Movie Paints Bush as Hero

In real life, Wyatt Earp probably dove under the bed at the first sign of trouble. But he sure looked brave on the big screen, taking on troublemakers in Dodge City. Of course, anyone's story can be magically transformed by Hollywood screenwriters, who routinely turn the tawdriest tales into heroic sagas.
Even so, they must have dug deep into their bag of tricks to write the made-for-TV movie — filmed in Toronto this spring — of George Bush's heroic handling of the 9/11 crisis.
The film, which qualifies for generous Canadian federal and provincial cash incentives for film production, is sure to help the White House further its two-pronged re-election strategy: Keep Americans terrified of terrorism and make Bush look like the guy best able to defend them.
Lionel Chetwynd, the writer-producer of this heartily pro-Bush movie, is a kind of west coast David Frum — a Canadian who has fully embraced the Bush revolution and even joined the administration (sitting on a White House arts committee).READ

Global Eye-Errand Boy

So now we know. After all the mountains of commentary and speculation, all the earnest debates over motives and goals, all the detailed analyses of global strategy and political ideology, it all comes to down to this: George W. Bush waged war on Iraq because, in his own words, God "instructed me to strike at Saddam."
...Here are Bush's exact words, quoted by Haaretz: "God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me, I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them." READ

Majority in US believes Bush 'stretched truth' about Iraq: poll

For the first time since the beginning of the war in Iraq (news - web sites), a solid majority of Americans believe the Bush administration either "stretched the truth" about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction or told outright lies, according to a new opinion survey.
The poll by the University of Maryland found that 52 percent of respondents said they believed President George W. Bush (news - web sites) and his aides were "stretching the truth, but not making false statements" about Iraqi president Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s chemical, biological and nuclear programs.
Another 10 percent said US officials were presenting Congress, the American public and the international community "evidence they knew was false," indicated the survey which was made public Tuesday. READ

Poll deals Blair triple whammy as 46% call for him to go

THE time has come for Tony Blair to stand down, according to a poll which dealt him a triple blow last night. Most voters say the Prime Minister is no longer trustworthy, the Mori survey showed.
A majority say his record on health, crime, transport and asylum seekers is poor. Half say he is doing a good job as Premier, but more, 53%, say he has run out of ideas and just 45% say he should stay on, while 46% want him to quit.
Labour is running neck and neck with the Tories on 35%, while the Liberal Democrats are on 19%, according to the poll of 1,007 adults, carried out for the News of the World.
On the key question of trust, Blair was backed by 36% but doubted by 58% - a big slip on a similar survey in October 2000. READ

Bush 'indicted' over war crimes

A group of Japanese lawyers unveiled documents Monday "indicting" U.S. President George W. Bush for war crimes allegedly committed against the Afghan people since the United States-led coalition began its antiterrorism campaign in Afghanistan in October 2001. READ

Cost of the War in Iraq

War affects everyone, not just those directly involved in the fighting. This webpage is a simple attempt to demonstrate one of the more quantifiable effects of war: the financial burden it places on our tax dollars.
To the right you will find a running total of the amount of money spent by the US Government to finance the war in Iraq. This total is based on estimates from the Congressional Budget Office. Below the total are a number of different ways that we could have chosen to use the money. Try clicking on them; you might be surprised to learn what a difference we could have made. VIEW

Tipping the Republicans' Hand?

Without intending to, Grover G. Norquist has done the Democrats a huge favor. The president of Americans for Tax Reform and influential presiding officer at a famous weekly strategy session of conservative organizations honored The Post last week with an op-ed article modestly headlined "Step-by-Step Tax Reform" [June 9].
In it, Norquist, who is most noted for pressing candidates at all levels to sign a pledge that they will never raise taxes, hailed the Bush administration for pushing through a fresh tax cut in each of the three years it has been in office.
It will continue to do so, he said, because this president -- unlike Ronald Reagan and the elder George Bush -- can operate with confidence that Republican control of Washington will provide him eight years to pursue his economic agenda.
" This," Norquist explained, "is because the 2002 redistricting gave Republicans a lock on the House of Representatives until 2012 and the Founding Fathers gerrymandered the Senate for Republican control. In the 50-50 election that was 2000, Bush carried 30 states and Al Gore 20. Over time, a reasonably competent Republican Party will tend to [elect] 60 Republicans in the Senate. This guarantee of united Republican government has allowed the Bush administration to work and think long-term." READ

When Will House Republicans Call for Bush's Impeachment?

It has now become clear that President Bush lied to the American people in order to promote a war. That war continues and has already led to the death of thousands of Iraqi civilians, hundreds of U.S. soldiers and countless Iraqi soldiers. In truth, Bush’s lies are more than just lies. They are high crimes and the President should now be subject to impeachment.
There are those who say that the President’s current popularity or the Republican majority in the House and Senate preclude the possibility of his impeachment. Perhaps they are underestimating the moral integrity of our Republican congressmen. In fact, some of them have already publicly stated their opinions on this subject. They did so in February of 1999 when they served as Impeachment Trial Managers for the Senate Impeachment Trial of former President Clinton. Let’s look at what they had to say then: READ

We Used To Impeach Liars By William Rivers Pitt

In September of 2002, fully six months before George W. Bush attacked Iraq, I published a small book entitled "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You To Know." The essential premise of the book was that the threats surrounding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were wildly overblown by the Bush administration for purely political reasons. In the opening paragraphs, I framed the argument as follows:
According to Bush and the men who are pushing him towards this war-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle.The United States will institute a "regime change" in Iraq, and bring forth the birth of a new democracy in the region. Along the way, we will remove Saddam Hussein, a man who absolutely, positively has weapons of mass destruction, a man who will use these weapons against his neighbors because he has done so in the past, a man who will give these terrible weapons to Osama bin Laden for use against America. READ

'Is lying about the reason for war an impeachable offense?' by John W. Dean:

President George W. Bush has got a very serious problem. Before asking Congress for a Joint Resolution authorizing the use of American military forces in Iraq, he made a number of unequivocal statements about the reason the United States needed to pursue the most radical actions any nation can undertake - acts of war against another nation.
Now it is clear that many of his statements appear to be false. In the past, Bush's White House has been very good at sweeping ugly issues like this under the carpet, and out of sight. But it is not clear that they will be able to make the question of what happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) go away - unless, perhaps, they start another war.
...Presidential statements, particularly on matters of national security, are held to an expectation of the highest standard of truthfulness. A president cannot stretch, twist or distort facts and get away with it. President Lyndon Johnson's distortions of the truth about Vietnam forced him to stand down from reelection. President Richard Nixon's false statements about Watergate forced his resignation. READ

Who's Accountable?
It's outrageous that nobody is being held accountable for misleading the nation into war. By PAUL KRUGMAN

The Bush and Blair administrations are trying to silence critics - many of them current or former intelligence analysts - who say that they exaggerated the threat from Iraq. Last week a Blair official accused Britain's intelligence agencies of plotting against the government. (Tony Blair's government has since apologized for January's "dodgy dossier.") In this country, Colin Powell has declared that questions about the justification for war are "outrageous."
Yet dishonest salesmanship has been the hallmark of the Bush administration's approach to domestic policy. And it has become increasingly clear that the selling of the war with Iraq was no different.
For example, look at the way the administration rhetorically linked Saddam to Sept. 11. As The Associated Press put it: "The implication from Bush on down was that Saddam supported Osama bin Laden's network. Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks frequently were mentioned in the same sentence, even though officials have no good evidence of such a link." Not only was there no good evidence: according to The New York Times, captured leaders of Al Qaeda explicitly told the C.I.A. that they had not been working with Saddam. READ

'Dems have shot in '04 - if they don't go wobbly' by Helen Thomas

Democratic presidential aspirants might have a monumental issue for their 2004 campaign against President George W. Bush -- if they don't go wobbly.
It's based on growing doubts that Bush was on the level when he tried to whip up public support for a U.S. attack on Iraq by claiming that the Saddam Hussein regime had a huge arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.
It's a question of presidential credibility and reflects on the character of the American people and the country.
Understandably, the Democrats may calculate that voters will always rally to the commander-in-chief in wartime.
And, like columnists, they should always recognize the possibility that those weapons will eventually be found.
But that should not stop them from raising the question of whether Bush initiated the Iraq war on the basis of possibly flawed, politicized or flimsy information.
Of course, the Democratic aspirants run the risk of being called "unpatriotic" or "un-American" -- labels that go with any dissent. But if they spout a "me-too" foreign policy in their bid for support, what choice will the voters have? READ

'Bush administration deceptions about Iraq threaten democracy' by John Conyers
Speech in the House of Representatives, June 10, 2003

...I have seen the American people apparently deceived into supporting invasion of sovereign nation, in violation of UN charter and international law, on the basis of what now appear to be false assurances. The power of the Congress to declare war was usurped. The consent of the governed was obtained by manipulation rather than candid persuasion.
Instead of conducting a sustained all-out war against the genuine terrorists behind 9/11, President Bush chose to terrorize the American people. The President, Vice President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld painted lurid nightmares of al Qaeda's attacking U.S. cities with insidious anthrax or clouds of deadly nerve gas. All of this was portrayed as coming courtesy of Saddam Hussein, unless we destroyed the Iraq regime. They also wielded the ultimate threat that Iraq would imminently endanger America and our closest allies with nuclear weapons. Members of Congress who voiced deep distrust of those claims were privately briefed with even more vivid descriptions of the deadly threats that Saddam posed to American security. READ

A Crack In Bush's Facade Growing WMD Scandal By Ted Rall

Bush lied about the weapons of mass destruction. He lied to us, the United Nations, and the soldiers he sent to die in Iraq. Bush's apologists defend his attempts to sell this obscene war as mere spin, but claiming certain knowledge of something that doesn't exist is hardly a question of emphasis. It's time to stop wondering where the WMDs are. Even if nukes and gases and anthrax turn up in prodigious quantities, it won't matter. Proof of Bush's perfidy, unlike his accusations that Saddam had something to do with 9/11, is irrefutable.
Before he ordered U.S. forces to kill and maim tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi soldiers and civilians, Bush and Co. repeatedly maintained that they had absolute proof that Saddam Hussein still possessed WMDs. "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," Dick Cheney said in August. In January, Ari Fleisher said: "We know for a fact that there are weapons there." WMDs; not a "WMD program" as they now refer to it. WMDs--not just indications of possible, or probable, WMDs. READ

Ministers knew war papers were forged, says diplomat
US official who identified documents incriminating Iraq as fakes says Britain must have been aware of findings

A high-ranking American official who investigated claims for the CIA that Iraq was seeking uranium to restart its nuclear programme last night accused Britain and the US of deliberately ignoring his findings to make the case for war against Saddam Hussein.
The retired US ambassador said it was all but impossible that British intelligence had not received his report - drawn up by the CIA - which revealed that documents, purporting to show a deal between Iraq and the west African state of Niger, were forgeries. When he saw similar claims in Britain's dossier on Iraq last September, he even went as far as telling CIA officials that they needed to alert their British counterparts to his investigation. READ

How We Got Into This Imperial Pickle: 
A PNAC Primer by Bernard Weiner 

I was the guest on a radio talk-show hosted by a thoroughly decent far-right Republican. I got verbally battered, but returned fire and, I think, held my own. Toward the end of the hour, I mentioned that the National Security Strategy -- promulgated by the Bush Administration in September 2002 -- now included attacking possible future competitors first, assuming regional hegemony by force of arms, controlling energy resources around the globe, maintaining a permanent-war strategy, etc. 
...The talk-show host seemed to gulp, and then replied: "If you really can demonstrate all that, you probably can deny George Bush a second term in 2004." 
Two things became apparent in that exchange: 1) Even a well-educated, intelligent radio commentator was unaware of some of this information; and, 2) Once presented with it, this conservative icon understood immediately the implications of what would happen if the American voting public found out about these policies. 
So, a large part of our job in the run-up to 2004 is to get this information out to those able to hear it and understand the implications of an imperial foreign/military policy on our economy, on our young people in uniform, on our moral sense of ourselves as a nation, on our constitutional freedoms, and on our treaty obligations -- which is to say, our respect for the rule of law. READ

Calling for a Media Crimes Tribunal by Danny Schechter

...By late May, no one in Washington wanted to talk about Iraq any more. Iran had become the enemy du jour as all the familiar tools of media demonization were trotted out as if they were in some playbook of well-worked but successful scenarios for orchestrating crises. The same neo-conservative cast of strategists that gave us the Iraq War seemed to be cranking up a new confrontation with Teheran.
Oddly, some of the Terror War advocates here recommend assisting (i.e., arming) opposition movements that the Iranians brand as terrorists. A Pentagon warning that it will seek to "destabilize" the Teheran government has given that country's right-wing mullahs new arguments to label reformists traitors. Another country is on the verge of imploding.
Meanwhile, Iraq is still coming apart at the seams. READ

Where is Bush leading us By Gary Hart

SOMETIME LAST FALL, between the successful overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the notion of ''regime change'' in Iraq, the war on terrorism as it threatened America became a war on all terrorism everywhere. And ''terrorism'' came to include all evil and governments we didn't like. It would be interesting to know how this happened. Even more, it is important to know how this happened, because when the Bush administration decided to go after terrorism everywhere it fundamentally defined a new role for America in the world.
Iraq represented no immediate or unavoidable threat to the United States. We overthrew its government because key Bush administration officials convinced the president it was the next step in the war on terrorism. But they had decided Saddam Hussein must go a full decade before 9/11. The destruction of the World Trade towers, which Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with, simply gave them the excuse to resurrect an old agenda. READ

America's Matrix By Robert Parry

“ Matrix” and its sequel. “Matrix Reloaded,” offer a useful analogy for anyone trying to make sense of the chasm that has opened between what’s real and what Americans perceive is real. Like the science-fiction world of the two movies, a false reality is being pulled daily over people’s eyes, often through what they see and hear on their TV screens. Facts have lost value. Logic rarely applies.
Some living in this “American Matrix” are like the everyday people in the movies, simply oblivious to what’s going on beneath the surface, either too busy or too bored to find out. Others appear to know better but behave like Cipher, the character in the original movie who chooses the fake pleasures of the Matrix over what Morpheus calls “the desert of the real.”
Many Americans so enjoyed the TV-driven nationalism of the Iraq War, for instance, that they didn’t want it spoiled by reality. During the conflict, they objected to news outlets showing mangled bodies or wounded children or U.S. POWs. Presenting the ugly face of war was seen as unpatriotic or somehow disloyal to “the troops.” Only positive images were welcome and dissent was deemed almost treasonous. READ

Germany In 1933: The Easy Slide Into Fascism by Bernard Weiner

If my email is any indication, a goodly number of folks wonder if they're living in America in 2003 or Germany in 1933.
All this emphasis on nationalism, the militarization of society, identifying The Leader as the nation, a constant state of fear and anxiety heightened by the authorities, repressive laws that shred constitutional guarantees of due process, wars of aggression launched on weaker nations, the desire to assume global hegemony, the merging of corporate and governmental interests, vast mass-media propaganda campaigns, a populace that tends to believe the slogans and lies it's fed without asking too many questions, a timid opposition that barely contests the administration's reckless adventurism abroad and police-state policies at home, etc. etc.
The parallels are not exact, of course; America in 2003 and Germany seventy years earlier are not the same, and Bush certainly is not Adolf Hitler. But there are enough disquieting similarities in the two periods at least to see what we can learn -- cautionary tales, as it were -- and then figure out what to do with our knowledge. READ

Bush & the End of Reason By Nat Parry

The United States is at a crossroads, with neither route offering an easy journey. In one direction lies a pretend land – where tax cuts increase revenue, where war is peace, where any twisted bits of intelligence justify whatever the leader wants and the people follow. In the other direction lies a painful struggle to bring accountability to political forces that have operated with impunity now for years.
The choice is so big, so intimidating, so important that many in politics, in the U.S. news media and on Main Street America don’t want to believe that there is a crossroads or that there is a choice. They want to think everything’s okay and go about their lives without making a choice. Or they hope someone else will do the hard work so they can stay on the sidelines as bemused observers.
But more and more Americans have a sinking feeling that the institutions that they count on to check abuses – the Congress, the courts, the press – are no longer there as bulwarks. The dawning reality is, too, that what ultimately is at stake is not simply the fiscal stability of the United States or the relative comfort of the American people. Nor even the awful shedding of blood by U.S. soldiers and foreign inhabitants in faraway lands.
What may be in the balance is an era of history that many Americans take for granted, an era that has lasted for a quarter of a millennium, an era that has given rise to scientific invention, to a flourishing of the arts and commerce, to modern democracy itself. There is a gnawing realization that the United States might be careening down a course leading to the end of the Age of Reason. READ

US losing the peace in Afghanistan

Just as the United States is struggling to deal with major postwar headaches in Iraq, its efforts to pacify Afghanistan appear to be unraveling, according to a new report by a key group of experts sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Asia Society.
Titled "Afghanistan: Are We Losing the Peace?", the 24-page document, authored by, among others, three retired senior US government policymakers who specialize in South Asian affairs, answers that question very much in the affirmative and argues that Washington must do far more, and urgently, to save the situation.
" Without greater support for the transitional government of President Hamid Karzai, security in Afghanistan will deteriorate further, prospects for economic reconstruction will dim, and Afghanistan will revert to warlord-dominated anarchy," the task force concluded. READ

Straw 'shifting story' over Iraq

The government has been accused of shifting its story over its claims that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.
Conservative Richard Ottaway made the accusation after MPs questioned Foreign Secretary Jack Straw for a second time over the weapons row.
Downing Street has demanded the BBC apologise for reporting that a senior official had said the prominence given to the 45 minutes claim was part of the "sexing up" of a dossier on Iraq.
The committee met in public for around 90 minutes on Friday going into a private session during which Mr Straw was said to have been "very forthcoming".
During the public grilling, Mr Straw acknowledged the 45 minutes intelligence was not in the original draft of the dossier.
But he insisted that this was because the information did not come to light until later.
His words appeared to contradict Downing Street press chief Alastair Campbell's evidence that the 45 minutes claim was in the "very first draft" of the dossier. READ

Bush credibility gap - a slow, quiet crumble

President Bush is not really an "issue guy." He never has been and probably never will be. As CEO of America Inc. - an image he likes to sell - he isn't one to get bogged down in minutiae. He's content to let an army of wonks go about their wonkery while he sits in the big office and oversees the big picture.
...In the past few weeks some questions have begun to arise about just how candid this White House is being in a variety of areas. The accusations aren't really of lying, per se, but rather they center on this administration's ability to give people the entire truth, the full picture of reality. Slowly and quietly, a credibility gap is opening, and this White House needs to be careful. If not, the gap may open wide enough to swallow up Bush's high poll numbers.
The highest-profile case concerns Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Not long ago these weapons were called the principal reason the United States went to war. Now, as days go by without any revelatory discoveries in Iraq, even members of the administration are backing away from talk of their existence. READ

Senators Predict 5-Year Presence in Iraq

U.S. senators said on Monday American troops could remain in Iraq for at least five years, and U.S. officials said there was no indication toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein or his sons were killed in an attack on suspected "regime figures" in western Iraq.
The lawmakers, members of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee on a bipartisan fact-finding visit to Iraq, urged President Bush to be more forthcoming about the breadth of the U.S. commitment and the cost of rebuilding Iraq. READ

Things I've Learned or Concluded in the Last Couple of Years

If terrorists attack us and world opinion sees us as selfish, spoiled, destructive and imperialistic, acting that way even more will stop the attacks and change world opinion. 
The more people vilify other people, the more adult they are. 
We say they're evil; they say we're evil. Evil people kill innocent civilians, believe God is guiding them and hate ambiguity. 
God wants a lot of people dead. READ

Al Gore Testing Water for Cable Network

Former Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites) has enlisted heavyweight media investor Steven Rattner to help develop his plan for a liberal-minded cable network, according to sources familiar with the embryonic venture.
Rattner, a politically active fund-raiser for Gore's failed bid for the presidency, is principal manager of the Quadrangle Group, a well-connected investment firm that manages more than $1 billion in capital for numerous media companies. He also was an adviser to Comcast Corp. in its merger last year with AT&T Broadband and is a member of Cablevision Systems' board of directors.
Liberals just don't seem angry enough to draw audiences to the set, said Michael Harrison, editor-publisher of Talkers, a talk radio and TV trade publication. READ

Senator queries WMD claims

A senior US senator says he has evidence that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deliberately withheld crucial information from the UN arms inspectors deployed to Iraq.
The claim comes as Congress prepares to open inquiries into whether the US Government misread or inflated threats posed by Iraq before going to war.
In London, parliament's Foreign Affairs Select Committee has opened a hearing into whether the UK Government misled parliament on the threat posed by Iraq.
In both cases, a key question is over claims, made by the US and the UK, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Since the war was officially declared over, no such weapons have been located - although their alleged existence was a key reason cited by the US President George W Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair for going to war.
Senator Carl Levin is the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee which is reviewing the information provided by the CIA to the United Nations.
He told reporters that if the public had known that information about alleged top weapons sites was not being shared, there would have been "greater public demand that the inspection process continue".READ

The impeachable offense
Bush jeopardized troops' lives on false pretext

Finally, and far too late, the networks, the big dailies, and the national news magazines are discovering that the Bush Administration's case for invading Iraq was a combination of willfully gross exaggerations and flat-out lies.
For weeks, various recently leaked or released documents have confirmed that there was little or no evidence in American and British files that even plausibly pointed to an Iraqi threat of either nuclear or other banned weapons or an Iraqi link to Al-Qaeda. Intelligence analysts in both governments did not believe such threats existed; allegations of a threat only materialized when the politicians got involved.
The new documentation of hyped claims, combined with an utter lack of post- invasion evidence that such claims had any basis in fact, are an enormous political scandal in Britain. However, their content does little more than confirm what opponents of the proposed invasion have said since last summer. Even then, it was a staple of opposition to Bush's invasion that intelligence community reports assessed the possibility of the existence of Iraqi WMDs as minimal and Iraq's threat to the U.S. as nonexistent. It was also an opposition staple that the Bush Administration routinely either misrepresented or ignored such expertise, and that most of the endless variety of Bush assertions "proving" either Iraqi WMDs or links between Saddam and Al-Qaeda were on their face preposterous. READ

GOP Rejects Formal Probe of Iraq Intel

Congressional Republicans on Wednesday rejected Democratic calls for a formal investigation into intelligence on Iraq (news - web sites)'s weapons programs, contending that such a probe could harm intelligence agencies' work.The majority Republicans said routine oversight by Congress' Intelligence and Armed Services committees will be adequate to evaluate intelligence findings that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had weapons of mass destruction. Those findings served as the basis for the war on Iraq, but no such weapons have been found.
The inability of Democrats and Republicans to agree on an inquiry deepens partisan divisions in an area with potential consequences in the 2004 election: whether prewar intelligence on Iraq was inaccurate or had been manipulated to make the case for war. READ

How Their Big Lie Came to Be

Leave it to a Marine to be blunt. When Lt. Gen. James Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, was asked Friday why his Marines failed to encounter or uncover any of the weapons of mass destruction that U.S. intelligence had warned them about, his honesty put the White House to shame.
" We were simply wrong," Conway said. "It was a surprise to me then, it remains a surprise to me now, that we have not uncovered [nuclear, chemical or biological] weapons" in Iraq. And, he added, "believe me, it's not for lack of trying. We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwait border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there."
Now that the "imminent threat" posed by Iraqi chemical or biological weapons has turned out not to be so imminent, the question is: Did our gazillion-dollar spy operations blow the call, or was the dope they developed distorted or exaggerated by our political leaders?
… Paul Wolfowitz, one of the general's top civilian bosses in the Pentagon and a key proponent of invading Iraq, certainly seems unconcerned with the implications of making arguments for war based on convenience rather than facts. In a Vanity Fair interview released last week, the neoconservative Wolfowitz said, "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason." READ

It's More than the WMD, It's the Sophistry
BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY

The focus on the search for the elusive WMD unfortunately clouds the bigger tragedy of our war on Iraq; we didn't have to fight, but we chose to fight and the arguments for the war were pure bogus. If it wasn't clear to the American public before the war, it should be now: Even with a dedicated WMD program, Saddam Hussein was not an "imminent threat" to either the US or our allies and our aggression was a pre-determined policy in search of a justification. WMD may have made a nice political consensus to feed to America's intellect, but they didn't represent a threat that required invasion and occupation.
...However, once those illusive WMDs are found, what will the opponents of the war say then? The discovery of WMD is really only a side issue to the more important questions about the legitimacy of the war. READ

Ex-Army boss: Pentagon won't admit reality in Iraq

The former civilian head of the Army said Monday it is time for the Pentagon to admit that the military is in for a long occupation of Iraq that will require a major commitment of American troops.
Former Army secretary Thomas White said in an interview that senior Defense officials "are unwilling to come to grips" with the scale of the postwar U.S. obligation in Iraq. The Pentagon has about 150,000 troops in Iraq and recently announced that the Army's 3rd Infantry Division's stay there has been extended indefinitely.
" This is not what they were selling (before the war)," White said, describing how senior Defense officials downplayed the need for a large occupation force. "It's almost a question of people not wanting to 'fess up to the notion that we will be there a long time and they might have to set up a rotation and sustain it for the long term." READ

Blair: I have secret proof of weapons

Prime Minister Tony Blair last night insisted he had secret proof that weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq in his strongest signal yet that coalition forces believe they may have begun to uncover leads to Iraq's alleged deadly arms cache.
Stung by claims that the Government exaggerated the threat from Saddam, Blair said he was waiting to publish a 'complete picture' of both intelligence gained before the war and 'what we've actually found'. READ

Bush's credibility tainted

President George W Bush's administration faces credibility problems after insisting for months that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction posed an imminent security threat, experts say.
Bush cited stockpiles of banned weapons as a justification for waging war on Iraq but since the toppling of President Saddam Hussein's regime, the US military has found no concrete proof of their existence.
" There is a very big disconnect between the intelligence as reflected by open statements by the administration before the invasion of Iraq and what they've found on the ground," Vincent Cannistrano, former director of counterterrorism at the CIA, said.
US officials are now saying the weapons might have been destroyed, buried or transported elsewhere prior to the start of the war and are sending in a new 1 300-member team to step up the hunt this week. READ

Stop the FCC

On June 2, the Federal Communications Commission intends to lift restrictions on media ownership that could allow your local newspaper, cable provider, radio stations, and TV channels all to be owned by one company. The result could be the disappearance of the checks and balances provided by a competitive media marketplace -- and huge cutbacks in local news and reporting. Good, balanced information is the basis for our democracy. That's why we're asking that:
" Congress and the FCC should stop media deregulation and work to make the media diverse, competitive, balanced, and fair."
Please join us below. We'll send your comments to your Representative and your Senators. If you choose, they'll also be posted to the FCC's public comments website. And we'll keep you posted about what more you can do to support this campaign. This petition is an initiative of MoveOn.org, Media Alliance, CodePink, United for Peace and Justice, and Global Exchange. SIGN PETITION

Senators Seek to Keep Cap on TV Audience

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators on Tuesday introduced legislation to head off an effort to allow a television network to own stations reaching more than 35 percent of the national audience.
With the Federal Communications Commission poised to vote June 2 on lifting several media ownership restrictions, the lawmakers said the cap was needed to preserve diversity of voices in a market and local reporting and programming.
Meanwhile, the two Democrat FCC commissioners who have been skeptical about raising ownership limits asked Chairman Michael Powell to delay the vote by a month so they can go through the justification of the new rules, evaluate the impact, and then try to reach a consensus. READ

IndyMedia De-Googled?

By some accounts, Google News is avoiding Indy Media as an expression of pro-war "patriotism," by other accounts it's been pressured to do something about IndyMedia postings considered anti-Semitic. Whatever the case, IndyMedia –- all of it -- is off of Google News. READ

Strange Weather Lately By Kurt Vonnegut

And now, having installed themselves as our federal government, or taken control of it from outside, they have squandered our public treasury and then some. They have created a public debt of such appalling magnitude that our descendants, for whom we had such high hopes, will come into this world as poor as church mice.
Shock and awe.
What are the conservatives doing with all the money and power that used to belong to all of us? They are telling us to be absolutely terrified, and to run around in circles like chickens with their heads cut off. But they will save us. They are making us take off our shoes at airports. Can anybody here think of a more hilarious practical joke than that one? Smile, America. You’re on Candid Camera.
And they have turned loose a myriad of our high-tech weapons, each one costing more than a hundred high schools, on a Third World country, in order to shock and awe human beings like us, like Adam and Eve, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. READ

NO-FLY ZONES SHIELD DISNEY'S RESORTS

Walt Disney Co. won a rare prize on the eve of the Iraq war when federal officials permanently closed the airspace above its theme parks in Florida and California -- ostensibly to protect against terrorist attacks.
Walt Disney World and Disneyland now have 24-hour security zones that put them on par with a select few potential targets in the United States, including President Bush's Texas ranch, nuclear submarine bases and stockpiles of sarin gas and other weapons of mass destruction.
Without public debate or even a request from the new Homeland Security Department, Congress bent its own rules to help Disney secure the no-fly zones at the urging of at least one well-connected company lobbyist. READ

U.S. rich-poor gap "unsustainable"-Fed's McDonough

A large gulf between the rich and poor can tear at a society's fabric, departing New York Federal Reserve Bank President William McDonough said on Thursday, calling U.S. income disparity "unsustainable." READ

SODOMY LAWS by State: (crossreference: Rick Santorum's recent ant-gay remarks)

Sodomy is illegal in 15 states, in eight states it is a felony, in five states it only applies to homosexual couples. READ

US finds evidence of WMD at last - buried in a field near Maryland

The good news for the Pentagon yesterday was that its investigators had finally unearthed evidence of weapons of mass destruction, including 100 vials of anthrax and other dangerous bacteria.
The bad news was that the stash was found, not in Iraq, but fewer than 50 miles from Washington, near Fort Detrick in the Maryland countryside.
The anthrax was a non-virulent strain, and the discoveries are apparently remnants of an abandoned germ warfare programme. They merited only a local news item in the Washington Post.
But suspicious finds in Iraq have made front-page news (before later being cleared), given the failure of US military inspection teams to find evidence of the weapons that were the justification for the March invasion. READ

Anti-Terror Power Used Broadly
Laws Invoked Against Crimes Unrelated to Terror, Report Says

The Justice Department has used many of the anti-terrorism powers granted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to pursue defendants for crimes unrelated to terrorism, including drug violations, credit card fraud and bank theft, according to a government accounting released yesterday. READ

Praise the Lord, pass the votes

The Republicans' pact with the religious Right reflects a growing divide between the US and other nations. But over the past 20 years the longstanding American churches - Catholic, Presbyterian, Episcopalian and Methodist - have been haemorrhaging members to the fast growing Pentecostal movement which takes scripture literally as the word of God and believes in salvation earned by individualistic virtue rather than via the mediation of the church. The Republicans have struck a Faustian pact with the Pentecostal movement; they will concede its arguments that abortion and even stem cell research are against biblical text in return for the church mobilising its members to vote Republican. Christianity is no longer above politics. READ

For Partisan Gain, Republicans Decide Rules Were Meant to Be Broken

...But the real problem was that Republicans were redrawing lines that had just been adopted in 2001, defying the rule that redistricting occurs only once a decade, after the census.
... The Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, has declared that filibusters, which allow senators to block action with just 41 votes, should not be used to reject judicial nominations, despite a history of using them to do just that. Abe Fortas was prevented from becoming chief justice in 1968 by a Republican-backed filibuster. While Senator Frist pushes "filibuster reform," Senate Republicans are also talking about a "nuclear option," in which Vice President Dick Cheney would preside over the Senate and hand down a ruling that Rule 22, which permits filibusters, does not apply to judicial nominations.
The Republicans' attack on the rules come at a time when they could easily afford to take a higher road. They have, by virtue of their control of the White House and Congress, extraordinary power to enact laws and shape the national agenda. And this administration is already getting far more of its judges confirmed, and more quickly, than the Clinton administration did. READ

Character Witness

To conservatives, the Bush administration is everything its predecessor was not: decent, ethical, honest. It doesn't abuse government power or the public trust. As Wall Street Journal columnist and presidential hagiographer Peggy Noonan has put it, "Bush brings character to the table."
...These stories of Bush administration dishonesty and abuse have not been denied in the conservative press as much as they have been ignored. In researching this column, I could not find a single substantive defense of Bush's UAV claim, or his filibuster plan, or his uranium allegation, in any elite conservative publication. READ

Investigation Links Texas Probe To Feds AG Trying To Block Depositions Of 3 DPS Officers

A Texas official who answers to Gov. Rick Perry provided state troopers with the information they needed to get a federal terrorism-fighting agency involved in a state political battle, according to a legislator investigating the situation.Texas Homeland security coordinator Jay Kimbrough gave Department of Public Safety officers the telephone number to the agency within the federal Homeland Security Department that helped Texas officials track down more than 50 Democrats who fled the state in a political walkout, said Rep. Kevin Bailey, chairman of the House General Investigating Committee.
... The House General Investigating Committee is looking into how DPS coordinated its search. The committee also wants to know whether anyone associated with U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a supporter of the redistricting plan, helped direct the search and why DPS officials ordered some records on the issue destroyed on May 14. READ

Hubris Unbound

On May 2 President George W. Bush zoomed off the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, where he had declared victory in Iraq following a televised landing in a US Navy S-3B Viking jet. A few hours later, Bush landed in California's Silicon Valley, where he abruptly changed the topic of the day from triumphant war to sputtering economy.
...Bush "pulled into the well-protected grounds of United Defense Industries, which produces the Bradley fighting vehicle, tanks and other equipment that became familiar to television viewers watching the 350-mile race to Baghdad last month."
...But Sanger, along with every other reporter covering the speech, neglected to mention a crucial fact about United Defense. It is majority-owned and controlled by the Carlyle Group, the Washington, DC, merchant bank in which Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, has a direct financial interest and serves as a trusted adviser. Yet the American public was kept in the dark about this relationship by the newspaper of record, along with the Washington Post, CNN and every other major media outlet. To people who follow these things, the silence was deafening. READ

Did Karl Rove Stuff Socks Down the Front of Bush's Pants Before He Got On THAT Plane?

It will be interesting to find out how much George's Campaign Photo Shoot, with his "top gun" on display, will cost us? The picture was hilarious and when I found out that "women think he's hot" I laughed even harder. I decided perhaps I was too old and wasn't looking at it the right way. So, I asked my daughter if she thought George Bush was hot and she laughed, "he's an old guy and looks like a monkey." She looked at the picture and said "what's wrong with his pants, he looks disgusting?" READ

What did Bush stuff down his pants?

PHOTO: President George W. Bush walks the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln VIEW

By whatever lies necessary: Bush stretches the truth as far as needed to reach his goals

” Bill Clinton lies about big things and does it very well; Al Gore lies about little things and does it very badly. None of his fibs really amount to much, but they remind voters of what they don't like about Clinton. With Bush, voters see a decent, likable and truthful candidate, but they're not sure he's up to the job.” -- Charlie Cook, National Journal, Oct. 28, 2000
As this quotation from one of America's best nonpartisan political analysts demonstrates, George W. Bush's 2000 campaign for the presidency was based in large part on the idea that Bush was honest while Clinton and Gore were liars. The phrase “little lies” stuck to Gore early, and he never shook it.
All of which makes it surprising that the media do not pay more attention to the ways in which Bush and his White House say whatever is necessary, even if they have to admit later that what they said the first time wasn't exactly true. READ

Trust in Leaders is Lost if WMD Are Not Found

... If we never discover the "materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent" cited by President Bush in his State of the Union speech, if the "30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents" reported by U.S. intelligence never existed, it would matter a great deal.
 Such an outcome could mean only one of two things: Either our intelligence apparatus is more incompetent than we had dreamed possible, or we were lied to on a massive scale by our own government to lure us into war. READ

Yes, Virginia, the idea of a lying government is serious

...But the weirdest media reaction of all is to the ongoing non-appearance of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. More and more stories quoting ever-unnamed administration officials appear saying that the administration would be "amazed if we found weapons-grade plutonium or uranium" and that finding large volumes of chemical or biological material is "unlikely."
Look, if there are no WMDs in Iraq, it means either our government lied us to us in order to get us into an unnecessary war or the government itself was disastrously misinformed by an incompetent intelligence apparatus. In either case, it's a terribly serious situation.
...Of course it matters if our government lies to us.
Why do you think people were so angry at Lyndon Johnson over the Gulf of Tonkin? At Richard Nixon over the "secret war" in Cambodia? Even at Bill Clinton over the less cosmic matter of whether he had sex with "that woman." READ

In war, some facts less factual: Some US assertions from the last war on Iraq still appear dubious.

When George H. W. Bush ordered American forces to the Persian Gulf – to reverse Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait – part of the administration case was that an Iraqi juggernaut was also threatening to roll into Saudi Arabia.
Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated in mid–September that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the border, threatening the key US oil supplier.
But when the St. Petersburg Times in Florida acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images of the same area, taken at the same time, no Iraqi troops were visible near the Saudi border – just empty desert.
" It was a pretty serious fib," says Jean Heller, the Times journalist who broke the story. READ

THE FICTIONAL WAR ON TERRORISM by Ted Rall

We've killed thousands of Muslims and taken over two of their countries. We're spending billions of dollars to make it easier for our government to spy on us. But we haven't caught Osama, Al Qaeda is doing better than ever and airport security is still a sick joke. So when are Americans going to demand a real war on terrorism?
READ

Saving Private Lynch story 'flawed'

Private Jessica Lynch became an icon of the war, and the story of her capture by the Iraqis and her rescue by US special forces became one of the great patriotic moments of the conflict.
But her story is one of the most stunning pieces of news management ever conceived.
..." It was like a Hollywood film. They cried 'go, go, go', with guns and blanks without bullets, blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show for the American attack on the hospital - action movies like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan."
There was one more twist. Two days before the snatch squad arrived, Harith had arranged to deliver Jessica to the Americans in an ambulance. But as the ambulance, with Private Lynch inside, approached a checkpoint American troops opened fire, forcing it to flee back to the hospital. The Americans had almost killed their prize catch. READ

Propaganda? Was Pfc. Lynch used? (from Lynch's home state newspaper)

SEVERAL voices around the world say the Pentagon falsified reports about West Virginia’s hero, Pfc. Jessica Lynch, to boost patriotic support for President Bush’s war on Iraq.
On Tuesday, Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer said it’s a shame that Lynch, a teen-age soldier injured in an ambush, was used as “a propaganda pawn” by the administration.
“ Sadly, almost nothing fed to reporters about either Lynch’s original capture by Iraqi forces or her ‘rescue’ by U.S. forces turns out to be true,” he wrote.  requires registration READ

Surveys pointing to high civilian death toll in Iraq: Preliminary reports suggest casualties well above the Gulf War.

Evidence is mounting to suggest that between 5,000 and 10,000 Iraqi civilians may have died during the recent war, according to researchers involved in independent surveys of the country.
...Such a range would make the Iraq war the deadliest campaign for noncombatants that US forces have fought since Vietnam.
Though it is still too early for anything like a definitive estimate, the surveyors warn, preliminary reports from hospitals, morgues, mosques, and homes point to a level of civilian casualties far exceeding the Gulf War, when 3,500 civilians are thought to have died. READ

www.iraqbodycount.org

“ We don’t do body counts” General Tommy Franks, US Central Command
The worldwide update of reported civilian deaths in the war on Iraq VIEW

The Iraq War: Disturbing Photos

Here are a few pictures from the Iraq war. This is considered collateral damage in a $20 trillion oil heist, callously masquerading as a compassionate regime change. VIEW

Iraq War Helped Boost Al Qaeda. Allowed Network to Recruit: Experts

The U.S.-led war on Iraq gave Al Qaeda the opportunity to reinvigorate its weakened terrorist network with new recruits and more funding, say experts on terrorism.
...U.S. officials partly tried to justify the Iraq war by insisting there were links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's ousted regime — an assertion most experts continue to believe is unsubstantiated.
By linking the Iraq war with the war on terror, Bush has left himself vulnerable to Americans concluding the invasion was a failure if terrorist attacks continue, said Andrew Garfield, director of the International Center for Security Analysis at King's College in London. READ

US post-war effort seen as on the brink of "fiasco"

Nearly 40 days after the fall of Baghdad, US efforts to restore order and establish a functioning administration in Iraq (news - web sites) are faltering as US forces struggle to cope with lawlessness, a fragile infrastructure and fractious Iraqi political forces, analysts said.
" It's close to a fiasco," said Loren Thompson, an analyst with the Lexington Institute, a Washington research organization. " The contrasts between the efforts to rebuild Iraq and the stunning military victory could hardly be more pronounced." READ

Made in the USA (Part I) A guide to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction

As U.S. and British fighter jets and bombers knife through Iraqi airspace to pound targets in and around Baghdad, attacking pilots will challenge an air-defense system updated with fiber-optic equipment installed by a Chinese corporation and supported by American high-end technology.
At every turn of the war against Iraq, U.S. and British forces will face weapons systems largely developed and supplied to Iraq by American, European, Russian and Chinese companies.
Airmen will seek to evade anti-aircraft missiles, designed by Russian, German, Chinese, Egyptian and Argentine engineers, and controlled by American, British and French supercomputers and navigational systems.
Ground forces will gird themselves against the risk of germs and viruses supplied by American companies, or chemical weapons manufactured with German, Swiss, American and British technology and supplies. So-called dirty bombs, which use conventional explosives to spread deadly radiation, would be the direct result of French- or Japanese-based engineering. READ

Made in the USA (Part II) More on the connection between the U.S., American corporations and Iraq’s weapons programs

Iraq would never have developed its chemical-, biological- and nuclear-weapons program — or even its conventional missiles — without technology and material support supplied by a phalanx of American and international corporations. It also helped mightily that officials in the first Bush presidency – many of whom now work for George W. Bush – were willing to look the other way or directly assist Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Between 1985 and 1990, the U.S. government approved 771 licenses for exports of biological agents, high-tech equipment and military items to Iraq, reported Representative Sam Gejdenson (D-Connecticut) in 1991. Those exports were valued at $1.5 billion, said Gejdenson, who was the chairman of the House Subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs Committee at the time.
" The United States spent virtually an entire decade making sure that Saddam Hussein had almost whatever he wanted . . . We continued to approve this equipment until just weeks before Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait," declared, according to a Congressional transcript. READ

Made in the USA, Part III: The Dishonor Roll America’s corporate merchants of death in Iraq

Saddam Hussein’s regime was crushed by the combined military might of American and British forces in a lightning-quick, three-week war. But there’s still more work to be done, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon this month.
" We still need to find and secure Iraq’s weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities," said Rumsfeld. "We still must find out everything we can about how the Iraqi regime acquired its capabilities, and the proliferation that took place by countries in the industrialized world."
A glance at his datebook would provide some of the answers. In 1983, Rumsfeld, then a private citizen, traveled to Baghdad to meet with the Iraqi dictator. Rumsfeld delivered President Ronald Reagan’s personal message of support to Hussein, who was already three years into his eventual eight-year war with Iran. The American envoy also discussed a proposed joint-venture oil pipeline with the Iraqi leader. That project, also championed by the San Francisco–based Bechtel Group, never materialized, but Rumsfeld’s mission underscored the reality that for more than 30 years the economic interests of American industry were firmly embedded into the geopolitical goals of U.S. policymakers.READ

War profiteers Shell, Bechtel, Fluor take record of terror from Africa to Iraq

As Bush creates a corporate protectorate in Iraq, many companies who stand to benefit from reconstruction and oil exploration there are familiar to Africans. Shell, Bechtel and Fluor are all associated with massacres and crimes against humanity in Africa.
Oil giant Shell had a hand in the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the massacre of hundreds of Ogoni in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. Bechtel has profited from and exacerbated the ongoing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And Flour had tight relationships with the apartheid regime of South Africa. READ

Bush ally set to profit from the war on terror

James Woolsey, former CIA boss and influential adviser to President George Bush, is a director of a US firm aiming to make millions of dollars from the 'war on terror', The Observer can reveal.
Woolsey, one of the most high-profile hawks in the war against Iraq and a key member of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board, is a director of the Washington-based private equity firm Paladin Capital. The company was set up three months after the terrorist attacks on New York and sees the events and aftermath of September 11 as a business opportunity which 'offer[s] substantial promise for homeland security investment'.
Woolsey is not alone among the members of the Pentagon's highly influential Defence Policy Board to profit from America's war on terror.
The American watchdog, the Centre for Public Integrity, showed that nine of the board's members have ties to defence contractors that won more than $76bn in defence contracts in 2001 and 2002. Woolsey's fellow neo-conservative, Richard Perle, had to resign his chairmanship of the board because of conflicts of interest, although he remains a board member. READ

The two faces of Rumsfeld

Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, sat on the board of a company which three years ago sold two light water nuclear reactors to North Korea - a country he now regards as part of the "axis of evil" and which has been targeted for regime change by Washington because of its efforts to build nuclear weapons.
Mr Rumsfeld was a non-executive director of ABB, a European engineering giant based in Zurich, when it won a $200m (£125m) contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors. The current defence secretary sat on the board from 1990 to 2001, earning $190,000 a year. He left to join the Bush administration. READ

Right turns only

Social moderates have lost all say in the Republican Party.On its own, Christie Whitman's departure from the national political stage is a minor event. Her tenure at the Environmental Protection Agency will soon be forgotten, and her once limitless future is now decidedly in the past. What is momentous is how quickly Whitman went from rising star to Washington burnout. The story of how it happened is bad news for socially progressive Republicans everywhere. READ

Whitman Quits As EPA Chief

...Whitman said in a letter to President Bush that she was leaving to spend time with family.
... With Whitman's departure, Mr. Bush loses one of the most prominent women in his administration — a moderate former New Jersey governor selected by the president to help soften his image as a political conservative, particularly on environmental issues.
... Mr. Bush will be under pressure to replace Whitman with a nominee who will be acceptable to his GOP supporters without alienating swing voters who tend to be wary of Republicans on the environment. READ

Bush Spokesman Ari Fleischer to Resign

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, whose televised briefings gave viewers a daily window on President Bush in wartime, said today that he will resign this summer, probably in late July.
The change will leave Bush with a new face at the podium as he embarks on his reelection race. "I love this job," Fleischer told reporters at his off-camera "gaggle" this morning. "My heart tells me it's time to go."
Sources said Fleischer was not forced out, but he wanted to avoid burning out and thought he should leave before Bush's reelection campaign moved into full swing. Administration officials have been told that if they stay past summer vacation, they are in through the elections. READ

Fleischer finally to spin on out the door

For the control freaks in command of the current Bush administration, however, Fleischer's bull-necked stonewalling has, of course, been completely to their tastes and he has well earned his $140,000 annual salary (the max for a White House staff member under Bush). Fleischer will undoubtedly make much more, but with less television face time, when he departs for the private sector this summer. I wish him well, as he is not an unkind person, but I wish him gone from the pinnacle of press agentry. He has given spin a very bad name. READ

Ari the Evader

Ari Fleischer is a nice guy. He likes baseball. We like baseball. That's about where the similarities end. READ

Ari & I by Russell Mokhiber

Mokhiber: Ari, one of your predecessors, Jerald terHorst, resigned as President Ford's press secretary, he said, as a matter of conscience - because he couldn't defend President Ford's pardon of President Nixon. I was wondering, is there anything President Bush has done as President, that made you think, even for a moment, that you would resign as a matter of conscience? READ

Ari & I Archives by Russell Mokhiber

White House Press Briefing with Ari Fleischer 2001-2003 READ

Top U.S. commander Franks to retire: Architect of Iraq campaign will write, hit speaking circuit  

Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who orchestrated the U.S. military campaign against Iraq, has decided to retire, Pentagon officials told NBC News on Thursday.
Franks, 57, has been the head of the military’s Central Command since July 2000.
 FRANKS MADE HIS decision, which was first reported by CNBC, after turning down an offer to serve as the Army’s chief of staff, the officials said on condition of anonymity. READ

U.S. treasurer resigning, returning to California Touted as possible GOP contender for Senate seat

U.S. Treasurer Rosario Marin, the highest-ranking Latin American woman in the Bush administration, plans to leave her post at the end of June, the Treasury Department announced Thursday.
Marin, who became the 41st treasurer in the summer of 2001, is being floated as a possible Republican contender for a Senate seat from California in 2004.
Mexican-born Marin, 44, has been a key player in the administration's efforts to reach out to Hispanic voters, the fastest-growing bloc. READ

QuestionW

Why, after Andrew Card told him America was under attack on 9-11, did George W sit there reading a book about a pet goat for 20 minutes?
* "I used a magic marker to write a ? on duct tape. I wear it on my jacket."
* "A busload of us are headed to our state capitol to raise a ruckus. I am taking a ? sign, a camera, and making ? stickers.
* "I had the woman who does my nails put a question mark on each one." VIEW

Documents From Congress' Joint Inquiry into 9/11

From June to October 2002, the Intelligence Committees from the US Senate and House teamed up to probe, more or less, 9/11. Of course, the Joint Investigation ran into all kinds of roadblocks. It took Congress five months to even announce the inquiry and another four months before it got started. Bush and Cheney each personally asked then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to keep the scope of the probe narrow. Republican Senator Richard Shelby openly complained of the lack of cooperation from the FBI, intelligence agencies, and others.
But you can't put the genie back in the bottle. We're going to help make sure of that. Below you'll find Acrobat files of all publicly released statements from the hearings, including the very ones the White House wants to restrict. The Memory Hole has had several of Hill's crucial statements professionally typed so they can be posted as HTML text (thanks to our donors!), and more will be done in the near future. We've also included a rare transcript of Hill's testimony from the first open session of the Inquiry, as well as the summary and recommendations that were released at the end. (Documents are listed as they appear on the Intelligence Committees Websites.) READ

An Interesting Day: President Bush's Movements and Actions on 9/11

" It was an interesting day." - President Bush, recalling 9/11 [White House, 1/5/02]
At approximately 8:48 a.m. on the morning of September 11, 2001, the first pictures of the burning World Trade Center were broadcast on live television. The news anchors, reporters, and viewers had little idea what had happened in lower Manhattan, but there were some people who did know. By that time, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon, the White House, the Secret Service, and Canada's Strategic Command all knew that three commercial airplanes had been hijacked. They knew that one plane had been flown deliberately into the World Trade Center's North Tower; a second plane was wildly off course and also heading toward Manhattan; and a third plane had abruptly turned around over Ohio and was flying back toward Washington, DC.
So why, at 9:03 a.m. - fifteen minutes after it was clear the United States was under terrorist attack - did President Bush sit down with a classroom of second-graders and begin a 20-minute pre-planned photo op? No one knows the answer to that question. In fact, no one has even asked Bush about it. READ

September 11: The Photo the RNC Shamelessly Used for Fundraising in 2002

After departing Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, President George W. Bush confers with Vice President Dick Cheney from Air Force One during his flight to Andrews Air Force Base Sept. 11, 2001.VIEW

9/11 Photos and Timeline on a Pro-Bush Website

President Bush's Reaction and Speeches After the September 11, 2001 ...Terrorist Attacks in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington. etc. VIEW

We were Soldiers Once? The Bush War Record

Bush on why the Air National Guard took him: " They could sense I would be one of the great pilots of all time." Houston Chronicle, August 1988
Bush on lessons learned: " I learned some good lessons from Vietnam. First, there must be a clear mission. Secondly, the politics ought to stay out of fighting a war. There was too much politics during the Vietnam War." Associated Press, March 2002... READ

The Bush Family Saga

...The other really important question to ask is how can one family which has so many skeletons in the family closet, get away with such dirty dealings and over such a long period of time without being called to task? It’s as if the mass media goes deaf, dumb and blind when the name Bush comes up. For no matter what your politics are, left, right or indifferent, a family which has its fingers in so many dirty dealings has surely got to have you thinking about exactly what kind of country it is you live in (if you’re an American) and what kind of world is it that’s dominated by a country with a media (not to mention a legal system) that’s quite content not to challenge its president or his lying, thiefing family and their tenticular network of associations which includes: the Mafia, the Chinese Communist Party, Japanese Triads, the Vatican, Central American drug smugglers and gun runners, international arms dealers, the Ayotollah Khomeini (RIP), Cuban-American terrorists, money laundering, illegal arms sales, countless conflicts of interests, nepotism, coverups, tax avoidance, SEC fiddles and banking scams? A veritable ‘school for scoundrels’. READ

Liberals Meeting to Set '04 Strategy

Labor, Rights Groups Focus on Getting Out the Vote to Help DemocratsMajor liberal organizations, from labor unions to civil rights groups, have begun to meet privately to develop a coordinated strategy to oppose President Bush's reelection in 2004. Their goal is to buttress the Democratic Party and its nominee by orchestrating voter mobilization and independent media in as many as a dozen battleground states.
... Historically, efforts to get liberal groups to work under a coordinated strategy have run into problems. Few organization leaders have been willing to cede power; competitive fundraising strategies have emerged among groups appealing to similar constituencies; and fundamental agenda conflicts forced splits, such as those between environmentalists and the more pro-development labor movement.
This election cycle, some participants say, will be different. READ

How to build a better Democrat

Fire the consultants, find some core values and speak from the heart, and then maybe one of the candidates will have a chance against Bush
Two days after George W. Bush strutted across the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in full fighter-pilot regalia--an image we may see from time to time between now and Election Day--the nine Democrats running for President of the U.S. held their first debate of the 2004 campaign.
No more than 10 minutes into it, two of those Democrats, John Kerry of Massachusetts and Howard Dean of Vermont, had entangled themselves in a ridiculous scuffle over the issue of gay rights. Not that they disagreed. Both are staunch advocates of equal rights and "civil unions."
...This seemed a classic Democratic Party moment--woolly liberals taking time from crucial issues like war and peace and prosperity to argue over who could offer the most extravagant pander to a narrow, controversial interest group. READ

Playing the Hillary card

The Karl Rove/Dick Cheney/George W. Bush GOP is the "piece de resistance" of slick political coordination, masterful organization and Madison Avenue-caliber salesmanship.
The Tom Daschle/Nancy Pelosi Democrat party is better described as well meaning, moderately disorganized and occasionally lucky. This week, however, there's one sign the Republicans' "at-bat" as the disciples of discipline has stumbled into a major self-imposed obstacle.
According to the New York Daily News, the Republican Party has stooped to scare tactic fund-raising based on the fabricated supposition that New York Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton will run for president. It's a desperation move one would expect from a party in financial or political disarray, not the party controlling the White House and Congress and packing three or four times the fund-raising power of the only viable opposition.
The News reports Republicans last week mailed out a national fundraising missive that "implores donors to stop her (i.e. Clinton) from 'seizing control of our national agenda.'" My goodness, could little Ms. Hillary do that all by herself? Apparently, the Republican Party thinks so. Or so it posits in an effort to separate fellow Republicans from their hard-earned millions. READ

RNC: WHO IS HOWARD DEAN? (ed. note: know what tricks the RNC has up its sleeve by going to their web site)

Howard Dean is an Ultra-Liberal On Social Issues Who Is Out Of The Mainstream And Wrong For America. (RNC depections of all Democratic candidates can be found here) READ

Dean Offers Plan for Near-Universal Health Care Access

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean today unveiled a plan to provide near-universal access to health care coverage by targeting federal assistance to those without insurance and penalizing large, profitable corporations that fail to offer it, saying the United States "has fallen 50 years behind the social standards of what we consider the civilized world."
...Democrats face a serious intraparty debate over health care that could influence both the outcome of the nomination battle and the viability of their desire to make the issue a major point of difference with President Bush in the 2004 election. READ