There are only 13 days to go until the national referendum on the CREDIBILITY, COMPETENCE and CHARACTER of the _resident, the VICE _resident and the US regime stream news media that fronts for it…Kerry-Edwards is attacking the _resident on 9/11, Kristen Breitweiser is debunking the _resident’s claim to leadership in the “war on terrorism” in Kerry-Edwards TV attack ads, Supreme Court clerks are speaking out about the Supreme InJustice of Bush vs. Gore, the CIA Inspector General has written and delivered a report naming the names of those high officials within the Bush abomination who were either asleep at the wheel or driving in the wrong direction (or worse) and the Bush Cabal is blocking its release, Al Gore, the man you elected President of the US in 2000 is sound the alarm that this election too is in great danger, but the US regimestream news media is not reporting these stories, Sinclair is getting the crap knocked out of it by its sponsors, Kerry-Edwards are ahead in local polls taken in Ohio, Fraudida and New Hampshire, an unprecendented number of prominent Republicans, including former Bardoground State governors have not REBUKED the Bush abomination and endorsed Kerry-Edwards, BUT all you hear about on SeeNotNews is DISinformation on cooked polls and the only John Kerry sound bites you are about social security…Please read these SEVEN pieces and share them with others. They deserve to dominate the air waves and capture headlines above the fold, but they will not because the US regimestream news media is a full partner in a Triad of shared special interest (e.g., energy, weapons, media, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, tobacco, etc) with the Bush Cabal and its wholly-owned-subsidiary-formerly-known-as-the-Republican-Party…Please vote and encourage others to vote… The very life of the Republic itself is at stake. If enough of us vote they cannot steal it… The Bush abomination is an illegitimate, corrupt and incompetent regime. There is an Electoral Uprising coming at the Ballot Box on November 2…Remember, in this national referendum, when you vote NO on the Bush abomination you are also voting NO on the US regimestream news media, which has fronted for it and provided cover for this illegitimate, corrupt and incompetent regime…Save the Republic on November 2, 2004. If enough of us vote they cannot steal it…Frodo lives!
Scheer, Los Angeles Times: It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general's office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago.
"It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed," an intelligence official who has read the report told me, adding that "the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren't interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward."
When I asked about the report, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, said she and committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) sent a letter 14 days ago asking for it to be delivered. "We believe that the CIA has been told not to distribute the report," she said. "We are very concerned."
According to the intelligence official, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, release of the report, which represents an exhaustive 17-month investigation by an 11-member team within the agency, has been "stalled." First by acting CIA Director John McLaughlin and now by Porter J. Goss, the former Republican House member (and chairman of the Intelligence Committee) who recently was appointed CIA chief by President Bush.
The official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific than the earlier bipartisan reports produced by the Bush-appointed Sept. 11 commission and Congress.
"What all the other reports on 9/11 did not do is point the finger at individuals, and give the how and what of their responsibility. This report does that," said the intelligence official. "The report found very senior-level officials responsible."
Noelle Straub, Boston Herald: Former Vice President Al Gore, who lost the bitterly contested 2000 election, is warning of a repeat of the recount nightmare in Florida.
``The widespread efforts by (President) Bush's political allies to suppress voting have reached epidemic proportions,'' he charged yesterday. ``Some of the scandals of Florida four years ago are now being repeated in broad daylight even as we meet here today.''
He said the Bush team used an Enron jet to ferry ``their rent-a-mob to Florida in 2000 to permanently halt the counting of legally cast ballots.''
In a stinging indictment of his former rival, Gore accused Bush of forbidding dissent, disdaining facts and ignoring his mistakes in a ``recklessness that risks the safety and security of the American people.''
``It is love of power for its own sake that is the original sin of this presidency,'' Gore said in a speech at Georgetown University sponsored by the liberal group MoveOn.org.
Al Gore, www.moveon.org: The only warnings of this nature that remotely resembled the one given to George Bush was about the so-called Millenium threats predicted for the end of the year 1999 and less-specific warnings about the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996. In both cases these warnings in the President's Daily Briefing were followed, immediately, the same day - by the beginning of urgent daily meetings in the White House of all of the agencies and offices involved in preparing our nation to prevent the threatened attack.
By contrast, when President Bush received his fateful and historic warning of
9/11, he did not convene the National Security Council, did not bring
together the FBI and CIA and other agencies with responsibility to protect
the nation, and apparently did not even ask followup questions about the
warning. The bi-partisan 9/11 commission summarized what happened in its
unanimous report: "We have found no indication of any further discussion
before September 11 th between the President and his advisors about the
possibility of a threat of al Qaeda attack in the United States." The
commissioners went on to report that in spite of all the warnings to
different parts of the administration, the nation's "domestic agencies never
mobilized in response to the threat. They did not have direction and did not
have a plan to institute. The borders were not hardened. Transportation
systems were not fortified. Electronic surveillance was not targeted against
a domestic threat. State and local law authorities were not marshaled to
augment the FBI's efforts. The public was not warned."
We know from the 9/11 commission that within hours of the attack, Secretary Rumsfeld was attempting to find a way to link Saddam Hussein with 9/11. We know the sworn testimony of the President's White House head of counter-terrorism Richard Clarke that on September 12 th - the day after the attack: "The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.I said, 'Mr. President.There's no connection. He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam!
Find out if there's a connection.We got together all the FBI experts, all the
CIA experts.They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president
and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer. ... Do it again.' .I don't think he sees memos that he doesn't-- wouldn't like the answer."
He did not ask about Osama bin Laden. He did not ask about al Qaeda. He did not ask about Saudi Arabia or any country other than Iraq. When Clarke
responded to his question by saying that Iraq was not responsible for the
attack and that al Qaeda was, the President persisted in focusing on Iraq,
and again, asked Clarke to spend his time looking for information linking
Saddam Hussein to the attack.
Again, this is not hindsight. This is how the President was thinking at the
time he was planning America's response to the attack. This was not an
unfortunate misreading of the available evidence, causing a mistaken linkage
between Iraq and al Qaeda, this was something else; a willful choice to make
the linkage, whether evidence existed or not.
www.mediamatters.org: For the second straight day, CNN selectively reported recent presidential polling results. Although the network misleadingly dubbed its October 19 report on recent polls a "comprehensive overview," CNN Live Today host Daryn Kagan omitted results that are more favorable to Senator John Kerry and instead focused on results that show a lead for President George W. Bush.
From the October 19 edition of CNN Live Today:
KAGAN: As the election draws closer, the race appears deadlocked. According to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, both Kerry and Bush are in a statistical tie among registered voters. Bush has a one-percentage-point lead among likely voters, but that is within the margin of error. A comprehensive overview of five post-debate polls shows the Bush campaign having a bit more breathing room; it shows Bush with a four-percentage-point lead, just beyond the margin of error.
But there's nothing "comprehensive" about that "overview" of polls -- it excluded the most recent one, The New York Times/CBS News poll, which Kagan had just mentioned. Again: Kagan's "comprehensive" overview did not factor in a poll she had just told viewers about less than ten seconds earlier.
Kagan's "comprehensive" overview also omitted three other recent polls -- and, coincidentally, all three showed better results for Kerry, as Media Matters for America noted after a similar CNN report on October 18.
Kagan also claimed that Bush's lead in the "comprehensive overview" (of polls with results favorable to Bush) was, at four points, "just beyond the margin of error." But the on-screen graphic indicated that the "sampling error" was plus or minus four points, so even under her mistaken view of "margin of error," Bush's lead was just within that. In fact, margin of error applies to both Bush's total and Kerry's total. So Bush's lead is not "just beyond" the margin of error, or even "just within" it -- it is well within the margin of error.
Jon Friedman, CBS Market Watch: Shares of Sinclair Broadcasting Group fell further Tuesday and hit a 3 1/2-year low in the wake of a the television station owner's controversial decision to run a film critical of Sen. John Kerry's military service.
Sinclair shares have dropped about 15 percent since just over a week ago, when the company said its 62 television stations would show the documentary, "Stolen Hours," from Oct. 21-24.
The company's stations reach about 24 percent of the U.S. households that have television sets.
Sinclair's stock (SBGI: news, chart, profile) declined 29 cents to $6.17 by the close of trading.
Sinclair has come under pressure to provide equal time on its stations to allow the Kerry campaign to rebut the film's main charges.
Glickenhaus & Co., a Wall Street firm with clients who own about 6,100 shares of Sinclair stock, sent a protest letter to Sinclair Chief Executive David Smith and the company's board of directors.
Charles Lane, Washington Post: In a town where confidential information travels fast, the justices protect their internal deliberations fiercely - and, usually, successfully.
But in the October issue of Vanity Fair magazine, former Supreme Court law clerks from the court's 2000-01 term speak out - under cover of anonymity - about what they saw behind the scenes during the fateful case of Bush v. Gore.
That case, decided by a 5-4 vote, ended the contentious recount in Florida, thereby giving the presidency to George W. Bush.
Writers David Margolick, Evgenia Peretz and Michael Shnayerson recount the views of former clerks to liberal justices who opposed the ruling. Those clerks contend that the decision was an exercise in partisanship by conservative Republican justices…
The Vanity Fair sources do not deny the importance of in-chambers confidentiality, a lifetime obligation spelled out in the written code of conduct that all law clerks pledge to uphold when they come to the court. They simply felt bound by a higher duty.
"We feel that something illegitimate was done with the Court's power, and such an extraordinary situation justifies breaking an obligation we'd otherwise honor," one clerk told the magazine. "Our secrecy was helping to shield some of those actions."
William Rivers Pitt, www.truthout.org: In the last Presidential election, it was Florida that made the mess. This time, it could very well be Ohio, Oregon, West Virginia and Nevada, and that's just for starters.
The problems with electronic voting machines put in place after the passage of the Help America Vote Act have been well-documented. In Ohio, where thousands of Diebold electronic voting machines have been deployed, a consultant discovered that anyone with a security card and access to the voting terminals could take control of the machines by inputting a frighteningly simple password. Security consultants in Maryland found they could hack into the election system, delete vote counts and make wholesale changes to election results. Horror stories like this abound.
As if this wasn't frightening enough, there are the other stories…
Last week in Nevada, Eric Russell, a former employee of a firm called Voters Outreach of America, which also goes by the names America Votes and Project America Votes, accused the firm of deliberately destroying voter registration forms filled out by people who registered themselves as Democrats. "I personally witnessed my supervisor at VOA, together with her personal assistant, destroy completed registration forms that VOA employees had collected," said Russell. "All of the destroyed registration forms were for registrants who indicated their party preference as 'Democrat.'" Thousands of people who believe they are registered to vote in Nevada will go to the polls on November 2nd and get a nasty shock…
In Ohio, the name 'John Kerry' has been left off absentee ballots sent out to voters. A man named Chad Stanton (yes, for the love of crumbcake, his name is 'Chad') was paid in crack cocaine to submit phony registration forms, and was arrested for his troubles. There are reports that Ohio college students are being paid $100 to vote Republican on absentee ballots.
The Republican Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, attempted to block newly registered voters from getting on the rolls by claiming their registration forms were invalid because they were not on postcard-weight paper. Blackwell has also made efforts to block newly registered voters from receiving provisional ballots, which allow new voters to cast a ballot if they have moved. Such an action not only affects newly registered voters, but also the working poor, who are constantly required to move from residence to residence as their financial status rises and falls.
What is most infuriating about these Ohio stories is the fact that they are taking place amid an unprecedented surge in voter participation. Hundreds of thousands of people have registered to vote in that state; four years ago, newly registered voters could only be measured in the tens of thousands. Ohioans are racing to participate in the democratic process, and are being foiled not just by criminals and fools, but by their own elected representatives.
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.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-scheer19oct19,1,6762967.column?coll=la-util-op-ed
The 9/11 Secret in the CIA's Back Pocket
The agency is withholding a damning report that points at senior officials.
It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general's office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago.
"It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed," an intelligence official who has read the report told me, adding that "the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren't interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward."
When I asked about the report, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, said she and committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) sent a letter 14 days ago asking for it to be delivered. "We believe that the CIA has been told not to distribute the report," she said. "We are very concerned."
According to the intelligence official, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, release of the report, which represents an exhaustive 17-month investigation by an 11-member team within the agency, has been "stalled." First by acting CIA Director John McLaughlin and now by Porter J. Goss, the former Republican House member (and chairman of the Intelligence Committee) who recently was appointed CIA chief by President Bush.
The official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific than the earlier bipartisan reports produced by the Bush-appointed Sept. 11 commission and Congress.
"What all the other reports on 9/11 did not do is point the finger at individuals, and give the how and what of their responsibility. This report does that," said the intelligence official. "The report found very senior-level officials responsible."
By law, the only legitimate reason the CIA director has for holding back such a report is national security. Yet neither Goss nor McLaughlin has invoked national security as an explanation for not delivering the report to Congress.
"It surely does not involve issues of national security," said the intelligence official.
"The agency directorate is basically sitting on the report until after the election," the official continued. "No previous director of CIA has ever tried to stop the inspector general from releasing a report to the Congress, in this case a report requested by Congress."
None of this should surprise us given the Bush administration's great determination since 9/11 to resist any serious investigation into how the security of this nation was so easily breached. In Bush's much ballyhooed war on terror, ignorance has been bliss.
The president fought against the creation of the Sept. 11 commission, for example, agreeing only after enormous political pressure was applied by a grass-roots movement led by the families of those slain.
And then Bush refused to testify to the commission under oath, or on the record. Instead he deigned only to chat with the commission members, with Vice President Dick Cheney present, in a White House meeting in which commission members were not allowed to take notes. All in all, strange behavior for a man who seeks reelection to the top office in the land based on his handling of the so-called war on terror.
In September, the New York Times reported that several family members met with Goss privately to demand the release of the CIA inspector general's report. "Three thousand people were killed on 9/11, and no one has been held accountable," 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser told the paper.
The failure to furnish the report to Congress, said Harman, "fuels the perception that no one is being held accountable. It is unacceptable that we don't have [the report]; it not only disrespects Congress but it disrespects the American people."
The stonewalling by the Bush administration and the failure of Congress to gain release of the report have, said the intelligence source, "led the management of the CIA to believe it can engage in a cover-up with impunity. Unless the public demands an accounting, the administration and CIA's leadership will have won and the nation will have lost."
If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.
http://news.bostonherald.com/election/view.bg?articleid=49751
Gore warns of grab by Bush
By Noelle Straub
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
WASHINGTON - Former Vice President Al Gore, who lost the bitterly contested 2000 election, is warning of a repeat of the recount nightmare in Florida.
``The widespread efforts by (President) Bush's political allies to suppress voting have reached epidemic proportions,'' he charged yesterday. ``Some of the scandals of Florida four years ago are now being repeated in broad daylight even as we meet here today.''
He said the Bush team used an Enron jet to ferry ``their rent-a-mob to Florida in 2000 to permanently halt the counting of legally cast ballots.''
In a stinging indictment of his former rival, Gore accused Bush of forbidding dissent, disdaining facts and ignoring his mistakes in a ``recklessness that risks the safety and security of the American people.''
``It is love of power for its own sake that is the original sin of this presidency,'' Gore said in a speech at Georgetown University sponsored by the liberal group MoveOn.org.
But Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said, ``Al Gore seems intent on shattering whatever minuscule credibility he has left with baseless, mean-spirited personal attacks and conspiracy theories.''
http://www.moveonpac.org/gore5/
I have made a series of speeches about the policies of the Bush-Cheney
administration - with regard to Iraq, the war on terror, civil liberties, the
environment and other issues - beginning more than two years ago with a
speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco prior to the
administration's decision to invade Iraq. During this series of speeches, I
have tried to understand what it is that gives so many Americans the uneasy
feeling that something very basic has gone wrong with our democracy.
There are many people in both parties who have the uneasy feeling that there is something deeply troubling about President Bush's relationship to reason, his disdain for facts, an incuriosity about new information that might
produce a deeper understanding of the problems and policies that he wrestles with on behalf of the country. One group maligns the President as not being intelligent, or at least, not being smart enough to have a normal curiosity about separating fact from myth. A second group is convinced that his religious conversion experience was so profound that he relies on religious
aith in place of logical analysis. But I disagree with both of those groups.
I think he is plenty smart. And while I have no doubt that his religious
belief is genuine, and that it is an important motivation for many things
that he does in life, as it is for me and for many of you, most of the
President's frequent departures from fact-based analysis have much more to do
with right-wing political and economic ideology than with the Bible. But it
is crucially important to be precise in describing what it is he believes in
so strongly and insulates from any logical challenge or even debate. It is
ideology - and not his religious faith - that is the source of his
inflexibility. Most of the problems he has caused for this country stem not
from his belief in God, but from his belief in the infallibility of the
right-wing Republican ideology that exalts the interests of the wealthy and
of large corporations over the interests of the American people. Love of
power for its own sake is the original sin of this presidency.
The surprising dominance of American politics by right-wing politicians whose
core beliefs are often wildly at odds with the opinions of the majority of
Americans has resulted from the careful building of a coalition of interests
that have little in common with each other besides a desire for power devoted
to the achievement of a narrow agenda. The two most important blocks of this
coalition are the economic royalists, those corporate leaders and high net
worth families with vast fortunes at their disposal who are primarily
interested in an economic agenda that eliminates as much of their own
taxation as possible, and an agenda that removes regulatory obstacles and
competition in the marketplace. They provide the bulk of the resources that
have financed the now extensive network of foundations, think tanks,
political action committees, media companies and front groups capable of
simulating grassroots activism. The second of the two pillars of this
coalition are social conservatives who want to roll back most of the
progressive social changes of the 20 th century, including women's rights,
social integration, the social safety net, the government social programs of
the progressive era, the New Deal, the Great Society and others. Their
coalition includes a number of powerful special interest groups such as the
National Rifle Association, the anti-abortion coalition, and other groups
that have agreed to support each other's agendas in order to obtain their
own. You could call it the three hundred musketeers - one for all and all for
one. Those who raise more than one hundred thousand dollars are called not
musketeers but pioneers.
His seeming immunity to doubt is often interpreted by people who see and hear
him on television as evidence of the strength of his conviction - when in
fact it is this very inflexibility, based on a willful refusal to even
consider alternative opinions or conflicting evidence, that poses the most
serious danger to the country. And by the same token, the simplicity of his
pronouncements, which are often misinterpreted as evidence that he has
penetrated to the core of a complex issue, are in fact exactly the opposite
-- they mark his refusal to even consider complexity. That is a particularly
difficult problem in a world where the challenges we face are often quite
complex and require rigorous analysis.
The essential cruelty of Bush's game is that he takes an astonishingly
selfish and greedy collection of economic and political proposals then cloaks
it with a phony moral authority, thus misleading many Americans who have a
deep and genuine desire to do good in the world. And in the process he
convinces them to lend unquestioning support for proposals that actually hurt
their families and their communities. Bush has stolen the symbolism and body
language of religion and used it to disguise the most radical effort in
American history to take what rightfully belongs to the citizenry of America
and give as much as possible to the already wealthy and privileged, who look
at his agenda and say, as Dick Cheney said to Paul O'Neill, "this is our
due."
The central elements of Bush's political - as opposed to religious -- belief
system are plain to see: The "public interest" is a dangerous myth according
to Bush's ideology - a fiction created by the hated "liberals" who use the
notion of "public interest" as an excuse to take away from the wealthy and
powerful what they believe is their due. Therefore, government of by and for
the people, is bad - except when government can help members of his
coalition. Laws and regulations are therefore bad - again, except when they
can be used to help members of his coalition. Therefore, whenever laws must
be enforced and regulations administered, it is important to assign those
responsibilities to individuals who can be depended upon not to fall prey to
this dangerous illusion that there is a public interest, and will instead
reliably serve the narrow and specific interests of industries or interest
groups. This is the reason, for example, that President Bush put the chairman
of Enron, Ken Lay, in charge of vetting any appointees to the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission. Enron had already helped the Bush team with such
favors as ferrying their rent-a-mob to Florida in 2000 to permanently halt
the counting of legally cast ballots. And then Enron went on to bilk the
electric rate-payers of California, without the inconvenience of federal
regulators protecting citizens against their criminal behavior. Or to take
another example, this is why all of the important EPA positions have been
filled by lawyers and lobbyists representing the worst polluters in their
respective industries in order to make sure that they're not inconvenienced
by the actual enforcement of the laws against excessive pollution. In Bush's
ideology, there is an interweaving of the agendas of large corporations that
support him and his own ostensibly public agenda for the government he leads.
Their preferences become his policies, and his politics become their
business.
Any new taxes are of course bad - especially if they add anything to the
already unbearable burden placed on the wealthy and powerful. There are
exceptions to this rule, however, for new taxes that are paid by lower income
Americans, which have the redeeming virtue of simultaneously lifting the
burden of paying for government from the wealthy and potentially recruiting
those presently considered too poor to pay taxes into the anti-tax bandwagon.
In the international arena, treaties and international agreements are bad,
because they can interfere with the exercise of power, just as domestic laws
can. The Geneva Convention, for example, and the U.S. law prohibiting torture
were both described by Bush's White House Counsel as "quaint." And even
though new information has confirmed that Donald Rumsfeld was personally
involved in reviewing the specific extreme measures authorized to be used by
military interrogators, he has still not been held accountable for the most
shameful and humiliating violation of American principles in recent memory.
Most dangerous of all, this ideology promotes the making of policy in secret,
based on information that is not available to the public and insulated from
any meaningful participation by Congress. And when Congress's approval is
required under our current constitution, it is given without meaningful
debate. As Bush said to one Republican Senator in a meeting described in Time
magazine, "Look, I want your vote. I'm not going to debate it with you." At
the urging of the Bush White House, Republican leaders in Congress have taken
the unprecedented step of routinely barring Democrats from serving on
important conference committees and allowing lobbyists for special interests
to actually draft new legislative language for conference committees that has
not been considered or voted upon in either the House or Senate.
It appears to be an important element in Bush's ideology to never admit a
mistake or even a doubt. It also has become common for Bush to rely on
special interests for information about the policies important to them and he
trusts what they tell him over any contrary view that emerges from public
debate. He has, in effect, outsourced the truth. Most disturbing of all, his
contempt for the rule of reason and his early successes in persuading the
nation that his ideologically based views accurately described the world have
tempted him to the hubristic and genuinely dangerous illusion that reality is
itself a commodity that can be created with clever public relations and
propaganda skills, and where specific controversies are concerned, simply
purchased as a turnkey operation from the industries most affected.
George Orwell said, "The point is that we are all capable of believing things
which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong,
impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right.
Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite
time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up
against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."
And in one of the speeches a year ago last August, I proposed that one reason
why the normal processes of our democracy have seemed dysfunctional is that
the nation had a large number of false impressions about the choices before
us, including that Saddam Hussein was the person primarily responsible for
attacking us on September 11 th 2001 (according to Time magazine, 70 percent
thought that in November of 2002); an impression that there was a tight
linkage and close partnership and cooperation between Osama bin Laden and
Saddam Hussein, between the terrorist group al Qaeda, which attacked us, and
Iraq, which did not; the impression that Saddam had a massive supply of
weapons of mass destruction; that he was on the verge of obtaining nuclear
weapons, and that he was about to give nuclear weapons to the al Qaeda
terrorist group, which would then use them against American cities; that the
people of Iraq would welcome our invading army with garlands of flowers; that
even though the rest of the world opposed the war, they would quickly fall in
line after we won and contribute money and soldiers so that there wasn't a
risk to our taxpayers of footing the whole bill, that there would be more
than enough money from the Iraqi oil supplies, which would flow in abundance
after the invasion and that we would use that money to offset expenses and we
wouldn't have to pay anything at all; that the size of the force required for
this would be relatively small and wouldn't put a strain on our military or
jeopardize other commitment around the world. Of course, every single one of
these impressions was wrong. And, unfortunately, the consequences have been
catastrophic for our country.
And the plague of false impressions seemed to settle on other policy debates
as well. For example in considering President Bush's gigantic tax cut, the
country somehow got the impression that, one, the majority of it wouldn't go
disproportionally to the wealthy but to the middle class; two, that it would
not lead to large deficits because it would stimulate the economy so much
that it would pay for itself; not only there would be no job losses but we
would have big increases in employment. But here too, every one of these
impressions was wrong.
I did not accuse the president of intentionally deceiving the American
people, but rather, noted the remarkable coincidence that all of his
arguments turned out to be based on falsehoods. But since that time, we have
learned that, in virtually every case, the president chose to ignore and
indeed often to suppress, studies, reports and facts that were contrary to
the false impressions he was giving to the American people. In most every
case he chose to reject information that was prepared by objective analysts
and rely instead on information that was prepared by sources of questionable
reliability who had a private interest in the policy choice he was
recommending that conflicted with the public interest.
For example, when the President and his team were asserting that Saddam
Hussein had aluminum tubes that had been acquired in order to enrich Uranium
for atomic bombs, numerous experts at the Department of Energy and elsewhere
in the intelligence community were certain that the information being
presented by the President was completely wrong. The true experts on Uranium
enrichment are at Oak Ridge, in my home state of Tennessee. And they told me
early on that in their opinion there was virtually zero possibility
whatsoever that the tubes in question were for the purpose of enrichment -
and yet they received a directive forbidding them from making any public
statement that disagreed with the President's assertions.
In another example, we now know that two months before the war began, Bush
received two detailed and comprehensive secret reports warning him that the
likely result of an American-led invasion of Iraq would be increased support
for Islamic fundamentalism, deep division of Iraqi society with high levels
of violent internal conflict and guerilla warfare aimed against U.S. forces.
Yes, in spite of these analyses, Bush chose to suppress the warnings and
instead convey to the American people the absurdly Polyanna-ish view of
highly questionable and obviously biased sources like Ahmad Chalabi, the
convicted felon and known swindler, who the Bush administration put on its
payroll and gave a seat adjacent to Laura Bush at the State of the Union
address. They flew him into Baghdad on a military jet with a private security
force, but then decided the following year he was actually a spy for Iran,
who had been hoodwinking President Bush all along with phony facts and false
predictions.
There is a growing tension between President Bush's portrait of the situation
in which we find ourselves and the real facts on the ground. In fact, his
entire agenda is collapsing around his ankles: Iraq is in flames, with a
growing U.S. casualty rate and a growing prospect of a civil war with the
attendant chaos and risk of an Islamic fundamentalist state. America's moral
authority in the world has been severely damaged, and our ability to persuade
others to follow our lead has virtually disappeared. Our troops are stretched
thin, are undersupplied and are placed in intolerable situations without
adequate training or equipment. In the latest U.S.-sponsored public opinion
survey of Iraqis only 2% say they view our troops as liberators; more than
90% of Arab Iraqis have a hostile view of what they see as an "occupation."
Our friends in the Middle East - including, most prominently, Israel - have
been placed in greater danger because of the policy blunders and the sheer
incompetence with which the civilian Pentagon officials have conducted the
war. The war in Iraq has become a recruiting bonanza for terrorists who use
it as their damning indictment of U.S. policy. The massive casualties
suffered by civilians in Iraq and the horrible TV footage of women and
children being pulled dead or injured from the rubble of their homes has been
a propaganda victory for Osama bin Laden beyond his wildest dreams. America's
honor and reputation has been severely damaged by the President's decision to
authorize policies and legal hair splitting that resulted in widespread
torture by U.S. soldiers and contractors of Iraqi citizens and others in
facilities stretching from Guantanamo to Afghanistan to Iraq to secret
locations in other countries. Astonishingly, and shamefully, investigators
also found that more than 90 percent of those tortured and abused were
innocent of any crime or wrongdoing whatsoever. The prestigious Jaffe think
tank in Israel released a devastating indictment just last week of how the
misadventure in Iraq has been a deadly distraction from the crucial war on
terror.
We now know from Paul Bremer, the person chosen to be in charge of U.S.
policy in Iraq immediately following the invasion, that he repeatedly told
the White House there were insufficient troops on the ground to make the
policy a success. Yet at that time, President Bush was repeatedly asserting
to the American people that he was relying on those Americans in Iraq for his
confident opinion that we had more than enough troops and no more were
needed.
We now know from the Central Intelligence Agency that a detailed,
comprehensive and authoritative analysis of the likely consequences of an
invasion accurately predicted the chaos, popular resentment, and growing
likelihood of civil war that would follow a U.S. invasion and that this
analysis was presented to the President even as he confidently assured the
nation that the aftermath of our invasion would be the speedy establishment
of representative democracy and market capitalism by grateful Iraqis.
Most Americans have tended to give the Bush-Cheney administration the benefit
of the doubt when it comes to his failure to take any action in advance of
9/11 to prepare the nation for attack. After all, hindsight always casts a
harsh light on mistakes that were not nearly as visible at the time they were
made. And we all know that. But with the benefit of all the new studies that
have been made public it is no longer clear that the administration deserves
this act of political grace by the American people. For example, we now know,
from the 9/11 Commission that the chief law enforcement office appointed by
President Bush to be in charge of counter-terrorism, John Ashcroft, was
repeatedly asked to pay attention to the many warning signs being picked up
by the FBI. Former FBI acting director Thomas J. Pickard, the man in charge
of presenting Ashcroft with the warnings, testified under oath that Aschroft
angrily told him "he did not want to hear this information anymore." That is
an affirmative action by the administration that is very different than
simple negligence. That is an extremely serious error in judgment that
constitutes a reckless disregard for the safety of the American people. It is
worth remembering that among the reports the FBI was receiving, that Ashcroft
ordered them not to show him, was an expression of alarm in one field office
that the nation should immediately check on the possibility that Osama bin
Laden was having people trained in commercial flight schools around the U.S.
And another, from a separate field office, that a potential terrorist was
learning to fly commercial airliners and made it clear he had no interest in
learning how to land. It was in this period of recklessly willful ignorance
on the part of the Attorney General that the CIA was also picking up
unprecedented warnings that an attack on the United States by al Qaeda was
imminent. In his famous phrase, George Tenet wrote, the system was blinking
red. It was in this context that the President himself was presented with a
CIA report with the headline, more alarming and more pointed than any I saw
in eight years I saw of daily CIA briefings: "bin Laden determined to strike
in the U.S."
The only warnings of this nature that remotely resembled the one given to
George Bush was about the so-called Millenium threats predicted for the end
of the year 1999 and less-specific warnings about the Olympics in Atlanta in
1996. In both cases these warnings in the President's Daily Briefing were
followed, immediately, the same day - by the beginning of urgent daily
meetings in the White House of all of the agencies and offices involved in
preparing our nation to prevent the threatened attack.
By contrast, when President Bush received his fateful and historic warning of
9/11, he did not convene the National Security Council, did not bring
together the FBI and CIA and other agencies with responsibility to protect
the nation, and apparently did not even ask followup questions about the
warning. The bi-partisan 9/11 commission summarized what happened in its
unanimous report: "We have found no indication of any further discussion
before September 11 th between the President and his advisors about the
possibility of a threat of al Qaeda attack in the United States." The
commissioners went on to report that in spite of all the warnings to
different parts of the administration, the nation's "domestic agencies never
mobilized in response to the threat. They did not have direction and did not
have a plan to institute. The borders were not hardened. Transportation
systems were not fortified. Electronic surveillance was not targeted against
a domestic threat. State and local law authorities were not marshaled to
augment the FBI's efforts. The public was not warned."
We know from the 9/11 commission that within hours of the attack, Secretary
Rumsfeld was attempting to find a way to link Saddam Hussein with 9/11. We
know the sworn testimony of the President's White House head of counter-
terrorism Richard Clarke that on September 12 th - the day after the attack:
"The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the
door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.I said, 'Mr.
President.There's no connection. He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam!
Find out if there's a connection.We got together all the FBI experts, all the
CIA experts.They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president
and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced
and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer. ... Do it again.' .I don't think he sees
memos that he doesn't-- wouldn't like the answer."
He did not ask about Osama bin Laden. He did not ask about al Qaeda. He did
not ask about Saudi Arabia or any country other than Iraq. When Clarke
responded to his question by saying that Iraq was not responsible for the
attack and that al Qaeda was, the President persisted in focusing on Iraq,
and again, asked Clarke to spend his time looking for information linking
Saddam Hussein to the attack.
Again, this is not hindsight. This is how the President was thinking at the
time he was planning America's response to the attack. This was not an
unfortunate misreading of the available evidence, causing a mistaken linkage
between Iraq and al Qaeda, this was something else; a willful choice to make
the linkage, whether evidence existed or not.
Earlier this month, Secretary Rumsfeld, who saw all of the intelligence
available to President Bush on the alleged connection between al Qaeda and
Saddam Hussein, finally admitted, under repeated questioning from reporters,
"To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the
two."
This is not negligence, this is deception.
It is clear that President Bush has absolute faith in a rigid, right-wing
ideology. He ignores the warnings of his experts. He forbids any dissent and
never tests his assumptions against the best available evidence. He is
arrogantly out of touch with reality. He refuses to ever admit mistakes.
Which means that as long as he is our President, we are doomed to repeat
them. It is beyond incompetence. It is recklessness that risks the safety and
security of the American people.
We were told that our allies would join in a massive coalition so that we
would not bear the burden alone. But as is by now well known, more than 90
percent of the non-Iraqi troops are American, and the second and third
largest contingents in the non American group have announced just within this
last week their decisions to begin withdrawing their troops soon after the
U.S. election.
We were told by the President that war was his last choice. It is now clear
from the newly available evidence that it was always his first preference.
His former Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O'Neill, confirmed that Iraq was
Topic A at the very first meeting of the Bush National Security Council, just
ten days after the inauguration. "It was about finding a way to do it, that
was the tone of the President, saying, 'Go find me a way to do this.'"
We were told that he would give the international system every opportunity to
function, but we now know that he allowed that system to operate only
briefly, as a sop to his Secretary of State and for cosmetic reasons. Bush
promised that if he took us to war it would be on the basis of the most
carefully worked out plans. Instead, we now know he went to war without
thought or preparation for the aftermath - an aftermath that has now claimed
more than one thousand American lives and many multiples of that among the
Iraqis. He now claims that we went to war for humanitarian reasons. But the
record shows clearly that he used that argument only after his first public
rationale - that Saddam was building weapons of mass destruction --
completely collapsed. He claimed that he was going to war to deal with an
imminent threat to the United States. The evidence shows clearly that there
was no such imminent threat and that Bush knew that at the time he stated
otherwise. He claimed that gaining dominance of Iraqi oil fields for American
producers was never part of his calculation. But we now know, from a document
uncovered by the New Yorker and dated just two weeks to the day after Bush's
inauguration, that his National Security Counsel was ordered to "meld" its
review of "operational policies toward rogue states" with the secretive
Cheney Energy Task Force's "actions regarding the capture of new and existing
oil and gas fields."
We also know from documents obtained in discovery proceedings against that
Cheney Task Force by the odd combination of Judicial Watch and the Sierra
Club that one of the documents receiving scrutiny by the task force during
the same time period was a detailed map of Iraq showing none of the cities or
places where people live but showing in great detail the location of every
single oil deposit known to exist in the country, with dotted lines demarking
blocks for promising exploration - a map which, in the words of a Canadian
newspaper, resembled a butcher's drawing of a steer, with the prime cuts
delineated. We know that Cheney himself, while heading Halliburton, did more
business with Iraq than any other nation, even though it was under U.N.
sanctions, and that Cheney stated in a public speech to the London Petroleum
Institute in 1999 that, over the coming decade, the world will need 50
million extra barrels of oil per day. "Where is it going to come from?"
Answering his own question, he said, "The middle east, with two thirds of the
world's oil and the lowest cost is still where the prize ultimately lies."
In the spring of 2001, when Cheney issued the administration's national
energy plan - the one devised in secret by corporations and lobbyist that he
still refuses to name - it included a declaration that "the [Persian] Gulf
will be a primary focus of U.S. international energy policy."
Less than two months later, in one of the more bizarre parts of Bush's policy
process, Richard Perle, before he was forced to resign on conflict of
interest charges as chairman of the Defense Policy Board, invited a
presentation to the Board by a RAND corporation analyst who recommended that
the United States consider militarily seizing Saudi Arabia's oil fields.
The cynical belief by some that oil played an outsized role in Bush's policy
toward Iraq was enhanced when it became clear that the Iraqi oil ministry was
the only facility in the country that was secured by American troops
following the invasion. The Iraqi national museum, with its priceless
archeological treasures depicting the origins of civilization, the electric,
water and sewage facilities so crucial to maintaining an acceptable standard
of living for Iraqi citizens during the American occupation, schools,
hospitals, and ministries of all kinds were left to the looters.
An extensive investigation published today in the Knight Ridder newspapers
uncovers the astonishing truth that even as the invasion began, there was,
quite literally, no plan at all for the post-war period. On the eve of war,
when the formal presentation of America's plan neared its conclusion, the
viewgraph describing the Bush plan for the post-war phase was labeled, "to be
provided." It simply did not exist.
We also have learned in today's Washington Post that at the same time Bush
was falsely asserting to the American people that he was providing all the
equipment and supplies their commanders needed, the top military commander in
Iraq was pleading desperately for a response to his repeated request for more
equipment, such as body armor, to protect his troops. And that the Army units
under his command were "struggling just to maintain.relatively low readiness
rates."
Even as late as three months ago, when the growing chaos and violence in Iraq
was obvious to anyone watching the television news, Bush went out of his way
to demean the significance of a National Intelligence Estimate warning that
his policy in Iraq was failing and events were spinning out of control. Bush
described this rigorous and formal analysis as just guessing. If that's all
the respect he has for reports given to him by the CIA, then perhaps it
explains why he completely ignored the warning he received on August 6 th,
2001, that bin Laden was determined to attack our country. From all
appearances, he never gave a second thought on that report until he finished
reading My Pet Goat on September 11 th.
Iraq is not the only policy where the President has made bold assertions
about the need for a dramatic change in American policy, a change that he has
said is mandated by controversial assertions that differ radically from
accepted views of reality in that particular policy area. And as with Iraq,
there are other cases where subsequently available information shows that the
President actually had analyses that he was given from reputable sources that
were directly contrary what he told the American people. And, in virtually
every case, the President, it is now evident, rejected the information that
later turned out to be accurate and instead chose to rely upon, and to
forcefully present to the American people, information that subsequently
turned out to be false. And in every case, the flawed analysis was provided
to him from sources that had a direct interest, financial or otherwise, in
the radically new policy that the President adopted. And, in those cases
where the policy has been implemented, the consequences have been to
detriment of the American people, often catastrophically so. In other cases,
the consequences still lie in the future but are nonetheless perfectly
predictably for anyone who is reasonable. In yet other cases the policies
have not yet been implemented but have been clearly designated by the
President as priorities for the second term he has asked for from the
American people. At the top of this list is the privatization of social
security.
Indeed, Bush made it clear during his third debate with Senator Kerry that he
intends to make privatizing Social Security, a top priority in a second term
should he have one. In a lengthy profile of Bush published yesterday, the
President was quoted by several top Republican fundraisers as saying to them,
in a large but private meeting, that he intends to "come out strong after my
swearing in, with.privatizing Social Security."
Bush asserts that - without any corroborating evidence - that the diversion
of two trillion dollars worth of payroll taxes presently paid by American
working people into the social security trust fund will not result in a need
to make up that two trillion dollars from some other source and will not
result in cutting Social Security benefits to current retirees. The
bipartisan Congressional Budget Office, run by a Republican appointee, is one
of many respected organizations that have concluded that the President is
completely wrong in making his assertion. The President has been given facts
and figures clearly demonstrating to any reasonable person that the assertion
is wrong. And yet he continues to make it. The proposal for diverting money
out of the Social Security trust fund into private accounts would generate
large fees for financial organizations that have advocated the radical new
policy, have provided Bush with the ideologically based arguments in its
favor, and have made massive campaign contributions to Bush and Cheney. One
of the things willfully ignored by Bush is the certainty of catastrophic
consequences for the tens of millions of retirees who depend on Social
Security benefits and who might well lose up to 40 percent of their benefits
under his proposal. Their expectation for a check each month that enables
them to pay their bills is very real. The President's proposal is reckless.
Similarly, the President's vigorous and relentless advocacy of "medical
savings accounts" as a radical change in the Medicare program would -
according to all reputable financial analysts - have the same effect on
Medicare that his privatization proposal would have on Social Security. It
would deprive Medicare of a massive amount of money that it must have in
order to continue paying medical bills for Medicare recipients. The
President's ideologically based proposal originated with another large
campaign contributor - called Golden Rule -- that expects to make a huge
amount of money from managing private medical savings accounts. The President
has also mangled the Medicare program with another radical new policy, this
one prepared for Bush by the major pharmaceutical companies (also huge
campaign contributors, of course) which was presented to the country on the
basis of information that, again, turns out to have been completely and
totally false. Indeed the Bush appointee in charge of Medicare was secretly
ordered - we now know - to withhold the truth about the proposal's real cost
from the Congress while they were considering it. Then, when a number of
Congressmen balked at supporting the proposal, the President's henchmen
violated the rules of Congress by holding the 15 minute vote open for more
than two hours while they brazenly attempted to bribe and intimidate members
of Congress who had voted against the proposal to change their votes and
support it. The House Ethics Committee, in an all too rare slap on the wrist,
took formal action against Tom DeLay for his unethical behavior during this
episode. But for the Bush team, it is all part of the same pattern. Lie,
intimidate, bully, suppress the truth, present lobbyists memos as the gospel
truth and collect money for the next campaign.
In the case of the global climate crisis, Bush has publicly demeaned the
authors of official reports by scientists in his own administration that
underscore the extreme danger confronting the United States and the world and
instead prefers a crackpot analysis financed by the largest oil company on
the planet, ExxonMobil. He even went so far as to censor elements of an EPA
report dealing with global warming and substitute, in the official government
report, language from the crackpot ExxonMobil report. The consequences of
accepting ExxonMobil's advice - to do nothing to counter global warming - are
almost literally unthinkable. Just in the last few weeks, scientists have
reached a new, much stronger consensus that global warming is increasing the
destructive power of hurricanes by as much as half of one full category on
the one-to-five scale typically used by forecasters. So that a hurricane
hitting Florida in the future that would have been a category three and a
half, will on average become a category four hurricane. Scientists around the
world are also alarmed by what appears to be an increase in the rate of CO2
buildup in the atmosphere - a development which, if confirmed in subsequent
years, might signal the beginning of an extremely dangerous "runaway
greenhouse" effect. Yet a third scientific group has just reported that the
melting of ice in Antarctica, where 95 percent of all the earth's ice is
located, has dramatically accelerated. Yet Bush continues to rely, for his
scientific advice about global warming, on the one company that most stands
to benefit by delaying a recognition of reality.
The same dangerous dynamic has led Bush to reject the recommendations of
anti-terrorism experts to increase domestic security, which are opposed by
large contributors in the chemical industry, the hazardous materials industry
and the nuclear industry. Even though his own Coast Guard recommends
increased port security, he has chosen instead to rely on information
provided to him by the commercial interests managing the ports who do not
want the expense and inconvenience of implementing new security measures.
The same pattern that produced America's catastrophe in Iraq has also
produced a catastrophe for our domestic economy. Bush's distinctive approach
and habit of mind is clearly recognizable. He asserted over and over again
that his massive tax cut, which certainly appeared to be aimed at the
wealthiest Americans, actually would not go disproportionally to the wealthy
but instead would primarily benefit middle income Americans and "all tax
payers." He asserted that under no circumstances would it lead to massive
budget deficits even though common sense led reasonable people to conclude
that it would. Third, he asserted - confidently of course - that it would not
lead to job losses but would rather create an unprecedented economic boom.
The President relied on high net worth individuals who stood to gain the most
from his lopsided tax proposal and chose their obviously biased analysis over
that of respectable economists. And as was the case with Iraq policy, his
administration actively stopped the publication of facts and figures from his
own Treasury Department analysts that contained inconvenient conclusions." As
a result of this pattern, the Congress adopted the President's tax plan and
now the consequences are clear. We have completely dissipated the 5 trillion
dollar surplus that had been projected over the next ten years (a surplus
that was strategically invaluable to assist the nation in dealing with the
impending retirement of the enormous baby boom generation) and instead has
produced a projected deficit of three and one half over the same period. Year
after year we now have the largest budget deficits ever experienced in
America and they coincide with the largest annual trade deficits and current-
account deficits ever experienced in America - creating the certainty of an
extremely painful financial reckoning that is the financial equivalent for
the American economy and the dollar of the military quagmire in Iraq.
Indeed, after four years of this policy, which was, after all, implemented
with Bush in control of all three branches of government, we can already see
the consequences of their economic policy: for the first time since the four-
year presidency of Herbert Hoover 1928-1932, our nation has experienced a net
loss of jobs. It is true that 9/11 occurred during this period. But it is
equally true that reasonable economists quantify its negative economic impact
as very small compared with the negative impact compared with Bush's. Under
other Presidents the nation has absorbed the impact of Pearl Harbor, World
War II, Vietnam War, Korean war, major financial corrections like that in
1987 and have ended up with a net gain of jobs nonetheless. Only Bush ranks
with Hoover. Confronted with this devastating indictment, his treasury
secretary, John Snow, said last week in Ohio job loss was "a myth." This is
in keeping with the Bush team's general contempt for reality as a basis for
policy. Unfortunately, the job loss is all too real for the more than two
hundred thousand people who lost their jobs in the state where he called the
job loss a myth.
In yesterday's New York Times Magazine, Ron Suskind related a truly startling
conversation that he had with a Bush White House official who was angry that
Suskind had written an article in the summer of 2002 that the White House
didn't like. This senior advisor to Bush told Suskind that reporters like him
lived "in what we call the reality-based community," and denigrated such
people for believing that solutions emerge from your judicious study of
discernable reality.that's not the way the world really works anymore.when we
act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality,
judiciously as you will, we'll act again, creating other new realities, which
you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's
actors, and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
By failing to adjust their policies to unexpected realities, they have made
it difficult to carry out any of their policies competently. Indeed, this is
the answer to what some have regarded as a mystery: How could a team so
skilled in politics be so bumbling and incompetent when it comes to policy?
The same insularity and zeal that makes them effective at smashmouth politics
makes them terrible at governing. The Bush-Cheney administration is a rarity
in American history. It is simultaneously dishonest and incompetent.
Not coincidentally, the first audits of the massive sums flowing through the
Coalition Provisional Authority, including money appropriated by Congress and
funds and revenue from oil, now show that billions of dollars have
disappeared with absolutely no record of who they went to, or for what, or
when, or why. And charges of massive corruption are now widespread. Just as
the appointment of industry lobbyists to key positions in agencies that
oversee their former employers has resulted in institutionalized corruption
in the abandonment of the enforcement of laws and regulations at home, the
outrageous decision to brazenly violate the law in granting sole-source, no-
bid contracts worth billions of dollars to Vice President Cheney's company,
Halliburton, which still pays him money every year, has convinced many
observers that incompetence, cronyism and corruption have played a
significant role in undermining U.S. policy in Iraq. The former four star
general in charge of central command, Tony Zinni, who was named by President
Bush as his personal emissary to the middle east in 2001, offered this view
of the situation in a recent book: "In the lead up to the Iraq war, and its
later conduct, I saw, at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and
irresponsibility; at worst lying, incompetence and corruption. False
rationales presented as a justification; a flawed strategy; lack of planning;
the unnecessary alienation of our allies; the underestimation of the task;
the unnecessary distraction from real threats; and the unbearable strain
dumped on our over-stretched military. All of these caused me to speak
out...I was called a traitor and a turncoat by Pentagon officials."
Massive incompetence? Endemic corruption? Official justification for torture?
Wholesale abuse of civil liberties? Arrogance masquerading as principle?
These are new, unfamiliar and unpleasant realities for America. We hardly
recognize our country when we look in the mirror of what Jefferson called,
"the opinion of mankind." How could we have come to this point?
America was founded on the principle that "all just power is derived from the
consent of the governed." And our founders assumed that in the process of
giving their consent, the governed would be informed by free and open
discussion of the relevant facts in a healthy and robust public forum.
But for the Bush-Cheney administration, the will to power has become its own
justification. This explains Bush's lack of reverence for democracy itself.
The widespread efforts by Bush's political allies to suppress voting have
reached epidemic proportions. The scandals of Florida four years ago are
being repeated in broad daylight even as we meet here today. Harper's
magazine reports in an article published today that tens of thousands of
registered voters who were unjustly denied their right to vote four year ago
have still not been allowed back on the rolls.
An increasing number of Republicans, including veterans of the Reagan White
House and even the father of the conservative movement, are now openly
expressing dismay over the epic failures of the Bush presidency. Doug Bandow,
a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a veteran of both the Heritage
Foundation and the Reagan White House, wrote recently in Salon.com, "Serious
conservatives must fear for the country if Bush is re-elected.based on the
results of his presidency, a Bush presidency would be catastrophic.
Conservatives should choose principles over power." Bandow seemed most
concerned about Bush's unhealthy habits of mind, saying, "He doesn't appear
to reflect on his actions and seems unable to concede even the slightest
mistake. Nor is he willing to hold anyone else responsible for anything. It
is a damning combination." Bandow described Bush's foreign policy as a
"shambles, with Iraq aflame and America increasingly reviled by friend and
foe alike."
The conservative co-host of Crossfire, Tucker Carlson, said about Bush's Iraq
policy, "I think it's a total nightmare and disaster, and I'm ashamed that I
went against my own instincts in supporting it."
William F. Buckley, Jr., widely acknowledged as the founder of the modern
conservative movement in America, wrote of the Iraq war, "If I knew then,
what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have
opposed the war."
A former Republican Governor of Minnesota, Elmer Andersen, announced in
Minneapolis that for the first time in his life he was abandoning the
Republican Party in this election because Bush and Cheney "believe their own
spin. Both men spew outright untruths with evangelistic fervor." Andersen
attributed his switch to Bush's "misguided and blatantly false
misrepresentations of the threat of weapons of mass destruction. The terror
seat was Afghanistan. Iraq had no connection to these acts of terror and was
not a serious threat to the United States as this President claimed, and
there was no relation, it is now obvious, to any serious weaponry." Governor
Andersen was also offended, he said, by "Bush's phony posturing as *censored*sure
leader of the free world."
Andersen and many other Republicans are joining with Democrats and millions
of Independents this year in proudly supporting the Kerry-Edwards ticket. In
every way, John Kerry and John Edwards represent an approach to governing
that is the opposite of the Bush-Cheney approach.
Where Bush remains out of touch, Kerry is a proud member of the "reality
based" community. Where Bush will bend to his corporate backers, Kerry stands
strong with the public interest.
There are now fifteen days left before our country makes this fateful choice
- for us and the whole world. And it is particularly crucial for one more
reason: T The final feature of Bush's ideology involves ducking
accountability for his mistakes.
He has neutralized the Congress by intimidating the Republican leadership and
transforming them into a true rubber stamp, unlike any that has ever existed
in American history.
He has appointed right-wing judges who have helped to insulate him from
accountability in the courts. And if he wins again, he will likely get to
appoint up to four Supreme Court justices.
He has ducked accountability by the press with his obsessive secrecy and
refusal to conduct the public's business openly. There is now only one center
of power left in our constitution capable of at long last holding George W.
Bush accountable, and it is the voters.
There are fifteen days left before our country makes this fateful choice -
for us and the whole world. Join me on November 2 nd in taking our country
back.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200410190005
Incomprehensible: CNN again excluded polls favorable to Kerry from
"comprehensive" polling overview
For the second straight day, CNN selectively reported recent presidential polling results. Although the network misleadingly dubbed its October 19 report on recent polls a "comprehensive overview," CNN Live Today host Daryn Kagan omitted results that are more favorable to Senator John Kerry and instead focused on results that show a lead for President George W. Bush.
From the October 19 edition of CNN Live Today:
KAGAN: As the election draws closer, the race appears deadlocked. According to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, both Kerry and Bush are in a statistical tie among registered voters. Bush has a one-percentage-point lead among likely voters, but that is within the margin of error. A comprehensive overview of five post-debate polls shows the Bush campaign having a bit more breathing room; it shows Bush with a four-percentage-point lead, just beyond the margin of error.
But there's nothing "comprehensive" about that "overview" of polls -- it excluded the most recent one, The New York Times/CBS News poll, which Kagan had just mentioned. Again: Kagan's "comprehensive" overview did not factor in a poll she had just told viewers about less than ten seconds earlier.
Kagan's "comprehensive" overview also omitted three other recent polls -- and, coincidentally, all three showed better results for Kerry, as Media Matters for America noted after a similar CNN report on October 18.
Kagan also claimed that Bush's lead in the "comprehensive overview" (of polls with results favorable to Bush) was, at four points, "just beyond the margin of error." But the on-screen graphic indicated that the "sampling error" was plus or minus four points, so even under her mistaken view of "margin of error," Bush's lead was just within that. In fact, margin of error applies to both Bush's total and Kerry's total. So Bush's lead is not "just beyond" the margin of error, or even "just within" it -- it is well within the margin of error.
— J.F.
Posted to the web on Tuesday October 19, 2004 at 1:10 PM EST
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http://www.marketwatch.com/news/yhoo/story.asp?source=blq/yhoo&siteid=yhoo&dist=yhoo&guid=%7B7BB76ADC%2D594B%2D42B4%2D92AD%2D55F7FE796519%7D
More fallout over Sinclair decision
Film on Kerry's war service prompts investor protest
By Jon Friedman, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 6:11 PM ET Oct. 19, 2004
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NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Shares of Sinclair Broadcasting Group fell further Tuesday and hit a 3 1/2-year low in the wake of a the television station owner's controversial decision to run a film critical of Sen. John Kerry's military service.
Sinclair shares have dropped about 15 percent since just over a week ago, when the company said its 62 television stations would show the documentary, "Stolen Hours," from Oct. 21-24.
The company's stations reach about 24 percent of the U.S. households that have television sets.
Sinclair's stock (SBGI: news, chart, profile) declined 29 cents to $6.17 by the close of trading.
Sinclair has come under pressure to provide equal time on its stations to allow the Kerry campaign to rebut the film's main charges.
Glickenhaus & Co., a Wall Street firm with clients who own about 6,100 shares of Sinclair stock, sent a protest letter to Sinclair Chief Executive David Smith and the company's board of directors.
Glickenhaus general partner Jim Glickenhaus, whose firm has about $1 billion in assets under management, said, "Let there be a rebuttal, so no one can accuse you of taking a position."
"Simply, as a fiduciary matter, we have to protect our shareholders," Glickenhaus said. "This has nothing to do with politics."
A call placed to the office of Sinclair's Smith seeking comment wasn't returned.
Some sponsors have already withdrawn their commercials on Sinclair stations in response to the decision.
"Management is not acting in the interest of shareholders," he said. "By showing something that's clearly propaganda, they are damaging the network."
Additionally, some public interest groups have expressed anger over Sinclair's decision and have vowed to oppose its stations when their broadcasting licenses come up for renewal.
"They could lose their licenses," Glickenhaus said. "They're going incur all sorts of challenges to their licenses."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/102004I.shtml
Clerks Spill Bush v. Gore Details
By Charles Lane
The Washington Post
Monday 18 October 2004
Washington - The inscription on the front of the Supreme Court building says "Equal Justice Under Law," but the court's motto could just as easily be "What Happens Here, Stays Here." In a town where confidential information travels fast, the justices protect their internal deliberations fiercely - and, usually, successfully.
But in the October issue of Vanity Fair magazine, former Supreme Court law clerks from the court's 2000-01 term speak out - under cover of anonymity - about what they saw behind the scenes during the fateful case of Bush v. Gore.
That case, decided by a 5-4 vote, ended the contentious recount in Florida, thereby giving the presidency to George W. Bush.
Writers David Margolick, Evgenia Peretz and Michael Shnayerson recount the views of former clerks to liberal justices who opposed the ruling. Those clerks contend that the decision was an exercise in partisanship by conservative Republican justices.
Lawyers are buzzing - but the buzz centers less on the article's content than the fact that some of the brilliant, ambitious young men and women who work for the justices broke their vow of silence.
"Since 'The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court' (the 1979 Supreme Court expose by Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong), I don't think there has been another case where law clerks spoke so openly to the press about the inner workings of the court," says Noah Feldman, a professor of law at New York University and ex-clerk for Justice David H. Souter. "I'm shocked."
The justices have had no public reaction. Chief Justice William Rehnquist declined a request to comment for this article.
The Vanity Fair sources do not deny the importance of in-chambers confidentiality, a lifetime obligation spelled out in the written code of conduct that all law clerks pledge to uphold when they come to the court. They simply felt bound by a higher duty.
"We feel that something illegitimate was done with the Court's power, and such an extraordinary situation justifies breaking an obligation we'd otherwise honor," one clerk told the magazine. "Our secrecy was helping to shield some of those actions."
Most of the Bush v. Gore clerks aren't talking to the media, even to comment on the article's accuracy, which, as several pointed out privately, would require them to reveal confidential information. But their private comments about the leakers tend to break down along partisan lines, with conservative clerks condemning them and liberals expressing understanding, if not support.
"There's nothing outrageous about what they've done," says a former clerk for a liberal justice, who asked not to be named because of his own concerns about his relationship with other clerks and the court. "It's in the spirit of whistle-blowing if not actual whistle-blowing."
But an open letter in the Sept. 27 issue of Legal Times from 96 mostly conservative former law clerks and lawyers who practice before the Supreme Court branded the leaks "conduct unbecoming any attorney or legal adviser working in a position of trust."
Most of the criticism in the Vanity Fair piece is aimed at Justices Antonin Scalia, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy, all of whom voted in favor of Bush. Scalia is depicted bullying Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg into watering down her dissenting opinion. O'Connor is described as emotionally fixated on stopping a recount and Kennedy as overly influenced by his right-wing clerks.
As the Vanity Fair article's authors concede, the clerks present no document or other "smoking gun" proving that the conservative justices deliberately decided the case to suit their partisan preferences - a charge that members of the court on both sides have denied publicly.
While calling their account "by far the best" inside look yet, the article acknowledges that it is necessarily "lopsided, partisan, speculative and incomplete."
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http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/102004A.shtml
Author's note | For more information about issues and incidents surrounding your right to vote, please reference our Voter Rights Page. - wrp
Desperate Measures
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday 20 October 2004
"Elections belong to the people. It is their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters."
- Abraham Lincoln
In the last Presidential election, it was Florida that made the mess. This time, it could very well be Ohio, Oregon, West Virginia and Nevada, and that's just for starters.
The problems with electronic voting machines put in place after the passage of the Help America Vote Act have been well-documented. In Ohio, where thousands of Diebold electronic voting machines have been deployed, a consultant discovered that anyone with a security card and access to the voting terminals could take control of the machines by inputting a frighteningly simple password. Security consultants in Maryland found they could hack into the election system, delete vote counts and make wholesale changes to election results. Horror stories like this abound.