[Liberation News Service]: Countdown to Electoral Uprising -- 13 Days to Go -- CIA Inspector General Names Names on 9/11, Supreme Court Clerks are Talking about Bush vs. Gore, Gore speaks out on Coup II, CNN caught in willful DISinformation, Sinclair is getting bloodied...
richard power
richardpower at wordsofpower.net
Wed Oct 20 15:22:55 CDT 2004
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
Copyright © 2004 Media Matters for America. All rights
reserved.
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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
E-mail it | Print | Alert | Reprint | RSS
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."
-------
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.
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.
Voters Outreach of America is, basically, a
Republican-funded outfit. It is run by a man named
Nathan Sproul, former head of the Arizona Republican
Party. Sproul and his company, Sproul & Associates,
received nearly $500,000 from the Republican National
Committee to collect voter registrations. Sproul
engineered in Arizona the push to get Ralph Nader on
the ballot, and has been accused of collecting some
14,000 invalid signatures in that process.
Sproul and his outfit have also been accused of
similar registration tampering in Oregon and West
Virginia. Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury and
Attorney General Hardy Myers have begun an
investigation into allegations of registration form
tampering that are eerily similar to what has been
happening in Nevada. The firm at the center of the
Oregon scandal, again, is Sproul & Associates. Mike
Johnson, a 20-year-old canvasser working for Sproul's
firm in downtown Portland, said he was instructed to
only accept Republican registration forms. "I have
never in my five years as secretary of state ever seen
an allegation like the one that came up tonight -
ever," said Oregon Secretary of State Bradbury. "I
mean, frankly, it just totally offends me that someone
would take someone else's registration and throw it
out."
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.
Ohio, Oregon, West Virginia and Nevada amount to a
combined total of 37 Electoral College votes. Each is
considered a swing state in the coming election. In a
race as tight as the professional pundits tell us this
one is, those 37 EC swing-state votes are huge.
It is probably safe to say that the American
people do not want a re-enactment of the carnival of
folly that was Florida in 2000. It is bad enough that
millions will vote on outdated equipment, and perhaps
worse that millions more will vote on new and highly
suspect equipment, raising the specter of yet another
contested vote count. That some people are also
deliberately tearing up the system in swing states is
beyond the pale.
One the most egregious attempts at affecting the
outcome of the election has been unfolding away from
the voting booth. A broadcasting company called The
Sinclair Broadcast Group ordered its 62 affiliate
stations all across the country to air a highly
dubious anti-Kerry 'documentary' which claims he
betrayed Vietnam prisoners of war. The Los Angeles
Times has reported that at least two of the former
POWs featured in the film have links to the Bush
administration and have also appeared in anti-Kerry
attack ads.
Sinclair refused for weeks to offer equal time for
a documentary, such as the recently released film
titled 'Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry,'
that offered an opposing view. 'Going Upriver' could
easily have been included in the Sinclair broadcast,
if fairness was on the menu; it has been made
available for download in its entirety on the
internet.
The Democratic Party filed complaints with both
the FCC and the FEC, charging that Sinclair was
essentially offering a gratis political contribution
to the Bush campaign. Despite these charges, despite
the fact that the scandal surrounding this broadcast
has caused Sinclair's stock to crater in recent days,
and despite the fact that some 80 companies who
advertise on Sinclair affiliates said they would pull
their business away, the film was slated to run this
week.
The Washington Bureau Chief for Sinclair's
Maryland-based news division, Jon Lieberman, blasted
the film and his company in a Baltimore Sun article on
Monday. "It's biased political propaganda, with clear
intentions to sway this election," said Leiberman.
"For me, it's not about right or left - it's about
what's right or wrong in news coverage this close to
an election...the selection of the material - dumping
it on the news department, and giving them four days,
and running it this close to the election - it's
indefensible, in my opinion." One day later, Lieberman
was fired by Sinclair.
Apparently, however, the public and financial
pressures upon Sinclair became too much to bear. On
Tuesday the 19th, the company released a blatantly
self-serving press release claiming they never
intended to show the biased anti-Kerry film in its
entirety, and will instead show an hour-long news
program on the use of documentary film to affect
elections, of which the aforementioned Kerry slam
piece will only comprise a small part.
The irony surrounding the Sinclair cave-in is
palpable. For the last two weeks, they absorbed
massive abuse for their unprecedented intention to
manipulate the airwaves, and for their obvious and
ham-fisted attempt to influence the election. In
finally succumbing to the onslaught, they are going to
run a supposedly straightforward news program that
documents the exact form of election tampering they
were planning to take part in. Though the Kerry slam
will not be shown, this demonstrably biased broadcast
company cannot be trusted to keep its word. It is
entirely probable that their intended 'news' program
will be as much a propaganda screed as the now-defunct
documentary. All in all, this has been a shameful
episode, a new low in an already debased media
environment.
The simple and central ideal of our democracy -
count every vote, and make every vote count - is being
betrayed by the actions of those who would deny
Americans the ability to vote, and by this powerful
media company that tried to foist a biased and
factually questionable program upon its viewers. These
are desperate measures being taken by obvious
political partisans who do not want to leave the
choice of the vote to the voters, because they do not
trust the outcome.
Jon Lieberman, who lost his job for fighting this,
said it best. "At the end of the day," he said, "all
you really have is your credibility." This must be
above issues of Left and Right. If the United States
of America cannot have a free, fair, open and
untrammeled election, if our nation cannot perform its
most solemn duty without criminal interference and
blatant propaganda soiling the process, perhaps we do
not deserve the democracy so many have fought and died
for.
We deserve better.
________________________________________
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and
international bestseller of two books - 'War on Iraq:
What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' and 'The
Greatest Sedition is Silence.'
-------
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