Three more US soldiers have died in the _resident's
foolish military adventure. For what? Yes, a neo-con
wet dream. But for something more...Their tragic
deaths bear witness to the _resident's utter lack of
CHARACTER, CREDIBILITY or COMPETENCE...in a way that
is too poignant and too immediate for most red-blooded
Americans to deny...here the incomparable William
Rivers Pitts bears witness (again and again!) that, as
the LNS has promised you all along, you are not
alone...Even the "US mainstream news media" polls are
showing the _resident's numbers in a nosedive. He
always was very unpopular, the change in the "US
mainstream news media" polls indicates that his base
itself is deteriorating and his unpopularity can no
longer be hidden...
William Rivers Pitt, www.truthout.org: No, none of these candidates are the one you’ve been waiting for. The one you’ve been waiting for has always been here. The one you’ve been waiting for pressured these candidates to fight the onslaught of the Bush administration. The one you’ve been waiting for took to the streets before the Iraq invasion, worked for the campaign which most inspired, agitated against the PATRIOT Act, spoke to friend and neighbor and family about what has gone wrong...This final truth is self-evident. You are the one you’ve been waiting for. You drive the agenda. You make or break this political season. You are the hero. You’ve been here the whole time.
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/021904A.shtml
The One You’ve Been Waiting For
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 19 February 2004
“Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror,
victory however long and hard the road may be; for
without victory there is no survival.” - Winston
Churchill
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
Nicole Frye and Bryan Spry are dead because of
George W. Bush. Both died in Iraq. Both were 19 years
old. William Ramirez was also 19 years old, as was
Holly McGeogh. Luis Moreno and Nathan Nakis, Jeffrey
Braun and Jason Wright, Joey Whitener and Steven
Acosta and Rachel Bosveld, all were 19 years old when
they died in Iraq. Ryan Thomas and Michael Mihalakis
were 18 when they died in Iraq. They join the 544
American soldiers who have been killed there in less
than a year.
They were lied to, as were we all, and now they
are forever young in death. The lie they, and we, were
fed still sits on the White House website. You can
find the lie if you go to www.WhiteHouse.gov and do a
search for the page titled ‘Disarm Saddam Hussein.’
The page is still there, in all its dishonest glory,
even today. The page will tell you that Iraq possesses
26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum
toxin, and 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve
agent. 500 tons, for those without calculators, equals
1,000,000 pounds.
Hide that.
This White House page likewise claims Iraq is in
possession of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering
the 64,000 liters of anthrax and botulinum toxin no
one can find, along with the 1,000,000 pounds of
sarin, mustard and VX gas no one can find. Better
still, the page claims a connection between Saddam
Hussein and al Qaeda that never existed and cannot be
proven.
Best of all, the page claims that Iraq was seeking
uranium from Niger for use in a nuclear weapons
program. This was the lie that Bush used in his State
of the Union address, to the humiliation of us all.
This was the lie that motivated Ambassador Joseph
Wilson to speak out on the pages of the New York
Times. This was the lie that motivated White House
staffers to take revenge against Wilson by exposing
his CIA wife, Valerie Plame, thus sparking a federal
investigation. This was the lie that might bring down
the administration. It is still on the White House
website.
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
The American people continue to be kept almost
completely in the dark regarding the events of
September 11. Very nearly a thousand days have passed
since the attacks, and yet the best we have to work
with is “Evildoers who hate our freedom.” The best we
have to work with is an unnecessary invasion of Iraq
as a substitute for actual answers and actions. Had
the Bush administration been given what it wanted, the
best we would have had to work with was master
secret-keeper Henry Kissinger chairing a hand-picked
investigation committee that would have come armed
with pens, paper and buckets of whitewash.
The families of the September 11 dead have
published some questions they would like to see George
W. Bush answer publicly. Among them are:
Beginning with the transition period between the
Clinton administration and your own, and ending on
9/11/01, specifically what information (either verbal
or written) about terrorists, possible attacks and
targets, did you receive from any source? This would
include briefings or communications from out-going
Clinton officials, CIA, FBI, NSA, DoD and other
intelligence agencies, foreign intelligence,
governments, dignitaries or envoys, National Security
Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and/or Richard Clarke,
former counterterrorism czar.
Specifically, what did you learn from the August 6,
2001, PDB about the terrorist threat that was facing
our nation? Did you request any follow-up action to
take place? Did you request any further report be
developed and/or prepared?
As Commander-in-Chief, from May 1, 2001 until
September 11, 2001, did you receive any information
from any intelligence agency official or agent that
UBL was planning to attack this nation on its own soil
using airplanes as weapons, targeting New York City
landmarks during the week of September 11, 2001 or on
the actual day of September 11, 2001?
Please explain why no one in any level of our
government has yet been held accountable for the
countless failures leading up to and on 9/11?
Do you continue to maintain that Saddam Hussein was
linked to al Qaeda? What proof do you have of any
connection between al-Qaeda and the Hussein regime?
No one on the entire earth has more moral
authority on this issue than the wives, husbands,
brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers of the men and
women who were killed that day. To ignore their demand
for answers is to slap them across the face. To ignore
their demand is to kill their loved ones all over
again. These questions must be answered in the broad
light of day.
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
Since George W. Bush came to Washington DC, some
2.2 million jobs have evaporated. Last year, the
administration promised to create 1.7 million new
jobs, a promise that went laughably unfulfilled. Just
last week, the administration promised to create
either 2.6 million new jobs or 3.8 million new jobs,
depending upon which administration official you chose
to listen to.
These White House predictions are so off-the-scale
ludicrous that the administration officials charged
with shepherding the economy have refused to have
anything to do with them. Both Treasury Secretary John
Snow and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans have put as
much distance as political physics will allow between
themselves and these predictions. "Macroeconomic
models are based on a lot of assumptions," said
Secretary Snow, who further stated that such things
are, "not without a range of error."
Indeed. The "range of error" may well be found in
the fact that this administration has promised
millions of new jobs while simultaneously – and by
‘simultaneously’ I mean within the pages of the same
economic report – claiming that the outsourcing of
millions of American jobs to foreign countries is a
good thing for the economy and the American people.
Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich asked a pointed
question about this which has gone unanswered: In
which country will these jobs be created?" They won’t
be created in America, for Americans.
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
Seldom in the history of American politics has the
Democratic Party fielded a more competent, patriotic,
excellent group of candidates for the office of the
Presidency than that which has been in the running to
date. A case can be made, however, that each has
bruises on their records as progressives; from voting
for the Iraq War Resolution to voting for the PATRIOT
Act to espousing right-leaning economic principles to
questionable allegiance to a woman’s right to choose,
each and every candidate has failed the purity test
somewhere along the line.
Yet held against the appalling record compiled by
the Bush administration to date, of which the issues
raised above comprise only a damnable fraction, the
truth is as self-evident as the shining sun at
noontime. Each and every one of the Democratic
candidates represent a quantum leap forward for
America, should any of them attain that high office.
Each and every one of them can be pressured, cajoled,
even attacked by the progressive community to act in a
manner required by the people. No amount of pressure
from the progressive community has moved the Bush
administration one inch away from its extremist agenda
to date, and no amount of pressure will move them
should Bush win the 2004 election.
Is John Kerry the one you’ve been waiting for? Is
John Edwards? Howard Dean? Dennis Kucinich? Al
Sharpton? Were any of the candidates who have dropped
out the one you’ve been waiting for? The answer to
those questions will vary from person to person. At
the end of the day, however, the final answer is no.
No, none of these candidates are the one you’ve
been waiting for. The one you’ve been waiting for has
always been here. The one you’ve been waiting for
pressured these candidates to fight the onslaught of
the Bush administration. The one you’ve been waiting
for took to the streets before the Iraq invasion,
worked for the campaign which most inspired, agitated
against the PATRIOT Act, spoke to friend and neighbor
and family about what has gone wrong...This final
truth is self-evident. You are the one you’ve been
waiting for. You drive the agenda. You make or break
this political season. You are the hero. You’ve been
here the whole time.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William Rivers Pitt is the senior editor and lead
writer for truthout. He is a New York Times and
international bestselling author of two books - 'War
on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' and
'The Greatest Sedition is Silence.'
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