Virtually every other major poll conducted in the past month confirms Kerry's newfound and perhaps transient popularity with voters under the age of 30. The size of this advantage varies, due in part to the relatively small number of younger voters and correspondingly large margin of sampling error in each survey.

A Newsweek Poll conducted on July 29-30 found Kerry with a 51-32 lead among 18- to 29-year-olds. The CBS News/New York Times post-convention survey of registered voters showed Kerry with a 50-31 advantage among this group.

Kerry also led among young adults in most surveys conducted during the weeks leading up to the convention. The combined data from surveys of 2,891 registered voters conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in May and June showed a 15-point Kerry lead, but its mid-July survey found the race tied. A Newsweek poll exclusively of younger voters interviewed in mid-July found Kerry with a 48-41 lead while a Post-ABC News survey put the Democrat ahead by 9 points on the eve of his party's convention.

Read entire article on http://www.washingtonpost.com...

EPA Warns of Dangers of Sewage Overflows While Bush Regime Abandons Plan to Prevent Them

08.30.04 (8:09 am) [edit]

[b]EPA Warns of Dangers of Sewage Overflows While Bush Administration Abandons Plan to Prevent Them[/b]

WASHINGTON - August 26 - The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today announced that more must be done to prevent sewage overflows that threaten health and water quality. Yet the Bush administration has proposed to cut funding for programs to help local communities update their sewage systems. The administration also halted proposed requirements for improving sewage system maintenance and warning communities when the overflows occur.

"The EPA says sewage overflows are a serious health threat but the Bush administration is shelving solutions that would prevent overflows," said Ed Hopkins, director of Sierra Club's Environmental Quality Program. "Sewage overflows pose serious health risks to communities. But instead of working with localities to prevent sewage overflows and to warn the public when they occur, the Bush administration is turning a blind eye to the problem, cutting necessary funding for updating and maintaining sewage systems."

The Bush administration put the brakes on a plan that would warn communities about overflows. In January 2001, the EPA proposed new requirements for fixing outdated sewer systems. The proposed rule would have protected the public from raw sewage by requiring improvements in the capacity, maintenance and operation of municipal sewage treatment systems. In addition, it would have required public reporting and notification of sewer overflows. The total cost would have amounted to less than two dollars-$1.92- per household per year. But the Bush administration, concerned about the costs of the proposal, blocked the proposal and refused to take any action, leaving people's health at risk and protections against sewage overflows on permanent hold.

Further, the Bush administration has proposed massive cuts in funding to help municipal sewage treatment systems do a better job. In Fiscal Year 2005, for example, the administration proposed cutting $500 million for sewage treatment, a reduction of almost one-third - costs that financially strapped states and municipalities cannot afford.

Sewage overflows are bad for people's health, the economy, and the environment. The EPA's new report estimates that up to 75,000 discharges of raw sewage occur each year from sanitary sewer systems, releasing between 3 billion and 10 billion gallons of untreated wastewater. That sewage ends up in our drinking water sources, streams and homes. The threat to people's health is serious and widespread. Raw sewage typically contains bacteria, viruses and other pathogens that can cause a variety of illnesses, from mild gastroenteritis (stomach cramps and diarrhea) to life-threatening illnesses such as cholera, dysentery and infectious hepatitis.

Sewage overflows inflict significant health and cleanup costs. Experts indicate that billions of dollars in health care are spent each year on the estimated 7.1 million mild-to-moderate cases and the 560,000 moderate-to-severe cases of infectious waterborne disease in the United States. The EPA has estimated that 400,000 basement backups occur each year at a cost of approximately $600 million. Closing sewage-contaminated beaches costs our economy $1-$2 billion each year, according to the EPA. Fish kills and shellfish bed closures impose further costs. - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

[b]CONTACT:[/b] Sierra Club - http://www.sierraclub.org/
Wendy Balazik, 202-675-2383

EPA Warns of Dangers of Sewage Overflows While Bush Regime Abandons Plan to Prevent Them

08.30.04 (8:07 am) [edit]

Major Temperature Rise Recorded in Arctic This Year: German Scientists

08.30.04 (8:02 am) [edit]

PARIS - German scientists probing global warming said they had detected a major temperature rise this year in the Arctic Ocean and linked this to a progressive shrinking of the region's sea ice.

Temperatures recorded this year in the upper 500 meters (1,625 feet) of sea in the Fram Strait -- the gap between Greenland and the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen -- were up to 0.6 C (1.08 F) higher than in 2003, they said in a press release received here.

The rise was detectable to a water depth of 2,000 meters (6,500 feet), "representing an exceptionally strong signal by ocean standards," it said.

The experts, from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, have been recording temperatures aboard a specialized vessel, Polarstern (Pole Star), for the past six weeks.

The sampling has been taking place in the West Spitsbergen Current, which carries warm water from the Atlantic into the Arctic Ocean.

The institute said water in the Fram Strait has been warming steadily since 1990 and over the past three years, satellite images had documented "a clear recession" of sea ice edges, both in the strait and the Barents Sea.

The latest data "point towards a further warming tendency," the institute said.

In June, a UN organization announced that American scientists had detected an "alarmingly rapid growth" this year in airborne concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), the fossil-fuel pollutant blamed for global warming.

CO2 levels recorded in March 2004 at Hawaii measured 379 parts per million (ppm), an increase of three ppm over the previous year.

By comparison, there had been an annual increase of only 1.8 ppm over the past decade. Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 before the Industrial Revolution were 280 ppm.

The June announcement was made at a conference on renewable energies in Bonn by Joke Waller-Hunter, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) -- the United Nations' paramount environment accord.

CO2 is the most important of the six "greenhouse" gases blamed for driving changes to the world's delicate climate system.

These gases hang like an invisible shroud in the atmosphere, trapping the Sun's heat and inflicting what many scientists predict will be serious changes to icecaps, glaciers and weather patterns.

In the Earth's distant past, climate change has occurred naturally, by emissions of CO2 disgorged by volcanoes and other phenomena.

But the overwhelming majority of climate experts say CO2 levels are rising fast today because of the unbridled burning of oil, gas and coal.

Opinions differ, though, as to how fast the effects will occur and how bad they will be. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Major Temperature Rise Recorded in Arctic This Year: German Scientists

08.30.04 (8:00 am) [edit]

Karl 'Balloon-face McGoon' Now Tells Bush Who He Can and Can't Meet with

08.29.04 (2:40 pm) [edit]

There is no question at all now who really runs the White House - and it isn't George 'Puppetman' Bush. The Independent reports "Michael Howard last night accused George Bush of seeking to protect Tony Blair in an extraordinary row sparked by news that the Tory leader has been banned from the White House.Mr Howard hit back after it emerged that his calls for Mr Blair to stand down over the Iraq war have enraged the US President. The simmering feud was laid bare yesterday as it emerged that Karl Rove, Mr Bush's most powerful official, told the Tory leader that he "could forget about meeting the President". Mr Howard last night launched an unprecedented attack on Mr Bush. "If some people in the White House, in their desire to protect Mr Blair, think I am too tough on Mr Blair or too critical of him, they are entitled to their opinion. But I shall continue to do my job as I see fit," he said."

Read article on http://news.independent.co.uk...

Karl 'Balloon-face McGoon' Now Tells Bush Who He Can and Can't Meet with

08.29.04 (2:39 pm) [edit]

If Bush is Re(s)elected, the US will be at war in Iran within a Year

08.29.04 (2:36 pm) [edit]

Anyone who casts a vote for G. W. Bush this November is casting a vote for a third war, this one in Iran. They will also be casting a vote for the deaths of hundreds of more US soldiers in yet another war zone and, most likely, for a draft. The Guardian reports: "History is beginning to repeat itself, this time over Iran. Just two years after the notorious Downing Street dossier on Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction and the first efforts to get United Nations approval for war, Washington is trying to create similar pressures for action against Iran. The ingredients are well-known: sexed-up intelligence material which puts the target country in the worst possible light; moves to get the UN to declare it in "non- compliance", thereby claiming justification for going in unilaterally even if the UN gives no support for invasion; and at the back of the whole brouhaha, a clique of American neoconservatives whose real agenda is regime change. "

Read article on http://www.guardian.co.uk/com...,3604,1291797,00.html

If Bush is Re(s)elected, the US will be at war in Iran within a Year

08.29.04 (2:35 pm) [edit]

If Bush is Re(s)elected, the US will be at war in Iran within a Year

08.29.04 (2:32 pm) [edit]

Bush=Hitler: A Holocaust Survivor Speaks Out!!!

08.27.04 (1:49 pm) [edit]

[b]The Bush Hitler Thing[/b]

Dear Sir,

My family was one of Hitler's victims. We lost a lot under the Nazi occupation, including an uncle who died in the camps and a cousin killed by a booby trap. I was terrified when my father went ballistic after finding my brother and me playing with a hand grenade. (I was only 12 at the time, and my brother insisted the grenade was safe.) I remember the rubble and the hardships of 'austerity' - and the bomb craters from Allied bombs. As late as the 1980s, I had to take detours while bombs were being removed - they litter the countryside, buried under parking lots,buildings, and in the canals and rivers to this day. Believe me, I learned a lot about Hitler while I was growing up, both in Europe and here in the US - both my parents were in the war and talked about it constantly, unlike most American families. I spent my earliest years with the second-hand fear that trickled down from their PTSD - undiagnosed and untreated in those days.

I'm no expert on WWII - but I learned a lot about what happened in Germany - and Europe - back in those days. I always wondered how the wonderful German people - so honest, decent, hard-working, friendly, and generous - could ever allow such a thing to happen. (There were camps near my family's home - they still talk about them only in hushed conspiratorial whispers.) I asked a lot of questions - we were only a few kilometers from the German border - and no one ever denied me. My relatives had obviously spent a lot of time thinking about the war - they still haven't forgotten - I don't think anyone can forget such a horrible nightmare. Among the questions I asked:

[b]Why didn't you do anything about the people in the camps?[/b]

Everyone was terrified. People 'disappeared' into those camps. Sometimes the Nazis came and lined everyone up, walking behind them - even school children - with a cocked pistol. You never knew when they would just shoot someone in the back of the head. Everyone was terrified. Everyone was disarmed - guns were registered, so all the Nazis had to do was go from house to house and demand the guns.

[b] Didn't you see what was happening?[/b]

We saw. There was nothing we could do. Our military had no modern weapons. The Nazis had technology and resources - they just invaded and took over - we were overwhelmed by their air power. They had spies everywhere - people spying on each other, just to have an 'ace in the hole' in case they were accused - and anyone who had a grudge against you could accuse you of something - just an accusation meant you'd disappear. Nobody dared ask where you had gone - anyone who returned was considered suspicious - what had they said, and who did they implicate? It was a climate of fear - there's nothing anyone can do when the government uses fear and imprisonment to intimidate people. The government was above the law - even in Germany, it became 'every man for himself'. Advancement was possible by exposing 'traitors' - anyone who questioned the government. It didn't matter if the people you accused were guilty or not - just the accusation was enough.

[b]Did anyone know what was going on? [/b]

We all knew. We imagined the worst because the Nazis made 'examples' of a few people in every town and village. Public torture and execution. The most unspeakable atrocities were committed in full view of everyone. If this is what happened in public, can you imagine what might be going on in the camps? Nobody wanted to know.

[b]Why didn't the German people stop the Nazis?[/b]

Life was better, at first, under the Nazis. The war machine invigorated the economy - men had jobs again, and enough money to take care of their family. New building projects were everywhere. The shops were full again - and people could afford good food, culture, and luxuries. Women could stay home in comfort. Crime was reduced. Health care improved. It was a rosy scenario - Hitler brought order and prosperity. His policies won widespread approval because life was better for most Germans, after the misery of reparations and inflation. The people liked the idea of removing the worst elements of society - the gypsies, the homosexuals, the petty criminals - it was easy to elicit support for prosecuting the corrupt 'evil'people poisoning society. Every family was proud of their hometown heroes - the sharply-dressed soldiers they contributed to his program - they were, after all,defending the Fatherland. Continuing a proud tradition that had been defeated and shamed after WWI, the soldiers gave the feeling of power and success to the proud families that showered them with praise and support. Their early victories were reason to celebrate - in spite of the fact that they faced poorly armed inferior forces - further proof that what they were doing was right, and the best thing for the country. The news was full of stories about their bravery and accomplishments against a vile enemy. They were 'liberating' these countries from their corrupt governments.

These are some of the answers I gleaned over the years. As a child, I was fascinated with the Nazis. I thought the German soldiers were really something - that's how strong an impression they made, even after the war. After all, they weren't the ones committing war crimes - they were the pride of their families and communities. It was just the SS and Gestapo that were 'bad'. Now I know better -but that pride in the military was a strong factor for many years, only adding to the mystique of military power - after all, my father had been a soldier too, but in the American army. It took a while to figure out the truth.

Every time I've gone back to Europe, someone has taken me to the 'gardens of stone' - the Allied cemeteries that dot the countryside. With great sadness, my relatives would stand in abject misery, remembering the nightmare, and asking 'Why?'. Maybe that's why they wouldn't support the US invasion of Iraq. They knew war. They knew occupation. And they knew resistance. I saw the building where British flyers hid on their way back to England - smuggled out by brave families that risked the lives of everyone to help the Allies. As a child, I had played in a basement, where the cow lived under the house, as is common there. The same place those flyers hid.

So why, now, when I hear GWB's speeches, do I think of Hitler? Why have I drawn a parallel between the Nazis and the present administration? Just one small reason -the phrase 'Never forget'. Never let this happen again. It is better to question our government - because it really can happen here - than to ignore the possibility.

So far, I've seen nothing to eliminate the possibility that Bush is on the same course as Hitler. And I've seen far too many analogies to dismiss the possibility. The propaganda. The lies. The rhetoric. The nationalism. The flag waving. The pretext of 'preventive war'. The flaunting of international law and international standards of justice. The disappearances of 'undesirable' aliens. The threats against protesters. The invasion of a non-threatening sovereign nation. The occupation of a hostile country. The promises of prosperity and security. The spying on ordinary citizens. The incitement to spy on one's neighbors - and report them to the government. The arrogant triumphant pride in military conquest. The honoring of soldiers. The tributes to 'fallen warriors. The diversion of money to the military. The demonization of government appointed 'enemies'. The establishment of 'Homeland Security'. The dehumanization of 'foreigners'. The total lack of interest in the victims of government policy. The incarceration of the poor and mentally ill. The growing prosperity from military ventures. The illusion of 'goodness' and primacy. The new einsatzgrupen forces. Assassination teams. Closed extralegal internment camps. The militarization of domestic police. Media blackout of non-approved issues. Blacklisting of protesters - including the no-fly lists and photographing dissenters at rallies.

There isn't much doubt in my mind - anyone who compares the history of Hitler's rise to power and the progression of recent events in the US cannot avoid the parallels. It's incontrovertible. Is Bush another Hitler? Maybe not, but with each incriminating event, the parallel grows -it certainly cannot be dismissed. There's too much evidence already. Just as Hitler used American tactics to plan and execute his reign, it looks as if Karl Rove is reading Hitler's playbook to plan world domination - and that is the stated intent of both. From the Reichstag fire to the landing at Nuremberg to the motto of "Gott Mit Uns" to the unprovoked invasion and occupation of Iraq to the insistence that peace was the ultimate goal, the line is unbroken and unwavering.

I'm afraid now, that what may still come to pass is a reign far more savage and barbaric than that of the Nazis. Already, appeasement has been fruitless - it only encourages the brazen to escalate their arrogance and braggadocio. Americans support Bush - by a generous majority - and mass media sings his praises while indicting his detractors - or silencing their opinions completely. The American people seem to care only about the domestic economic situation - and even in that, they are in complete denial. They don't want to hear about Iraq, and Afghanistan is already forgotten. Even the Democratic opposition supports the occupation of Iraq. Everyone seems to agree that Saddam Hussein deserves to be executed -with or without a trial. 'Visitors' are fingerprinted. Guilty until proven innocent. Snipers are on New York City rooftops. When do the Stryker teams start appearing on American streets? They're perfectly suited for 'Homeland Security' - and they've had a trial run in Iraq. The Constitution has been suspended - until further notice. Dick Cheney just mentioned it may be for decades - even a generation, as Rice asserts as well. Is this the start of the 1000 year reign of this new collection of thugs? So it would seem.

I can only hope that in the coming year there will be some sign - some hint - that we are not becoming that which we abhor. The Theory of the Grotesque fares all too well these days. It may not be Nazi Germany - it might be a lot worse.

SL | Wisconsin - http://www.truthout.org/cgi-b...

[[b]Note:[/b] This letter was written on Friday 09 January 2004 before the neo-hitlerian atrocities committed by Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld at Abu Ghraib were disclosed to the public. History is repeating itself in the most grotesque and vile manner, which is why Bush=Hitler and his neo-con thugs must go.]

Corrupt Bush/Cheney Bow to Nuclear Industry Pressure by Gutting Environmental Policy

08.27.04 (11:24 am) [edit]

[b]Government Bows to Nuclear Industry Pressure by Gutting Its Environmental Justice Policy [/b]

WASHINGTON - August 24 - Ignoring the expressed concerns of citizens’ groups, including Public Citizen and the Washington, D.C.-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), http://www.nirs.org/ the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) http://www.nrc.gov/ today published in the [i]Federal Register [/i]its final policy statement on the issue of “environmental justice” (EJ), the phenomenon of disproportionate adverse environmental impacts of federal projects on minority and/or low-income populations. The agency should have endeavored to carry out the just and progressive executive order (EO) issued by President Bill Clinton in 1994 calling on agencies to incorporate EJ programs into their respective missions, which then-NRC Chairman Ivan Selin pledged to do. Instead, the NRC has bowed to industry pressure to inexorably weaken its ability to ensure that its licensing actions are fair, just and free of economic and racial discrimination, NIRS and Public Citizen said today.

“While the policy statement on the treatment of environmental justice matters in NRC licensing, rulemaking and regulatory actions purports to be a reaffirmation of the NRC’s commitment to the consideration of environmental justice issues, the new policy is disingenuous and retreats from the basic principles of environmental justice as established in the initial executive order,” said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program http://www.citizen.org/cmep/ .

Today’s NRC policy statement asserts that the executive order “does not establish new substantive or procedural requirements applicable to NRC regulatory or licensing activities.” The result is that the NRC likely will refuse to consider legal challenges regarding issues of racial discrimination, fairness and economic equity in its licensing hearings. In a current proceeding involving a proposed uranium enrichment plant, the NRC commissioners already ordered that only themselves – not the licensing board overseeing the hearing – would determine whether environmental justice issues would be heard.

The new policy appears to be a nod to the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), http://www.nei.org/ which is the lobbying arm of the nuclear industry and which submitted a letter to the NRC in December 2002 sharply criticizing the agency for its handling of EJ issues in licensing hearings. Those hearings involve Louisiana Energy Services, http://www.citizen.org/cmep/e... which is seeking a license for a uranium enrichment facility in New Mexico, and Private Fuel Storage, http://www.citizen.org/cmep/e... which is seeking a license for a high-level nuclear waste storage facility on the Indian reservation of the Goshute tribe in Skull Valley, Utah.Today’s statement appropriates many of the arguments and incorporates some of the recommendations articulated by the NEI in its letter. Moreover, the NEI has the broad interest of securing a license for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, http://www.citizen.org/cmep/e... which may also face contentions related to EJ. (The state of Nevada submitted comments urging the NRC to retract its EJ policy statement.)

“The NRC is abandoning environmental justice for Jim Crow regulation,” said Michael Mariotte, executive director of NIRS. “The federal agency might as well hang a ‘Nuclear Industry Only’ sign on the hearing room door.”

As three large electric utilities seek Early Site Permits for the construction of new nuclear reactors and two energy industry consortiums seek licenses for controversial nuclear facilities, there is a manifest industry interest to clear the path for the licensing of these projects. Already, an NRC judicial board has dismissed an EJ contention brought to a licensing hearing for a new nuclear reactor at the Grand Gulf site http://www.citizen.org/cmep/e... in Port Gibson, Miss. The draft version of the EJ policy was cited by the board in dismissing charges that the proposed reactor would have disproportionate and adverse impacts on the surrounding area’s predominately African-American population. Grand Gulf is in Claiborne County, Miss., which is 84 percent African-American with 32 percent living at or below the poverty line. Despite the racial and economic makeup of the county, the board was not willing even to consider that reactor operations, nor inadequately funded emergency plans, might cause a disproportionate impact – even though the electricity from the plant is not intended for the region.

“The situation in Claiborne County demonstrates the need for a strong, enforceable policy on environmental justice, but the NRC is instead eviscerating its policy,” Mariotte said. “It is unfortunate that the NRC appears so willing to violate its regulatory duty by reneging on the directives of the EO, when the only beneficiary of this action is the industry it regulates.”

According to the NRC, more than 700 people submitted postcard comments opposing the changes to the NRC’s policy.

To read the[i] Federal Register [/i]notice regarding the NRC’s EJ policy, click here http://frwebgate.access.gpo.g... .

To read Public Citizen’s initial comments on the NRC’s draft EJ policy statement, click here http://www.citizen.org/cmep/e... .

To read NIRS’ comments on the draft policy, click here http://www.nirs.org/Commentso... .

[b]CONTACT:[/b] Public Citizen - http://www.citizen.org/
Newsroom: 202-588-7742

Corrupt Bush/Cheney Bow to Nuclear Industry Pressure by Gutting Environmental Policy

08.27.04 (11:22 am) [edit]

Corrupt Bush/Cheney Bow to Nuclear Industry Pressure by Gutting Environmental Policy

08.27.04 (11:20 am) [edit]

74% of American Voters Want Paper Trails - and a President who Will Fight for Them

08.27.04 (11:01 am) [edit]

"A new poll shows growing support for requiring electronic voting machines to produce a voter-verified paper trail. Just under half of all respondents -- 44% -- said they thought computerized voting systems are unreliable, up from about one-fourth of respondents in other studies. And [74%] said the systems should produce a paper record that the voter can review. 60% said they would vote for a presidential candidate this year who supports requiring a paper trail... By contrast, just 15% of respondents said they would support a candidate who said producing a paper audit record is an unnecessary expense and that voters can trust what they see on the voting-machine screen... While neither candidate has come out clearly for or against requiring a paper trail, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has said that he thinks systems should be able to trace and recount all votes."

[b]More[/b] ... http://www.wired.com/news/pol...,1283,64700,00.html

74% of American Voters Want Paper Trails - and a President who Will Fight for Them

08.27.04 (10:58 am) [edit]

First Large Protest Kicks Off Week of Expected Anti-GOP Rallies

08.27.04 (10:52 am) [edit]

NEW YORK -- Kat McIver was so disgusted with the Democratic and Republican parties that she walked 258 miles from Boston to New York to protest at both of their conventions.

McIver, a 22-year-old activist from Orange County, Calif., helped organize DNC2RNC, a march that began at the Democratic Convention in Boston and ended Thursday blocks south of Madison Square Garden, where the Republican National Convention will begin on Monday.

"The two parties are not representative of the people," she said. "They represent corporate greed."

Nearly a thousand people joined McIver and about 50 other fellow travelers from Boston at Central Park, the first large rally before a week expected to draw hundreds of thousands of protesters to the GOP convention. The event runs from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2.

"I feel the country needs to be reclaimed and I want to show solidarity with the people who will help us get it back," said Paul Lambermont, 43, of Queens, who joined the marchers.

The DNC2RNC coalition, a mix of environmentalists, labor unionists and community activists, held aloft the red and black standard of the anarchist movement, American flags and a large banner that read "Democracy Uprising" as they wound their way down Broadway, flanked on both sides by hundreds of police officers. The marchers chanted "No Bush, no Kerry, revolution is necessary" and "Drop Bush, not bombs" to cheers from some onlookers.

At a separate demonstration on Thursday, a small group of AIDS activists were arrested after they stripped naked opposite the site of the convention, demanding that President Bush make good on his promise to help HIV-positive people in the world's poorest countries. They were variously charged with public lewdness, disorderly conduct and reckless endangerment.

Earlier Thursday, police arrested four people for allegedly unfurling an anti-Bush banner out of the Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue. The sign had the word "truth" on an arrow pointing north toward Central Park - where anti-war protesters want to rally - and another arrow with "Bush" pointing south toward Madison Square Garden.

Police said an officer needed 38 stitches for a leg wound he suffered at the scene, and the four protesters were charged with assault along with reckless endangerment, criminal trespassing and other offenses.

An additional five protesters were arrested Thursday night at Union Square, two for allegedly using a bullhorn without a permit and three on charges of obstructing governmental administration, police said.

[b]Larger protests are still to come [/b]

The anti-war group United for Peace and Justice said it would stage a march on the eve of the convention past Madison Square Garden and ending at Union Square. The group also suggested that protesters could still gather in Central Park that day, despite a judge's ruling that it may not stage a rally there.

"To our supporters, we ask that you follow our march to the end and then make your own decision," said Leslie Cagan, the group's national coordinator.

United for Peace and Justice also announced that the Rev. Jesse Jackson, liberal filmmaker Michael Moore and actor Danny Glover were expected to join the march.

A second group, which saw its appeal to stage a rally in Central Park on Saturday rejected in a Federal Court earlier this week, said that it has begun handing out fliers informing protesters of their right to congregate in Central Park.

The flier issued by the ANSWER coalition outlines city regulations, which the group says allow protesters to bring political signs to the park as long as they are no larger than 2 by 3 feet.

"The fact is that people are coming to Central Park," said Brian Becker, national coordinator for the group. "It is their constitutional right to do so."

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Friday that most of the demonstrators "want to voice their opinions in a peaceful way."

"I think there are a small number of people who want to come here and be disruptive, we're aware of that, were prepared to handle that," Kelly said in an interview on CBS's "The Early Show. "But again, the vast majority of people are going to be peaceful."

A poll released Thursday said 81 percent of New Yorkers approve of lawful demonstrations during the convention, and 68 percent approve of nonviolent civil disobedience. Nearly all disapprove of violent protests, the Quinnipiac University Poll found.

Eleven percent said that they would take part in protests this weekend or during the four-day convention.

Lisa Fithian, national co-chair for United for Peace and Justice, said the DNC2RNC march was just the beginning.

"We know Sunday when we march, we are following in the footsteps of people who walked 258 miles," she told the crowd. "It's the power of the people who are going to make a difference in this country." - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

First Large Protest Kicks Off Week of Expected Anti-GOP Rallies

08.27.04 (10:50 am) [edit]

Bush/GOP Hates Freedom of Assembly, Freedom of Speech: Judge Blocks Central Park Protest

08.26.04 (8:27 am) [edit]

[b]Judge Blocks Central Park Protest [/b]

A judge has denied a protest group's plea to rally in Central Park during the Republican convention.

Earlier, before the judge's ruling, the group indicated it would go forward with the Sunday demonstration even if the it was barred from the park.

"Whatever the judge rules about the rally site, United for Peace and Justice http://www.unitedforpeace.org... is continuing with our planned protest march," the group said in a statement released Wednesday afternoon.

United for Peace and Justice's national director, Leslie Cagan, said during testimony at a hearing in State Supreme Court yesterday that she would cancel the scheduled Sunday rally rather than hold it on the West Side Highway, the one location the city has suggested as a viable spot. If the rally is canceled, it is unclear where the 250,000 protesters would go once they finish marching past Madison Square Garden.

The group said that in a meeting with police this morning, the 250,000 protestors will assemble for the march this Sunday starting at 10 a.m. at 7th Avenue and 14th Street. They would begin marching at noon, travelling up 7th Avenue past MSG.

Despite the crushing time constraints, Cagan said yesterday she and her organization are optimistic an eleventh-hour arrangement can be worked out with the city.

"We remain hopeful, as strange as that might sound," she said at a news conference outside the courthouse Tuesday.

The city's lawyer, Jonathan Pines, said the Parks Department argument that Central Park cannot accommodate the quarter million people expected to attend the rally is now trumped by a more pressing concern: time.

"We shouldn't even have to go there," he said in his closing arguments. "At this point, it is too late in the day. There is simply not enough time here."

He said the city would not be able to handle the anticipated crowds if the judge ruled in the protesters' favor.

"We're talking about 250,000 people here. We're not talking about a walk in the park," Pines said. "We could've been here in May when the Parks Department first denied the permit."

The group had filed its permit request to use the park more than a year ago.

Christopher Dunn, associate legal director with the New York Civil Liberties Union, said arguments about freedom of expression aside, the cost of staging the rally on the West Side Highway would be prohibitive to event organizers.

"They can't afford it," he said, referring to the $631,000 price tag for sound equipment and jumbotrons. Event organizers estimate that it would cost less than half - or $250,000 - if the rally were held in Central Park.

In an attempt to undermine the city's contention that the Great Lawn could not sustain the crowd, Jeffrey Fogel, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, drew a comparison to a nuclear disarmament march in 1982 that drew a much larger crowd - at least double the number expected Sunday.

But Judge Jacqueline Silberman, who is hearing the case, cut Fogel short. "The park was different and the world was different," Silberman said.

In the mostly quiet courtroom yesterday, the raucous din of dozens of disgruntled protesters outside drifted into the hearing, at times drowning out the testimony.

The contrast in moods reflected the divergent views about the purpose Central Park serves. Rally organizers view the park as the city's town square, a public forum with a rich tradition of acting as an assembly space for divergent political ideas and voices.

On the other side of the spectrum is Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the Parks Department, which see the park more as a safe haven for New Yorkers, as important for recreation as for exercising rights.

Fogel said closing the park to the rally would be akin to silencing it for dissent in the future. "We do live in a different era," Fogel said. "The question is, are we going to remain a democracy?" - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

....... Rumsfeld--and Others--Must Go .......

08.26.04 (7:51 am) [edit]

Why Donald Rumsfeld still has his job is beyond me.

The Secretary of Defense wasn't alert to the threat posed by Al Qaeda in the summer of 2001.

Then, like the man who loses his keys in a dark alley but looks for them under the lamppost because there's more light there, Rumsfeld immediately wanted to bomb Iraq because he said there weren't enough targets in Afghanistan.

He repeatedly undercut the diplomacy of Colin Powell.

He grossly underestimated the number of troops needed for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

And he shares responsibility for the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, according to the new Schlesinger report.

"The abuses were not just the failure of some individuals to follow known standards, and they are more than the failure of a few leaders to enforce proper discipline," the report notes. "There is both institutional and personal responsibility at higher levels"--including Rumsfeld's level.

One member of the commission, Tillie Fowler, said, "We found a string of failures that go well beyond an isolated cellblock in Iraq. We found fundamental failures throughout all levels of command. . . . These failures of leadership helped set the conditions which allowed for the abusive practice to take place."

One of those failures, according to the report, was Rumsfeld's "decisions beginning on December 2, 2002, to authorize for use at Guantánamo16 additional interrogation procedures more aggressive" than the standard military methods. These procedures included the use of dogs, the stripping of detainees, and making detainees sit or stand in painful positions for long periods of time. "The augmented techniques for Guantánamo migrated to Afghanistan and Iraq, where they were neither limited nor safeguarded."

The verb "migrated" is unfortunate. It implies something natural or instinctive that birds do. But some human beings made the decisions to engage in these abusive practices, and higher ups let such practices go on.

Another unfortunate word choice in the report was the "purposeless sadism" at Abu Ghraib.

What, pray tell, would "purposeful sadism" be?

The torture scandal goes beyond Rumsfeld and the Pentagon.

It reaches into the CIA, whose officers were allegedly involved in the torture. The commission did not receive "full access to information involving the role of the Central Intelligence Agency," the report notes.

The torture scandal reaches into the Justice Department, where the Attorney General and his deputies justified the use of torture by splitting hairs about what the actual definition of torture is, and by stating that torture is OK, anyway, if it is "pursuant" to the President's authority as commander in chief.

And the scandal reaches into the White House. Bush's legal counsel, Alberto Gonzales, referred to the Geneva Conventions as "quaint" and "antiquated."

So, yes, Rumsfeld has got to go.

But other high officials need to be held accountable, too. - http://www.progressive.org/we...

Abu Ghraib War Crimes: A Trail of 'Major Failures' Leads to Defense Secretary's Office

08.26.04 (7:41 am) [edit]

[b]A Trail of 'Major Failures' Leads to Defense Secretary's Office [/b]

For Donald H. Rumsfeld to resign over the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib would be a mistake, the four-member panel headed by James M. Schlesinger [Bush Crime Family toady] asserted Tuesday. But in tracing responsibility for what went wrong at Abu Ghraib, it drew a line that extended to the defense secretary's office.

The panel cited what it called major failures on the part of Mr. Rumsfeld and his aides in not anticipating and responding swiftly to the post-invasion insurgency in Iraq. On the eve of the Republican convention, that verdict could not have been welcome at the White House, where postwar problems in Iraq represent perhaps President Bush's greatest political liability.

The report rarely mentions Mr. Rumsfeld by name, referring most often instead to the "office of the secretary of defense." But as a sharp criticism of postwar planning for Iraq, it represents the most explicit official indictment to date of an operation that was very much the province of Mr. Rumsfeld and his top deputies.

[b]More [/b]... http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...

[b]Findings on Abu Ghraib Prison: Sadism, 'Deviant Behavior' and a Failure of Leadership [/b]

Following are excerpts from the executive summary of the final report of the Independent Panel to Review Department of Defense Detention Operations, which was released Tuesday. The full text is online at nytimes.com/international :-- http://www.nytimes.com/intern...

[b]More[/b] ... http://nytimes.com/2004/08/25...

GOP Rounds up Black Delegates from a Few Key States in What Amounts to a 'Racial Cattle Call'

08.26.04 (7:23 am) [edit]

To give the appearance of "diversity," the Repugs have rounded up as many black delegates as they can muster to attend the Republican Convention. US Newswire: "The number of African Americans attending next week's Republican National Convention will be almost double the number in 2000, according to Blacks and the 2004 Republican National Convention, a new report by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. The 167 black delegates represent a 96.5 percent increase, and also set a new record for the largest percentage of black delegates (6.7 percent)." Yep, gotta get those "statistics" up. But that it is merely a cattle call for warm bodies is indicated by the finding that "Fewer African Americans will be holding key positions at the Republican convention than at the Democratic event last month" and that the increase in delegates came only from a few key states and thus represent concentrated hard sells (or inducements) rather than real diversity.

[b]More[/b] ... http://releases.usnewswire.co...

..... MPs Plan to Impeach Blair Over Iraq War Record .....

08.26.04 (7:19 am) [edit]

MPs are planning to impeach Tony Blair for "high crimes and misdemeanors" in taking Britain to war against Iraq, reviving an ancient practice last used against Lord Palmerston more than 150 years ago.

Eleven MPs led by Adam Price, Plaid Cymru MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, are to table a motion when parliament returns that will force the prime minister to appear before the Commons to defend his record in the run-up to the war.

Nine of the MPs are Welsh and Scottish Nationalists, including the party leaders, Elfyn Llwyd, and Alex Salmond, and two are Conservative frontbenchers, Boris Johnson, MP for Henley and editor of the Spectator, and Nigel Evans, MP for Ribble Valley.

A number of Labour backbenchers are considering whether to back the motion, though it could mean expulsion from the party.

The MPs' decision follows the commissioning of a 100-page report http://image.guardian.co.uk/s... which lays out the case for impeaching Mr Blair and the precedents for action, including arguments laid down in Erskine May, the parliamentary bible, on impeachments dating back to medieval times.

The authors are Glen Rangwala, a lecturer in politics at Newnham College, Cambridge, and Dan Plesch, honorary fellow of Birkbeck College, London.

Under the ancient right, which has never been repealed, it takes only one MP to move a motion and the Speaker has to grant a debate on the impeachment. This means, at the least, Mr Blair will have to face a fresh debate on his personal handling of the war and there will have to be a vote in parliament on whether to institute impeachment proceedings.

In effect, impeachments were discontinued after Lord Palmerston, accused of concluding a secret treaty with Russia, survived an impeachment debate in 1848. The proceedings were replaced with a convention on ministerial responsibility, with ministers being forced to resign if they misled parliament. The last two cases involved the Home Office minister Beverley Hughes, over immigration clearances in Romania and Bulgaria, and Peter Mandelson over the Hinduja passports affair.

Mr Price said he believed the case was compelling. "To dust off Victorian constitutional histories and examine precedents from the time of Charles I and Chaucer may seem bizarre. But the conduct of the prime minister has left people and parliament with no alternative if we are to preserve the very basis of democracy." - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

..... MPs Plan to Impeach Blair Over Iraq War Record .....

08.26.04 (7:16 am) [edit]

....... This Week Veterans Come Out in Defense of Kerry, Criticizing Dole .......

08.25.04 (11:30 am) [edit]

[b]Veterans defend Kerry, criticize Dole[/b]

BOSTON — Vietnam war veterans on Monday defended Democratic White House hopeful John Kerry from charges he lied to get his medals and scolded prominent Republican Bob Dole for joining the critics.

Dole fiercely attacked Kerry on CNN television Sunday, saying the Democratic senator from Massachusetts had won "three Purple Hearts and never bled that I know of. I mean, they're all superficial wounds."

"John Kerry is lucky to be alive today. The fourth Purple Heart could have been an AK-47 (bullet) through the heart," former lieutenant Rich Baker countered in a conference call arranged by the Kerry campaign.

The Purple Heart "is the one medal you don't even want," because it means you were wounded or killed, said Rich McCann, who told reporters many veterans would gladly trade their medals for "an arm or leg" lost at war.

Baker and McCann, as well as another veteran, Jim Russell, said they had taken part in patrols and at least one firefight with Kerry, who has made his service in Vietnam a centerpiece of his campaign for president.

Dole's suggestion that Kerry "never bled" runs counter to U.S. Navy records showing that Kerry, who also won a Bronze Star and a Silver Star for bravery, still carries shrapnel in his left thigh from a February 1969 firefight.

The attack from Dole, who was severely wounded during World War II, came as the Kerry campaign redoubled its efforts to link U.S. President George W Bush to the attacks by "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth."

But Kerry aides and supporters have not been able to cite any firm evidence that the president or his top strategist are behind the accusations, which have put the Democrat on the defensive ahead of the Nov 2 elections.

"I hope that the president will stand up and repudiate this smear campaign and get back to the issues important to the American people," Democratic Senator Jack Reed said in the conference call.

Bush has refused to repudiate commercials by the group, but collaboration between it and the president's reelection campaign would violate campaign finance laws.

Kerry aides note that one of the veterans in the group's ads served until late last week as a coordinator for veterans issues for the Bush campaign. They also point out that a Bush headquarters in Florida was caught organizing rallies touting the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth."

They also point to a New York Times report that several backers of the group's ad campaign have close ties to the Bush family.

And the Kerry campaign has taken to running an Internet ad featuring Sen John McCain, Bush's rival for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, accusing Bush of having smeared his record during that campaign.

McCain now supports Bush, but has called the anti-Kerry group's campaign "dishonest and dishonorable" and called on the White House to repudiate it. (Wire reports) - http://www.japantoday.com/e/?...

Study Contradicts Cheney-Bush Claim [Lie] of Undue Limits on Western Oil, Gas Drilling

08.25.04 (7:16 am) [edit]

[b]Study Contradicts Cheney-Bush Claim of Undue Limits on Western Oil, Gas Drilling[/b]

A new study of federal land records finds no evidence for the Bush administration's insistent claims that restrictions on access to U.S. public lands have hampered oil and gas development and led to greater dependence on foreign oil.

In a town meeting in Arkansas on August 3, Vice President Cheney asserted again that "[w]e've taken large chunks of the country and put it off limits to any kind of exploration or development...large parts of the Rocky Mountain West are off limits." Cheney blamed this alleged lack of access for the fact that "we aren't producing [oil and gas] here at home".

An extensive investigation by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) http://www.ewg.org/ found Cheney's assertion to be little more than myth. "The west has been wide open to the oil and gas industry for the last 22 years," Dusty Horwitt, one of the lead authors, told BushGreenwatch. "The rhetoric" about lack of access, Horwitt said, "is just an attempt to open especially sensitive lands to friends of the administration."

The EWG study reports that oil and gas interests poured over $75 million into political campaigns, of which 79% went to Republicans. [1]

The study, "Who Owns the West?: Oil and Gas Leases," found that since 1982 the federal government has leased 229 million acres for drilling on public and private land in 12 western states -- an area equal to Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona combined.

Moreover, according to the federal government's own studies, the oil and gas industry already has access to a high percentage of land in the five western basins that contain "most of the natural gas and much of the oil under public ownership within the 48 contiguous states."

In these reserves, 88 percent of the natural gas and 85 percent of the oil is on land open to leasing.

Since 1982, U.S. dependence on foreign oil has doubled, and American reliance on foreign gas has tripled. At current rates of U.S. energy consumption, the reserves in the five richest western basins contain at most a 279-day supply of oil and an 8-year supply of natural gas.

Domestic energy production can do little to close America's yawning gap between production and consumption, or address the problem of increasing dependence. Despite the relatively small amounts of energy available in the West, the Bush administration has made a determined push to remove barriers for drilling on an additional 45 million acres. It has also reversed environmental protections on lands already open to development.

The Bush effort will do little to make the U.S. less vulnerable to foreign energy producers. But, noted Horwitt, it will line the pockets of the oil and gas industries.

###

[b]SOURCES:[/b] - http://www.bushgreenwatch.org...

[1] "Who Owns the West?: Oil and Gas Leases," EWG report, Aug. 25, 2004.

Study Contradicts Cheney-Bush Claim [Lie] of Undue Limits on Western Oil, Gas Drilling

08.25.04 (7:14 am) [edit]

Study Contradicts Cheney-Bush Claim [Lie] of Undue Limits on Western Oil, Gas Drilling

08.25.04 (7:11 am) [edit]

... Kerry Wins Backing from Nobel Economics Laureates

08.25.04 (7:04 am) [edit]

[b]Kerry Wins Backing from Nobel Economics Laureates [/b]

John Kerry won the endorsement of 10 Nobel Prize-winning economists on Wednesday as he attacked President Bush for policies that he said have led to the creation of only low-paying jobs.

The Democratic presidential nominee released a letter from the economists saying the Bush administration had "embarked on a reckless and extreme course that endangers the long-term economic health of our nation."

They cited "poorly designed" tax cuts that instead of creating jobs have turned budget surpluses into enormous budget deficits, a "fiscal irresponsibility threatens the long-term economic security and prosperity of our nation."

The endorsement, in the form of an open letter American voters, was signed by George Akerlof and Daniel McFadden of the University of California at Berkeley, Kenneth Arrow and William Sharpe of Stanford University, Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University, Lawrence Klein of the University of Pennsylvania, Douglass North of Washington University, Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow of MIT and Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University.

Kerry, in remarks prepared for an appearance in Philadelphia, called for "jobs that don't just let you survive but let you get ahead. Jobs that let you pay your bills, send your kids to college, buy a house, save a little for retirement and go out to dinner or a movie every once in a while."

Now, he said, good jobs are being replaced "with ones that just don't pay the bills," -- 1.8 million private sector jobs lost replaced by ones that pay $9,000 less and are more likely to be temporary less likely to offer health insurance.

Kerry hammered on the jobs issue in his neck-and-neck race for the Nov. 2 election with Bush after days of focus on criticism about his Vietnam war record.

In an appearance in Philadelphia Tuesday night the decorated veteran who became one of the conflict's leading critics firmly defended his opposition to the war.

Voters "can judge my character" by his Vietnam record, the Massachusetts senator said, "Because when the times of moral crisis existed in this country, I wasn't taking care of myself. I was taking care of public policy. I was taking care of things that made a difference to the life of this nation."

He said he served in Vietnam for two tours -- longer than opponents allege -- and the Navy "thought enough of my service that they made me an aide to an admiral."

Aides said his total service was about six months, including four months and 10 days in country and several weeks on a ship off the coast.

He was awarded a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts.

"The Navy 35 years ago made the awards that it made through the normal process. I'm proud of them and I'm of my service and I'm proud that I stood up against the war when I got home because it was the right thing to do," he added.

The controversy over how Kerry won his medals in that war 35 years ago has recently stolen the spotlight in the race for the White House as both candidates try to portray themselves as best able to lead the United States in its global anti-terror war.

Some veterans, some with ties to the Republican Party and Bush allies, have called Kerry's courage into question and disputed the circumstances under which he received his medals.

But other veterans -- with direct knowledge of events -- have backed him up.

Bush's record during the Vietnam war has also drawn criticism from some Democrats who accuse him of going absent without leave from the Texas Air National Guard, citing gaps in his service record. Bush did not serve in Vietnam. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

... Kerry Wins Backing from Nobel Economics Laureates (DimWits will still vote for DimWit Dubya)

08.25.04 (7:01 am) [edit]

Repug Bush/Cheney Senior Adviser in Iraq: "We Blundered & Screwed-up" Iraq ... Yeah, People DIED

08.24.04 (1:29 pm) [edit]

[b]What Went Wrong in Iraq

By Larry Diamond[/b]

Summary: Although the early U.S. blunders in the occupation of Iraq are well known, their consequences are just now becoming clear. The Bush administration was never willing to commit the resources necessary to secure the country and did not make the most of the resources it had. U.S. officials did get a number of things right, but they never understood-or even listened to-the country they were seeking to rebuild. As a result, the democratic future of Iraq now hangs in the balance.

[i][b]Larry Diamond is Co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. From January to April 2004, he served as a Senior Adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad.[/b][/i]

[b]BLUNDERING IN BAGHDAD[/b]

With the transfer of power to a new interim Iraqi government on June 28, the political phase of U.S. occupation came to an abrupt end. The transfer marked an urgently needed, and in some ways hopeful, new departure for Iraq. But it did not erase, or even much ease at first, the most pressing problems confronting that beleaguered country: endemic violence, a shattered state, a nonfunctioning economy, and a decimated society. Some of these problems may have been inevitable consequences of the war to topple Saddam Hussein. But Iraq today falls far short of what the Bush administration promised. As a result of a long chain of U.S. miscalculations, the coalition occupation has left Iraq in far worse shape than it need have and has diminished the long-term prospects of democracy there. Iraqis, Americans, and other foreigners continue to be killed. What went wrong?

Many of the original miscalculations made by the Bush administration are well known. But the early blunders have had diffuse, profound, and lasting consequences-some of which are only now becoming clear. The first and foremost of these errors concerned security: the Bush administration was never willing to commit anything like the forces necessary to ensure order in postwar Iraq. From the beginning, military experts warned Washington that the task would require, as Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki told Congress in February 2003, "hundreds of thousands" of troops. For the United States to deploy forces in Iraq at the same ratio to population as NATO had in Bosnia would have required half a million troops. Yet the coalition force level never reached even a third of that figure. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his senior civilian deputies rejected every call for a much larger commitment and made it very clear, despite their disingenuous promises to give the military "everything" it asked for, that such requests would not be welcome. No officer missed the lesson of General Shinseki, whom the Pentagon rewarded for his public candor by announcing his replacement a year early, making him a lame-duck leader long before his term expired. Officers and soldiers in Iraq were forced to keep their complaints about insufficient manpower and equipment private, even as top political officials in the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) insisted publicly that greater military action was necessary to secure the country.

In truth, around 300,000 troops might have been enough to make Iraq largely secure after the war. But doing so would also have required different kinds of troops, with different rules of engagement. The coalition should have deployed vastly more military police and other troops trained for urban patrols, crowd control, civil reconstruction, and peace maintenance and enforcement. Tens of thousands of soldiers with sophisticated monitoring equipment should have been posted along the borders with Syria and Iran to intercept the flows of foreign terrorists, Iranian intelligence agents, money, and weapons.

But Washington failed to take such steps, for the same reasons it decided to occupy Iraq with a relatively light force: hubris and ideology. Contemptuous of the State Department's regional experts who were seen as too "soft" to remake Iraq, a small group of Pentagon officials ignored the elaborate postwar planning the State Department had overseen through its "Future of Iraq" project, which had anticipated many of the problems that emerged after the invasion. Instead of preparing for the worst, Pentagon planners assumed that Iraqis would joyously welcome U.S. and international troops as liberators. With Saddam's military and security apparatus destroyed, the thinking went, Washington could capitalize on the goodwill by handing the country over to Iraqi expatriates such as Ahmed Chalabi, who would quickly create a new democratic state. Not only would fewer U.S. troops be needed at first, but within a year, the troop levels could drop to a few tens of thousands.

Of course, these naive assumptions quickly collapsed, along with overall security, in the immediate aftermath of the war. U.S. troops stood by helplessly, outnumbered and unprepared, as much of Iraq's remaining physical, economic, and institutional infrastructure was systematically looted and sabotaged. And even once it became obvious that the looting was not a one-time breakdown of social order but an elaborately organized, armed, and financed resistance to the U.S. occupation, the Bush administration compounded its initial mistakes by stubbornly refusing to send in more troops. Administration officials repeatedly deluded themselves into believing that the defeat of the insurgency was just around the corner-just as soon as the long, hot summer of 2003 ended, or reconstruction dollars started flowing in and jobs were created, or the political transition began, or Saddam Hussein was captured, or the interim government was inaugurated. As in Vietnam, a turning point always seemed imminent, and Washington refused to grasp the depth of popular disaffection.

Under its chief administrator, Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, the CPA (which ruled Iraq from May 2003 until June 2004) worked hard and creatively to craft a transition to a legitimate, viable, and democratic system of government while rebuilding the overall economy and society. As I saw during my brief tenure as a senior CPA adviser on governance earlier this year, the U.S. administration got a number of things right. But one cannot review the political record without underscoring the pervasive security deficit, which undermined everything else the coalition sought to achieve.

[b]NATIONAL INSECURITY[/b]

Any effort to rebuild a shattered, war-torn country should include four basic components: political reconstruction of a legitimate and capable state; economic reconstruction, including the rebuilding of the country's physical infrastructure and the creation of rules and institutions that enable a market economy; social reconstruction, including the renewal (or in some cases, creation) of a civil society and political culture that foster voluntary cooperation and the limitation of state power; and the provision of general security, to establish a safe and orderly environment.

These four elements interact in intimate ways. Without legitimate, rule-based, and effective government, economic and physical reconstruction will lag and investors will refuse to risk their capital to produce jobs and new wealth. Without demonstrable progress on the economic front, a new government cannot develop or sustain legitimacy, and its effectiveness will quickly wane. Without the development of social capital-in the form of horizontal bonds of trust and cooperation in a (re)emerging civil society-economic development will not proceed with sufficient vigor or variety, and the new system of government will not be properly scrutinized or supported. And without security, everything else grinds to a halt.

In postconflict situations in which the state has collapsed, security trumps everything: it is the central pedestal that supports all else. Without some minimum level of security, people cannot engage in trade and commerce, organize to rebuild their communities, or participate meaningfully in politics. Without security, a country has nothing but disorder, distrust, and desperation-an utterly Hobbesian situation in which fear pervades and raw force dominates. This is why violence-ridden societies tend to turn to almost any political force that promises to provide order, even if it is oppressive. It is a big reason why the CPA was unable to spend most of the $18.6 billion for Iraqi reconstruction appropriated by Congress last fall. And it explains why a country must first have a state before it can become a democracy. The primary requirement of a state is that it hold a monopoly on the use of violence. By that measure, the body that the United States transferred power to in Baghdad on June 28 may have been a government-but it was not a state.

Even though insufficient forces were deployed to Iraq, much more could have been done with them to build security and contain the forces of disorder before the handoff. Unfortunately, not only did the CPA lack the resources for the job, it also lacked the understanding and organization. The effort to create a new Iraqi police force, for example, withered from haste, inefficiency, poor planning, and sheer incompetence. Newly minted Iraqi cops were rushed onto the job with too little training, insufficient vetting, and shamefully inadequate equipment. Although most had uniforms (of a sort), they lacked cars, radios, and body armor and were often outgunned by the criminals, terrorists, and saboteurs they faced. As vital symbols of the new Iraqi state, the police also quickly became "soft targets" for terrorist attacks, and coalition forces did too little too late to protect them.

Iraqi politicians, civic leaders, and government officials, as well as civilian coalition officials and their Iraqi aides, paid a heavy price for the lack of security. More than 100 Iraqi government workers were killed during the occupation, including several high-level officials and the occupant of the Governing Council's rotating presidency. Iraqis collaborating with the occupation (including those lining up for jobs) became targets-especially translators, a fact that worsened the CPA's already severe language gap. Although few CPA officials themselves were killed, many were attacked, and numerous civilian contractors were slain or kidnapped.

Insecurity drove the political occupation into a physical and psychological bunker. Already separated from Iraqis by the formidable security around the three-square-mile "Green Zone" (where the CPA was based) and around the CPA's regional and provincial headquarters, coalition officials began to travel less and less with every passing month. By the early spring of this year, foreign officials and contractors could no longer safely move around the country without an armored car and a well-armed escort. And even these precautions failed to protect them from well-placed and powerful roadside bombs. The most secure means of transportation, helicopters, were usually unavailable to all but the highest officials-one of many shortages that lasted throughout the occupation and that the Pentagon was very slow and very inefficient in addressing.

Also absent was the determination to face down political threats, as the case of Muqtada al-Sadr made painfully clear. Sadr, a radical young Shiite cleric, sought to fan and exploit anti-American, nationalist, and Islamist sentiments in a bid for power. Although he lacked the religious knowledge and authority of his father (who was assassinated in 1999) or of more senior and respected Shiite clerics, Sadr managed to build a following among disaffected, unemployed, and poorly educated young men in Iraq's cities. The coalition should have quickly developed a strategy to counter him and his al-Mahdi militia. Some Shiite leaders urged that Sadr be co-opted into the political process, while many moderate Shiites and CPA officials urged that he be dealt with through legal or military means. But the CPA did none of these things; instead, it prevaricated. In August 2003, the Iraqi Central Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Sadr and 11 of his top henchmen (for the April 2003 murder of a moderate Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Majid al-Khoei). But the CPA kept the arrest warrants sealed, and over the subsequent months, as Sadr kept pushing, U.S. officials waited, warned, wavered, hesitated, and debated. Although coalition figures knew that Sadr's organization had to be put out of business before any kind of decent political order could arise in Iraq, the various plans drawn up to take him down were never executed, apparently because Washington decided that the risks were too great. The same administration that was bold enough to launch an unpopular war against Saddam blanched at the prospect of confronting a bully such as Sadr-even though he was reviled by the majority of the Shiite population and the religious establishment.

There was certainly no shortage of warning signs, provocations, and justifications for removing Sadr. In October 2003, coalition forces intercepted dozens of busloads of his heavily armed followers as they headed to Karbala to seize control of the city and its holy shrines. On March 12 of this year, Sadr's forces leveled the Gypsy village of Qawliyya, sending most of its 1,000 residents fleeing. That same month, Sadr's organization publicly called for the assassination of Sayyid Farqad al-Qizwini, the most influential pro-U.S. cleric in Iraq's Shiite heartland, and a number of his associates in a U.S.-supported pro-democracy movement. For six months, Sadr's army and organization grew alarmingly in size, muscle, and daring. In a Taliban-style bid for social power, they seized public buildings, beat up moderate professors, took over classrooms, forced women to wear the hijab, set up illegal sharia courts, and imposed their own brutal penalties. Meanwhile, new Mahdi army recruits openly trained for terror and mayhem.

Yet when the coalition finally decided to act against them, its approach was impromptu and incomprehensibly chaotic. On March 28, Bremer ordered the closure of Sadr's incendiary newspaper, Hawza, but did nothing to strike against the more dangerous elements of Sadr's organization. The cleric reacted by ordering his followers to rise up against the occupation. A few days later, on April 2, coalition forces arrested a top Sadr aide, Mustafa al-Yaccoubi, and Sadr responded by unleashing a full-scale insurgency in the Shiite south, for a time seizing control of Najaf, Karbala, and many other strategic sites and forging tactical ties with the Sunni insurgents who had taken control of Fallujah. In the subsequent weeks, after conceding control of Fallujah to a hastily constructed local militia that promised to reassert order, U.S. forces finally went to war with the Mahdi army, evicting it from most of its strongholds, killing or arresting many of its leaders, and largely defeating its troops. But Sadr remained at large, mocking the coalition's demand for his arrest and maneuvering for power.

Not only did the fighting in April and May fail to eliminate Sadr's forces, it also did nothing to counter Iraq's other heavily armed militias. These include not only the battle-hardened Kurdish Pesh Merga (which number at least 50,000 fighters) but also the large and well-armed militias of the two most important Shiite religious parties, SCIRI (the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq) and Dawa. At the beginning of 2004, the CPA began negotiating an agreement with these militias for their disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) into the new Iraqi police and armed forces. The CPA's plan was intelligent and comprehensive in design. But the Kurds, understandably wary of any new central Iraqi government, refused to agree to anything more than a superficial integration of their forces (with command structures intact) into the new Iraqi military, and it remains unclear whether the other large militias will truly demobilize and disarm or just warehouse their heavy weapons while temporarily joining the new armed forces. The ddr plan was supposed to have been finalized and announced on May 1. But it was set back seriously by the outbreak of twin insurgencies in Fallujah and the Shiite south in April. The U.S. military was forced to rely on the cooperation (or at least forbearance) of the SCIRI and Dawa militias to evict and defeat the Mahdi army, and this sharply reduced the CPA's leverage over them. The plan was finally released in early June, but with little time left to implement it before the transfer of power. Even as the CPA insisted that the Mahdi army's failure to comply would disqualify Sadr from participating in electoral politics, other Iraqi political leaders began negotiating with him to try to bring him into the political game.

It now seems unlikely that the weak and besieged new Iraqi government will have the will or capacity to enforce the demobilization plan. In fact, the new Iraqi state is caught in a Catch-22: to be viable, it must build up its armed forces as rapidly as possible. But the readiest sources of soldiers and police are the most powerful militias, which will probably allow their fighters to join the new military only if their command structures remain intact. Thus, if the fledgling Iraqi state hopes to truly defeat the militias, it may have to go to war with itself. That seems hard to imagine. Yet if Iraq tries to hold elections while the militias remain intact (in one guise or another), the campaign is likely to become a very bloody and undemocratic affair. Candidates will face assassination, weaker political opponents will be run out of town, and the electoral machinery will be hijacked by those with the most guns.

Even if the security situation improves enough to allow elections to go forward on time, Iraq could still get into further trouble if it follows the UN's recommendation and uses a national-list system, apportioning seats in parliament on the basis of nationwide voting, since this would give the big regional and religious parties an added incentive to inflate their numbers through force and fraud. Should that occur, the biggest winners will be the best-armed and most-organized forces-the Kurds in the far north and the Iranian-backed Islamist parties in the Shiite south. The American occupation could wind up paving the way for the "election" of an Iranian-linked Islamist government in Baghdad.

[b]Read the entire essay on:[/b] http://www.foreignaffairs.org...

Bush Senior Adviser in Iraq: "We Blundered Iraq" ... DUH!!!

08.24.04 (10:52 am) [edit]

No More Mr. Nice Guy ... Oh, so very, very true ...

08.24.04 (8:22 am) [edit]

[b]It is time for American patriots to wake-up and stop playing the Mr. Nice Guy routine!!!

It's No More Mr. Nice Guy for the Bush/Cheney neo-fascist propaganda machine that abuses the American people by refusing to discuss issues concerning our stability, economy, welfare and national security. Bush/Cheney can't discuss these issues because they are Miserable Failures who have betrayed us on each and every issue!

So instead they get neo-con goons and thugs to lie, smear and conduct a neo-hitlerian smear campaign devised to mislead us (like they did into Iraq) about an honorable and courageous man, John F. Kerry (while AWOL Bush was a deserter and drunkard by comparison) and divert our attention away from the real issues!

We must fight back against these neo-con criminals. No More Mr. Nice Guy ... Oh, so very, very true ...

THEN AND NOW[/b]....I've mentioned before that one of the reasons you shouldn't trust the SwiftVets group is that until recently a lot of them said nice things about John Kerry — and then suddenly refreshed their memories early this year. Some of those nice things were said to reporters during the past few years, some were said in official reports 36 years ago, while in other cases official documents directly contradict what they're saying today.

This probably isn't a complete list, but here's a quick recap of why nobody with a brain should trust a word they say:

Roy Hoffman, today: "John Kerry has not been honest."
Roy Hoffman, 2003: "I am not going to say anything negative about him — he's a good man."

Adrian Lonsdale, today: "He lacks the capacity to lead."
Adrian Lonsdale, 1996: "He was among the finest of those Swift boat drivers."

George Elliot, today: "John Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam."
George Elliot, 1996: "The fact that he chased an armed enemy down is something not to be looked down upon, but it was an act of courage."

Larry Thurlow, today: "...there was no hostile enemy fire directed at my boat or at any of the five boats operating on the river that day."
Larry Thurlow's Bronze Star citation, 1969: "...all units began receiving enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire from the river banks."

Dr. Louis Letson, today: "I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated him for that injury."
Medical records, 1968: "Dr. Letson's name does not appear on any of the medical records for Mr. Kerry. Under 'person administering treatment' for the injury, the form is signed by a medic, J. C. Carreon, who died several years ago."

Grant Hibbard, today: "He betrayed all his shipmates. He lied before the Senate."
Hibbard's evaluation of Kerry, 1968: "Mr. Hibbard gave Mr. Kerry the highest rating of 'one of the top few' in three categories—initiative, cooperation and personal behavior. He gave Mr. Kerry the second-best rating, 'above the majority,' in military bearing."

They were either lying then or they're lying now. Take your pick. But either way, since there's no documentary evidence to back up their stories, the only thing going for them is their own personal credibility.

And that seems pretty thin, doesn't it? - http://www.washingtonmonthly....

New Report Blasts Bush On Ground Zero Cleanup [Bush Put Americans Lives At Risk!]

08.24.04 (7:58 am) [edit]

[b]Report Blasts Bush On Ground Zero Cleanup[/b]

In a strongly worded and minutely detailed report, http://www.sierraclub.com/gro... the Sierra Club charges the Bush administration with "reckless disregard" for public health in the days and months following the collapse of the World Trade Center. "Many hundreds of people" are sick today, the report states, some debilitatingly so, because of the government's failure to alert the public to obvious health risks, including toxic smoke, asbestos and mercury at Ground Zero. The report concludes: "Much of the exposure that caused these illnesses, sadly, could have been avoided if our federal government had responded to the crisis…with proper concern for the people exposed." The report is the most comprehensive in a litany of evidence suggesting Bush administration officials ignored warnings, misinterpreted data and issued a series of overly optimistic and unsupported statements about environmental conditions which endangered and in some cases ruined the health of heroic rescue workers and residents in and around Ground Zero.

THE EPA WHITEWASH: The day after the World Trade Center collapsed, "a top federal scientist warned in a strongly worded memo http://www.nydailynews.com/fr... against the quick reoccupation of buildings in lower Manhattan because of possible dangers from asbestos and other toxic materials." But, unaccountably, the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) first press release, on Sept. 13, said the results of sampling were "very reassuring." On Sept. 17, federal and city officials allowed thousands of people to return to lower Manhattan, declaring a day later that "their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe." But EPA Inspector General Nikki Tinsley later admitted, "the EPA had not gathered nearly enough data to make such a sweeping declaration." It was in these days, according to the Sierra Club's report, http://www.sierraclub.com/gro... that New Yorkers near the site were exposed to dangerous levels of asbestos, lead, concrete, glass and other debris, including toxic vapors easily assimilated into people's lungs and nasal passenges. But on Oct. 3, the EPA said Ground Zero data through Sept. 30 revealed "no significant health risks."

PLEADING IGNORANCE: The Bush administration's only defense for allowing rescue workers and other New Yorkers to expose themselves to harmful chemicals and toxins in the days following 9/11 has been to claim it did not know of the danger. The report categorically refutes that logic. It states, "The hazards posed by the incineration and demolition of the towers were new in scale, but not that new in character. There was a long-standing, accepted body of knowledge about the potential dangers that the federal government ignored. EPA failed to find toxic hazards because it did not look for them." When private parties, "using technology that the federal government not only knew about but possessed," did find evidence of public health hazards in the area, the EPA failed to revise its sunny, uninformed conclusions. "Leaders in the Bush Administration failed to change their statements of assurance about safety even after it became clear that people were getting sick."

LANGUAGE GAMES: When EPA officials did find hazards at Ground Zero, Inspector Tinsley's August report documents several instances where the Bush administration stripped their draft statements of caveats and warnings before releasing them to the public. For instance, language in an EPA draft stating asbestos levels in some areas were three times higher than national standards was changed to "slightly above the 1 percent trigger for defining asbestos material." In another example, "A warning on the importance of safely handling ground zero cleanup, due to lead and asbestos exposure, was changed to say that…'the general public should be very reassured by initial sampling.'" As for the Sept. 18 statement telling New Yorkers their air and water were safe, agency scientists quoted in Inspector Tinsley's report said "the EPA added reassuring language and deleted words of caution" after it was urged to do so by the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

COUNCIL RUN BY INDUSTRY INSIDER: And who was the man the Bush administration put in charge of vetting memos to the public about Ground Zero? "The White House changes were the work of James Connaughton, chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality…an industry lawyer who represented major asbestos and toxic polluters before his appointment by President Bush."

STEPS NOT TAKEN: On 9/14/01, President Bush saluted the firemen and rescue workers at Ground Zero, saying the nation was "on bended knee…for the workers that work here." But because of his administration's repeated public assurances, the Sierra Club report http://www.sierraclub.com/gro... found myriad steps were not taken which might have insulated those workers from health risks. Throughout the cleanup effort, rescue and recovery workers were given "inadequate safety gear and conflicting messages about the need to use it." When union health officials urged employers to provide safety gear, they encountered resistance. And privately hired dust and debris clean-up workers often had "no protective gear at all." These and other missteps are partially responsible for the adverse health of the "Ground Zero Community" documented in the report. According to the Sierra Club, many of those who worked on the site are now in need of "long-term health monitoring and other help. The federal government, however, has not provided reasonably adequate assistance to these people."

[b]WHAT YOU CAN DO:[/b] You can sign the Sierra Club's petition here http://www.sierraclub.com/pet... to ensure the Bush administration finishes the job of cleaning up Ground Zero and provides proper care and monitoring to those at risk of illness from Trade Center pollutants.

New Report Blasts Bush On Ground Zero Cleanup [Bush Put Americans Lives At Risk!]

08.24.04 (7:55 am) [edit]

New Report Blasts Bush On Ground Zero Cleanup [Bush Put Americans Lives At Risk!]

08.24.04 (7:54 am) [edit]

New Lawsuits Aim at Reckless Bush EPA Action Enabling Millions of Fish Kills

08.24.04 (7:47 am) [edit]

[b]New Lawsuits Aim at Bush EPA Action Enabling Millions of Fish Kills[/b]

As reported by BushGreenwatch http://www.bushgreenwatch.org... last February, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) opted to allow existing power plants and other industrial facilities to continue using cooling water systems which kill countless fish in American rivers every year--and to mitigate the damage by trying to restock the fish.

EPA issued this regulation despite a unanimous decision by the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which found that allowing massive destruction of wildlife in cooling systems, and then attempting to replace them in the ecosystem, did not fulfill the Clean Water Act requirement to use the "best technology available" to mitigate environmental damage.

Now, the Hudson River-based organization Riverkeeper is again leading a national coalition of environmental groups in suing EPA, charging the agency with violating the mandate of Congress under the Clean Water Act.

"Unfortunately, the agency has illegally rewritten the Clean Water Act to allow industry to avoid upgrading power plants that function as aquatic slaughterhouses," said Alex Matthiessen, executive director of Riverkeeper, in the organization's July announcement of the suit. [1]

While the Second Circuit's February decision applied specifically to a portion of EPA's rules called Phase I regulation, which applies to new facilities, Riverkeeper charges EPA with exceeding its authority in applying a different standard to existing facilities with the subsequent set of rules, called Phase II regulation. [2]

"EPA has caved in to the demands of the power industry, and completely abdicated responsibility under the Clean Water Act," Reed Super, Riverkeeper senior attorney and lead counsel in the suit, told BushGreenwatch http://www.bushgreenwatch.org... . "We hope the court will vacate or remand some or all of the rule." [3]

Super tells BushGreenwatch http://www.bushgreenwatch.org... that six state attorneys general—Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island—have also filed suit against EPA.

"The states, as well as environmental groups, recognize that EPA is dropping the ball. This will raise the level of importance of the case in the eyes of the judge," says Super.

Currently, the best cooling technology available is "closed cycle, " which re-circulates water repeatedly to cool a plant. This dramatically lessens water use, and reduces the kills of fish and other organisms by approximately 95% over the much older, more destructive—and less expensive--"once-through" systems.

These older systems pull in several billion gallons of water a day, leading to a massive mortality--trillions of fish, shellfish, and other organisms--every year.

In once-through systems, larger animals are killed by "impingement," or being trapped against water intake screens. Their eggs and larvae are killed by "entrainment," being drawn in to exchangers that transfer the plant's heat to the water, where they die from heat, toxicity, and physical stress.

Once-through cooling systems rival the fishing industry in the number of fish and shellfish killed every year. About 52% of power plants in the U.S. use once-through systems. [3]

Super vividly describes the impact this outmoded technology has on the Hudson River. "Just one plant--the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant--uses 2.4 billion gallons a day of cooling water," he says. "By comparison, nine million people use New York City's water supply, and they consume only 1.2 billion gallons a day.

"Indian Point is just one of five plants on the Hudson using once-through cooling systems. Altogether they are sucking nearly five billion gallons daily from the river."

###

[b]SOURCES:[/b] - http://www.bushgreenwatch.org...

[1] Riverkeeper press release, http://riverkeeper.org/campai... Jul. 26, 2004.
[2] Riverkeeper fact sheet http://riverkeeper.org/docume... .
[3] Ibid.

New Lawsuits Aim at Reckless Bush EPA Action Enabling Millions of Fish Kills

08.24.04 (7:44 am) [edit]

Bush/Cheney Election Rigging: Voting machine test results 'off-limits' to the public

08.24.04 (7:38 am) [edit]

[b]Voting machine test results 'off-limits' to the public[/b]

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The three companies that certify the nation's voting technologies operate in secrecy and refuse to discuss flaws in the ATM-like machines to be used by nearly one in three voters in November.

Despite concerns over whether the so-called touch-screen machines can be trusted, the testing companies won't say publicly whether they have encountered shoddy workmanship.

They say they are committed to secrecy in their contracts with the voting machines' makers — even though tax money ultimately buys or leases the machines.

''I find it grotesque that an organization charged with such a heavy responsibility feels no obligation to explain to anyone what it is doing,'' Michael Shamos, a Carnegie Mellon computer scientist and electronic voting expert, told lawmakers in Washington.

The system for ''testing and certifying voting equipment in this country is not only broken, but is virtually nonexistent,'' Shamos added.

Touch screens were introduced broadly in a bid to modernize voting technology after the 2000 presidential election ballot- counting fiasco in Florida.

Failures involving touch screens during voting this year in Georgia, Maryland, California and other states have prompted questions about the machines' susceptibility to tampering and software bugs.

Also in question is their viability, given the lack of paper records, if recounts are needed in what's shaping up to be a tightly contested presidential race. Paper records of each vote were considered a vital component of the electronic machines used in last week's referendum in Venezuela on whether to recall President Hugo Chavez.

Although up to 50 million Americans are expected to vote on touch-screen machines on Nov. 2, federal regulators have virtually no oversight over testing of the technology. The certification process, in part because the voting machine companies pay for it, is described as obsolete by those charged with overseeing it.

The testing firms — CIBER and Wyle Laboratories in Huntsville and SysTest Labs in Denver — also are inadequately equipped, some critics contend.

Federal regulations specify that every voting system used must be validated by a tester. Yet it has taken more than a year to gain approval for some election software and hardware, leading some states to either do their own testing or order uncertified equipment.

Critics of reliance on touch-screen machines want not just paper records — only Nevada among the states expects to have them installed in its touch screens come November — but also public scrutiny of the software they use. The machine makers have resisted.

''Four years after the last presidential election, very little has been done to assure the public of the accuracy and integrity of our voting systems,'' Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., told members of a House subcommittee in June at the same hearing at which Shamos testified.

In Huntsville, the window blinds were closed when a reporter visited the office suite where CIBER Inc. employees test voting machine software. A woman who unlocked the door said no one inside could answer questions about testing.

Shawn Southworth, a voting equipment tester at the laboratory, said that he wouldn't publicly discuss the company's work. He referred questions to a spokeswoman at CIBER headquarters in Greenwood Village, Colo., who never returned telephone messages.

CIBER, founded in 1974, is a public company that promotes itself as an international systems integration consultant.

Also in a sprawl of high-tech businesses that feed off Redstone Arsenal and NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville is the division of Wyle Laboratories Inc. that tests U.S. elections hardware, including touch screens made by market leaders Diebold Inc., Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. and Election Systems & Software Inc.

Wyle spokesman Dan Reeder refused to provide details on how the El Segundo, Calif.-based company, which has been vetting hardware for the space industry since 1949 in Huntsville, tests the voting equipment.

''Our work on election machines is off-limits,'' Reeder said. ''We just don't discuss it.'' He did allow, though, that the testing includes ''environmental simulation … shake, rattle and roll.''

Carolyn Goggins, a spokeswoman for SysTest Labs, the only other federally approved election software and hardware tester, refused to discuss the company's work.

More than a decade ago, the Federal Election Commission authorized the National Association of State Election Directors to choose the independent testers.

On its Web site, the association says the three testing outfits ''have neither the staff nor the time to explain the process to the public, the news media or jurisdictions.'' It directs inquiries to a Houston-based nonprofit organization, the Election Center, which assists election officials. The center's executive director, Doug Lewis, did not return telephone messages seeking comment.

The election directors' voting systems board chairman, former New York state elections director Thomas Wilkey, said the testers' secrecy stems from the FEC's refusal to take the lead in choosing them and the government's unwillingness to pay for it.

He said that left election officials no choice but to find technology companies willing to pay.

''When we first started this program, it took us over a year to find a company that was interested, then along came Wyle, then CIBER and then SysTest,'' Wilkey said of the standards developed over five years and adopted in 1990.

''Companies that do testing in this country have not flocked to the prospect of testing voting machines,'' said U.S. Election Assistance Commission Chairman DeForest Soaries Jr., the top federal overseer of voting technology.

A 2002 law, the Help America Vote Act, created the four-member bipartisan team headed by Soaries to oversee a change to easier and more secure voting.

Soaries said there should be more testers, but the three firms are ''doing a fine job with what they have to work with.''

Wilkey, meanwhile, predicted ''big changes'' in the testing process after November's election.

But critics led by Stanford University computer science professor David Dill say it's an outrage that the world's most powerful democracy doesn't already have an election system so transparent its citizens know it can be trusted.

''Suppose you had a situation where ballots were handed to a private company that counted them behind a closed door and burned the results,'' said Dill, founder of VerifiedVoting.org. ''Nobody but an idiot would accept a system like that. We've got something that is almost as bad with electronic voting.'' - http://www.tennessean.com/ele...

Bush/Cheney Election Rigging: Voting machine test results 'off-limits' to the public

08.24.04 (7:33 am) [edit]

Blair Refuses to Accept US Award [Doesn't Want To Be Seen With Bush!]

08.24.04 (7:29 am) [edit]

[b]Blair refuses accept US award[/b]

BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair is refusing to fly to the US to receive a medal bestowed on him by the nation for his support over last year's Iraq war, a London newspaper reported today.

US President George W. Bush has put huge pressure on his closest ally to pick up the Congressional Medal of Honour in person, the Sunday Mirror said, quoting a senior British government source.

Mr Blair is immensely popular with large sections of the American public for his staunch support of the Iraq war and the White House believes a visit by the prime minister now would provide a much-needed boost to Mr Bush's re-election campaign, the weekly said.

"There has been a lot of telephone traffic between the White House and Downing Street over the medal in recent week," the Sunday Mirror quoted a senior government source as saying.

"George Bush wants the prime minister to come to Washington and pick up the medal, which is the highest honour America can bestow on a foreigner.

"But he has refused for more than a year now and for good reason. He cannot possibly accept an award for the Iraq war when British and American troops continue to risk their lives there."

Mr Blair is concerned also that a trip to the US now would effectively be giving a boost to Bush ahead of November's presidential elections.

"The Democrats are watching the situation very carefully and there would be uproar if Tony travelled to Washington to meet (Republican) Bush so close to the presidential elections," the government source said.

"But Bush isn't letting up. The White House has already let it be known that they feel slighted because of this and believe they can use this to put pressure on Blair to get him out there." - http://www.news.com.au/common...,4057,10534579%5E401,00.html

Nobody Who Is Choosy Wants Bush [Even Tony 'Poodle' Blair Won't Be Seen With The Walking DimWit!]

08.24.04 (7:27 am) [edit]

....... GOSPEL, CROSSES AND BOOS ON CUE .......

08.24.04 (7:23 am) [edit]

[b]'Gospel, crosses and boos on cue'[/b]

A guy in combat gear and Kevlar helmet, machine gun at the ready, stopped me outside the Xcel Energy Center.

"Hey," he said. "How you doing?"

It was just one of my buddies on the St. Paul Police Department, dressed for combat and carrying a 9-millimeter MP5. It was a beautiful day in St. Paul, the president of the United States was on his way to town, the SWAT team and the protesters were out, and I was on my way in.

My daughter put me down for a ticket to attend Wednesday's rally for President Bush, probably because she's always wondered what her old man would look like spread-eagled against a wall. But I was glad to join her. Lots of people don't feel welcome at political rallies these days, so this was a chance to see what's going on.

After three hours of speeches and nothing to eat or drink, I can say this: If you aren't dying to get into a political rally, you will be to get out of one.

We passed through the metal detectors and by the tables where folks were told to leave their contraband -- umbrellas, water bottles and other items not allowed inside, including books. Here's an impromptu look at a Republican reading list: "The Ultimate Bible Fun Book" was one of the inspirational titles left behind, along with "Shrines to Our Lady Around the World."

Religious conviction was a big part of the program, from the invocation in which the minister thanked God for touching the heart of George W. Bush ("a man we believe You've established") to the Pledge of Allegiance, during which people shouted out the words "under God" in order to vocalize their faith.

And all of that came after we were informed by the emcee, conservative talk-radio host and author Laura Ingraham, that if the ACLU had its way, we wouldn't even be allowed to pray. When the crowd didn't respond, Ingraham stepped back to the microphone to chide us: "You're supposed to BOO when I say the ACLU!" After that, boos came at all the proper cues.

Then we were treated to an off-key "Star-Spangled Banner" sung by the Minnesota Teen Challenge Choir -- the 230 residents of a Christ-based drug-treatment program in Minneapolis that includes many adults as well as teens.

Minnesota Teen Challenge enjoys the support of many Republicans, including Gov. Tim Pawlenty and his wife, Mary (she is on the board), and the group also was bused to Duluth last month to sing for a Bush rally there.

"Teen Challenge is one of President Bush's favorite charities," said Kimberly Lende, a Teen Challenge official.

With the remainder of their three hours in St. Paul, many of the recovering addicts made crosses by taping together inflatable Bush 2004 "thunder sticks." Later, during the president's speech, they lifted the improvised crosses toward the podium, holding them out in a reverential manner.

"Bush stands for One Nation Under God," said one teen when I asked why he was raising a cross for the president. "He wants to keep God in the nation."

The crosses worried two visitors sitting next to me, foreign students seeing their first American political rally.

Gabriella Gyorgy from Romania works part time in a senior center in St. Paul. She happened to pick up the phone when a Republican organizer called to ask if any old folks would like to see the president. She said no, but ended up taking tickets for herself and her friend, Balint Vanek of Hungary.

She hoped that seeing a campaign rally might help her understand America. Mission not accomplished.

"Please tell the meaning of the crosses," Gabriella said. "We are bothered by that. Do they mean evil is coming?"

No, I said. Why do you think that?

"Because many bad Hollywood films show crosses when evil comes."

Since she was Romanian, I was afraid it might be rude to discuss my favorite Dracula movies. She and Vanek were having enough trouble with the Europe-bashing they were hearing.

"I do not understand the mentality," Gabriella said, looking pained when one speaker's mere mention of the word "Europe" drew boos. "Every person must have friends who they talk to and helps them. If they have no friends, then everything is 'Me, me, me.'

"It is the same with countries."

She wrinkled her nose when U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman capped the Euro-bashing with a Top 10 list of reasons to re-elect Bush. No. 3 was "We're at war!" No. 2 was "He's a good man!" But Norm's No. 1 reason to reelect Bush was:

"He cares more about what Americans think than what Europeans think or what the U. N. thinks!"

Ingraham, the willowy talk-show host, gave Coleman a giant hug like the ones Lance Armstrong gets from the flower girls when he wins the Tour de (name of European country deleted for your protection). "What an inspiration," Ingraham gushed after Coleman had set the table for the president.

Musician Ricky Skaggs then took the stage with his bluegrass band to fire up the crowd. Skaggs is part of the Presidential Prayer Team and finished his set with a gospel song called "The Weapon of Prayer."

"We must never lay our [prayer] weapons down," he sang. "The weapon of love" will still be needed after "the planes and tanks and guns have done all that they can do, and the mighty bombs have rained and failed."

While Skaggs sang, American tanks were near the second holiest shrine in Islam. Gospel music is always timely.

Two hours, and still no Bush.

Finally, just before 6 p.m., two shiny Bush-Cheney campaign buses wheeled into the arena in a flashy entrance worthy of Willie Nelson.

The traveling press corps tramped in -- exhausted reporters who plugged in their laptops and zoned out, some of them reading online newspapers (I had binoculars), others leaning back with their hands on their laps.

Bush would speak for 45 minutes, but the news lamp was out: he would say nothing new or newsworthy in St. Paul. Even the president seemed to lose interest in his speech at times. And when sound problems lowered the volume to an almost inaudible decibel level, the crowd looked as blank as hockey fans during the last numbing minutes of a meaningless late-season blowout.

When it was over, we staggered into the lovely evening to find Bush and Kerry supporters yelling at each other.

"Bush was partying while John Kerry was in Vietnam," one Democrat yelled.

"Not my president," snapped a woman pushing a baby in a stroller "My president has a God who will not let you have what you want, which is to destroy the world."

I didn't know what God wanted, but I wanted a beer.

Seventy-four more days to go. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

....... GOSPEL, CROSSES & BOOS ON CUE .......

08.24.04 (7:22 am) [edit]

...... I'VE HAD IT TOO!!! ......

08.24.04 (7:15 am) [edit]

[b]I've had it with a corrupt and stupid President Bush and a corrupt and vile Vice-President Cheney who are so callous and dishonest that they take us into war based on lies and wreck our economy with the highest deficit spending in our nation's history while awarding themselves and their corporate cronies massive tax cuts for the rich![/b]

[u][b]Why John F. Kerry Will Make A Better Commander-in-Chief than Dry-Drunk Dubya!!![/b][/u]

[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...

[b]Courtesy of CheckItOut, http://checkitout.tblog.com [/b]

Senile Ole' Fraud-n-Liar Bob Dole LIES About Kerry's Medals

08.23.04 (8:25 pm) [edit]

NY Times reports, "'John Kerry's a hero,' Bob Dole told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. 'But what I will always quarrel about are the Purple Hearts. I mean, the first one, whether he ought to have a Purple Heart - he got two in one day, I think...' Mr. Kerry did not receive two Purple Hearts for events of the same day. He received them for the events of Dec. 2, 1968, Feb. 20, 1969, and March 13, 1969. Mr. Kerry often acknowledges that his wounds were not severe, but he still has shrapnel in his left thigh from the firefight that led to his second Purple Heart. When Mr. Blitzer pointed out that Mr. Kerry had said on 'Meet the Press' earlier this year that he had gone too far in his original Congressional testimony, Mr. Dole responded: 'Maybe he should apologize to all the other 2.5 million veterans who served.'" Dole should apologize to Kerry for LYING about his medals. And Bush should apologize to the 2.5 million veterans who fought - and died - IN HIS PLACE!

[b]Read article:[/b] http://nytimes.com/2004/08/23...

Idiot Bush: Announces Removal of Troops from S Korea then Provokes Confrontation with N Korea

08.23.04 (8:21 pm) [edit]

And there are people out there who actually claim Bush makes them feel SAFER? Hell-Oh! We bet the troops still serving in So. Korea don't feel safer this week following Bush's pointless provocation of the North Korean government in a cheap and grossly irresponsible play for votes in Wisconsin last week. After months of diplomatic effort by others to get No. Korea into nuke talks, Bush ruined it all in an moment of idiocy by hurling arrogant, inflammatory statements at the North Korean government just so he would appear "tough" after taking heat for his pledge to remove troops from So. Korea. This is a LEADER? Remove troops, THEN make war-mongering statements? with "brilliant thinking" like this, no wonder Iraq is a mess.

[b]Read the article:[/b] http://newsobserver.com/24hou...

... Explosive New Book Calls AWOL Bush a 'Deserter,' Exposes He Loathes the Military ...

08.23.04 (8:16 pm) [edit]

[b]The Nation:[/b] "At issue is whether Bush was, technically at least, a deserter in his fourth year of National Guard service [when] no one on the base remembers seeing him.... [Bush] was ordered to report for a flight medical exam in July 1972 [which he] 'failed to accomplish' [Bush] returned to Texas with zero active duty days.... [Bush used] nepotistic influence, jumping a long line, despite a 25 percent score on his pilot aptitude test [and] a series of driving convictions [and] was commissioned an officer despite ... no pilot experience [or] time in the ROTC [then] went missing for a year, [and] terminate[d] his service early.... His use of the National Guard to escape Vietnam should have inhibited him and his party from successively attacking the patriotism and martial virtues of triple amputee Senator Max Cleland and John Kerry--having earlier pointed fingers at Bill Clinton. But going AWOL ... deserting for a year even from this surrogate service, makes [Bush] doubly vulnerable."

[b]Read the article:[/b] http://www.thenation.com/doc....%3Fi=20040816&s=williams

The Sensitive Men

08.23.04 (2:35 pm) [edit]

[b]Let's play nice about who advocated a sensitive approach to the war on terror. Jules Siegel points out at News Room http://www.newsroom-l.net/blo... that the sneering by the likes of Cheney and shillster Hugh Hewitt http://www.newsroom-l.net/blo... at Kerry's call for sensitivity was an act of substantive hypocrisy[/b].

[u]From the Center for American Progress: - http://www.americanprogress.o... [/u]

[b]SPECIAL FORCES STATE NEED TO FIGHT "SENSITIVE WAR ON TERRORISM": [/b]The Bush campaign's latest salvo, while aimed at Kerry, also is an attack on the military's top special forces commanders. On 7/20/04, the Bush administration sent one of the Air Force's top special forces officers to Capitol Hill to assuage concerns about tactics being used in the War on Terror. In his testimony, Chief Master Sgt. Robert Martens reassured Republican Chairman Rep. Jim Saxton (R-NJ) that "our special operators offer a seasoned, culturally sensitive war on terrorism."

[b]VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY SAYS MILITARY MUST NOT BE INSENSITIVE: [/b]On 4/13/04, Cheney said the Bush administration was focused on conducting sensitive military operations. He stated, "We recognize that the presence of U.S. forces can in some cases present a burden on the local community. We're not insensitive to that. We work almost on a continual basis with the local officials to remove points of friction and reduce the extent to which problems arise in terms of those relationships."

[b]RUMSFELD STRESSES NEED TO BE "SENSITIVE" IN THE WAR:[/b] In the lead up to the Iraq war and afterwards, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld promised the Pentagon would be "sensitive." On 2/5/03, he said "we have to be sensitive, to the extent the world thinks the United States is focused on the problems in Iraq, it's conceivable that someone could make a mistake and believe that that's an opportunity for them to take an action which they otherwise would have avoided." On 7/9/03, he reassured the public that his department was being "sensitive" to troop needs during the war. He said U.S. commanders are "sensitive to the importance of troops knowing what the rotation plan will be so they have some degree of certainty in their lives. And [they are sensitive to the importance of the quality of their lives."

[b]ASHCROFT CLAIMS THE ADMINISTRATION IS BEING "SENSITIVE" IN WAR ON TERROR:[/b] Attorney General John Ashcroft has repeatedly stressed the need for the Bush administration to be "sensitive" in fighting the War on Terror. On 4/28/03, just a month after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Ashcroft said, "The United States is very sensitive about interfering in the internal politics of other countries." On 3/20/02, he said the Justice Department was making sure to be "sensitive" in hunting down terrorists. He said, "The agents and officers who conducted the interviews did so in a sensitive manner, showing full respect for the rights and dignity of the individuals being interviewed."

... Kerry comrade breaks war silence [Unlike Swift Smear Liars, he was really there!!!]

08.23.04 (11:46 am) [edit]

[b]Kerry comrade breaks war silence[/b]

[b]A US officer who commanded a swift boat alongside John Kerry in Vietnam has broken a 35-year silence to condemn the presidential candidate's detractors.[/b]

William Rood, now a journalist on the Chicago Tribune, said in an article he could not keep silent after seeing TV ads aimed at discrediting Mr Kerry.

"It's... harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue," he wrote.

Mr Rood defended a controversial Kerry tactic of charging ambushers.

During a Viet Cong rocket and gun attack in February 1969, Mr Kerry led his boat and two others - including Mr Rood's - at the enemy.

A recent book, Unfit for Command, condemns the tactic as "stupidity, not courage" but Mr Rood said it had been praised by their task force commander as a "shining example of completely overwhelming the enemy".

The BBC's Dan Griffiths reports from Washington that despite Mr Rood's dramatic testimony, there is no sign of the row going away.

On Saturday, Mr Kerry's campaign issued an internet advertisement claiming that the group behind the ads, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT), were co-ordinating their work with the Republican Party.

[b]Silver star [/b]

SBVT accuse Mr Kerry of embellishing his war record for electoral gain - a charge denied by the Kerry campaign.

"There were three swift boats on the river that day in Vietnam... three officers and 15 crew members," said Mr Rood.

"Only two of those officers remain to talk about what happened... One is John Kerry... who won a Silver Star for what happened... I am the other."

The journalist said Mr Kerry, the tactical commander, had asked his fellow officers to join him in charging the enemy in the event of an ambush - a common occurrence at the time.

"We agreed that if we were not crippled by the initial volley and had a clear fix on the location of the ambush, we would turn directly into it, focusing the boats' twin .50-calibre machine-guns on the attackers and beaching the boats," he said.

"We routed the ambush, killing three of the attackers. The troops, led by an army adviser, jumped off the boats and began a sweep, which killed another half dozen VC, wounded or captured others."

[b]'Loose cannon' [/b]

Mr Rood quoted his task force commander, Rear Adm Roy Hoffmann, as congratulating the three boats and praising the tactic at the time.

However, Mr Hoffmann, now a Kerry critic, said earlier this year that Mr Kerry's action had shown him to be a "loose cannon". [Another slut bought-and-paid for by the Bush Crime Family.]

"He was aggressive, but vain and prone to impulsive judgement, often with disregard to specific tactical assignments," the retired admiral said in May. - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wo...

... JOHN F. KERRY BY A LANDSLIDE ...

08.23.04 (11:39 am) [edit]

[b]'Kerry by a landslide'[/b]

[i][b]What if the 2004 presidential election isn't even close?[/b][/i]

Everyone knows the presidential election is going to be a squeaker. Liberals are mad at Bush, but conservatives love him. For every blue state, there's a red state. November 2nd is going to be a long night.

But what if it isn't? What if it isn't even close?

Let me go out on a limb: John Kerry is going to win the 2004 election – not by a nose, not by a chad, but by a landslide.

Making predictions is always a dangerous business, and you run the risk of looking foolish (although no one fired Peggy Noonan for predicting that George W. Bush would get 411 electoral votes in 2000, while his actual total was 271). And the unexpected could always occur – Kerry might have an Israeli poet file a sexual harassment suit against him, or Bush could pull Osama bin Laden out of his hat a week before election day. And along with just about every other commentator, I've been saying all along that this election is going to be as close as could be – divided America, and all that.

But signs are pointing to a sea change in the 2004 election campaign, a gradual but powerful shift in the landscape that makes a Bush victory seem increasingly unlikely.

What has led me to such a radical prediction? Let's look at what's happening out there.

[b]The national picture[/b]

National polls are showing a clear if subtle trend: Kerry has moved ahead of Bush. No two polls will be exactly the same, and a single poll will almost never show the same results from one week to the next, but when almost all the surveys are pointing in the same direction, we can be confident that there's something real going on. At the moment there are about a dozen national public polls out there, and with the exception of Gallup, every one shows Kerry ahead, anywhere from 1 point to 8 points.

[b]The view from the states[/b]

Of course, because of the bizarrely undemocratic system we have, you don't actually have to win the most votes in order to become president, and on election night we'll be watching a relatively small number of states to see which way they swing.

But here's the key point: the number of battleground states has grown since the beginning of this race, and in each case a state that Bush won easily in 2000 has, to the surprise of many, become highly contested, complete with multiple candidate visits and a tsunami of television ads. Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado were all supposed to be safely Republican; Kerry could win one or more.

In fact, there is not a single battleground state save Louisiana (which many people don't consider and actual battleground state) in which a non-partisan poll shows Bush with a lead larger than the poll's margin of error, while in many, things are trending Kerry's way. Bush won Missouri comfortably in 2000; Kerry now leads in polls there. Pennsylvania, the state Bush has visited more times than any other save Texas, now looks like it might not even be close, with Kerry garnering double-digit leads in some polls. Kerry also leads by a good margin in Michigan. Ohio was supposed to be the Florida of 2000, the state on which all could hinge; most polls show Kerry with a lead there.

Which brings us to Florida itself. After Jeb Bush coasted to re-election in 2002, some were saying Democrats shouldn't even bother trying to contest the Sunshine State; now Kerry leads there in every poll. And the situation on the ground is favorable to Kerry as well: According to the St. Petersburg Times, the Bush campaign, the state GOP, and the RNC combined have only 68 paid staffers in Florida, compared to the 300 working there for the crack anti-Bush field organizing group America Coming Together; that doesn't even count the Kerry campaign itself. Through June, the Democrats had added 129,423 new voters to the Florida rolls, compared to 75,132 for Republicans. And the Democrats will be watching the vote counting very carefully.

[b]The issue terrain[/b]

As President Bush tries to make his case to the American people, what exactly is he offering them? He's having a hard time making the case that his administration has been successful on any major issue. Gasoline prices are at record highs. Kerry seems to have already won the argument on the state of the economy, which is hampered by weak job creation and stagnant wages. Iraq continues to be a quagmire; a majority of Americans now believe the war was a mistake, and some time close to election day the 1000th American soldier will be killed there. On a range of domestic issues, most notably health care, Bush has neither accomplished much meaningful nor offered any compelling plans for a second term.

In short, the President doesn't have much of a hand to play when it comes to the issues that will dominate the rest of the campaign. Perhaps his convention will provide a positive, unifying theme for Bush's re-election, but it's a mighty tall order.

[b]The home stretch[/b]

As many analysts have pointed out, undecided voters tend to be more likely to break toward the challenger at the end of a presidential race. While every race is different, if you haven't made up your mind by now about which candidate you're going to vote for, it's probably because you don't like what Bush has done but Kerry hasn't yet convinced you to vote for him.

In a comment that became a symbol of liberals' disconnection from ordinary Americans, after the 1972 election New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael expressed shock that Richard Nixon had won re-election, because she didn't know a single person who had voted for him. But today, something different grips liberals, particularly those ensconced in enclaves like Manhattan, Madison, or San Francisco. Even though they live in an environment in which almost everyone is progressive, they believe that such places are few and far between, and the vast majority of Americans are conservatives whose values and political choices couldn't be more different from theirs.

But this suspicion is no more accurate than Kael's. In fact, America is full of liberals, and it's also full of a somewhat larger group: people who don't think George Bush should be re-elected. Could the election be as close as 2000? Anything is possible. But I wouldn't bet on it. - http://gadflyer.com/articles/...

FEAR FACTOR: Bush/Cheney Nazis Use Fear & Terror To Intimidate America!!!

08.22.04 (9:19 pm) [edit]

[b]Delusional Bush Cynically Uses Fear as a Weapon in Sinking Re-election Bid [/b]

More madness! President Bush says Iraq is the forefront in the war on terrorism while his alarm-sounders tell us to beware and brace for attacks from al-Qaida this summer.

Al-Qaida has different leaders with drastically different agendas who come from different "hoods," but that doesn't stop George W. and his gang from tossing them all into the same pot to serve his political purpose.

Of course, this confusion regarding our real enemy is beyond cynical, it is the greatest lie of our times.

Bush created more terrorists in a war waged for all the wrong reasons and then uses the disastrous results to instill fear in the minds of the American people, in order to enhance the power of the corporate masters he serves and their investment in his re-election.

Bush's policies in the war in Iraq have accelerated the recruitment of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and made America far less safe. That's according to a British military think-tank that actually supported the war.

The International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) says al-Qaida's ranks have swelled to more than 18,000 potential terrorists around the world and the war in Iraq is adding to its ranks.

The IISS says the Iraq conflict "has arguably focused the energies and resources of al-Qaida and its followers while deluding those of the global counter-terrorism coalition that appeared so formidable" after the Sept. 11 attacks and the military action in Afghanistan.

The organization sees the war in Iraq as a "potent global recruitment pretext for al-Qaida."

According to a British newspaper, the invasion of Iraq "galvanized" al-Qaida while weakening a campaign against terrorism, and at the same time split the Western alliance, leaving the United States and Britain isolated.

Far from being weeded out, al-Qaida is blossoming around the Muslim world. In Iraq, where it was hardly a factor before the invasion, it is now a growing force.

The IISS also notes that, in order to restore any political stability there, it could require up to 500,000 U.S. and allied troops. The great coalition the president speaks of, which includes the Solomon Islands and Bulgaria, may not be up to the task. I am still waiting for one Bush scion -- or any child of the creators of this madness -- to volunteer for military service in order to stay the course in Iraq.

But a glimmer of hope in all of this appears under the heading of "occasionally even a blind squirrel finds an acorn." A top Saudi diplomat speaks the truth about the Bush crusade, calling it what it certainly is: "a colonial war."

The president is in total denial and delusion about the reality of the more frightening world he's created. Frankly, he doesn't have a clue. He's just reading the lines with that "just goosed" look after landing on his head in the bike-riding mishap (why am I smelling pretzels?).

He is again trying to sell the nutty notion that Iraq represents the frontline in the war on terror, a feeble fabrication that more and more Americans are seeing right through. Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi Ambassador to Great Britain, says Bush's stated reasons for war cloak a more cynical reality.

He told the Irish Independent, "No matter how exalted the aims of the U.S. in that war ... in the final analysis it was a colonial war."

The Saudi prince, who certainly is versed in these issues, was in touch with people in the United States who pushed the war as a means of getting their hands on Iraqi oil. This is a rare and refreshing assessment of the true motives of Bush and company from a Saudi royal whose family's business and political interests are inextricably tied to George W., his family and his corporate godfathers.

Meanwhile, Bush the Elder says they're pickin' on his boy. The Washington Post reports George H.W. Bush complains in an upcoming "Today Show" interview about the way the media is covering "43."

"The economy is strong ... but even without that, the country is looking for a strong leader. They've got one, and they're going to want him to serve more," President "41" bristled. "It's pretty horrible ... it's all anti-Bush. It's all anti-family. It just burns you up." But a respected human rights organization says the world ought to be inflamed over his boy's record on human rights.

Amnesty International says young Bush's policies have led to a "global security agenda ... bankrupt of vision and bereft of principle."

Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan says the Bush administration "is sacrificing human rights in the name of security at home, turning a blind eye to abuses abroad and using pre-emptive military force where and when it chooses," and these policies "have neither increased security nor ensured liberty."

The world view of the Bush administration, Khan says, has "dealt a mortal blow" to the UN's vision of universal human rights and virtually paralyzed its efforts to hold states to account.

But the president remains unwilling to share the terrible and frightening truth with the American people that he and his handlers simply don't understand the forces at work in Iraq.

Asad Abu Khalil, professor of political science at California State University, tells "Salon" online magazine, "Bush and neo-conservatives foolishly refer to a 'free Iraq' as a model for the region. They may be right if other Arab populations are eager to incorporate into their lives daily car-bombs, shootings by soldiers at checkpoints, torture of prisoners by liberating armies, the rise of fundamentalist groups and violent militia, clerical control of political affairs and many empty promises of democracy. Colonization does not work in the 21st century and Iraqis who suffered under Saddam will settle for nothing less than full independence."

Prince Turki, who has a handle on Bush's colonialism, sees a more reasonable approach to end terrorism in the region and threats against the United States.

"To bring bin Laden to justice will go a long way," he says.

George W. Bush is too busy fighting "the frontline of terrorism" in Iraq and protecting his family's fortune and political interests to do that.

[b]Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former Niagara Falls city councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox2 News[/b].

BUSH/CHENEY FASCISM: American Workers & US Soldiers Don't Get Paid Overtime!!!

08.22.04 (9:12 pm) [edit]

[b]Already American workers are fucked out of being paid overtime http://www.enquirer.com/editi... while Bush/Cheney and their rich corporate cronies get richer by making us slaves. What about US Soldiers risking their lives? They're fucked too!

US Soldiers May Be Eliminated From Possible Overtime Pay [/b]

The United States Labor Department may soon adopt a new rule that would prevent soldiers returning from battle from receiving overtime pay.

The proposed rule change has been talked about for almost a year now.

Opponents of the rule said it would eliminate overtime pay for eight million workers which could now include soldiers who get specific technical training in the armed forces and come home to work certain jobs.

The proposed rule change could affect a lot of soldiers fighting for freedom in Iraq.

If a soldier gets specific technical training in the armed services and then use that in their private jobs after they leave the military their employers could then classify them as professionals and they would not be eligible for overtime.

Unions say that's not fair.

"You will work for a General Electric, A Pratt Whitney, whatever and because you served your country, you received this training, you're going to be eliminated from overtime," said Dan Radford, Cincinnati AFL-CIO.

The Labor Department said unions are exaggerating the impact on veterans.

But the rule change goes beyond veterans and as far as students who get certain training at technical colleges like Cincinnati State and then get jobs in certain fields could also not be eligible for overtime pay once they get certain jobs.

Unions say eight million workers in the country would no longer get overtime pay under the new rule.

The Labor Department said the rule will affect more like 664,000 workers and they may make the change as early as March. - http://www.wcpo.com/news/2004...

... President Bush: Flip-Flopper In Chief [Except for Corporate Cronyism & Favors For The Rich!]

08.22.04 (9:05 pm) [edit]

[b]President Bush: Flip-Flopper-In-Chief[/b]

From the beginning, George W. Bush has made his own credibility a central issue. On 10/11/00, then-Gov. Bush said: "I think credibility is important.It is going to be important for the president to be credible with Congress, important for the president to be credible with foreign nations." But President Bush's serial flip-flopping raises serious questions about whether Congress and foreign leaders can rely on what he says.

[b]1. Social Security Surplus[/b]

BUSH PLEDGES NOT TO TOUCH SOCIAL SECURITY SURPLUS... "We're going to keep the promise of Social Security and keep the government from raiding the Social Security surplus." [President Bush, 3/3/01]

...BUSH SPENDS SOCIAL SECURITY SURPLUS The New York Times reported that "the president's new budget uses Social Security surpluses to pay for other programs every year through 2013, ultimately diverting more than $1.4 trillion in Social Security funds to other purposes." [The New York Times, 2/6/02]

[b]2. Patient's Right to Sue[/b]

GOVERNOR BUSH VETOES PATIENTS' RIGHT TO SUE... "Despite his campaign rhetoric in favor of a patients' bill of rights, Bush fought such a bill tooth and nail as Texas governor, vetoing a bill coauthored by Republican state Rep. John Smithee in 1995. He... constantly opposed a patient's right to sue an HMO over coverage denied that resulted in adverse health effects." [Salon, 2/7/01]

...CANDIDATE BUSH PRAISES TEXAS PATIENTS' RIGHT TO SUE... "We're one of the first states that said you can sue an HMO for denying you proper coverage... It's time for our nation to come together and do what's right for the people. And I think this is right for the people. You know, I support a national patients' bill of rights, Mr. Vice President. And I want all people covered. I don't want the law to supersede good law like we've got in Texas." [Governor Bush, 10/17/00]

...PRESIDENT BUSH'S ADMINISTRATION ARGUES AGAINST RIGHT TO SUE "To let two Texas consumers, Juan Davila and Ruby R. Calad, sue their managed-care companies for wrongful denials of medical benefits ‘would be to completely undermine' federal law regulating employee benefits, Assistant Solicitor General James A. Feldman said at oral argument March 23. Moreover, the administration's brief attacked the policy rationale for Texas's law, which is similar to statutes on the books in nine other states." [Washington Post, 4/5/04]

[b]3. Tobacco Buyout[/b]

BUSH SUPPORTS CURRENT TOBACCO FARMERS' QUOTA SYSTEM... "They've got the quota system in place -- the allotment system -- and I don't think that needs to be changed." [President Bush, 5/04]

...BUSH ADMINISTRATION WILL SUPPORT FEDERAL BUYOUT OF TOBACCO QUOTAS "The administration is open to a buyout." [White House spokeswoman Jeanie Mamo, 6/18/04]

[b]4. North Korea[/b]

BUSH WILL NOT OFFER NUCLEAR NORTH KOREA INCENTIVES TO DISARM... "We developed a bold approach under which, if the North addressed our long-standing concerns, the United States was prepared to take important steps that would have significantly improved the lives of the North Korean people. Now that North Korea's covert nuclear weapons program has come to light, we are unable to pursue this approach." [President's Statement, 11/15/02]

...BUSH ADMINISTRATION OFFERS NORTH KOREA INCENTIVES TO DISARM"Well, we will work to take steps to ease their political and economic isolation. So there would be -- what you would see would be some provisional or temporary proposals that would only lead to lasting benefit after North Korea dismantles its nuclear programs. So there would be some provisional or temporary efforts of that nature." [White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, 6/23/04]

[b]5. Abortion[/b]

BUSH SUPPORTS A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE... "Bush said he...favors leaving up to a woman and her doctor the abortion question." [The Nation, 6/15/00, quoting the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, 5/78]

...BUSH OPPOSES A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE "I am pro-life." [Governor Bush, 10/3/00]

[b]6. OPEC[/b]

BUSH PROMISES TO FORCE OPEC TO LOWER PRICES... "What I think the president ought to do [when gas prices spike] is he ought to get on the phone with the OPEC cartel and say we expect you to open your spigots...And the president of the United States must jawbone OPEC members to lower the price." [President Bush, 1/26/00]

...BUSH REFUSES TO LOBBY OPEC LEADERS With gas prices soaring in the United States at the beginning of 2004, the Miami Herald reported the president refused to "personally lobby oil cartel leaders to change their minds." [Miami Herald, 4/1/04]

[b]7. Iraq Funding[/b]

BUSH SPOKESMAN DENIES NEED FOR ADDITIONAL FUNDS FOR THE REST OF 2004... "We do not anticipate requesting supplemental funding for '04" [White House Budget Director Joshua Bolton, 2/2/04]

...BUSH REQUESTS ADDITIONAL FUNDS FOR IRAQ FOR 2004 "I am requesting that Congress establish a $25 billion contingency reserve fund for the coming fiscal year to meet all commitments to our troops." [President Bush, Statement by President, 5/5/04]

[b]8. Condoleeza Rice Testimony[/b]

BUSH SPOKESMAN SAYS RICE WON'T TESTIFY AS 'A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE'... "Again, this is not her personal preference; this goes back to a matter of principle. There is a separation of powers issue involved here. Historically, White House staffers do not testify before legislative bodies. So it's a matter of principle, not a matter of preference." [White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, 3/9/04]

...BUSH ORDERS RICE TO TESTIFY: "Today I have informed the Commission on Terrorist Attacks Against the United States that my National Security Advisor, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, will provide public testimony." [President Bush, 3/30/04]

[b]9. Science[/b]

BUSH PLEDGES TO ISSUE REGULATIONS BASED ON SCIENCE..."I think we ought to have high standards set by agencies that rely upon science, not by what may feel good or what sounds good." [then-Governor George W. Bush, 1/15/00]

...BUSH ADMINISTRATION REGULATIONS IGNORE SCIENCE "60 leading scientists—including Nobel laureates, leading medical experts, former federal agency directors and university chairs and presidents—issued a statement calling for regulatory and legislative action to restore scientific integrity to federal policymaking. According to the scientists, the Bush administration has, among other abuses, suppressed and distorted scientific analysis from federal agencies, and taken actions that have undermined the quality of scientific advisory panels." [Union of Concerned Scientists, 2/18/04]

[b]10. Ahmed Chalabi[/b]

BUSH INVITES CHALABI TO STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS...President Bush also met with Chalabi during his brief trip to Iraq last Thanksgiving [White House Documents 1/20/04, 11/27/03]

...BUSH MILITARY ASSISTS IN RAID OF CHALABI'S HOUSE "U.S. soldiers raided the home of America's one-time ally Ahmad Chalabi on Thursday and seized documents and computers." [Washington Post, 5/20/04]

[b]11. Department of Homeland Security[/b]

BUSH OPPOSES THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY..."So, creating a Cabinet office doesn't solve the problem. You still will have agencies within the federal government that have to be coordinated. So the answer is that creating a Cabinet post doesn't solve anything." [White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, 3/19/02]

...BUSH SUPPORTS THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY "So tonight, I ask the Congress to join me in creating a single, permanent department with an overriding and urgent mission: securing the homeland of America and protecting the American people." [President Bush, Address to the Nation, 6/6/02]

[b]12. Weapons of Mass Destruction[/b]

BUSH SAYS WE FOUND THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION..."We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories...for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them." [President Bush, Interview in Poland, 5/29/03]

...BUSH SAYS WE HAVEN'T FOUND WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION "David Kay has found the capacity to produce weapons.And when David Kay goes in and says we haven't found stockpiles yet, and there's theories as to where the weapons went. They could have been destroyed during the war. Saddam and his henchmen could have destroyed them as we entered into Iraq. They could be hidden. They could have been transported to another country, and we'll find out." [President Bush, Meet the Press, 2/7/04]

[b]13. Free Trade[/b]

BUSH SUPPORTS FREE TRADE... "I believe strongly that if we promote trade, and when we promote trade, it will help workers on both sides of this issue." [President Bush in Peru, 3/23/02]

...BUSH SUPPORTS RESTRICTIONS ON TRADE "In a decision largely driven by his political advisers, President Bush set aside his free-trade principles last year and imposed heavy tariffs on imported steel to help out struggling mills in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, two states crucial for his reelection." [Washington Post, 9/19/03]

[b]14. Osama Bin Laden[/b]

BUSH WANTS OSAMA DEAD OR ALIVE... "I want justice. And there's an old poster out West, I recall, that says, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.'" [President Bush, on Osama Bin Laden, 09/17/01]

...BUSH DOESN'T CARE ABOUT OSAMA "I don't know where he is.You know, I just don't spend that much time on him... I truly am not that concerned about him."[President Bush, Press Conference, 3/13/02]

[b]15. The Environment[/b]

BUSH SUPPORTS MANDATORY CAPS ON CARBON DIOXIDE... "[If elected], Governor Bush will work to...establish mandatory reduction targets for emissions of four main pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide." [Bush Environmental Plan, 9/29/00]

...BUSH OPPOSES MANDATORY CAPS ON CARBON DIOXIDE "I do not believe, however, that the government should impose on power plants mandatory emissions reductions for carbon dioxide, which is not a 'pollutant' under the Clean Air Act." [President Bush, Letter to Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), 3/13/03]

[b]16. WMD Commission[/b]

BUSH RESISTS AN OUTSIDE INVESTIGATION ON WMD INTELLIGENCE FAILURE... "The White House immediately turned aside the calls from Kay and many Democrats for an immediate outside investigation, seeking to head off any new wide-ranging election-year inquiry that might go beyond reports already being assembled by congressional committees and the Central Intelligence Agency." [NY Times, 1/29/04]

...BUSH SUPPORTS AN OUTSIDE INVESTIGATION ON WMD INTELLIGENCE FAILURE "Today, by executive order, I am creating an independent commission, chaired by Governor and former Senator Chuck Robb, Judge Laurence Silberman, to look at American intelligence capabilities, especially our intelligence about weapons of mass destruction." [President Bush, 2/6/04]

[b]17. Creation of the 9/11 Commission[/b]

BUSH OPPOSES CREATION OF INDEPENDENT 9/11 COMMISSION... "President Bush took a few minutes during his trip to Europe Thursday to voice his opposition to establishing a special commission to probe how the government dealt with terror warnings before Sept. 11." [CBS News, 5/23/02]

...BUSH SUPPORTS CREATION OF INDEPENDENT 9/11 COMMISSION "President Bush said today he now supports establishing an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks." [ABC News, 09/20/02]

[b]18. Time Extension for 9/11 Commission[/b]

BUSH OPPOSES TIME EXTENSION FOR 9/11 COMMISSION... "President Bush and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) have decided to oppose granting more time to an independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks." [Washington Post, 1/19/04]

...BUSH SUPPORTS TIME EXTENSION FOR 9/11 COMMISSION "The White House announced Wednesday its support for a request from the commission investigating the September 11, 2001 attacks for more time to complete its work." [CNN, 2/4/04]

[b]19. One Hour Limit for 9/11 Commission Testimony[/b]

BUSH LIMITS TESTIMONY IN FRONT OF 9/11 COMMISSION TO ONE HOUR... "President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have placed strict limits on the private interviews they will grant to the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, saying that they will meet only with the panel's top two officials and that Mr. Bush will submit to only a single hour of questioning, commission members said Wednesday." [NY Times, 2/26/04]

...BUSH SETS NO TIMELIMIT FOR TESTIMONY "The president's going to answer all of the questions they want to raise. Nobody's watching the clock." [White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 3/10/04]

[b]20. Gay Marriage[/b]

BUSH SAYS GAY MARRIAGE IS A STATE ISSUE... "The state can do what they want to do. Don't try to trap me in this state's issue like you're trying to get me into." [Gov. George W. Bush on Gay Marriage, Larry King Live, 2/15/00]

...BUSH SUPPORTS CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT BANNING GAY MARRIAGE "Today I call upon the Congress to promptly pass, and to send to the states for ratification, an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of man and woman as husband and wife." [President Bush, 2/24/04]

[b]21. Nation Building[/b]

BUSH OPPOSES NATION BUILDING... "If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road." [Gov. George W. Bush, 10/3/00]

...BUSH SUPPORTS NATION BUILDING "We will be changing the regime of Iraq, for the good of the Iraqi people." [President Bush, 3/6/03]

[b]22. Saddam/al Qaeda Link[/b]

BUSH SAYS IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEEN AL QAEDA AND SADDAM... "You can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror." [President Bush, 9/25/02]

...BUSH SAYS SADDAM HAD NO ROLE IN AL QAEDA PLOT "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in Sept. 11." [President Bush, 9/17/03]

[b]23. U.N. Resolution[/b]

BUSH VOWS TO HAVE A UN VOTE NO MATTER WHAT... "No matter what the whip count is, we're calling for the vote. We want to see people stand up and say what their opinion is about Saddam Hussein and the utility of the United Nations Security Council. And so, you bet. It's time for people to show their cards, to let the world know where they stand when it comes to Saddam." [President Bush 3/6/03]

...BUSH WITHDRAWS REQUEST FOR VOTE "At a National Security Council meeting convened at the White House at 8:55 a.m., Bush finalized the decision to withdraw the resolution from consideration and prepared to deliver an address to the nation that had already been written." [Washington Post, 3/18/03]

[b]24. Involvement in the Palestinian Conflict[/b]

BUSH OPPOSES SUMMITS... "Well, we've tried summits in the past, as you may remember. It wasn't all that long ago where a summit was called and nothing happened, and as a result we had significant intifada in the area." [President Bush, 04/05/02]

...BUSH SUPPORTS SUMMITS "If a meeting advances progress toward two states living side by side in peace, I will strongly consider such a meeting. I'm committed to working toward peace in the Middle East." [President Bush, 5/23/03]

[b]25. Campaign Finance[/b]

BUSH OPPOSES MCCAIN-FEINGOLD... "George W. Bush opposes McCain-Feingold...as an infringement on free expression." [Washington Post, 3/28/2000]

...BUSH SIGNS MCCAIN-FEINGOLD INTO LAW "[T]his bill improves the current system of financing for Federal campaigns, and therefore I have signed it into law." [President Bush, at the McCain-Feingold signing ceremony, 03/27/02]

Also refer to[b] "'Who is the best flip-flopper? It's not Kerry, it's Bush'"[/b] on http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Why Baby Bush Jr. May End-up Another One-Term President Lke Poppy Bush ...

08.22.04 (9:04 pm) [edit]

[b]Writing on wall for another one-term Bush[/b]

IN Washington, some of the icons are well known to the public and some retain almost guru-like status among the cognoscenti and are content to have their fame restricted to a few blocks around the White House. One such nerdy eminence is Charlie Cook, of the wonkish but often indispensable National Journal.

Cook knows polls and districts and congressional races the way a sea-fisherman knows tides and currents and shoals. And so, in a relatively becalmed August, the big news was that Cook made a simple call on the presidential race. He says the election is John Kerry's to lose.

But isn't it neck and neck? Aren't the national polls dead even? Aren't we forever being told that the US is a 50-50 nation and nobody is likely to break from the pack? And didn't Kerry get the most anaemic bounce from his convention in many a year?

All of the above may be true. And next week's Republican convention will surely give George W. Bush a fillip. But it's equally true that the fundamentals in this race - and its direction - seem to be favouring the Democratic challenger, and that the US President is fast running out of ways to reverse the trend.

This is how Cook sees it: "Bush must have a change in the dynamics and the fundamentals of this race if he is to win a second term. The sluggishly recovering economy and renewed violence in Iraq don't seem likely to positively affect this race, but something needs to happen.

"It is unlikely Bush will get much more than one-fourth of the undecided vote, and if that is the case, he will need to be walking into election day with a clear lead of perhaps three percentage points.

"This election is certainly not over, but for me it will be a matter of watching for events or circumstances that will fundamentally change the existing equation - one that for now favours a challenger over an incumbent."

Now look at the numbers. In almost every poll Kerry has a lead of around four points or so. In almost every swing state, Kerry has a small advantage that is just outside the margin of error. Bush isn't clearly ahead in a single one of the critical states. He's even behind in conservative New Hampshire, and only just ahead in North Carolina.

A majority of voters in every national poll say the US is headed in the wrong direction. Unsurprisingly, a majority also say it's time for someone new in the White House.

And when you look at more localised polls in, say, Florida, you find Kerry opening up a small but resilient lead: 47 per cent to 42 per cent, compared with a dead heat in late June.

The issues? Bush's sole source of strength is that the public still supports him in the war on terrorism and, as another poll showed last week, that matters to a lot of voters. But in May Bush enjoyed a 19-point lead on the terror issue. Now he's ahead by 10.

On Iraq alone the race is even. On the economy, Bush is way behind. Ditto on healthcare. In fact, on every domestic political issue Kerry has a bigger lead today than he did in May. He may be boring, and his progress may be slow. But it seems unrelenting.

When the candidates are appealing to their base voters, Bush does relatively well as a decisive, strong leader on national security. He has the support of 86 per cent of Republicans compared with Kerry's support among 79 per cent of Democrats. But among independent voters - who make up the lion's share of the undecided vote at this point - it's a different story.

When polling firm Zogby analysed independent voters' concerns it found them looking a lot like Democrats: the economy has been the top issue for independents all year, with the war in Iraq in second place, the war on terrorism third, then healthcare.

No surprise then that when the undecided are pushed to say who they are leaning towards, Kerry leads by 49 per cent to 31 per cent.

Add it up. Kerry is now ahead by a few points. Of the votes still up for grabs, he looks to win almost twice as many as Bush will. And that fits with the usual expectation that incumbents tend not to win over undecided voters in the last stages of a campaign. More over, Kerry's Bush-hating supporters seem more motivated than Bush's. Kerry's lead in the blue states (the ones Al Gore won last time) is 17 points. Bush's lead in the red states that he won in 2000 is now only six points.

How the President turns this around is not easy to see. He can try to rev up his conservative base further - by proposing state constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage in evenly matched Ohio, for example.

He can put his more popular wife out there more and more to soften his image. At his convention he can parade social liberals such as Vietnam hero John McCain and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Then there's the option of smearing and attacking Kerry. Last week saw the airing of a scurrilous advertisement by disaffected Vietnam veterans calling Kerry a liar. But none of these add up to a coherent strategy.

Maybe he'll be lucky again. His fate is tied to events outside his control - the crisis in Najaf, the paltry job gains three years into a recovery - but it might also be rescued by them.

A new al-Qa'ida attack might rally the country behind him; Kerry may implode in a Gore-like huff of condescension in the televised debates; war may break out with Iran; Afghanistan might have successful elections; Iraqi President Iyad Allawi may turn out to have more staying power.

When the race is still relatively close you'd be foolish to rule anything out now. But if Bush maintains his current posture and strategy it's only a matter of time before he follows his dad into first-term oblivion. - http://www.theaustralian.news...,5744,10531791%255E2703,0 0.html

Bush Dodges AWOL Treason & War Crimes Charges By Spreading LIES About Kerry!!!

08.22.04 (9:01 pm) [edit]

[b]Bush/Cheney Spreads LIES About Kerry to Divert Attention From Dubya's AWOL Treason!!![/b]

[b]Dubya's AWOL desertion during Vietnam is treasonous and a heinous crime deserving of prison time. It is for this reason that ugly Bush/Cheney attacks Kerry with LIES! Moreover Bush/Cheney is guilty of committing War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity in their bloody tragedy in Iraq.[/b]

The LIES about an honorable and courageous veteran who [i]actually did serve heroically [/i]in Vietnam: John F. Kerry; are spread by the vicious Bush/Cheney to [i]divert the attention [/i]of the poor, stupid American people away from a far worse atrocity: a cowardly AWOL Dubya who [i]betrayed our nation [/i]and Dubya DIDN'T EVEN SERVE as well as his War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity!

Americans should beware[i] not to fall in the trap [/i]of the guy who [i]blindly follows [/i]a Hitler-Bush/Cheney [i]order [/i]to go after the dog that poops in his yard, meanwhile Hitler-Bush/Cheney invade his home, rapes his wife and kills his kids. Dubya's AWOL criminality, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity are [i]so, so far worse [/i]than anything Kerry DIDN'T DO but they falsely accuse him of doing-- that it would be hilarious if it wasn't so despicable.

Refer to "When Will The Criminal AWOL Bush Be Held Accountable For Desertion in Vietnam?": http://www.tblog.com/template...

... Blair Refuses to Accept US Award, Angering Dubya the Exploiter ...

08.22.04 (4:45 pm) [edit]

[b]Blair refuses to accept US award[/b]

BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair is refusing to fly to the US to receive a medal bestowed on him by the nation for his support over last year's Iraq war, a London newspaper reported today.

US President George W. Bush has put huge pressure on his closest ally to pick up the Congressional Medal of Honour in person, the Sunday Mirror said, quoting a senior British government source.

Mr Blair is immensely popular with large sections of the American public for his staunch support of the Iraq war and the White House believes a visit by the prime minister now would provide a much-needed boost to Mr Bush's re-election campaign, the weekly said.

"There has been a lot of telephone traffic between the White House and Downing Street over the medal in recent week," the Sunday Mirror quoted a senior government source as saying.

"George Bush wants the prime minister to come to Washington and pick up the medal, which is the highest honour America can bestow on a foreigner.

"But he has refused for more than a year now and for good reason. He cannot possibly accept an award for the Iraq war when British and American troops continue to risk their lives there."

Mr Blair is concerned also that a trip to the US now would effectively be giving a boost to Bush ahead of November's presidential elections.

"The Democrats are watching the situation very carefully and there would be uproar if Tony travelled to Washington to meet (Republican) Bush so close to the presidential elections," the government source said.

"But Bush isn't letting up. The White House has already let it be known that they feel slighted because of this and believe they can use this to put pressure on Blair to get him out there." - http://www.news.com.au/common...,4057,10534579%5E401,00.html

Why Baby Bush Jr. May End-up Another One-Term President Lke Poppy Bush ...

08.22.04 (11:24 am) [edit]

Bush Dodges AWOL Treason & War Crimes Charges By Spreading LIES About Kerry!!!

08.22.04 (5:38 am) [edit]

Bush/Cheney Spreads LIES About Kerry to Divert Attention From Dubya's AWOL Treason!!!

08.21.04 (3:56 pm) [edit]

[b]Dubya's AWOL desertion during Vietnam is treasonous and a heinous crime deserving of prison time. It is for this reason that ugly Bush/Cheney attacks Kerry with LIES![/b]

The LIES about an honorable and courageous veteran who [i]actually did serve heroically [/i]in Vietnam: John F. Kerry; are spread by the vicious Bush/Cheney to [i]divert the attention [/i]of the poor, stupid American people away from a far worse atrocity: a cowardly AWOL Dubya who [i]betrayed our nation [/i]and Dubya DIDN'T EVEN SERVE!

Americans should beware[i] not to fall in the trap [/i]of the guy who [i]blindly follows [/i]a Hitler-Bush/Cheney [i]order [/i]to go after the dog that poops in his yard, meanwhile Hitler-Bush/Cheney invade his home, rapes his wife and kills his kids. Dubya's AWOL criminality is [i]so, so far worse [/i]than anything Kerry DIDN'T DO but they falsely accuse him of doing-- that it would be hilarious if it wasn't so despicable.

Refer to "When Will The Criminal AWOL Bush Be Held Accountable For Desertion in Vietnam?": http://www.tblog.com/template...

... U.S. Veterans Group Slams Swift-Boat Charlatans & Endorses John F. Kerry for President ...

08.21.04 (3:51 pm) [edit]

[b]Letter in Support of John F. Kerry[/b] - http://www.vaiw.org/vet/modul...

[b]As veterans and families of veterans of the United States military, we affirm our faith in the honesty and integrity of John F. Kerry to become our next president.[/b]

Recently the Swift Boat Veterans of Truth released a letter to John Kerry. We do not approve of the statements made by the authors of the letter from the Swift Boat Veterans of Truth. We resent the innuendo, and outright falsehoods, made by this group of partisan GOP operatives. This group is certainly entitled to its opinion on who should be our next president, but they do not speak for all Swift Boat Veterans and they do not have the right to falsely malign a bona fide Silver Star holder and a genuine hero.

The Swift Boats Veterans letter said in part: "It is our collective judgment that, upon your [John Kerry’s] return from Vietnam, you grossly and knowingly distorted the conduct of the American soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen of that war (including a betrayal of many of us, without regard for the danger your actions caused us). Further, we believe that you have withheld and/or distorted material facts as to your own conduct in this war."

This is what John Kerry said in 1971 in his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "... several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command...

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is one by the applied bombing power of this country."

www.richmond.edu/~ebolt/history398/Joh nKerryTestimony.html

To anyone who bothers to read what he said, it is clear John Kerry is charging no one, but is repeating statements others had made about their own behavior. But it is with regard to the latter sentence of the charge that John O'Neill, a signer of the letter, and others become vague. When asked by NewsMax if they had in mind any potential smoking gun of distortion that might be revealed by an unfettered examination of John Kerry's military records, no answer was forthcoming.

We are proud that when his country needed him John Kerry served with honor in Viet Nam.

We are just as proud that John Kerry had the courage and fortitude to speak out against the same war after he served, and realized it was an unnecessary war that tragically cost so many American lives.

We are proud that John Kerry has the humility to admit and correct any mistakes he has made.

We approve of John Kerry’s plans to help the troops who are at war now and who will soon become veterans of the future. John Kerry "will deliver the health care and prescription drugs that veterans need" and "will grant full concurrent receipt to disabled veterans and fairly compensate soldiers and their families for their valiant service.”

We approve of John Kerry’s plans for all veterans and their health care needs. John Kerry “will insist on mandatory funding for veterans health care.” He said "veterans will get the needed appointments with VA doctors and the federal government will invest the resources necessary to make sure that no veteran has unmet health care need.”

We approve the fact that John Kerry "believes military retirees who have a service-connected disability should receive both military retired pay and disability compensation.”

We approve of the fact that "John Kerry believes there are plenty of places to cut back government--but disabled vets are not one of them!”

We approve of the fact that "John Kerry will streamline the VA so that veterans hear back about their status and receive benefits they are eligible for in a timely manner, supporting legislation, appropriations, and other steps as needed so that such decisions are made promptly and fairly.”

We approve John Kerry’s plan to "properly compensate soldiers and their families for their service.” John Kerry pledges to improve housing, schools for the military, better communications while soldiers are overseas, more thorough studies on afflictions from agent orange, depleted uranium, and other chemicals used by the military.

We approve of John Kerry’s plan to have a "full accounting for missing POW/MIAs.”

We approve of John Kerry’s plans to prevent veteran homelessness and to "work to make sure that veterans have the support they need to find housing, jobs and social support they deserve.”

We approve John Kerry’s "full support to the national guard and reservists,” including health care, benefits, etc.

We approve of John Kerry’s plan to "support increasing the death benefit and making the payment tax-free.” John Kerry “will fight to provide surviving spouses of service members killed-in-action with one year of military pay equal to what would have been earned and permitting surviving spouses and children of service members killed-in-action to remain in military housing for one year after the death of their spouse.”

We approve of John Kerry’s pledge not to stretch the military too thin.

All of the above approvals are featured on John Kerry’s own website, and we, the undersigned, wholeheartedly support all the above efforts and plans this candidate is bringing to the table when he wins the November 2004 election.

We truly believe that JOHN KERRY WILL NOT LEAVE ANY MAN, WOMAN OR CHILD BEHIND.

A vote for John F. Kerry is a vote for all!

[b]VETERANS and FAMILY MEMBERS, to Endorse this Letter in Support of John Kerry CLICK HERE http://www.vaiw.org/vet/modul... ! [/b]

... New Evidence Undermines Swift Vet Charlatans Attack on Kerry ...

08.21.04 (7:16 am) [edit]

On March 13, 1969, in the Bay Hap River, did Lieut. John Kerry, captain of Swift boat PCF-94, defy enemy fire and heroically save the life of First Lieut. Jim Rassmann, who had been blown off Kerry's boat into the water by a mine explosion? Or did Kerry, during this mission involving five Swift boats, merely help a comrade return to his boat at a time of relative calm? A band of anti-Kerry veterans funded by Republican donors--who call themselves Swift Boat Veterans for Truth--have claimed that there was no enemy fire when Kerry pulled Rassmann into his boat and that Kerry did not deserve the Bronze Star he won for this incident. Although the citation for Kerry's Bronze Star notes he rescued Rassmann in the face of sniper fire and Kerry, Rassmann and PCF-94 crew members all say Rassmann was under fire when Kerry pulled him aboard, the anti-Kerry vets insist that was not how it happened, that there was no enemy fire. Their campaign against Kerry took a hit yesterday when The Washington Post disclosed that the military records of Larry Thurlow--a leader of the anti-Kerry outfit who also won a Bronze Star for actions taken during this engagement--contradict Thurlow's claim that there was no enemy fire at the time. (See here.) Military records obtained by The Nation provide more evidence that there was enemy fire during this episode.

Three Navy men won Bronze Stars for their actions that day: Kerry, Thurlow, and radarman first class Robert Eugene Lambert, a petty officer in the boat captained by Thurlow. The citation for Lambert's Bronze Star--previously undisclosed but obtained today under the Freedom of Information Act from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis--repeats the description of the incident included in the citation for Thurlow's Bronze Star: "all units came under small arms and automatic weapons fire from the river banks." Lambert's citation also notes that Lambert--who assumed command of PCF-51 after Thurlow went to assist another Swift boat damaged by a mine--"directed accurate suppressing fire at the enemy." The citation praises Lambert's "coolness, professionalism and courage under fire."

In an affidavit Thurlow signed last month, he said "no return fire occurred....I never heard a shot." He said to the Post, "I am here to state that we weren't under fire." But the individual citations for Thurlow, Kerry and Lambert each refer to enemy fire. And the Lambert citation also suggests there was a need for his boat to engage in "suppressing fire."

Asked about the discrepancy between his own account and his citation, Thurlow, who was the senior skipper in the flotilla involved in this engagement, said that Kerry was often able to present his own (presumably self-serving) descriptions of events to superiors. But neither Thurlow nor the Swift Boat group has substantiated this claim. And did Kerry rig not only his own award recommendation but those of Thurlow and Lambert? In the award recommendation for Thurlow's Bronze Star, Lambert--not Kerry--is listed as the eyewitness. (And Del Sandusky, a crew mate of Kerry, was the eyewitness listed in the award recommendation for Kerry. According to the National Personnel Records Cent

er, Lambert's file no longer contains the award recommendation for his Bronze Star.)
Kerry has posted his award citation on his web site (click here), and Thurlow's Bronze Star citation was posted by the Post (click here). Lambert's citation describes what seems to have been a harrowing situation. It reads in full:

"For meritorious achievement while serving with Coastal Division ELEVEN engaged in armed conflict against Viet Cong communist aggressors in An Xuyen Province, Republic of Vietnam on 13 March 1969. Inshore Patrol Craft [PCF] 51, with Petty Officer Lambert serving as Leading Petty Officer, was conducting a SEA LORDS operation in the Bay Hap river with four other boats. The boats were exiting the river when a mine detonated under another Inshore Patrol Craft, inflicting heavy damage to the boat and wounding the entire crew. At the same time, all units came under small arms and automatic weapons fire from the river banks. Inshore Patrol Craft 51 immediately proceeded to aid the damaged Inshore Patrol Craft, where the Officer-in-Charge [Larry Thurlow] leaped aboard to render assistance. Petty Officer LAMBERT assumed command of Inshore Patrol Craft 51 and directed accurate suppressing fire at the enemy. While administering first aid to the crew of the damaged Inshore Patrol Craft, Inshore Patrol Craft 51's Officer-in-Charge was knocked overboard. Petty Officer LAMBERT, without hesitation, directed Inshore Patrol Craft 51 alongside his Officer-in-Charge, where, from an exposed position and with complete disregard for his personal safety, he pulled him aboard. Petty Officer LAMBERT then returned his Officer-in-Charge to the aid of the damaged Inshore Patrol Craft and remained in command of Inshore Patrol Craft 51 until all units cleared the river. Petty Officer LAMBERT's coolness, professionalism and courage under fire significantly contributed to the rescue of his Officer-in-Charge and the damaged Inshore Patrol Craft and were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service."

Lambert, a career Navy man who served on active duty from 1957 to 1978, could not be located. But his records offer more support for Kerry's account (which, by the way, is the official account). And the credibility of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has been challenged on several fronts. Jerome Corsi, the co-author of the book the group is promoting, Unfit for Command, recently acknowledged that he has posted anti-Catholic, anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic comments on a conservative website. Others involved with the anti-Kerry outfit have flip-flopped and altered their stories. For instance, George Elliott, a leading member of the group who was the commander who signed the recommendation for Kerry's Bronze Star, campaigned with Kerry in 1996, defending him after questions were raised about Kerry's Silver Star. (Kerry received this medal for chasing down and killing an enemy soldier on February 28, 1969.) And in 1969, Elliot wrote Kerry's fitness report and noted, "In a combat environment often requiring independent decisive action, Lt. j.g. Kerry was unsurpassed." Now he says Kerry lied about his service in Vietnam. And today the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth unveiled a new ad that assailed Kerry for having criticized the conduct of American soldiers in Vietnam. The ad claims Kerry, during his famous testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, accused his fellow soldiers of having committed atrocities. But Kerry, then a leader of the movement against the Vietnam War, was reporting what other soldiers had said they had done. (Today the Kerry campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing the group of illegally coordinating with the Bush campaign.)

The latest volley from the Swift Vets shows what motivates these anti-Kerry veterans. They remain mad at him for opposing the war and addressing its worst aspects. As for what happened on March 13, 1969, the issue is whether to accept the accounts of veterans who are angry with Kerry or the documentary evidence that is seconded by Rassmann, a Republican, and Kerry's crew mates. Lambert's citation offers more reason to wonder about the Swift Boat group's version of events and to question its dedication to the truth. - http://thenation.com/capitalg...

..... Another Veteran Speaks Out Against Bush's Smear Boat Liars Doing His "Dirty Work" For Him ...

08.21.04 (7:11 am) [edit]

Last April, there was still a public debate taking place, at least to some degree, about George W. Bush, his Texas Air National Guard service, and a six-month gap where the records show Bush never showed up anywhere to fulfill his military obligation. In other words, Bush was AWOL for a period of at least six months—and during a time of war. There are men that have spent a lot of time in a military brig for less, but then none of them were as well connected as Bush.

But then, seemingly overnight, the question about Bush and his being AWOL just vanished from the media. It was not because the issue had been settled, as the final chapter about Bush and his National Guard service has yet to be written. With the help of the Heritage Foundation, Fox News, and the Weekly Standard, AWOL Bush was replaced with John O'Neill and Swift boat Veterans for Truth and their campaign to smear John Kerry.

This is not the first attack by Bush people on the integrity and honor of someone who served in uniform during a time of war (unlike Bush). John McCain in 2000, Max Cleland in 2002 were two other Vietnam veterans that were smeared in much the same way as what is being done to John Kerry. Where is the outrage over these types of attacks? Or have we in this country sunk so low as to find acceptable the politics of "fear, hate, and smear" being thrust upon us by BushCo?

Back to O'Neill, Swift Boat Veterans for whatever and their "magical" appearance on center stage of Fox News. This sudden and magical appearance is very reminiscent of O'Neill and Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace and their "magical" appearance back in 1971. That group and O'Neill were a "creation" of the Nixon administration in an attempt to counter John Kerry and Vietnam Veterans against the War, which at the time was a real thorn in the side of Nixon. The only difference between then and now is Karl Rove. I have no doubt that he is involved with this, as this is the type of thing Rove is noted for—dirt and smear by innuendo.

John O'Neil may be a lot of things but a seeker of truth, as he puts it, is not one of them. He is, first and foremost, a conservative Republican of the neocon persuasion and an ardent supporter of Bush; Seeker of truth—not by any stretch of the imagination.

John O'Neill is a Houston lawyer whose law firm "Clements, O'Neill, Pierce, Wilson & Fulkerson, L.L.P. handles "Commercial, Oil & Gas, Securities, Intellectual Property & Employment litigation." In fact, one of his law partners, Margaret Wilson, was the general council for Bush from 1998 to 2000 while he was Texas governor. It just gets better from here.

It seems as though prior to working for Bush, Wilson lawyered for the law firm of Venson & Elkins, Enron's main law firm. Interesting side note: Steven Cambone, the current Bush general council whose memo's told Bush how to circumvent the law on the torturing of prisoners, also worked for Venson & Elkins. Does anyone smell a foul odor yet?

Joe Conason, writing in Salon, last May 4, quoted O'Neill's own public relations man stating, O'Neill is sounding like a "crazed extremist." And that comes from someone in his camp!

Wake up people! John O'Neill is one of the Houston oil/gas, corporate Republican good old boys. What he and his supporters are attempting to do in this baseless smear campaign directed at John Kerry is nothing more than an attempt to divert our attention from where it should be, and that's on George W. Bush. Did I mention that in 1991, Papa Bush considered O'Neill for a federal judgeship?

Hey, O'Neill, this is another Vietnam veteran that knows you for the fraud you are! If anyone lacks character, ethics, integrity and honor, you need look no further than your reflection in the mirror. You and the rest of your little Heritage Foundation backed and supported group are nothing more than another BushCo goon squad that apparently gets its thrills from the politics of character assassination.

If in fact O'Neill were what he attempts to convince us he is, a "seeker of truth" we would still be discussing George W. Bush being AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard during a time of war

.
I really do think it is past time to get back to where we were before the sudden appearance of John O'Neill with all his innuendo, false statements and just plain old everyday B.S. and that is the as yet unresolved issue of Bush being AWOL during a time of war.

Lt. Col. [ret] Bill Burkett was the senior Texas National Guard officer who blew the whistle on "ghost soldier" reporting and filing false readiness reports (USA Today, Dec., 2002) to the Texas House and Senate oversight committees in May of 1998, and who at that time revealed that actions by Governor Bush and his senior staff also were taken to scrub Bush's military record. Bill Burkett has appeared and testified under oath before those committees, and at a formal inspector general's investigation with the Department of Defense Inspector General's office, and civil court actions concerning these allegations. Burkett became the object of national interest in February of 2004 when his story of both incidents and the retaliation that followed were included in James Moore's book, "Bush's War for Re-election."

"In the late fall of 1997, while I was just doing my job, I encountered a true dilemma; a decision point. While waiting for an appointment with General Daniel James, the Adjutant General of Texas, I overheard the governor's chief of staff and special assistant telling James to "make sure there's nothing in there that will embarrass the governor", concerning Governor George W. Bush's military service within the Texas National Guard" . . ." The real question is anchored within attempts by Bush and his political entourage to cast a false image and then defend it with falsehood once the story began to unravel. And this sets up the question of this being the nexus issue of later framing of a war of choice and other falsehoods within his presidency [sic]. It's the credibility issue and trust rolled into one. It's not national security at all." (Bill Burkett, What?s an AWOL got to do with Presidential Service?)

Not only must Bush be held to account for being AWOL, those that participated in the manipulation of his records must also be held to account, as should John O'Neill for his substituting fiction and fantasy for truth and fact. The biggest culprist in this fiasco, the way I see it, are the corporate media. How can they claim to be presenting us with news, fair and balanced as Fox states, when not one of them even brings up who this guy is? If O'Neill had spoken out against Bush, we would have been told everything there is to know about him and then would have watched as his character was brought into question, much the same way as has happened to all that have spoken out against Bush
.
Anyone that does not see O'Neill and his group for what they are—hacks for the Bush administration—is living in a dream world. - http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Iraqi Olympic Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot

08.21.04 (7:06 am) [edit]

Sometimes we are reminded that the Olympics can serve as an international platform not only for flag waving and truck commercials, but also resistance.

In an incredible piece http://www.commondreams.org/h... by Grant Wahl on Sports Illustrated.com, the Iraqi Olympic Soccer team has issued a stinging rebuke to George W. Bush's attempt to use them as election year symbols.

Iraq's soccer squad is perhaps the surprise of the entire Olympics, advancing to this weekend's quarterfinals despite the war and occupation that has gripped their country for the last 17 months. Yet amidst cheers and triumph, they were infuriated to learn that Bush's brain, Karl Rove, had launched campaign ads featuring their Olympic glory as a brilliant by-product of the war on terror.

The commercial, subtle as a blowtorch, begins with an image of the Afghani and Iraqi flags with a voice over saying, "At this Olympics there will be two more free nations -- and two fewer terrorist regimes."

Bush has also been exploiting their exploits in stump speeches. Much more comfortable talking sports than foreign policy or stem-cell research, Bush brayed with bravado in Oregon, "The image of the Iraqi soccer team playing in this Olympics, it's fantastic, isn't it? It wouldn't have been free if the United States had not acted."

This has compelled the Iraqi soccer team, at great personal risk, to respond. Mid-fielder and team leader Salih Sadir told Sports Illustrated, "Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign. He can find another way to advertise himself."

Sadir has reason to be upset. He was the star player for the professional soccer team in Najaf. Najaf has in recent weeks been swamped by US troops and the new Iraqi army in an attempt to uproot rebel cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr. Thousands have died, each death close to Sadir's heart.

"I want the violence and the war to go away from the city," said Sadir, "We don't wish for the presence of Americans in our country. We want them to go away."

Sadir's teammates were less diplomatic.

Midfielder Ahmed Manajid, told Wahl angrily, "How will [Bush] meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women? He has committed so many crimes."

Manajid understands Sadir's pain because he is from another Iraqi city that has been in a state of siege, Fallujah.

Manajid told Wahl that his cousin Omar Jabbar al-Aziz, who was a resistance fighter, was killed by the US, as were several of his friends. Manajid even said that if he were not playing soccer he would "for sure" be fighting as part of the resistance.

"I want to defend my home. If a stranger invades America and the people resist, does that mean they are terrorists? Everyone [in Fallujah] has been labeled a terrorist. These are all lies. Fallujah people are some of the best people in Iraq."

Usually when there is political unrest on Olympic teams, the coach tries to be a mitigating force with the media. But not here and not now. Iraqi soccer coach Adnan Hamad also went public to Sports Illustrated saying, "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."

To be clear, Iraq's team is not pining for former Olympic head Uday Hussein, notorious for torturing athletes that under performed. Yet they don't feel their choice has to be between Uday's way and the bloodbath that has been visited upon their country. As Hamad said," What is freedom when I go to the [national] stadium and there are shootings on the road?

The ideas expressed by the Iraqi soccer team are by all counts commonplace in Iraq yet find little expression in the mainstream media here at home. It is critical that their words find ears.

Without WMDs, Al-Qaeda connections, and with an Iraqi populace that overwhelmingly views the U.S. as occupiers and not liberators, what possible justification does Bush - and Kerry - have for supporting this invasion that has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and countless lives?

Take time this weekend to root for the Iraqi soccer team. Their ascent will accompany a platform for ideas that demand to be heard. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

... President Bush: Flip-Flopper In Chief [Except for Corporate Cronyism & Favors For The Rich!]

08.20.04 (3:28 pm) [edit]

... U.S. Veterans Group Slams Swift-Boat Charlatans & Endorses John F. Kerry for President ...

08.20.04 (9:00 am) [edit]

... Bush/Cheney's Catastrophic Blunder: The Invasion of Iraq was Always Going to Prove Disastrous

08.20.04 (8:13 am) [edit]

[b]It's Easy to Let Hope Override Reality

The Invasion of Iraq was Always Going to Prove Disastrous[/b]

I wish I could claim that I always knew the adventurism of Iraq was going to end badly, but I'd be lying. What I knew led me to believe it was a deeply distasteful dictatorship. If it was harboring weapons of mass destruction then, in my mind, there was a possible case for intervention.

If it was possible to destroy those weapons and expedite Iraq's political status to a functioning democracy with a minimum of innocent bloodshed, then I felt the enterprise might just possibly be worthwhile.

I was well aware that there was absolutely no evidence of any link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. And I was well aware that there were worse totalitarian governments than Iraq, America's ally Saudi Arabia being one and North Korea another. And that Israel really did have weapons of mass destruction.

I had no time for Bush or his far-right cronies and the frequent contempt they showed for the rest of the world. I was also pretty certain that control of Middle Eastern oil resources on behalf of Western multinationals was a pretty large part of Bush's agenda, but I confess that at first I thought that his gung-ho approach might possibly be more moral in helping an oppressed people than the appalling inaction of a world community who stood by and watched Rwandans being slaughtered, Cambodians being slaughtered and East Timorese being slaughtered.

Could a world that habitually did nothing when hideous crimes against humanity were perpetrated, point an accusing finger at someone who finally acted? OK, acted extremely selectively and with a lot of self-interest, but at least acted.

Of course, in hindsight, as the death toll mounts I realize I was sucked into the Rambo myth. That simplistic solutions involving massive force might work. I was sucked in by the television excitement of smart bombs and embedded reporters.

In hindsight, in such a complex and volatile society as Iraq, the chances of the invasion not turning into a disaster were always going to be remote. Any society, no matter how severe its internal divisions, is going to unite against a hated alien invading power.

And no army in history has managed an invasion without barbarism and torture emerging as an inevitable part of the process.

But my hunger for action against an odious tyrant overrode my better judgment. Perhaps part of me was subliminally sucked in to believing that despite Bush and his cronies, there was something inherently moral about a democratic America.

A lifetime of Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper and even Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford had done their work. These type of men couldn't torture and rape.

A more realistic part of me has always believed that the world's most powerful country uses that power ruthlessly to ensure its control and dominance of the world's riches inexorably increases, but for a brief while I didn't listen to my inner cynic.

It's still possible that the Iraqi people will suffer less in the long term than they would have without intervention, but that possibility is growing smaller by the minute. If Rwandan-scale slaughter is occurring, then intervention is urgent and moral, but societies that aren't transgressing at that level can probably be transformed only from within, aided by a world community that exerts relentless diplomatic, trade and moral pressure. And it may take a very long time.

I should have realized that the doctrine of pre-emption, with its promise of immediate and easy change was an illusion. Mea culpa.

[b]David Williamson is a playwright. This is an edited extract from 'Authors Take Sides - Iraq and the Gulf War', published by Melbourne University Press[/b]. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

....... AFTER THE ELECTION ....... This is Scary .......

08.20.04 (7:13 am) [edit]

Some commentators have suggested that President Bush has turned his back on the neo-conservatives in his administration and is reaching out to moderates. Opening the door to the UN in Iraq is cited as one example of this moderation. Trying to mend fences within NATO is cited as another. And, certainly, as the President faces the polls in November, he does appear to be putting a more moderate face on his foreign policy – in part by adopting measures his opponent, John Kerry, has advocated. A number of the Middle East Ambassadors have told me that these are signs that the President is distancing himself from the failed policies of the neo-conservatives and that in a second term we will see a major difference in the Bush approach. But has the Bush Administration’s policy toward the Middle East really changed?

This prompted me to reread a speech I gave before we went to war in Iraq. In it, I pointed out a position paper called “Clean Break” which was developed by Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and a number of others as campaign advice to Benjamin Netanyahu in his campaign of 1996 for Prime Minister. Among other things, Perle told Bibi:

“[i]Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq - an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right - as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions[/i].”

This approach was further developed in the “Statement of Principles” of the “Project for a New American Century” signed off on in 1997 by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle and a host of other prominent figures in and around the Bush Administration. A key sentence in the statement was: “it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire.”

I don’t believe that Richard Perle or Douglas Feith has given any indication of a change of heart since 1996. And I don’t see any hint in the Vice President’s campaign rhetoric of a change in his position. If these are still the principles that the President is following, then all talk of a “new” look for the second Bush Administration looks very much like wishful thinking.

On July 1, the President made a speech on "Democracy and Freedom" while in Turkey for the NATO meeting. The President made the following points, among others:

• The historic achievement of democracy in the broader Middle East will be a victory shared by all.
• The promise of democracy is fulfilled in freedom of speech, the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, economic freedom, respect for women, and religious tolerance.
• Achieving these commitments of democracy can require decades of effort and reform and so we do not expect or demand that other societies be transformed in a day.
• Leaders throughout that region, including some friends of the United States, must recognize the direction of events. Any nation that compromises with violent extremists only emboldens them, and invites future violence.
• Many in the West have excused tyranny in the region, hoping to purchase stability at the price of liberty. But it has not made Western nations more secure to ignore the cycle of dictatorship and extremism.
• The rise of Iraqi democracy is bringing hope to reformers across the Middle East, and sending a very different message to Tehran and Damascus. A free and sovereign Iraq is also a decisive defeat for extremists and terrorists.

This was a speech that could be read in several ways. If you are from Turkey, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan, or Morocco, you would have to believe that the President is patient so long as you are demonstrating good faith on the road to democracy, as the President has defined it. As the President said: “we do not expect or demand that other societies be transformed in a day.” The obvious corollary to this statement is that we do demand that they be transformed. If you are from a state that is not on the President’s list then either your country has not made an impression on the President’s advisors or you have been left in limbo as to the US attitude. However, it should be obvious to all that major states of the region have been left off the President’s list – Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Algeria – while two capitals have been singled out for special attention – Tehran and Damascus.

The President was virtually silent on what we should do about Iran and Syria or how we should be approaching other major capitals of the Middle East. And the question in my mind is what the President intends to do with countries that ignore our “demand.” But I have no doubt, from Bush’s statements, that he is still a man on a mission. He is committed to the basic tenets that Perle and others outlined many years before. And there is no reason to believe that this mission will become less important to a second term President who no longer has to face the question of reelection.

[b]Author: Ambassador Edward S. Walker, Jr. is President of the Middle East Institute. He has served as Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and as Ambassador to Israel, the Arab Republic of Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates, and Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations.[/b] - http://www.mideasti.org/artic...

... Kerry: Ad Groups Do Bush's "Dirty Work" [Bush Gets Thugs to Lie for Him]

08.20.04 (7:08 am) [edit]

[b]Kerry Says Group Is a Front For Bush[/b]

[i][b]Democrat Launches Counterattack Ad On Combat Record[/b][/i]

Faced with unrelenting attacks on his military record, Sen. John F. Kerry on Thursday said a Republican-funded group of veterans is lying about his service in Vietnam and operating as a front organization for President Bush.

The president "wants them to do his dirty work," Kerry said.

Under pressure from Democrats to respond to a television ad and book challenging his valor in Vietnam, Kerry, for the first time, lashed out at Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the president, accusing them of conspiring to smear his decorated military record, and released a new ad highlighting his heroism in combat.

"More than 30 years ago, I learned an important lesson. When you're under attack, the best thing to do is turn your boat into the attack," Kerry told a few thousand union supporters here. "Thirty years ago, official Navy reports documented my service in Vietnam and awarded me the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. Thirty years ago, this was the plain truth. It still is. And I still carry the shrapnel in my leg from a wound in Vietnam."

Kerry, who has made his military service a centerpiece of his candidacy, was forced to defend his war honors as the attacks on his integrity came to dominate the campaign. Aides said Kerry has been flooded with calls from concerned veterans, and a CBS poll released last night showed the senator from Massachusetts losing significant support among those who served in the military.

While Kerry struck back at the group, he did not address some of the accusations, including the charge that he lied about crossing into Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968. Kerry, in a statement, maintains he was in Cambodia while serving in Vietnam but does not state that it was on that date. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has also accused Kerry of lying about his war record to win a Bronze Star and of using a self-inflicted wound to claim a Purple Heart, charges the Democratic nominee denies.

On its Web site, the veterans group says that the wound that led to the first of Kerry's three Purple Hearts was minor and self-inflicted, thus ineligible for the award. Kerry, through a spokesman, said the wound was not self-inflicted.

The Washington Post cited military records Thursday that support Kerry's account on the Bronze Star citation.

Instead of rebutting each charge, Kerry blamed Bush for sanctioning such highly personal attacks.

"Of course, the president keeps telling people he would never question my service to our country. Instead, he watches as a Republican-funded attack group does just that," Kerry told the International Association of Fire Fighters meeting here. "Well, if he wants to have a debate about our service in Vietnam, here is my answer: Bring it on."

Drew Whitlow and Bill Zaladonis, former naval officers who served under Kerry's command, came to the event to defend the senator's record.

Bush has refused to condemn the ad, and there is no evidence the president's campaign has direct connections to the anti-Kerry veterans group.

Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said he made the decision late Wednesday to fight back, during a teleconference from his Boston home with traveling staff and advisers in Washington. "When you shed your blood for your country, your instinct is to fight back," she said.

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which is funded in large part by Bob Perry, a Texas Republican, has knocked the Democratic nominee's campaign off stride with a small but effective advertising buy in the battleground states of Ohio, West Virginia and Wisconsin. The group spent about $500,000 on the ad, but its allegations that Kerry exaggerated his combat record to win medals have been on the Internet, the 24-hour cable channels and, most recently, the nation's major television networks and newspapers.

During the week ending Aug. 8, 966,000 people visited the anti-Kerry group's Web site, 34,000 fewer than those who visited Kerry's official site, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings. The new CBS poll found Kerry winning 37 percent of veterans' votes to Bush's 55 percent. (The two were tied at 46 percent after last month's Democratic National Convention, where Kerry highlighted his service.)

"They have been very effective at using the August lull to drive a story" in news outlets, said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.). Kerry, who planned to conserve resources by not buying television ads this month, will spend at least $180,000 to respond, his aides said.

Several Democrats said Kerry waited too long to condemn an ad designed to undermine the cornerstone of his political career and the overriding theme of the convention that nominated him for president: his heroics in war.

"If it were me, I would have come out a lot earlier," said Steve Jarding, a Democratic strategist. "Attack ads on people's character work. It's a sad fact of American politics." Jarding, who advised Sen. Bob Graham (Fla.) during the presidential primaries, said Kerry is especially vulnerable to misleading attacks because most voters still do not know much about him. "When someone levels a negative attack, particularly when it goes to your character, you have to respond" immediately, he said.

Cutter said the campaign relied on the news media, surrogates and 700 letters to the editor to discredit the charges. "But every time one of these guys [from the Swift boat group] shows up on Fox, we get calls from veterans," she said.

Kerry plans to bring in two seasoned communication specialists to help defend him from attacks, aides said: Joe Lockhart, White House spokesman under President Bill Clinton, and Joel Johnson, a lobbyist who also worked for Clinton.

Emanuel said Kerry has an opportunity to "turn this and backfire it on the White House," which is what the Democratic nominee began trying with his remarks Thursday. The campaign wants to convince voters that Bush and White House political director Karl Rove are behind the effort, at least in spirit.

Perry, a Houston home builder, initially contributed $100,000 to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and recently gave another $100,000. Perry has given millions of dollars to GOP efforts over the years, including $46,000 to Bush's gubernatorial campaigns in 1994 and 1998. He gave $2,000 to Bush's reelection campaign this year, records show. Seven of the 10 initial financial contributors to the veterans group have given to Bush's campaign this year, according to PoliticalMoneyLine.

Yet many of the veterans affiliated with the anti-Kerry effort do not have obvious relationships with the Bush campaign, nor do some of its donors.

Tad Devine, a top Kerry strategist, said Bush's refusal to condemn the content of the ad suggests an alliance. If Bush had, "that would have changed the whole chemistry of this debate," he said. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a Bush supporter, has joined Kerry in calling on the president to repudiate the content of the ad, but Bush has refused. Instead, Bush and his spokesmen have condemned all groups financed by unlimited "soft money" and called on Kerry to do the same. "The president thinks that we should get rid of all of this unregulated soft-money activity by these shadowy groups," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Thursday.

GOP strategists said Bush's refusal to condemn the ad is smart because doing so would undermine what appears to be an effective hit on his challenger.

The dispute is unlikely to end soon. John O'Neill, a member of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and author of the anti-Kerry book "Unfit for Command," said the group raised nearly $500,000 from 10,000 donors in recent days.

The group is planning to air a new ad starting Friday, though it is unclear what it will say. Group officials who discussed strategy on the condition of anonymity said the anti-Kerry group plans to hammer the Democrat for his war claims and his war protests after he left Vietnam, especially his claim that U.S. soldiers committed war crimes. The veterans, 15 or so who participate in conference calls most mornings at 7 to plot strategy, are also arranging local veterans to criticize Kerry when he visits their states, O'Neill said.

In its current TV ad, a Swift boat veteran says, "John Kerry lied to get his Bronze Star. . . . I know, I was there, I saw what happened" -- a reference to the mission on March 13, 1969, when Kerry pulled Lt. Jim Rassmann from a river after an explosion knocked Rassmann off Kerry's boat. The ad says Kerry was not under fire. That episode is also a focus of O'Neill's book.

But The Post reported Thursday that the military records of Larry Thurlow, one of Kerry's accusers, show that Kerry's boat faced fire when he pulled Rassmann from the water.

The new 30-second Kerry ad says the Navy documented Kerry's "heroism and awarded him the Bronze Star." In the ad, Rassmann says: "All these Viet Cong were shooting at me. I expected I'd be shot. When he pulled me out of the river, he risked his life to save mine." - http://www.washingtonpost.com...

Sadr Presses Iraqi Militia to Continue Fight After Massive US Attacks

08.20.04 (7:00 am) [edit]

Radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr urged his Mehdi Army to continue fighting US and Iraqi government forces after the militia holding out in Najaf's shrine area were pounded by the heaviest bombardment yet in the 16-day standoff.

The militia leader's defiant call, delivered as usual via a spokesman, followed a letter circulated late Thursday in which he refused to disarm in the wake of a "final warning" to do so from Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

At the same time, spokesman Sheikh Ahmed al-Shaibani said the militia was prepared to hand over control of the Imam Ali mausoleum in the heart of Najaf to the highest Shiite religious authority in Iraq, but there was a catch.

"Moqtada Sadr has asked his fighters to continue the fight," Shaibani told AFP at the shrine, one of the holiest Shiite pilgrimage sites in the world, which was taken over by the cleric's forces on April 5 after Sadr began his rebellion.

"The Mehdi Army is ready to leave the mausoleum and hand over the keys to the leaders of the Marjaiya, Ali Sistani and Kazem al-Haeri, but unfortunately they are not here," said Shaibani.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the spiritual leader of Iraq's majority Shiite population, is in London following hospital treatment, while Haeri is based in the Iranian holy city of Qom.

Deafening explosions engulfed central Najaf after nightfall, as guns fired, US helicopters and warplanes screeched overhead and smoke filled the sky above the Old City, at the heart of which lies the Imam Ali shrine.

An AFP correspondent said the bombardment was the heaviest since the fighting began on August 5 after the collapse of an earlier truce.

But by the time dawn broke Najaf was eerily quiet and not a single gunshot was heard in the city, where some 3,000 US and Iraqi government troops are facing some 1,000 militia.

Repeating the contents of Sadr's alleged Thursday letter, Shaibani said the Mehdi Army would not be disarmed "because we don't have the right to do so."

"This is the army of Imam Mehdi," he said, referring to the so-called 12th imam, who Shiites believe one day will return to this world.

The spokesman dismissed Allawi's call Thursday for the militiamen to disarm, quit the shrine and enter mainstream politics or face military defeat, saying the threats were dictated by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and a "government ordered by the Americans".

In the main southern city of Basra Friday, the British military said the number of security guards around key oil infrastructure had been stepped up after the Mehdi Army torched the offices and warehouses of the South Oil Company.

"The fire at the South Oil Company has been dealt with and there is no effect on oil production. The number of security guards around the oil infrastructure has also been increased," a spokeswoman said.

The fire was extinguished by Iraqi firemen, she said. British military spokesmen insisted that the number of sporadic small arms fire and erratic mortar attacks were less than in recent weeks.

Meanwhile, the US military confirmed that a three-day offensive operation, in league with Iraqi security forces, was continuing in Sadr's Baghdad bastion, the sprawling slum neighborhood of Sadr City.

The health ministry said 10 people had been killed and 79 wounded in the 24 hours to Friday morning. Two US soldiers have been killed and another two wounded since the operation began on Wednesday.

In what is one of the most depressed areas of the Iraqi capital, the US military have slammed militia attacks, "intimidation" and "threats" for delaying multi-million dollar reconstruction projects in the area.

An AFP photographer said US tanks were parked in the center of the slum and that armored vehicles had blocked off the three main streets leading into the district, ahead of the main weekly Friday prayers.

West of Baghdad, two Iraqis were killed and 11 others wounded in a double US airstrike on the Sunni Muslim stronghold of Fallujah in less than 12 hours, a doctor said Friday.

Both strikes pounded the industrial zone of the flashpoint city, said doctor Ahmed Shakir Khadouri from the Fallujah general hospital.

Two security guards were killed overnight and four people, including three women and a child, were wounded when the second attack hit an ice cream factory early Friday, Khadouri added.

Another seven people were admitted to the hospital following the overnight raid, the source said.

A US military spokesman said the airstrikes were ordered to take out two anti-aircraft guns and protect US air assets. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Bush is a Liar:-- All Bush Has to Sell, Is Fear Itself

08.19.04 (5:56 pm) [edit]

I sit here day after day wondering whom in the world these 47% of the people are in this country that can still sit there and support the worst President in modern history. What does George W. Bush offer us anymore? What has he ever offered? I know he promised to be uniter, not a divider and then proceeded to be the most polarizing President ever. I know he promised to return integrity back to the White House and then proceeded to treat the American people and the Constitution as his own personal blue dress. When you look back over these past three and a half years, what can he sell to you? Fear. All Bush has left to sell, is fear itself.

Ironically, George W. Bush shows us his deficiencies, when he tries to talk about what he views as his successes. Yesterday, in Springfield Mo. , Bush touted his record of legislative and military “results”, talking about his tax cuts, education agenda, and improvements to homeland security. What?? Bush has had three and half years to come up with a domestic agenda; unfortunately, he only found the time to develop one for Iraq . If he wants to run on this record, BRING IT ON.

Bush’s tax cuts were a lie when they were contrived and have crippled the economy since being enacted. Even the most ardent Bush supporter, if they are truly conservative, will have to admit as much. You cannot spend at the reckless rate that Bush does, fight a war on multiple fronts, and hand back so much money in tax cuts. What it does is drive up the debt, and eventually we all pay more money in other areas. The fact is that this tax cut does little to help middle class families and the majority of the money goes to the top 1% of this country. This tax cut was not for us; it was for whom Bush refers to as his “base”. The most frightening thing is that Bush is obviously proud of his tax cut for the filthy rich, which has led to this horrific economy. Proud of it! This is what you need to know about the Bush economy:

GW Bush will be the first President since Herbert Hoover to reign over a net loss of jobs.

Make sure you digest that. This means that Bush has lost more jobs, than he has created. I might add that this is by a lot, as Bush has lost over a million more jobs then he has created. Herbert Hoover was President when the Great Depression hit, so we understand why he had a net loss of jobs. How in the world can any reasonable person run proudly on this record? The fact the he does only speaks to the gall that George Bush possesses, and the complete lack of respect he has for all Americans.

Education agenda?? What education agenda. Oh that’s right it had a snazzy title, what was it again…

“No WMD were left behind?”

“No child left undrafted?”

“No funding left to spend on education”

Unfortunately, the last one is no joke. After touting no child left behind, President Bush has left it so under-funded, that it is virtually useless. President Bush has no education plan, successes, or future. It is so disingenuous to wait 3.5 years, six months before an election and then pretend to be an education President. Sadly, President Bush left his education policy behind, 3.5 years ago.

Improvements to homeland security?? We haven’t moved below the elevated magenta alert AT ALL DURING THIS PRESIDENCY. It has gone up, but it has never gone down. How is that viewed as a success? Just last month, this administration told us that al Qaeda is planning major operations within the US , possibly to disrupt our elections. The administration had no idea who, what, where, when, or how, but hey, they know essentially something bad is going to happen, somewhere, somehow, eventually. Yet, despite these ominous threats, Bush wants you to believe that he has improved homeland security? There have been infinitely more terrorist threats during Bush’s presidency than in many, many years before. We are not safer than before Bush, we are far more exposed. Bush’s go-it-alone policies also contribute to the fact that terrorist activities have increased during his presidency.

If these are the “successes” Bush wants us to focus on, then that must mean these are the best parts of his record. The rest of it, is even worse. He cannot run on the environment, because Bush is by far the worst environmental President in history. He has gutted almost all of the progress we had made in the past twenty years. When scientists do not agree with his ideology, he fires them and appoints yes-men. As Kerry pointed out yesterday, Bush simply does not believe in science. The most despicable thing is that he uses clever catch phrases for his legislation, which is the opposite of what the legislation actually does. Thus the “Healthy Forests” initiative, actually should be called “no tree left behind”, because it is simply a boon to the logging industry. The “Clear Skies” Initiative actually increases the amount of pollution. This is only the beginning of the Bush environmental legacy.

He cannot run on his protection of the constitution, as the patriot act has stripped us of the basic provisions of the Bill of Rights. In George W. Bush’s America , it is ok for a President to declare any citizen an enemy combatant, without offering proof, and hold them indefinitely, without counsel. In George W. Bush’s America , it is ok for law enforcement to watch your email, library book transactions, and Internet traffic, without cause, or warrants. Bush has set the tone, and that tone is that we should be very afraid. It is why police officers think it is ok to pepper spray a girl who had the temerity to talk on a cell phone during a movie. It is why a guard in Niagara Falls thinks it is acceptable to bludgeon an innocent Chinese tourist. It is the tone that Bush wants in his America .

The tone is fear. It is all that George W. Bush has left to run on. He cannot run on his record. His record is one of ignoring the American people, not funding education, gutting the environment, blowing up two third world countries, torturing men women and children and thinking international law does not apply to us, alienating our former allies, circumventing the constitution, tax cuts for his rich friends, a crippled economy, net loss of jobs, the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame for political revenge, lies about WMD, lies about Saddam and al Qaeda, lies about almost everything, Halliburton and billions upon billions of dollars in crony capitalism and a terror chart that has no real function other than to keep us scared.

That is because fear is all he has left to run on. George W. Bush cannot win, if you are unafraid. His only hope is to prey upon your fears. In Springfield Mo. Yesterday, President Bush said, “results matter”. I agree Mr. President, but you don’t have any to stand on. We need to be very careful as we head down the stretch toward Election Day. It is the Bush administration in charge of the terror. If his poll numbers slip too much, we will invariably hear about “chatter” which is so non-specific that it shouldn’t even be related to us except for the fact that its actual purpose is not to warn, it is just to scare. A scared citizen, will vote for Bush. An educated citizen, who does not fear, will see Bush’s record for what it is, appalling. Don’t be afraid America . George W. Bush is a used car salesman. His product is fear. I am just not interested in buying it anymore.

[b]Anthony Wade is co-administrator of www.ibtp.org, a website devoted to educating the populace to the ongoing lies of President George W. Bush and seeking his removal from office. He is a 36-year-old independent writer from New York with political commentary articles seen on multiple websites. A Christian progressive, and professional counselor, Mr. Wade believes that you can have faith and hold elected officials accountable for lies and excess. [/b] - http://www.opednews.com/wade_...

Swift Lies: Swift Boat Charlatans are Proven Liars & Thugs (Like Their Paymasters Bush/Cheney!)

08.19.04 (3:51 pm) [edit]

[b]Records Counter a Critic of Kerry[/b]

[u]Fellow Skipper's Citation Refers To Enemy Fire[/u]

Newly obtained military records of one of Sen. John F. Kerry's most vocal critics, who has accused the Democratic presidential candidate of lying about his wartime record to win medals, contradict his own version of events.

In newspaper interviews and a best-selling book, Larry Thurlow, who commanded a Navy Swift boat alongside Kerry in Vietnam, has strongly disputed Kerry's claim that the Massachusetts Democrat's boat came under fire during a mission in Viet Cong-controlled territory on March 13, 1969. Kerry won a Bronze Star for his actions that day.

But Thurlow's military records, portions of which were released yesterday to The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act, contain several references to "enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire" directed at "all units" of the five-boat flotilla. Thurlow won his own Bronze Star that day, and the citation praises him for providing assistance to a damaged Swift boat "despite enemy bullets flying about him."

As one of five Swift boat skippers who led the raid up the Bay Hap River, Thurlow was a direct participant in the disputed events. He is also a leading member of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a public advocacy group of Vietnam veterans dismayed by Kerry's subsequent antiwar activities, which has aired a controversial television advertisement attacking his war record.

In interviews and written reminiscences, Kerry has described how his 50-foot patrol boat came under fire from the banks of the Bay Hap after a mine explosion disabled another U.S. patrol boat. According to Kerry and members of his crew, the firing continued as an injured Kerry leaned over the bow of his ship to rescue a Special Forces officer who was blown overboard in a second explosion.

Last month, Thurlow swore in an affidavit that Kerry was "not under fire" when he fished Lt. James Rassmann out of the water. He described Kerry's Bronze Star citation, which says that all units involved came under "small arms and automatic weapons fire," as "totally fabricated."

"I never heard a shot," Thurlow said in his affidavit, which was released by Swift Boats Veterans for Truth. The group claims the backing of more than 250 Vietnam veterans, including a majority of Kerry's fellow boat commanders.

A document recommending Thurlow for the Bronze Star noted that all his actions "took place under constant enemy small arms fire which LTJG THURLOW completely ignored in providing immediate assistance" to the disabled boat and its crew. The citation states that all other units in the flotilla also came under fire.

"It's like a Hollywood presentation here, which wasn't the case," Thurlow said last night after being read the full text of his Bronze Star citation. "My personal feeling was always that I got the award for coming to the rescue of the boat that was mined. This casts doubt on anybody's awards. It is sickening and disgusting."

Thurlow said he would consider his award "fraudulent" if coming under enemy fire was the basis for it. "I am here to state that we weren't under fire," he said. He speculated that Kerry could have been the source of at least some of the language used in the citation.

In a telephone interview Tuesday evening after he attended a Swift Boat Veterans strategy session in an Arlington hotel, Thurlow said he lost his Bronze Star citation more than 20 years ago. He said he was unwilling to authorize release of his military records because he feared attempts by the Kerry campaign to discredit him and other anti-Kerry veterans.

The Post filed an independent request for the documents with the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, which is the central repository for veterans' records. The documents were faxed to The Post by officials at the records center yesterday.

Thurlow and other anti-Kerry veterans have repeatedly alleged that Kerry was the author of an after-action report that described how his boat came under enemy fire. Kerry campaign researchers dispute that assertion, and there is no convincing documentary evidence to settle the argument. As the senior skipper in the flotilla, Thurlow might have been expected to write the after-action report for March 13, but he said that Kerry routinely "duked the system" to present his version of events.

For much of the episode, Kerry was not in a position to know firsthand what was happening on Thurlow's boat, as Kerry's boat had sped down the river after the mine exploded under another boat. He later returned to provide assistance to the stricken boat.

Thurlow, an oil industry worker and former teacher in Kansas, said he was angry with Kerry for his antiwar activities on his return to the United States and particularly Kerry's claim before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that U.S. troops in Vietnam had committed war crimes "with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

" 'Upset' is too mild a word," said Thurlow, a registered Republican, of his reaction to Kerry then. "He did it strictly for his own personal political gain, and it directly affected every single one of us as we were trying to put our lives together."

Two other Swift boat skippers who were direct participants in the March 13, 1969, mine explosion on the Bay Hap, Jack Chenoweth and Richard Pees, have said they do not remember coming under "enemy fire." A fourth commander, Don Droz, who was one of Kerry's closest friends in Vietnam, was killed in action a month later.

The incident featured prominently in an anti-Kerry television ad produced by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth earlier this month. "John Kerry lied to get his Bronze Star," says Van Odell, a gunner on PCF-23, one of the boats that came to the rescue of the stricken boat. "I know. I was there."

The Bronze Star controversy is also a major focus of an anti-Kerry book by John E. O'Neill, "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry," which will hit No. 2 on The Post's bestseller list this weekend. The book accuses Kerry of "fleeing the scene" and lying repeatedly about his role.

Members of Kerry's crew have come to his defense, as has Rassmann, the Special Forces officer whom he fished from the river. Rassmann says he has vivid memories of being fired at from both banks after he fell into the river and as Kerry came to his rescue. The two had an emotional reunion on the eve of the Iowa Democratic caucuses in January, an event that some political analysts believe helped swing votes to Kerry at a crucial time.

The Bronze Star recommendations for both Kerry and Thurlow were signed by Lt. Cmdr. George M. Elliott, who received reports on the incident from his base in the Gulf of Thailand. Elliott is a supporter of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and has questioned Kerry's actions in Vietnam. But he has refused repeated requests for an interview after issuing conflicting statements to the Boston Globe about whether Kerry deserved a Silver Star. He was unreachable last night.

Money has poured into Swift Boat Veterans for Truth since the group launched its television advertisement attacking Kerry earlier this month. According to O'Neill, the group has received more than $450,000 over the past two weeks, mainly in small contributions. The Dallas Morning News reported yesterday that the organization has also received two $100,000 checks from Houston home builder Bob Perry, who backed George W. Bush's campaigns for Texas governor and for president.

Bush campaign officials have said they have no connection to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which is not permitted to coordinate its activities with a presidential campaign under federal election law. - http://www.washingtonpost.com...

... Bush/Cheney's Neo-Con Thugs Stuck their Penises into the Butts of Little Children & Fucked Them

08.19.04 (3:41 pm) [edit]

[b]Abu Ghraib's Evil: Child Sodomy[/b]

Seymour Hersh http://www.salon.com/politics... warns that far worse than we have seen, or heard of, to date is coming... the sodomizing of children on tape in front of their mothers. Hersh is quoted as saying, "You haven't begun to see evil.... Horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run."

See Notes http://www.j-bradford-delong.... , Commentary http://gryn.dailykos.com/stor... , Transcript http://www.dailykos.com/story... and Video http://stream.realimpact.net/... (Real Video) of Hersch's recent address at the University of Chicago.

Hersch also refers to maintaining over 20 secret detention facilities http://dean4az.blogspot.com/2... (PDF) around the world into which hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people have been disappeared.

Meanwhile, Newsweek is running a feature about the identity of those prisoners in the pictures from Abu Ghraib we have seen so far called "Beneath the Hoods. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5... For instance, the person in the iconic photo of a man in a hood and sheet standing on a box with wires attached to his genitals is a common carjacker, not a terrorist, named Satar Jabar.

If there were any justice in the world, these sorts of revelations of what moral monsters our government harbors, including Bush himself, should have put a stake in the heart of this Administration already. But the ability for educated and otherwise reasonable and ethical people to turn their heads and wallow in fear and willful ignorance concerning these issues seems boundless. People are too afraid to speak about what they know and confront their friends and neighbors about the evil being done in their names.

At this point I've become