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Bush the Deserter
In last night's
Democratic Presidential debate in New Hampshire, broadcast on the Fox News
(Nuisance?) Channel and ABC's Nightline, Peter Jennings went after Wesley
Clark -- and me -- because I said I want to see Clark debate Bush...
"The General vs. The Deserter."
Jennings, referring to me as "the
controversial filmmaker," asked if Clark wanted to distance himself from me
and my "reckless" remark. Clark would not back down, stating how "delighted"
he was with my support, and that I was entitled to say what I wanted to say
-- AND that I was not the only one who had made these charges against Bush.
Michael Moore 1/23/04
Bush Civility*
last week the
{Republican National] committee unveiled its first ad for the 2004
campaign, and it's as hateful as they come. "Some are now attacking the
president for attacking the terrorists," it declares. . .What the
critics say is that this loss of focus seriously damaged the campaign
against terrorism. Strategic assets in limited supply, like Special
Forces soldiers and Predator drone aircraft, were shifted from
Afghanistan to Iraq, while intelligence resources, including
translators, were shifted from the pursuit of Al Qaeda to the coming
invasion. This probably allowed Qaeda members, including Osama bin
Laden, to get away, and definitely helped the Taliban stage its ominous
comeback. And the Iraq war has, by all accounts, done wonders for Qaeda
recruiting. Is saying all this attacking the president for attacking the
terrorists?
Krugman, New York, 11/25/03
Bush
Promotes Fear*
Flashing the words "terrorists" and "self-defense"
in crimson, the Republican National Committee spot urges Americans "to
support the president's policy of pre-emptive self-defense" — a policy
Colin Powell claimed was overblown by the press.
The president is trying to make the campaign about guts: he has the guts
to persevere in the war on terror.
But the real issue is trust: should we trust leaders who cynically
manipulated intelligence, diverted 9/11 anger and lost focus on Osama so
they could pursue an old cause near to neocon hearts: sacking Saddam?
The Bush war left our chief villains operating, revved up the terrorist
threat, ravaged our international alliances and sparked the resentment
of a world that ached for us after 9/11.
Dowd,
NY Times 11/23/03
Messianic Vision*
Mr. Rumsfeld
thought the war could showcase his transformation of the military to be
leaner and more agile. Paul Wolfowitz thought the war could showcase his
transformation of Iraq into a democracy. Dick Cheney thought the war
could showcase his transformation of America into a dominatrix
superpower. Karl Rove thought the war could showcase his transformation
of W. into conquering hero. And Mr. Bush thought the war could showcase
his transformation from family black sheep into historic white hat.
But now Wolfie's messianic vision of growing democracy in the Middle
East is at odds with Rummy's stubborn desire to shrink the Army.
Maureen Dowd, NY Times,
11/9/03
What the Right Really Thinks?
"These bastards like Clark and Kerry
and that incipient ass, Dean, Gephardt and Kocinich and that absolute
mental midget Sharpton, race baiter, should be lined up and shot"
As
quoted by Kathleen Parker in a note from a "friend" and published on the
Heritage Foundation web site 11/1/03
See the Screen Shot HERE
Boykin Constituency *
President Bush said Tuesday that controversial
remarks by Lt. Gen. William
G. "Jerry" Boykin about Muslims and Islam do not
"reflect my point of view, or the view of this administration" — sharp
language from an administration that tends to circle the wagons when a
member is under attack.
Bush's move to distance himself from the outspoken general was the
strongest administration response to date to disclosures of Boykin's
frequent appearances before religious groups at which he characterized
the war on terrorism as a battle between Judeo-Christian tradition and
"Satan." His remarks have put the president in a difficult spot.
With hundreds of supportive calls coming into the Pentagon and Bush
facing a reelection campaign in which he'll seek the help of Christian
conservatives, it might be out of the question for the administration to
fire Boykin.
John Hendren, LA Times 10/29/03
Neo-Cons Scare Business*
the use of
military power and bold global leadership will be essential elements of
the [Project for the New American Century]. . .The principles of
"military preemptive strikes" and "regime change" have become
foundations of the U.S. foreign policy being implemented by three of the
group's founding members -- Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense
Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz.
Critics of the
group's agenda argue that . . . the United States could find itself in a
perpetual state of war-like activities that not only would cause
worldwide upheaval and anxiety but also would escalate massive defense
spending in the United States, causing an even-larger deficit than
currently exists.
If this new
U.S. foreign policy leads to decades of upheaval, how will U.S.
businesses convince their future global partners that they should look
to them for stable business opportunities Ronald Bosrock,
Minneapolis Star Tribute 10/27/03
Classic Bush
*
In
case "The Iliad" isn't lying around the Oval Office, let me recap for
our warriors in Washington. Achilles is both the mightiest warrior and a
petulant, self-righteous, arrogant figure. A unilateralist, he refuses
to consult with allies; he dismisses intelligence about his own
vulnerability; he never reads the newspapers . . .
To
pursue the classical parallel, Don Rumsfeld can be compared to Ajax, the
Greek warrior who had great force projection — but was so deluded that
he laid waste to what he perceived to be his enemies and turned out to
be a herd of cattle. (But a prominent classics scholar called the
comparison daft, noting that Ajax "has such nobility of spirit.")
Homer's most powerful lessons include the need to restrain hubris, to
cooperate with allies, to engage the real world rather than
black-and-white caricatures.
KRISTOF, NY Times 10/22/03
Ashcroft, Rove
and Bush *
"There's also the matter, for example, of the
White House asked for and got permission earlier this week to wait a day
before issuing the directive to preserve all documents and logs, which
led one seasoned federal prosecutor I
talked to to wonder why they wanted to wait a day,
and who at the Justice Department told them they could do that, and
why. So these are the kinds of things that make it uncomfortable at the
very least."
Nina
Totenberg, All Things Considered (8:00 PM ET) - NPR, 10/1/03
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., a member of the
Judiciary Committee, cited senior White House political advissor Karl
Rove's ties to Ashcroft when he said Wednesday that "recusal is
something Ashcroft ought to consider."
. . .Wilson has singled out Rove for blame in the disclosure of his
wife's identity, saying he was certain that Rove knew about and at least
"condoned" the leak.
MSNBC
AND NEWS SERVICES, 10/2/03
"I
believe Karl is Bush. They’re not separate, each of them freestanding,
with distinct agendas, as some people say. Karl thinks X. Bush thinks X"
Kristol
quoted by Ron Suskine, Esquire, January 2003
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George W. Bush, U.S. President
What Bush
Says
"Well, first of
all, [Enron's] Ken Lay is a supporter. And I got to know Ken Lay when he
was the head of the -- what they call the Governor's Business Council in
Texas. He was a supporter of Ann Richards in my run in 1994. And she had
named him the head of the Governor's Business Council. And I decided to
leave him in place, just for the sake of continuity. And that's when I
first got to know Ken,"
George W. Bush, 1/10/02
What Bush
Does
"For
obvious reasons, I have not tried to contact my previous friends in
politics, and they have not tried to contact me," Lay was quoted as
saying. And I think that is probably best, whether that be President
Bush or a lot of senators and congressmen or others that I certainly had
long-term and social relationships with."
Ken Lay quoted by Reuters,
7/16/04
What Bush
Says
"Our intelligence
officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as
much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent."
State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 2003
What Bush
Does
Bush keeps searching
even though "Nearly five months later, those 500 tons are nowhere to be
found. A few seconds with a calculator can help us understand exactly what
this means.
Five hundred tons of
gas equals one million pounds. After UNSCOM, after UNMOVIC, after the war,
after the U.S. Army inspectors, after all the satellite surveillance, it
is difficult in the extreme to imagine how one million pounds of anything
could refuse to be located. Bear in mind, also, that this one million
pounds is but a part of the Iraqi weapons arsenal described by Bush and
his administration.
Maybe the dog ate it. "
William
Rivers Pitt is a New York Times
best-selling author as quoted from TomePaine.com
What Bush
Says
"In a
White
House ceremony earlier Monday, Bush -- who flew fighter jets for the Texas
Air National Guard during Vietnam -- praised the "selfless sacrifice" of
Americans who served in previous wars" CNN,
November 11,2002
What Bush
Does
It
was May 27, 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War. Bush was 12 days away
from losing his student deferment from the draft at a time when Americans
were dying in combat at the rate of 350 a week. The unit Bush wanted to
join offered him the chance to fulfill his military commitment at a base
in Texas. It was seen as an escape route from Vietnam by many men his age,
and usually had a long waiting list. Lardner, Washington
Post
What Bush
Says
"Our people in uniform and families
deserve our gratitude and deserve our support."
February 13, George W. Bush at the Mayport Naval Air Station:
What Bush
Does
SINCE THE Bush administration took office, the
percentage of total contract money going to veterans has plummeted, with
the Department of Defense’s enormous coffers proving particularly elusive
to the men and women who served their country.
Michael Moran, MSNBC, 6/4/03
Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA) National
President Joseph L. Fox, Sr. condemned more than $1 trillion in cuts
approved by the House Budget Committee last week. This proposal would
significantly harm veterans, whose health-care and benefits programs would
lose nearly $25 billion.
PVA Newsroom
Richard Cheney,
U.S. Vice President
''When there is corporate fraud, the
American people can be certain that the government will fully investigate,
arrest and prosecute those responsible,''
Mr. Cheney told the
Commonwealth Club of California, August 2002
What Cheney
Does
"Vice Pres Dick Cheney's tenure as chief executive
of Halliburton is under scrutiny from government investigators and his
political opponents; Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating
changes made by company in its accounting practices for construction
projects while Cheney was in charge; another matter being probed is
Halliburton's acquisition in 1998 of Dresser Industries,"
GERTH , NY
Times
The
Securities and Exchange Commission has finally opened a formal
investigation into allegations that Halliburton (in partnership with
French petro-engineering company Technip) funneled $180 million into a
slush fund to pay bribes in the construction of a $6 billion Nigerian
gas refinery--a scandal that French authorities have been probing for
a year (for background, see Doug Ireland, "Will
the French Indict Cheney?"
December 29, 2003).
. . .The Journal du Dimanche (JDD, a large Sunday paper)
revealed on June 13 that Judge Van Ruymbeke's investigation has
uncovered how Albert "Jack" Stanley, the president of huge Halliburton
subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) at the time of the alleged
bribery, received so-called "commissions" of 3 percent of the deal
from the slush fund. The total amount Stanley received is some $5
million, according to reports in the International Herald Tribune
and elsewhere. The Nigerian oil minister at the time, Dan Entete, got
$2.5 million, reported the JDD. The slush fund was set up with
Halliburton money by a London lawyer, Jeffrey Tesler--who worked for
Halliburton at the same time he was financial adviser to the
notoriously corrupt late Nigerian dictator Gen. Sani Abacha--as a
shell-company front called TriStar, which Tesler established in the
British tax haven of Gibraltar. Stanley, the 5 Million Dollar Man, is
a close friend and associate of Dick Cheney. . . The final contract
for construction of the Nigeria refinery, one of the world's largest,
was signed in 1999, on Cheney's watch (Cheney was CEO of Halliburton
from 1995 to 2000). Bribes of the sort under investigation by the SEC
and the French are illegal under statutes of the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development, of whose international
conventions both the United States and France are signatories-members;
and under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Doug Ireland, the Nation,
6/18/04
Donald Rumsfeld,
U.S. Secretary of Defense
"You and a few
other critics are the only people I've heard use the phrase 'immediate
threat.' I didn't...It's become kind of folklore that that's what
happened."
- Donald Rumsfeld, 3/14/04
VERSUS
"No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the
security of our people than the regime of Saddam Hussein and Iraq."
- Donald Rumsfeld, 9/19/02
Speaking of Saddam's regime, Rumsfeld said "it's
just heartbreaking to see what a vicious, Stalinist-type regime can do to
people." excerpt from Fox News Sunday,
May 4, 2003.
What Rumsfeld Does
"In the 1980’s the Ronal
Reagan administration sent Donald Rumsfeld (the now chief advocate of war
against Iraq) to meet with President Saddam Hussein no less than 23 times
and promised the Iraqi President that America would do whatever it took
and legal to ensure Iraq won the war against Iran. President Reagan
allowed the export of biological agents such as anthrax and ingredients
for chemical bombs to Iraq. Rumsfeld knew personally and approved that
Iraq was using chemical weapons against the Iraqi Kurds"
Picture and quote from
Giovanni di Stefano in Lo Spettro.
Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday at a Pentagon news briefing
that he ordered the detainee held without a registration number at the
written request of George J. Tenet, the director of central
intelligence. . .A Human Rights Watch report last week identified 13
"ghost detainees" taken into United States custody since Sept. 11,
2001. The author of the report, Reed Brody, said the 13 were either
being held in undisclosed detention facilities, or the United States
government had not acknowledged holding them.
THOM SHANKER
, NY Times, 6/18/04
Condoleezza Rice,
National
Security Advisor to the President
What
Rice Says
“Maybe someone
knew [about the false evidence presented in the Bush State of the Union]
down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that
there were doubts and suspicions.”
TV interview on July 8 quoted by Tom
Raum, Associated Press, Jul. 24, 2003, azcentral.com
What Rice
Does
Press Briefing by Scott McClellan, Press Secretary to President Bush, July
23, 2003
In
response to revelation that Steve Hadley, deputy to Condi Rice received
two memos and a telephone call from the CIA informing him that the
information the the State of the Union about Iraq trying to buy uranium in
Africa was not reliable.
Q One of the unanswered questions from yesterday concerned whether or not
Condi Rice had, in fact, read the second memo from the CIA, in which she
was listed as a recipient of. Steve Hadley said he didn't know for certain
whether or not she read it, didn't even know for certain if she received
it. Can you now, a couple hours later, shed any light on that?
MR. McCLELLAN: That's what I know, as well.
Q Could you check, please, and share --
MR. McCLELLAN: I'll see if there's additional
information and find out. I'll look back at the briefing, as well.
MORE,
www.whitehouse.gov
What
Rice
Says
[About Bush
January 28, 2003 State of the Union claim that Iraq was
attempting to buy uranium in Africa said "Maybe someone knew down in the
bowels of the agency,but no one in our circles knew that there were
doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery."
What
Rice Does
Rice lives in a very small circle because
"When the State Department on Dec. 19, 2002, posted a reference to Iraq
not supplying details on its uranium purchases, the CIA raised an
objection, "but it came too late" to prevent its publication, the senior
intelligence official said." Walter Pincus,
Washington Post, 6/13/03
Richard Perle,
senior advisor to Rumsfeld and member of
the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, recently resigned as Chairman of the
Policy Board in the face of ethics charges.
What
Perle Says
"I think Europe has lost its moral compass"
an
interview with the Guardian.
What Perle
Does
"Pentagon adviser Richard Perle briefed an
investment seminar on ways to profit from conflicts in Iraq and North
Korea just weeks after he received a top-secret government briefing on the
crises in the two countries, the Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday.
MSNBC
John Ashcroft,
Attorney General of the United States
"Racism corrupts the mind, infects the
heart, and poisons the spirit. It is cured one person at a time as we
treat each other, as God views us, as equals."
Statement Ashcroft issued on Oct, 29, 1999
What
Ashcroft Does
Individual Freedom Does Not Matter to
Ashcroft
Mr. Joseph
is a refugee from Haiti who is seeking asylum in the United States. He
is not a terrorist, and no one has even suggested that he is a threat
to anyone. And yet he's been in federal custody for nearly two years.
An immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals have ruled
that he should be freed on bond, pending a final ruling on his asylum
request. But the attorney general of the United States, John Ashcroft,
won't let him go. Playing his ever-present, all-encompassing
terrorism card, Mr. Ashcroft personally intervened in Mr. Joseph's
case, summarily blocking his release. According to the attorney
general, releasing this young Haitian would tend to encourage mass
migration from Haiti, and might exacerbate the potential danger to
national security of nefarious aliens . . . Senator Specter urged Mr.
Ashcroft to consider a policy in which the Justice Department would
address cases like Mr. Joseph's on a less sweeping, "more individual"
basis, which would enable officials to determine whether there was any
real basis for concern about terrorism. Mr. Ashcroft was
unmoved. He told Senator Specter: "Sometimes individual treatment is
important. Sometimes it's important to make a statement about groups
of people that come." So David Joseph, a threat to no one, sits
and waits and prays at Krome. Herbert,
NY Times, 8/13/04
Ashcroft gave a commencement address at
Bob Jones, the school,which banned interracial dating and said "I thank
God for this institution," According to ABC News,
he also said "that America's greatness stems from the
triumph of "eternal authority" over "civic authority."
As the WP reports, four weeks after Attorney General John Ashcroft
said the provisions had never been used, "The FBI asked the Justice
Department to seek permission from a secret federal court to use" them.
Last year, when Congress considered
bipartisan legislation restricting these sections of the Patriot
Act, Ashcroft deployed his top spokesman, Mark Corallo, to attack
librarians and lawmakers and claim their concerns were not based in
reality. He said their concerns that library searches were going on
were "a
ruse being used by critics to scare the public." He said, "The
idea of the FBI snooping around the library to see what John Q. Public
is reading is absurd." He continued making such comments, even after
the 11/1/03 newsletter of the American Library Association revealed
that FBI agents in the summer of 2003 "formally contacted 14 libraries
with requests for patron-record information."
Sign the petition to remove Ashcroft.
From the Progress Report,
6/18/04
Worst
Attorney General Ever*
In April
2003, John Ashcroft's Justice Department disrupted what appears to
have been a horrifying terrorist plot. In the small town of Noonday,
Tex., F.B.I. agents discovered a weapons cache containing fully
automatic machine guns, remote-controlled explosive devices disguised
as briefcases, 60 pipe bombs and a chemical weapon — a cyanide bomb —
big enough to kill everyone in a 30,000-square-foot building. . .it's
hard to believe that William Krar wouldn't have become a household
name if he had been a Muslim, or even a leftist. Was Mr. Ashcroft, who
once gave an interview with Southern Partisan magazine in which he
praised "Southern patriots" like Jefferson Davis, reluctant to
publicize the case of a terrorist who happened to be a white
supremacist?
Krugman, NY Times, 6/22/04
Paul Wolfowitz,
U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary
What
Wolfowitz
Says
"Deputy
Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz provided the clearest answer in a talk to
the Council on Foreign Relations: "Consider that in 1997, U.N. inspectors
found Iraq had produced and weaponized at least 10 liters of ricin. In
concentrated form, that quantity of ricin is enough to kill more than 1
million people. Baghdad declared to the U.N. inspectors that it had over
19,000 liters of botulism, enough to kill tens of millions; and 8,500
liters of anthrax, with the potential to kill hundreds of millions."
Mr.
Wolfowitz's hyperbole about Saddam having the capability of killing
"hundreds of millions" was surely intended to drum up support for quick
action. But it seems more likely to provoke needless panic among those who
don't know better and total disbelief among those who do."
MORE
Reynolds, Cato Institute, February 9, 2003
What
Wolfowitz
Does
"Paul
Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, recently told Vanity Fair that
the decision to emphasize W.M.D.'s had been taken for "bureaucratic reasons . . . because it was
the one reason everyone could agree on." But it was the W.M.D. issue that
stampeded the Senate into giving Mr. Bush carte blanche to wage war."
Krugman, NY Times, May 30, 2003
Tom DeLay,
House
Majority Leader (R, TX)
What
DeLay
Says
"Only Christianity offers a way to understand that
physical and moral border. Only Christianity offers a comprehensive
worldview that covers all areas of life and thought, every aspect of
creation. Only Christianity offers a way to live in response to the
realities that we find in this world -- only Christianity."
--
Tom DeLay, speaking to 300 people at the First Baptist Church of Pearland,
Texas (April 12, 2002), quoted from Alan Cooperman, "House GOP whip
delivers fervent paean to Christianity" (Washington Post, April 21, 2002);
What
DeLay Does
"DeLay's rise in
politics was fueled by Enron. The rogue company hosted the first
fundraiser for his leadership PAC, raising $280,000 for him at the event.
And DeLay fought hard for the company's agenda of regulatory relief. Not
only did Enron reward Delay with $32,700 over his years in Congress
(making him its number eight top beneficiary overall), it gave two of his
top aides a $750,000 consulting contract and paid his wife Christine
$40,000 for a no-show job."
MORE Micah L.
Sifry, Public Concern as quoted at TomPaine.com
Ethics
DeLay*
[The]
Washington Post report[ed] that DeLay accepted a trip to South
Korea in 2001 from a group that had registered as a foreign agent. House
rules prohibit members . . Justice Department documents show that
the Korea-U.S. Exchange Council, a business-financed entity, registered
under the Foreign Agents Registration Act on Aug. 22, 2001. DeLay; his
wife, Christine; and two other Republican lawmakers departed on a trip
financed by the group on Aug. 25 of that year. . . The 10-member House
ethics panel, formally the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct,
is unique among committees in that it is split evenly between
Republicans and Democrats. Democrats are resisting rule changes the
House made in January that make it more difficult to open
investigations. Until January, a tie meant that an inquiry was
automatically triggered, now a majority must approve it.
Mike Allen, Washington
Post, 3/11/05
MORE
DeLay's
Skybox Corruption *
William J. Bennett,
Bennett served
as secretary of education and chair of the National Endowment for the
Humanities under former President Ronald Reagan and as director of the
Office of National Drug Control Policy under former President George Bush.
"In America, morality is central
to our politics and attitudes in a way that is not the case with Europe,
and precisely this moral streak is what is best about us. . . . Europeans
may have something to teach us about, say, wine or haute couture. But on
the matter of morality in politics, America has much to teach Europe."
~ Simon & Schuster (January 1998). The
Death of
Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals
What Bennett
Does
"Relentless Moral Crusader Is Relentless Gambler" SEELYE, NY Times
To see how Mr. Bennett has victimized the public at
large, the most instructive example is his shell game with the National
Endowment for the Humanities. In the 1970's, he secured a $970,000 grant
from its coffers for the National Humanities Center in North Carolina, of
which he was then director. In the Reagan administration, he became the
endowment's chairman. During the 90's, without missing a beat, he called
for the endowment's abolition.
Rich, NY Times
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