Five more US soldiers have died in Iraq. For what? The
neo-con wet dream of a Three Stooges Reich. There are
only 37 days to go until the national referendum on
the CREDIBILITY, COMPETENCE and CHARACTER of the
_resident and the VICE _resident.
Over one thousand US soldiers have died in a foolish,
ill-planned and unnecessary war in Iraq, the Bush
national insecurity team is GUILTY of pre-9/11
negligence and post-9/11 incompetence.
The US federal budget surplus has been squandered on
TWO foolish, ill-timed and unnecessary tax cuts skewed
toward the wealthiest few. The Bush doodoo economics
team, as LNS Foreign Correspondent Dunston Woods has
dubbed them, has plunged us into hundreds of billions
of dollars in federal deficit and a multi-trillion
dollar national debt.
With unprecedented ferocity and frequency, FOUR hurricanes have devasted Fraudida. Scientists studying Global Warming predicted such severe weather three years ago. But we have lost four years we did not have to lose in the struggle to come to grips with its impact, because the _resident has denied its reality as vehemently as he has denied the true costs of his foolish military adventure and his obscene tax cuts...
Forget about asking your fellow citizens if they are
safer or better off than they were four years ago (of
course, the answer is no), instead, ask them can we
afford four more years --strategically, militarily,
economically, environmentally, constitutionally?
The US regimestream news media, at least until this
point, has, in large part, been a full partner along
with the Bush Cabal and its wholly-owned-subsidiary
formerluy-known-as-the-Republican-Party
in a Triad of shared special interest (e.g. oil,
weapons, media, pharmaceuticals, tobacco, etc.) Here
are four very important news items. They should
dominate the air waves and demand headlines above the
fold. But they won't. Please read them and share them
with others. Please vote and encourage others to vote.
Please remember that the US regimestream news media,
particularly the major network and cable news
organizations, does not want to inform you about this
presidential campaign, it wants to DISinform you. It's
the Media, Stupid...
Bill Novak, Capitol Times: Russell Train is so
disappointed in President Bush's environmental record
that the staunch Republican, the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency's second leader 30 years ago, is
casting his vote in November for Democrat John Kerry.
Train, 84, EPA administrator under Presidents Nixon
and Ford from 1973 to 77, was in Madison Tuesday in
support of Environment2004, an organization trying to
end what it calls the anti-environmental agenda of the
Bush administration.
A Washington insider for more than half a century,
Train said the Bush administration's performance is a
radical rollback of environmental rules to benefit
special interests.
Michael Moore, www.michaelmoore.com: Dear Mr. Bush,
I am so confused. Where exactly do you stand on the
issue of Iraq? You, your Dad, Rummy, Condi, Colin, and
Wolfie -- you have all changed your minds so many
times, I am out of breath just trying to keep up with
you!
Which of these 10 positions that you, your family and
your cabinet have taken over the years represents your
CURRENT thinking...
I know you hate the words "flip" and "flop," so I
won't use them both on you. In fact, I'll use just
one: Flop. That is what you are. A huge, colossal
flop. The war is a flop, your advisors and the
"intelligence" they gave you is a flop, and now we are
all a flop to the rest of the world. Flop. Flop. Flop.
And you have the audacity to criticize John Kerry with
what you call the "many positions" he has taken on
Iraq. By my count, he has taken only one: He believed
you. That was his position. You told him and the rest
of congress that Saddam had WMDs. So he -- and the
vast majority of Americans, even those who didn't vote
for you -- believed you. You see, Americans, like John
Kerry, want to live in a country where they can
believe their president.
That was the one, single position John Kerry took. He
didn't support the war, he supported YOU. And YOU let
him and this great country down. And that is why tens
of millions can't wait to get to the polls on Election
Day -- to remove a major, catastrophic flop from our
dear, beloved White House -- to stop all the flipping
you and your men have done, flipping us and the rest
of the world off.
We can't take another minute of it.
Associated Press: CBS News has shelved a "60 Minutes"
report on the rationale for war in Iraq (news - web
sites) because it would be "inappropriate" to air it
so close to the presidential election, the network
said on Saturday.
The report on weapons of mass destruction was set to
air on Sept. 8 but was put off in favor of a story on
President Bush (news - web sites)'s National Guard
service. The Guard story was discredited because it
relied on documents impugning Bush's service that were
apparently fake.
CBS News spokeswoman Kelli Edwards would not elaborate
on why the timing of the Iraq report was considered
inappropriate.
E.L. Doctorow, East Hampton Star: The president we get
is the country we get. With each president the nation
is conformed spiritually. He is the artificer of our
malleable national soul. He proposes not only the laws
but the kinds of lawlessness that govern our lives and
invoke our responses. The people he appoints are cast
in his image. The trouble they get into and get us
into, is his characteristic trouble.
Finally, the media amplify his character into our
moral weather report. He becomes the face of our sky,
the conditions that prevail. How can we sustain
ourselves as the United States of America given the
stupid and ineffective warmaking, the constitutionally
insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of
this president? He cannot mourn but is a figure of
such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.
Support Our Troops, Save the US Constitution,
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Restore Fiscal Responsibility in the White House,
Thwart the Theft of a Second Presidential Election,
Save the Environment, Break the Corporatist
Stranglehold on the US Mainstream News Media, Rescue
the US Supreme Court from Right-Wing Radicals, Cleanse
the White House of the Chicken Hawk Coup and Its
War-Profiteering Cronies, Show Up for Democracy in
2004: Defeat the Triad, Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/images/index.php?ntid=10685&ntpid=1
EPA's chief under Nixon rips Bush on environment
Says he will vote for Kerry
By Bill Novak
September 23, 2004
Russell Train is so disappointed in President Bush's
environmental record that the staunch Republican, the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's second leader
30 years ago, is casting his vote in November for
Democrat John Kerry.
Train, 84, EPA administrator under Presidents Nixon
and Ford from 1973 to 77, was in Madison Tuesday in
support of Environment2004, an organization trying to
end what it calls the anti-environmental agenda of the
Bush administration.
A Washington insider for more than half a century,
Train said the Bush administration's performance is a
radical rollback of environmental rules to benefit
special interests.
The administration's reversal of a finding that
mercury is a hazardous pollutant is one of 400
rollbacks of environmental protections cited by
Enviroment2004, and Train said the reversal is the
reason he's switched parties this presidential
election.
"Almost anybody's policy would be better than George
Bush," Train said in an interview with The Capital
Times Wednesday. "Kerry's environmental record in
Congress is extremely good."
Ironically, Train was awarded the presidential Medal
of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in America,
from the first President George Bush in 1991.
A major issue for environmentalists in the 2004
presidential campaign is to get the candidates and the
public to think about the environment in a time when
other issues, such as Iraq, terrorism and the economy,
are on the front burners, relegating clean air and
water policies to the back pages.
"The environment ought to be front and center, but
neither candidate has raised this as an issue," Train
said. "The administration has gotten away with an
awful lot because public attention is somewhere else."
Train ran the EPA during the golden age of
environmental policy. Nixon signed the National
Environmental Policy Act in January of 1970, then
devoted a good third of his State of the Union address
two weeks later to the environment.
"He (Nixon) said the environmental cause is as
fundamental as life itself," Train said.
Nixon's sentiments have apparently fallen on deaf ears
in the current Republican administration.
"One thing that's troubled me about this
administration is with the process involving
appointments," he said. "The undersecretary for
forestry policy came from the lobbying group for the
timber industry - that's just unconscionable."
Also troubling Train is the administration's meddling
into the rules and regulations of the EPA, an
independent agency in the executive branch of the
federal government.
"This White House has never hesitated to inject itself
into the regulatory rule-making by the EPA," Train
said. "That is very improper. When I was EPA
administrator for four years, I can recall not one
example of the White House telling me how a rule
should be. It just didn't happen."
In visits to New Hampshire, Washington state,
Pittsburgh and Minnesota on behalf of Environment2004,
Train was dismayed by the lack of interest in the
environment today. Why isn't the public paying
attention anymore?
"In the '60s and '70s people really felt threatened
with the big oil spills and pollution," he siad.
"Those issues were pretty well taken care of, the air
is pretty good, the water is pretty good, so people
feel relaxed about the environment.
"Also, we have a new generation that hasn't grown up
with a sense of environmental threat, and third,
there's so damned much else on the agenda, Iraq,
terrorism, jobs, the public is beset with."
E-mail: bnovak@madison.com
Published: 10:56 AM 9/23/04
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?messageDate=2004-09-22
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2004
Mr. Bush and His 10 Ever-Changing Different Positions
on Iraq: "A flip and a flop and now just a flop."
9/22/04
Dear Mr. Bush,
I am so confused. Where exactly do you stand on the
issue of Iraq? You, your Dad, Rummy, Condi, Colin, and
Wolfie -- you have all changed your minds so many
times, I am out of breath just trying to keep up with
you!
Which of these 10 positions that you, your family and
your cabinet have taken over the years represents your
CURRENT thinking:
1983-88: WE LOVE SADDAM. On December 19, 1983, Donald
Rumsfeld was sent by your dad and Mr. Reagan to go and
have a friendly meeting with Saddam Hussein, the
dictator of Iraq. Rummy looked so happy in the
picture. Just twelve days after this visit, Saddam
gassed thousands of Iranian troops. Your dad and Rummy
seemed pretty happy with the results because ‘The
Donald R.’ went back to have another chummy hang-out
with Saddam’s right-hand man, Tariq Aziz, just four
months later. All of this resulted in the U.S.
providing credits and loans to Iraq that enabled
Saddam to buy billions of dollars worth of weapons and
chemical agents. The Washington Post reported that
your dad and Reagan let it be known to their Arab
allies that the Reagan/Bush administration wanted Iraq
to win its war with Iran and anyone who helped Saddam
accomplish this was a friend of ours.
1990: WE HATE SADDAM. In 1990, when Saddam invaded
Kuwait, your dad and his defense secretary, Dick
Cheney, decided they didn't like Saddam anymore so
they attacked Iraq and returned Kuwait to its rightful
dictators.
1991: WE WANT SADDAM TO LIVE. After the war, your dad
and Cheney and Colin Powell told the Shiites to rise
up against Saddam and we would support them. So they
rose up. But then we changed our minds. When the
Shiites rose up against Saddam, the Bush inner circle
changed its mind and decided NOT to help the Shiites.
Thus, they were massacred by Saddam.
1998: WE WANT SADDAM TO DIE. In 1998, Rumsfeld,
Wolfowitz and others, as part of the Project for the
New American Century, wrote an open letter to
President Clinton insisting he invade and topple
Saddam Hussein.
2000: WE DON'T BELIEVE IN WAR AND NATION BUILDING.
Just three years later, during your debate with Al
Gore in the 2000 election, when asked by the moderator
Jim Lehrer where you stood when it came to using force
for regime change, you turned out to be a downright
pacifist:
“I--I would take the use of force very seriously. I
would be guarded in my approach. I don't think we can
be all things to all people in the world. I think
we've got to be very careful when we commit our
troops. The vice president [Al Gore] and I have a
disagreement about the use of troops. He believes in
nation building. I--I would be very careful about
using our troops as nation builders. I believe the
role of the military is to fight and win war and,
therefore, prevent war from happening in the first
place. And so I take my--I take my--my responsibility
seriously.” --October 3, 2000
2001 (early): WE DON'T BELIEVE SADDAM IS A THREAT.
When you took office in 2001, you sent your Secretary
of State, Colin Powell, and your National Security
Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, in front of the cameras to
assure the American people they need not worry about
Saddam Hussein. Here is what they said:
Powell: “We should constantly be reviewing our
policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to
make sure that they have directed that purpose. That
purpose is every bit as important now as it was 10
years ago when we began it. And frankly, they have
worked. He has not developed any significant
capability with respect to weapons of mass
destruction. He is unable to project conventional
power against his neighbors.” --February 24, 2001
Rice: “But in terms of Saddam Hussein being there,
let's remember that his country is divided, in effect.
He does not control the northern part of his country.
We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces
have not been rebuilt.” --July 29, 2001
2001 (late): WE BELIEVE SADDAM IS GOING TO KILL US!
Just a few months later, in the hours and days after
the 9/11 tragedy, you had no interest in going after
Osama bin Laden. You wanted only to bomb Iraq and kill
Saddam and you then told all of America we were under
imminent threat because weapons of mass destruction
were coming our way. You led the American people to
believe that Saddam had something to do with Osama and
9/11. Without the UN's sanction, you broke
international law and invaded Iraq.
2003: WE DON’T BELIEVE SADDAM IS GOING TO KILL US.
After no WMDs were found, you changed your mind about
why you said we needed to invade, coming up with a
brand new after-the-fact reason -- we started this war
so we could have regime change, liberate Iraq and give
the Iraqis democracy!
2003: “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!” Yes, everyone saw you
say it -- in costume, no less!
2004: OOPS. MISSION NOT ACCOMPLISHED! Now you call the
Iraq invasion a "catastrophic success." That's what
you called it this month. Over a thousand U.S.
soldiers have died, Iraq is in a state of total chaos
where no one is safe, and you have no clue how to get
us out of there.
Mr. Bush, please tell us -- when will you change your
mind again?
I know you hate the words "flip" and "flop," so I
won't use them both on you. In fact, I'll use just
one: Flop. That is what you are. A huge, colossal
flop. The war is a flop, your advisors and the
"intelligence" they gave you is a flop, and now we are
all a flop to the rest of the world. Flop. Flop. Flop.
And you have the audacity to criticize John Kerry with
what you call the "many positions" he has taken on
Iraq. By my count, he has taken only one: He believed
you. That was his position. You told him and the rest
of congress that Saddam had WMDs. So he -- and the
vast majority of Americans, even those who didn't vote
for you -- believed you. You see, Americans, like John
Kerry, want to live in a country where they can
believe their president.
That was the one, single position John Kerry took. He
didn't support the war, he supported YOU. And YOU let
him and this great country down. And that is why tens
of millions can't wait to get to the polls on Election
Day -- to remove a major, catastrophic flop from our
dear, beloved White House -- to stop all the flipping
you and your men have done, flipping us and the rest
of the world off.
We can't take another minute of it.
Yours,
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CBS_BUSH?SITE=NYSTA&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
CBS Nixes '60 Minutes' Story on Iraq War
Sat Sep 25, 7:42 PM ET
NEW YORK - CBS News has shelved a "60 Minutes" report
on the rationale for war in Iraq (news - web sites)
because it would be "inappropriate" to air it so close
to the presidential election, the network said on
Saturday.
The report on weapons of mass destruction was set to
air on Sept. 8 but was put off in favor of a story on
President Bush (news - web sites)'s National Guard
service. The Guard story was discredited because it
relied on documents impugning Bush's service that were
apparently fake.
CBS News spokeswoman Kelli Edwards would not elaborate
on why the timing of the Iraq report was considered
inappropriate.
The report, with Ed Bradley as the correspondent, has
long been in the works. Originally scheduled for June,
it was first put off because of new developments,
Edwards said.
CBS said no other reports on the presidential election
have been affected.
The network last week appointed former U.S. Attorney
General Dick Thornburgh and retired Associated Press
chief executive Louis Boccardi to investigate what
went wrong with the National Guard report and
recommend changes.
The controversy has put CBS News officials squarely on
the fire line, particularly anchor Dan Rather, who
narrated the National Guard report.
Meanwhile, the network announced that Rather would
anchor the network's coverage of all three
presidential debates, starting Sept. 30.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GUESTWORDS: By E.L. Doctorow
The Unfeeling President
I fault this president for not knowing what death is.
He does not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who
wanted to be what they could be. On the eve of D-Day
in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives
of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He
knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war
not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the
cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.
But this president does not know what death is. He
hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the
press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass
destruction he can't seem to find, you see him at
rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to
the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and
waving, triumphal, a he-man.
He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should
mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech
written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak
of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate
sacrifice for their country.
But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he
dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the
depths of his being because he has no capacity for it.
He does not feel a personal responsibility for the
1,000 dead young men and women who wanted to be what
they could be.
They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers
and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to
the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of
familial relationships and the inconsolable
remembrance of aborted life . . . they come to his
desk as a political liability, which is why the press
is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their
coffins from Iraq.
How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret
and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his
reason for going to war was, as he knew,
unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that
his bungled plan for the war's aftermath has made of
his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not
regret that, rather than controlling terrorism, his
war in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns for
the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this
war of his choice.
He wanted to go to war and he did. He had not the mind
to perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those
who knew those costs. He did not understand that you
do not go to war when it is one of the options but
when it is the only option; you go not because you
want to but because you have to.
Yet this president knew it would be difficult for
Americans not to cheer the overthrow of a foreign
dictator. He knew that much. This president and his
supporters would seem to have a mind for only one
thing -- to take power, to remain in power, and to use
that power for the sake of themselves and their
friends.
A war will do that as well as anything. You become a
wartime leader. The country gets behind you. Dissent
becomes inappropriate. And so he does not drop to his
knees, he is not contrite, he does not sit in the
church with the grieving parents and wives and
children. He is the president who does not feel. He
does not feel for the families of the dead, he does
not feel for the 35 million of us who live in poverty,
he does not feel for the 40 percent who cannot afford
health insurance, he does not feel for the miners
whose lungs are turning black or for the working
people he has deprived of the chance to work overtime
at time-and-a-half to pay their bills - it is amazing
for how many people in this country this president
does not feel.
But he will dissemble feeling. He will say in all
sincerity he is relieving the wealthiest 1 percent of
the population of their tax burden for the sake of the
rest of us, and that he is polluting the air we
breathe for the sake of our economy, and that he is
decreasing the quality of air in coal mines to save
the coal miners' jobs, and that he is depriving
workers of their time-and-a-half benefits for overtime
because this is actually a way to honor them by
raising them into the professional class.
And this litany of lies he will versify with
reverences for God and the flag and democracy, when
just what he and his party are doing to our democracy
is choking the life out of it.
But there is one more terribly sad thing about all of
this. I remember the millions of people here and
around the world who marched against the war. It was
extraordinary, that spontaneous aroused oversoul of
alarm and protest that transcended national borders.
Why did it happen? After all, this was not the only
war anyone had ever seen coming. There are little wars
all over he world most of the time.
But the cry of protest was the appalled understanding
of millions of people that America was ceding its role
as the last best hope of mankind. It was their
perception that the classic archetype of democracy was
morphing into a rogue nation. The greatest democratic
republic in history was turning its back on the
future, using its extraordinary power and standing not
to advance the ideal of a concordance of civilizations
but to endorse the kind of tribal combat that
originated with the Neanderthals, a people, now
extinct, who could imagine ensuring their survival by
no other means than pre-emptive war.
The president we get is the country we get. With each
president the nation is conformed spiritually. He is
the artificer of our malleable national soul. He
proposes not only the laws but the kinds of
lawlessness that govern our lives and invoke our
responses. The people he appoints are cast in his
image. The trouble they get into and get us into, is
his characteristic trouble.
Finally, the media amplify his character into our
moral weather report. He becomes the face of our sky,
the conditions that prevail. How can we sustain
ourselves as the United States of America given the
stupid and ineffective warmaking, the constitutionally
insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of
this president? He cannot mourn but is a figure of
such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.
The novelist E.L. Doctorow has a house in Sag Harbor.
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