OBL's escape well noted at the time

** In an October 27, 2004 article, The Christian Science Monitor discusses the Kerry allegations that Osama Bin Laden was allowed to escape from Afghanistan because of US negligence. Though the administration calls Kerry an "armchair general," the article cites several news reports at the time that would seem to back Kerry's allegations. Included in the accounts is the Monitor's own. Here's an excerpt:

The Christian Science Monitor was one of the first news sources to report bin Laden's escape from Tora Bora. In a December 11, 2001 article the Monitor reported that there were "growing signs ... that bin Laden ... and other Al Qaeda leaders may have fled the besieged mountain base at Tora Bora."

A December 7, 2001 Monitor piece reported this:

By all accounts, about two-thirds of the original 1,500 to 2,000 of Arabs, Afghans, and Chechens may have fled. ... In addition to the original number of Al Qaeda fighters, hundreds of Al Qaeda family members have escaped the siege of Tora Bora in the past three weeks. Most of those leaving have tapped into an "underground railway" of sympathetic Afghan families at the base of Tora Bora, whose men had long been on bin Laden's payroll.
Though Mr. Rumsfeld has said that the two dozen or so US Special Forces are helping to block exit routes, that number of US military personnel can only be considered a token of the real figure needed to cut off all the mountain passes surrounding the mountain enclave.

A March 4, 2002 Monitor article reconstructed "how bin Laden got away" from Tora Bora.
As the US intensified its airstrikes on Tora Bora, US and Afghan helicopters started to arrive with supplies for the Afghans. Also - as was its pattern elsewhere in Afghanistan - the US began enlisting local warlords. Two - Hazret Ali and Haji Zaman Ghamsharik - would become notorious in the battle for Tora Bora. ...
The rift between the two men would seriously hinder US efforts to capture Al Qaeda's leadership. Although backed by the United States, the Jalalabad warlords would have to determine by themselves - while sometimes arguing fiercely - how best to go after Tora Bora's defenders.

... somewhere between Nov. 28 to Nov. 30 - according to detailed interviews with Arabs and Afghans in eastern Afghanistan afterward - the world's most-wanted man escaped the world's most-powerful military machine, walking - with four of his loyalists - in the direction of Pakistan.

What the polls said in 2000

From Daily Kos

CNN Monday, November 6, 2000 Via Lexis Nexis:

BLITZER: And now, let's take a look at the latest poll numbers. The new CNN/"USA Today" Gallup Tracking Poll results are being released at this hour. It shows George W. Bush with 48 percent, Al Gore 43 percent, Ralph Nader with 4 percent, Pat Buchanan with 1 percent. And those numbers are similar to other tracking polls. Take a look: ABC's poll has Bush at 49 percent, Gore at 45 percent; The Washington Post, Bush at 48 percent, Gore at 46 percent; the NBC-Wall Street Journal tracking poll, Bush at 47 percent, Gore 44 percent. And both the CBS and MSNBC-Reuters-Zogby tracking polls have Bush at 46, Gore at 44 percent.That was the day before Gore won the popular vote.

Explosives disappeared after war - Video

10/29/2004 4:00:00 PM GMT

ABC News on Thursday showed video that confirms that the 330 tons of explosives that went missing in Iraq, didn’t vanish until after the invasion, when the U.S. took control of the depot where those explosives were stored.

Explosives disappeared after war- Video -

Why Thomas Schaller will vote for Bush

** Not really!

Yes... I've changed my mind. I believe in President George W. Bush. Actually, I've always believed him!

I believe the president invaded Iraq to secure liberty and democracy for the Iraqi people. I believe he had compelling evidence that Iraq was a significant threat to America and the world, and presented that evidence in a complete and balanced manner. Like 42 percent of Americans - and 62 percent of Republicans - I believe Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 attacks.

I believe we have enough troops on the ground in Iraq to ensure stability. I believe the rising American fatality rates, the rising casualty rates, and the rising American share of those coalition fatalities and casualties testify to the undeniable progress we're making there. I believe it is inappropriate and traitorous, however, for the media to broadcast pictures of American flag-draped caskets returning from Iraq.

I believed then-candidate Bush when he said during the 2000 campaign that America should not nation-build, and believe him now when he says our nation was divinely chosen for this task. I believe, as the president claims, that "free societies are peaceful societies," but that the political and civil rights in oppressive, undemocratic countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are exempt from this standard. I believe Iraqis view Americans as liberators, and that once this swift, cheap war concludes the world will be more stable, our allies more cooperative, and our enemies fewer and less threatening.

I believe the best response against an Islamic fundamentalist network operating from a South Asian cave which used boxcutters to attack us is to invade a secular Arab dictator living in 11 palaces in a Middle Eastern country whose (supposed) weapon of choice was nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. I further believe that the best way to accomplish that mission was to land on an aircraft carrier in military garb and stand in front of a banner declaring it so.

I believe the president when he says he would have moved "heaven and earth" had he any "inkling" that terrorists were planning to attack America with hijacked airplanes. I believe the security briefing the president read five weeks before the attacks - which was entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside United States," and specifically mentioned hijacked airplanes and New York City as a target - was an inkling-free, "historical" document. I believe we should re-double our investments in a missile defense system, which could have prevented the 9/11 attacks and will prevent future attacks like it from occurring.

I believe the president was right to oppose the formation of the 9/11 Commission, to change his mind but then oppose fully funding it, to change his mind but then oppose granting its request for an extension, to change his mind but refuse to testify for more than an hour, to change his mind but then testify alongside Vice President Dick Cheney so long as transcripts and note-taking were prohibited. I believe the investigation into the Abu Ghraib prison scandal shows it was the fault of a handful of misguided underlings who simply misunderstood a memo signed by the Secretary of Defense which authorized the use of dogs to interrogate prisoners.

Domestically, I believe income tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans are the solution to budget surpluses or deficits, high or low inflation, stable or unstable interest rates, expanding or shrinking trade deficits, widening or narrowing wealth gaps, increasing or decreasing poverty rates, rising or falling unemployment, prosperity or recession, wartime or peace. I believe record-setting budget deficits, record-setting trade deficits, and a burgeoning national debt are examples of the president's fiscally-conservative economic leadership.

I believe that a president who insists that hard-working Americans deserve tax breaks should continue to stand fast against cutting payroll taxes - the direct tax on hard work. Clearly, I do not believe that payroll taxes coupled with income taxes on work constitute "double taxation," but the dividend tax on assets does. I believe those who complain that one third of American children live in poverty, or that the wealthiest nation on the planet should feel sheepish about having 45 million uninsured citizens, deserve California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's ridicule as "economic girlie men."

I believe the best way to improve local-run schools is to spend billions of dollars on a massive, federal testing program to tell us our schools are failing. I do not believe, however, that requiring local school districts to meet new, federal standards without resources is an example of an "unfunded mandate." I believe the president's education initiative will leave no child behind, much as his "clear skies" and "healthy forests" initiatives will make skies clearer and forests healthier.

Finally, I believe a white man of privilege who was accepted to Yale University despite a middling performance in prep school; was accepted to Harvard Business School despite a middling performance at Yale; was admitted to the Texas Air National Guard despite no flight background and an entrance exam score in the bottom quartile; was given funds by Osama bin Laden's father to start a failed oil company; and was chosen to serve as Texas governor and 43rd President of the United States despite a lifelong record of mediocrity, is a man with the moral authority to criticize affirmative action as a policy that gives opportunities to the undeserving.

Make no mistake: I believe that President Bush, just as he promised he would, has restored honor and integrity to the White House and united us as Americans.

A simple test

**

By Doug Giebel

If you support the "war" in Iraq:
(a) excepting yourself, choose five people from your immediate family and/or from among your best friends whom you would be willing to "sacrifice" (i.e., kill) in order to depose Saddam Hussein;
(b) tell them personally of your decision.

danger from Al Qaeda is 'dramatically overstated.'

** From The Christian Science Monitor (may require subscription for full article).


Politics of 'fear over vision' explored on British television

New documentary series says danger from Al Qaeda is 'dramatically overstated.'

by Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

The Guardian reported Sunday that documentarian Adam Curtis (who has been called by media critics "the most acclaimed maker of serious television programs in Britain") attacked British television, including the BBC, for its "obsession" with Islamic terrorism. Mr. Curtis says that British TV has done nothing to "dispel myths surrounding Al Qaeda and is too willing to take the government line on the 'high' level of the threat."

...the danger from Al Qaeda has been dramatically overstated. There are certainly terrorists in the world, Curtis says, but not a huge terrorist organization "run by a small man with a beard in a cave." For instance, Curtis says, the group didn't even have a name until early 2001 when the US government decided to prosecute the small group and needed to give it a name in order to use anti-Mafia style laws against it.

Someone asked for my prediction on the election

** There is a quiet tide of disaffection in the country - but the character of the campaign has made many people reticent about making their discontent known (a sure sign of an impending repressive regime - see link below) - so I think if they can be encouraged to get to the polls they will vote for change.

Another friend had this to say: "i'm trying to see what will happen if bush get's reelected. i think the true colors of the republican party will be out there in stark relief. after all powell will leave and maybe others that have been marginalized. state dept. will go up in flames. and there's no money to do anything.
...might be forced to change by the truth. after all they have been implementing kerry policies throughout the campaign.

Watch out for "Rovism" - from truthout.org

Who served and who didn't

** Via email from a friend who notes: "the biggest hawks never served. and those who did serve have their patriotism questioned." Another example of the Big Lie strategy of getting people to ignore the truth.

Democrats

* Richard Gephardt: Air National Guard, 1965-71.
* David Bonior: Staff Sgt., Air Force 1968-72.
* Tom Daschle: 1st Lt., Air Force SAC 1969-72.
* Al Gore: enlisted Aug. 1969; sent to Vietnam Jan. 1971 as an army journalist in 20th Engineer Brigade.
* Bob Kerrey: Lt. j.g. Navy 1966-69; Medal of Honor, Vietnam.
* Daniel Inouye: Army 1943-47; Medal of Honor, WWII.
* John Kerry: Lt., Navy 1966-70; Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V, Purple Hearts.
* Charles Rangel: Staff Sgt., Army 1948-52; Bronze Star, Korea.
* Max Cleland: Captain, Army 1965-68; Silver Star & Bronze Star, Vietnam.
* Ted Kennedy: Army, 1951-53.
* Tom Harkin: Lt., Navy, 1962-67; Naval Reserve, 1968-74.
* Jack Reed: Army Ranger, 1971-1979; Captain, Army Reserve 1979-91.
* Fritz Hollings: Army officer in WWII; Bronze Star and seven campaign ribbons.
* Leonard Boswell: Lt. Col., Army 1956-76; Vietnam, DFCs, Bronze Stars, and Soldier's Medal.
* Pete Peterson: Air Force Captain, POW. Purple Heart, Silver Star and Legion of Merit.
* Mike Thompson: Staff sergeant, 173rd Airborne, Purple Heart.
* Bill McBride: Candidate for Fla. Governor. Marine in Vietnam; Bronze Star with Combat V.
* Gray Davis: Army Captain in Vietnam, Bronze Star.
* Pete Stark: Air Force 1955-57
* Chuck Robb: Vietnam
* Howell Heflin: Silver Star
* George McGovern: Silver Star & DFC during WWII.
* Bill Clinton: Did not serve. Student deferments. Entered draft but received #311.
* Jimmy Carter: Seven years in the Navy.
* Walter Mondale: Army 1951-1953.
* John Glenn: WWII and Korea; six DFCs and Air Medal with 18 Clusters.
* Tom Lantos: Served in Hungarian underground in WWII. Saved by Raoul Wallenberg.

Republicans
* Dick Cheney: did not serve. Several deferments, the last by marriage.
* Dennis Hastert: did not serve.
* Tom Delay: did not serve.
* Roy Blunt: did not serve.
* Bill Frist: did not serve.
* Mitch McConnell: did not serve.
* Rick Santorum: did not serve.
* Trent Lott: did not serve.
* John Ashcroft: did not serve. Seven deferments to teach business.
* Jeb Bush: did not serve.
* Karl Rove: did not serve.
* Saxby Chambliss: did not serve. "Bad knee." The man who attacked Max Cleland's patriotism.
* Paul Wolfowitz: did not serve.
* Vin Weber: did not serve.
* Richard Perle: did not serve.
* Douglas Feith: did not serve.
* Eliot Abrams: did not serve.
* Richard Shelby: did not serve.
* Jon Kyl: did not serve.
* Tim Hutchison: did not serve.
* Christopher Cox: did not serve.
* Newt Gingrich: did not serve.
* Don Rumsfeld: served in Navy (1954-57) as flight instructor.
* George W. Bush: failed to complete his six-year National Guard; got assigned to Alabama so he could campaign for family friend running for U.S. Senate; failed to show up for required medical exam, disappeared from duty.
* Ronald Reagan: due to poor eyesight, served in a non-combat role making movies.
* B-1 Bob Dornan: Consciously enlisted after fighting was over in Korea.
* Phil Gramm: did not serve.
* John McCain: Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross.
* Dana Rohrabacher: did not serve.
* John M. McHugh: did not serve.
* JC Watts: did not serve.
* Jack Kemp: did not serve. "Knee problem," although continued in NFL for 8 years.
* Dan Quayle: Journalism unit of the Indiana National Guard.
* Rudy Giuliani: did not serve.
* George Pataki: did not serve.
* Spencer Abraham: did not serve.
* John Engler: did not serve.
* Lindsey Graham: National Guard lawyer.
* Arnold Schwarzenegger: AWOL from Austrian army base.

Pundits & Preachers
* Sean Hannity: did not serve.
* Rush Limbaug: did not serve (4-F with a 'pilonidal cyst').
* Bill O'Reilly: did not serve.
* Michael Savage: did not serve.
* George Will: did not serve.
* Chris Matthews: did not serve.
* Paul Gigot: did not serve.
* Bill Bennett: did not serve.
* Pat Buchanan: did not serve.
* John Wayne: did not serve.
* Bill Kristol: did not serve.
* Kenneth Starr: did not serve.
* Antonin Scalia: did not serve.
* Clarence Thomas: did not serve.
* Ralph Reed: did not serve.
* Michael Medved: did not serve.
* Charlie Daniels: did not serve.
* Ted Nugent: did not serve (he only shoots at things that don't shoot back.)

Republicans against Bush

** From the DailyKos's dKosopedia, the free political encyclopedia.


Republicans Endorsing John Kerry

Charley Reese, conservative columnist/journalist, Orlando Sentinel (1971-2001) -- May 17

Lee Iacocca, former Chrysler Chairman -- June 25

Russell E. Train, EPA chief under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford -- Jul. '04

Various Republican Business Leaders -- Aug. 5

Gail Slocum, former Republican Mayor of Menlo Park, California -- Sept. '04

Clay Myers, Republican Secretary of State (1967-77) and State Treasurer (1977-84) for Oregon -- Sept. 1

Bill Rutherford, former Treasurer of Oregon and Chair of the Oregon Investment Council -- Sept. 1

George Comstock, Mayor of Portola Valley, California -- Sept. 1

Mike Cobb, former Republican Mayor of Palo Alto, California -- Sept. 8

Pete McCloskey, former Republican Representative from California -- Sept. 8

John Eisenhower, son of former Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower -- Sept. 9

Steve May, former Republican state legislator from Arizona -- Sept. 10

Jon Silver, former Republican Mayor of Portola Valley, California -- Sept. 24

John A. Galbraith, former Republican Ohio General Assemblyman -- Sept. 28

David Catania, Republican (now Independent) Councilman from Washington, D.C. -- Sept. 29

Clyde Prestowitz, counselor to Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Commerce -- Oct. 6

Rick Russman, former Republican State Senator from New Hampshire -- Oct. 7

Marshall Wittmann, former communications director to Arizona Republican Senator John McCain -- Oct. 7

Richard Schmalensee, former Council of Economic Advisers member for President George H. W. Bush -- Oct. 12

Elmer L. Andersen, former Republican Governor of Minnesota (1961-63) -- Oct. 13

Ballard Morton, son of Thruston Morton, former Republican Senator from Kentucky -- Oct. 14

Anne Morton Kimberly, widow of Rogers C.B. Morton, former Republican Representative from Maryland -- Oct. 14

William Milliken, former Republican Governor of Michigan (1969-82) -- Oct. 18

Marlow Cook, former Republican Senator from Kentucky (1968-74) -- Oct. 20

Peter Gillette, former Republican Commissioner of Trade for Minnesota (1991-95) -- Oct. 20



Republicans Who Will Not Vote For George W. Bush


Bob Barr, former Republican Representative from Georgia (1995-2003) -- Oct. 14

Robert L. Black, retired Republican judge of the Ohio First District Court of Appeals -- Oct. 13

John H. Buchanan, former Republican Congressman from Alabama -- Oct. 4

Lincoln Chafee, Republican Senator from Rhode Island -- Oct. 4

John Dean, former White House Counsel to former Republican President Nixon -- Apr. '04

Paul Findley, former Republican Representative from Illinois -- Apr. '04

A. Linwood Holton former Republican Governor of Virginia (1970-74) -- Aug. 29

Log Cabin Republicans -- Sept. 8

Paul O'Neill, former Treasury Secretary to Republican President George W. Bush -- Jan. '04

Richie Robb, mayor of South Charleston, WV (and 2004 Electoral College WV Republican elector) -- Sep. '04

William Saletan, "liberal Republican" columnist for Slate -- Sept. 1

Karl W. B. Schwarz, very conservative Republican from Arkansas -- Oct. 20

Andrew Sullivan, conservative columnist, former editor of The New Republic -- Jul. 25

It's a national triage

** Sometimes you hear Undecideds say they don't find Kerry very appealing. They may have a point. But seldom in this country's history has an incumbent president been such a loose cannon. This article from a conservative magazine cites reasons why Kerry would not be a bad president while perhaps not a great one. He will be distracted, the author says, by the enormous clean-up task he will inherit if he is elected. It's really all about Bush.

Kerry’s the One
By Scott McConnell
The American Conservative
November 8, 2004 Issue

Unfortunately, this election does not offer traditional conservatives an easy or natural choice and has left our editors as split as our readership. In an effort to deepen our readers’ and our own understanding of the options before us, we’ve asked several of our editors and contributors to make “the conservative case” for their favored candidate. Their pieces, plus Taki’s column closing out this issue, constitute TAC’s endorsement. - The American Conservative Editors
There is little in John Kerry’s persona or platform that appeals to conservatives. The flip-flopper charge - the centerpiece of the Republican campaign against Kerry - seems overdone, as Kerry’s contrasting votes are the sort of baggage any senator of long service is likely to pick up. (Bob Dole could tell you all about it.) But Kerry is plainly a conventional liberal and no candidate for a future edition of Profiles in Courage. In my view, he will always deserve censure for his vote in favor of the Iraq War in 2002.

But this election is not about John Kerry. If he were to win, his dearth of charisma would likely ensure him a single term. He would face challenges from within his own party and a thwarting of his most expensive initiatives by a Republican Congress. Much of his presidency would be absorbed by trying to clean up the mess left to him in Iraq. He would be constrained by the swollen deficits and a ripe target for the next Republican nominee.

It is, instead, an election about the presidency of George W. Bush. To the surprise of virtually everyone, Bush has turned into an important president, and in many ways the most radical America has had since the 19th century. Because he is the leader of America’s conservative party, he has become the Left’s perfect foil - its dream candidate. The libertarian writer Lew Rockwell has mischievously noted parallels between Bush and Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II: both gained office as a result of family connections, both initiated an unnecessary war that shattered their countries’ budgets. Lenin needed the calamitous reign of Nicholas II to create an opening for the Bolsheviks.

Bush has behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing president is supposed to be, and his continuation in office will discredit any sort of conservatism for generations. The launching of an invasion against a country that posed no threat to the U.S., the doling out of war profits and concessions to politically favored corporations, the financing of the war by ballooning the deficit to be passed on to the nation’s children, the ceaseless drive to cut taxes for those outside the middle class and working poor: it is as if Bush sought to resurrect every false 1960s-era left-wing cliché about predatory imperialism and turn it into administration policy. Add to this his nation-breaking immigration proposal - Bush has laid out a mad scheme to import immigrants to fill any job where the wage is so low that an American can’t be found to do it - and you have a presidency that combines imperialist Right and open-borders Left in a uniquely noxious cocktail.

During the campaign, few have paid attention to how much the Bush presidency has degraded the image of the United States in the world. Of course there has always been “anti-Americanism.” After the Second World War many European intellectuals argued for a “Third Way” between American-style capitalism and Soviet communism, and a generation later Europe’s radicals embraced every ragged “anti-imperialist” cause that came along. In South America, defiance of “the Yanqui” always draws a crowd. But Bush has somehow managed to take all these sentiments and turbo-charge them. In Europe and indeed all over the world, he has made the United States despised by people who used to be its friends, by businessmen and the middle classes, by moderate and sensible liberals. Never before have democratic foreign governments needed to demonstrate disdain for Washington to their own electorates in order to survive in office. The poll numbers are shocking. In countries like Norway, Germany, France, and Spain, Bush is liked by about seven percent of the populace. In Egypt, recipient of huge piles of American aid in the past two decades, some 98 percent have an unfavorable view of the United States. It’s the same throughout the Middle East.

Bush has accomplished this by giving the U.S. a novel foreign-policy doctrine under which it arrogates to itself the right to invade any country it wants if it feels threatened. It is an American version of the Brezhnev Doctrine, but the latter was at least confined to Eastern Europe. If the analogy seems extreme, what is an appropriate comparison when a country manufactures falsehoods about a foreign government, disseminates them widely, and invades the country on the basis of those falsehoods? It is not an action that any American president has ever taken before. It is not something that “good” countries do. It is the main reason that people all over the world who used to consider the United States a reliable and necessary bulwark of world stability now see us as a menace to their own peace and security.

These sentiments mean that as long as Bush is president, we have no real allies in the world, no friends to help us dig out from the Iraq quagmire. More tragically, they mean that if terrorists succeed in striking at the United States in another 9/11-type attack, many in the world will not only think of the American victims but also of the thousands and thousands of Iraqi civilians killed and maimed by American armed forces. The hatred Bush has generated has helped immeasurably those trying to recruit anti-American terrorists - indeed his policies are the gift to terrorism that keeps on giving, as the sons and brothers of slain Iraqis think how they may eventually take their own revenge. Only the seriously deluded could fail to see that a policy so central to America’s survival as a free country as getting hold of loose nuclear materials and controlling nuclear proliferation requires the willingness of foreign countries to provide full, 100 percent co-operation. Making yourself into the world’s most hated country is not an obvious way to secure that help.

I’ve heard people who have known George W. Bush for decades and served prominently in his father’s administration say that he could not possibly have conceived of the doctrine of pre-emptive war by himself, that he was essentially taken for a ride by people with a pre-existing agenda to overturn Saddam Hussein. Bush’s public performances plainly show him to be a man who has never read or thought much about foreign policy. So the inevitable questions are: who makes the key foreign-policy decisions in the Bush presidency, who controls the information flow to the president, how are various options are presented?

The record, from published administration memoirs and in-depth reporting, is one of an administration with a very small group of six or eight real decision-makers, who were set on war from the beginning and who took great pains to shut out arguments from professionals in the CIA and State Department and the U.S. armed forces that contradicted their rosy scenarios about easy victory. Much has been written about the neoconservative hand guiding the Bush presidency - and it is peculiar that one who was fired from the National Security Council in the Reagan administration for suspicion of passing classified material to the Israeli embassy and another who has written position papers for an Israeli Likud Party leader have become key players in the making of American foreign policy.

But neoconservatism now encompasses much more than Israel-obsessed intellectuals and policy insiders. The Bush foreign policy also surfs on deep currents within the Christian Right, some of which see unqualified support of Israel as part of a godly plan to bring about Armageddon and the future kingdom of Christ. These two strands of Jewish and Christian extremism build on one another in the Bush presidency - and President Bush has given not the slightest indication he would restrain either in a second term. With Colin Powell’s departure from the State Department looming, Bush is more than ever the “neoconian candidate.” The only way Americans will have a presidency in which neoconservatives and the Christian Armageddon set are not holding the reins of power is if Kerry is elected.

If Kerry wins, this magazine will be in opposition from Inauguration Day forward. But the most important battles will take place within the Republican Party and the conservative movement. A Bush defeat will ignite a huge soul-searching within the rank-and-file of Republicandom: a quest to find out how and where the Bush presidency went wrong. And it is then that more traditional conservatives will have an audience to argue for a conservatism informed by the lessons of history, based in prudence and a sense of continuity with the American past - and to make that case without a powerful White House pulling in the opposite direction.

George W. Bush has come to embody a politics that is antithetical to almost any kind of thoughtful conservatism. His international policies have been based on the hopelessly naïve belief that foreign peoples are eager to be liberated by American armies - a notion more grounded in Leon Trotsky’s concept of global revolution than any sort of conservative statecraft. His immigration policies - temporarily put on hold while he runs for re-election - are just as extreme. A re-elected President Bush would be committed to bringing in millions of low-wage immigrants to do jobs Americans “won’t do.” This election is all about George W. Bush, and those issues are enough to render him unworthy of any conservative support.

100 and counting

** Here they all are in one place. We will want this as a checklist in the future to see what it was we stood for at this decisive moment in history.

100 Facts and 1 Opinion
The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration

PDF version available here. 100facts.pdf

The real enemy

** It's not as simple as the Bush administration wants us to believe. Thoughtful social researcher Daniel Yankelovich sketches the outlines of the problem that even though complex provides a path back out of the mess.


Christian Science Monitor

To defeat Al Qaeda, US must build trust of moderate Muslims
Daniel Yankelovich Date: 09/20/2004

(LA JOLLA, CALIF.)I have spent my professional life studying social and political movements and the role public opinion plays in them. I was pleased, then, to see that in its recently released report, the 9/11 commission makes the point that America's enemy is not just " 'terrorism,' some generic evil," nor is it just a "stateless network of terrorists called al Qaeda." Instead, the commission stresses that the US confronts today a radical ideological movement in the Islamic and Arab world.

Unfortunately, too few leaders, policymakers, and media outlets have paid much attention to this section of the 9/11 commission report. Nearly all the focus has been on the short-term goal of "fixing" the nation's intelligence systems.

Long-term success in the fight against terror, however, depends far more on a broader strategy to counter this radical political movement that is the source from which Al Qaeda constantly replenishes itself. America's primary focus must be on the goal of stopping new terrorist recruitment. Nothing will contribute more to the nation's safety than this - not more concrete barriers around the Capitol, not more air marshals on airplanes, or bomb-sniffing dogs in train stations.

The 9/11 commission is right. Al Qaeda is the militant tip of a religious political movement that is spreading throughout the Muslim world, particularly in nations allied to the US, such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Moreover, this movement is gathering public support. Like most successful movements, it is built like a stool on three legs: committed militants, moderates who may disagree with the tactics of the militants but feel they have a legitimate grievance, and a convenient scapegoat - in this case, the US.

Nearly all national attention has focused on the first leg of the stool - hunting down the committed militants. But long-term success on this point will depend largely on what is done about the other two legs.

When it comes to winning over Muslim moderates who now sympathize with the militants, the US starts with a huge disadvantage - a rising tide of mistrust of its policies and intentions. According to a Gallup Poll of nine Muslim countries, only about 1 out of 10 Muslims believes that Americans respect Islamic values, and even fewer - 7 percent - feel that the West understands Muslim customs and culture. The majority of Muslims polled by the Pew Global Attitudes Project also believes that the US is a military threat to them. Other surveys show that the Iraq war has exacerbated Muslim resentment.

Unfortunately, America's non-Muslim allies have also come to mistrust it. Majorities in most Western European countries polled by EOS Gallup Europe now consider the US a threat to world peace.

I have rarely seen a change in public opinion as great in such a short amount of time as the one from 2002 to 2003 in Europe that came as a direct result of the war in Iraq.

Rightly or wrongly, much of the world has come to see American military initiatives as lacking legitimacy. The US can no longer count on its traditional allies to help dispel the poisonous anti-Americanism in the Muslim world.

The US must also find ways to stop being a scapegoat for all the ills of the Muslim world. Many Americans assume that the nation's enemies hate them for who they are rather than for what they do. This may be true for Al Qaeda jihadists, but the vast majority of Muslims are more concerned with tangible policies. The militants have grossly distorted American policies in order to make the US a scapegoat. This is a

relatively recent phenomenon, however, and the US should be able to reverse it with the right policies and actions.

Somehow or other the US must communicate a vital truth to the moderate majority of Muslims, namely, that killing Americans will destroy their efforts to build just and prosperous societies, while friendship and cooperation with the US will vastly improve their life chances.

If the moderate majority of Muslims decide to isolate the militants in favor of cooperation with the US, mop-up military operations to destroy Al Qaeda will be feasible - and relatively straightforward. But if the US plays into Al Qaeda's hands and continues to alienate the moderate majority, the burden will be overwhelming.

How must US strategy and focus change? I am not suggesting that efforts to improve intelligence or homeland security be abandoned. However, the US needs a more enlightened approach to divide the moderates from the jihadists and to remove America as scapegoat.

Above all, a new vision of America must be presented to the world, especially the Muslim world - not through a slick PR campaign, but by positioning American foreign policy on the side of justice for the Muslim world.

This serves both a long-term and a more immediate goal. The long-term goal is to demonstrate to moderate Muslims that the US is on the side of justice, not injustice. The immediate goal is to slow or stop the recruitment of new terrorists.

We all need to start thinking differently if America is to build a constructive new relationship with the Muslim world - a world comprising 57 nations and 1.3 billion people whom we don't understand, and who don't understand us.

* Daniel Yankelovich is chairman of Public Agenda, a nonpartisan,nonprofit opinion research organization. His most recent venture is Viewpoint Learning, an organization which advances new forms of learning through dialogue for business and the public.

(c) Copyright 2004 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.

Al Gore's speech at Gaston Hall, Georgetown University

** This is long, but it has to be because it summarizes the whole case against Bush. From truthout.org.

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Al Gore Speaks on Iraq
Monday 18 October 2004
Gaston Hall, Georgetown University Washington, D.C.
Text of the speech, as prepared:
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 faith 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 cocksure 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.

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© Copyright 2004 by TruthOut.org

The Ultimate Voter - could it happen again?

** From TomPaine.com

Five Nightmare Scenarios
Richard L. HasenTuesday 10:12 AM
Voter fraud, disenfranchisement, Colorado, Electoral College chaos and terror. All pose plausible scenarios in which the election is once more sent to the Supreme Court. With the court comprised of the same nine justices, one has to admit that there is a clear partisan incentive to push the election into the court.

Spirituality and voting

** A commentary on spirituality.com, "The citizen at prayer" tries to square the "Thy will be done" neutrality of prayer with the passion and commitment to causes you know in your heart are just. With this election deemed seriusly critical for the future of the planet, I find it hard to be "fair" in the face of Bush's cowboy diplomacy, a smirking, swaggering pushiness that has needlessly pissed off a lot of oppressed people and made us easy targets for terrorism.

Some things are just plain wrong. Not that Kerry is 100% right, but he's not as wrong as Bush. Of course, he hasn't had four years and the wealth of the US to work with either. My hope is that once in office he will lead by negotiation, not just with money and military power, but with vigorous moral suasion. (Maybe Colin Powell should stay on as Sec. of State.)

Guess I'm not the only one feeling the gravity of this election.

** I found this on salon.com:

Looking for votes, finding America (may require subscription)
Scared, angry and needing to act, I left California to volunteer for John Kerry in Pennsylvania. I changed some minds -- including my own.
- By Jonathan Alford

"I feel the weight of the historical moment and the truly terrifying possibility of a disastrous change in the nature of the American political experiment. We have reached the stage where a manipulated media, an arrogant and unscrupulous Republican Party, and a fearful and misinformed populace have created the specter of a strange new Teflon-coated fascism. Antiseptic in its glossiness and packaging. Politics wearing a lethal smile."