BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 11 May 07 - 11:39 PM

Who gives a shit about what Perle said and what Tenet said about what Perle said and what Perle said about what Tenet said?

And does "Wow -- a small taste of their own medicine." Mean it is OK for Dean to use people's pain and suffering in a disaster to political purposes and create a straw man issue about not enough National Guard to bitch about the war in Iraq?

Does it mean it is OK for the Gov to lie for political purposes?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 11 May 07 - 06:33 PM

"Bush has a lot to worry about on many fronts
editorials and opinion
By ANN MCFEATTERS
Scripps Howard News Service
Friday, May 11, 2007

Recent votes in Congress show widespread disaffection with President Bush among Republicans as well as Democrats and bode ill for the nation for the next 20 months.

Bush has tasked his already overworked chief of staff, Josh Bolten, with the Herculean job of finding agreement on war spending while Congress tries futilely to change Iraq policy, a constitutional crisis if there ever was one. But the president is finding he has a lot to worry about on many other fronts....

...

This is a sample of what just one week brings these days. The likelihood is that the remaining months of Bush's term increasingly will be hell for Republicans, who not only face the possibility of losing a presidential election next year but more losses in the Senate and the House and in state legislatures.

The man they will blame if that happens will not be former CIA head George Tenet or Vice President Dick Cheney or one-time defense chief Donald Rumsfeld or Gonzales or anybody else in a long list of people who have seen their reputations diminished during this administration. It will be George W. Bush."

The inventory of Bush's latest 'bad wee' is in the full article, found here.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 11 May 07 - 12:36 PM

Perle is accusing Tenet of having made false statements about Perle saying Iraq was linked to 9-11. Perle denies both the event and the sentiment claimed for him by Tenet.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 11 May 07 - 12:24 PM

"He continues to assert falsely that the president's decision to remove Hussein was encouraged by lies about Iraq's responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks."

Exactly when and where was this assertion made and by whom?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 11 May 07 - 10:18 AM

NEW talking points: benchmarks good . Democrats bad.


Bush says he was for BENCHMARKS ALL ALONG.



must be another case of our lieing ears and eyes fooling us again.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 11 May 07 - 09:47 AM

Re "Bush Warns of Vetoes Over Abortion Issue" (news article, May 4):

President Bush has threatened to veto "any measures that 'allow taxpayer dollars to be used for the destruction of human life.' "

You did not note the irony of such a threat from a man who pursues the destruction of human life relentlessly in Iraq.

Why shouldn't his sound-bite rationale apply equally to war financing?

Chase Chiasson
Boston, May 4, 2007

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 11 May 07 - 09:37 AM

The Times editorializes:

"...If Mr. Bush hopes to salvage anything from his 20 months left in office, and, more to the point, if he wants to play a constructive role in the accelerating Iraq endgame, he needs to understand how much has changed in this country, and how tragically little has changed in Iraq.

The American people are no longer willing to write blank checks of blood and treasure to an Iraqi government that has refused to stop rampaging Shiite militias, has failed to approve constitutional changes to bring estranged Sunni Arabs back into the political system, and has still not come up with a way to share oil revenues fairly. Now it wants to give itself a two-month summer vacation.

Mr. Bush needs to face up to this grim reality and abandon his fantasies of ultimate victory and vindication. Otherwise, he could find himself, and America's best long-term interests, run over by a bipartisan rush toward the nearest exit."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 11 May 07 - 07:35 AM

From the Washington Post:

How the CIA Failed America

By Richard N. Perle
Friday, May 11, 2007; Page A19

George Tenet sets the stage in his memoir by recalling a conversation he claims to have had with me on Sept. 12, 2001: "As I walked beneath the awning that leads to the West Wing[, I] saw Richard Perle exiting the building just as I was about to enter. . . . Perle turned to me and said, 'Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. They bear responsibility.' I looked back at Perle and thought: Who has [he] been meeting with in the White House so early in the morning on today of all days?"

But I was in Europe on Sept. 12, 2001, unable to get a return flight to Washington, and I did not tell Tenet that Iraq was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, not then, not ever. That should have been the end of the story: a faulty recollection, perhaps attributing to me something he may have heard elsewhere, an honest mistake.

So I was surprised when, having been made aware of his error, Tenet reasserted his claim, saying: "So I may have been off on the day, but I'm not off on what he said and what he believed."

On "Meet the Press" last Sunday, Tenet argued that his version "seems to be corroborated" by a comment I made to columnist Robert D. Novak on Sept. 17 and a letter to President Bush that I signed, with 40 others, on Sept. 20. But my 10-word comment to Novak made no claim that Iraq was responsible for Sept. 11. Neither did the letter to the president, which said that "any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power."

Tenet insists on equating two statements that are not at all the same: that Iraq was responsible for Sept. 11 -- which I never said -- and that removing Saddam Hussein before he could share chemical, biological or nuclear weapons with terrorists had become an urgent matter, which I did say. He continues to assert falsely that the president's decision to remove Hussein was encouraged by lies about Iraq's responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks.

Understandably anxious to counter the myth that we went into Iraq on the basis of his agency's faulty intelligence, Tenet seeks to substitute another myth: that the decision to remove Saddam Hussein resulted from the nefarious influence of the vice president and a cabal of neoconservative intellectuals. To advance that idea, a theme of his book, he has attributed to me, and to others, statements that were never made.

Careful readers will see at once that what Tenet calls "corroboration" is nothing of the sort. But Tenet is not a careful reader -- a serious deficiency in a CIA director and a catastrophe for an intelligence organization. Indeed, sloppy analysis and imprecision with evidence got Tenet and the rest of us stuck in a credibility gap that continues to damage our foreign policy.

For years the American intelligence establishment has failed to show meticulous regard for the facts that are essential to its mission. The CIA's assessment that Hussein possessed chemical and biological weapons was only the most recent damaging example. The president, the vice president, Congress and others relied on intelligence produced by Tenet's CIA -- and repeated CIA findings that never should have been presented as fact.

When Defense Department officials pressed the CIA to reassess whether Hussein's intelligence service supported terrorists, and had links to al-Qaeda, Tenet first resisted, then treated with derision the evidence of such links that CIA analysts had ignored. While he later acknowledged some of that evidence in a letter to then-Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), he continues to minimize it while targeting critics of the CIA.

But the greatest intelligence failure of the past two decades was the CIA's failure to understand and sound an alarm at the rise of jihadist fundamentalism. It is Wahhabi extremism and the call to holy war against infidels that gave us the perpetrators of Sept. 11 and much of the terrorism that has followed. In his attempts to blame others for CIA shortcomings, Tenet cannot say, "I told the president that our Saudi allies were financing thousands of mosques and schools around the world where a hateful doctrine of holy war and violence was being inculcated in young potential terrorists." Fatefully, the CIA failed to make our leaders aware of the rise of Islamist extremism and the immense danger it posed to the United States.

George Tenet and, more important, our premier intelligence organization managed to find weapons of mass destruction that did not exist while failing to find links to terrorists that did -- all while missing completely the rise of Islamist fundamentalism. We have made only a down payment on the price of that failure.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 11 May 07 - 12:10 AM

Wow -- a small taste of their own medicine. Droll.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 10 May 07 - 11:36 PM

We need to "use this" for political purposes:

It seems that, on Sunday, a few hours after Kansas Governor, Kathleen Sebelius, made her remarks about Bush sending all their National Guard Members and Resources to Iraq, she made a call to Brownback

Sebelius, was calling to apologize to the Senator for making the Political statements that she did. She explained that she did not believe them and that they actually had too many National Guardsmen show up.

Governor Sebelius explained "Sam, you know how political everything is right now and we're not allowed to let an opportunity like this just pass." She continued "I made sure not to blame you or Pat (Senator Roberts?) or anybody outside the White House. With his (Bush's) numbers, you can't really blame me for usin' that."

Then Sebelius explained the path to her comments. After Brownback told her that he was very disappointed in her, She pleaded "You know me Sam, I wouldn't have said it if I didn't have to." She declared "Howard (Dean) called me around 5 o'clock (in the morning) and told me not to ask The White House for any help or make any statements until I heard back. Dick (Durban?) called me an hour or 2 later and that's when he told me we needed to use this 'n' said to talk about the Guard all bein' at war."

She then explained the thinking; "Speaker and Harry got so much heat on them from both sides over this damn war, 'n' they need to get the press on somethin' else. I didn't think it was right to use it like this either, but I didn't see's I had much choice in this climate, Sam."

She then apologized a few more times and promised that she'd try to move away from the comment when she and Brownback were to meet up later and tour the damage, but she had to so it without disappointing Dean and Pelosi.

Source: Quinn & Rose XM Radio

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 10 May 07 - 11:13 AM

Moore had the balls to tell the world that the Emperor had no clothes.

Sheehan has shown more guts by far than Bush's sycophants.

If associating with such people is bad PR for Democrats, then to hell with the PR. These are people who are trying for truth.

Something I recommend.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 10 May 07 - 10:39 AM

American soldiers are pawns for the politcal ambitions of Democrats:

Dems Urged to Seize 'Political Opportunity' Of Iraq War
By Nathan Burchfiel
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
May 10, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - Democrats hoping to win control of the White House in 2008 must seize the "golden opportunity" presented by failures in the war in Iraq and rethink their approach to national security, according to a security analyst and former staffer for Vice President Al Gore.

"For Democrats, who desperately want to regain the White House, the political opportunity is obvious," writes Haas, a former communications director for Gore and a former communications director for the Office of Management and Budget under President Bill Clinton.

Haas speculates that the war in Iraq "has given Democrats an opening - but only an opening, not a guarantee of future political success," and outlines steps Democrats must take to regain the American people's trust on national security issues.

He said the next Democratic presidential hopeful must "proudly trumpet the superiority of U.S.-style freedom and democracy, clearly define the challenge of militant Islam, and convince the American people that he or she is eager to grab the reins of power in order to protect their safety and security."

Haas also criticized Democrats for associating with filmmaker Michael Moore, anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, and activist groups like MoveOn.org, writing that Democrats have been "seized by an almost obsessive anger at the president, leading too many of them to discount, if not dismiss, everything with which he is associated."

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/viewstory.asp?Page=/Politics/archive/200705/POL20070510a.html

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 10 May 07 - 10:30 AM

The ex-CIA director examines Saddam Hussein's foolish bluff about WMD.

In George Tenet's new book, "At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA," there is an intriguing phrase that pinpoints the miscalculation that may have done much to trigger the Iraq war.

The former CIA director, who served both Presidents Clinton and Bush, writes, "Before the war, we didn't understand that [Saddam Hussein] was bluffing, and he didn't understand that we were not." Mr. Tenet was referring to the fact that Mr. Hussein was a "genius at what the intelligence community calls 'denial and deception' - leading us to believe things that weren't true."

While asserting to the United Nations that he had no weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Hussein perpetuated to others - including his own generals - the myth that he did possess them. Thus American and British intelligence agencies, mindful that Hussein had earlier used WMD against his own people, and mindful that evidence emerged after the earlier Gulf war that his regime had been much closer to acquiring nuclear weapons capacity than they had believed, concluded that he might have again clandestinely developed WMD.

The intelligence agencies of a slew of other countries, such as France, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, were similarly convinced. The Germans had their own prized informant, "Curve Ball," who gave them graphic accounts of Hussein's hidden weaponry. In the end, it all proved not to be true. The clever shell game that Hussein had played - assuring the United Nations Security Council that he was without WMD, while signaling a warning to others that he did have them and could use them if threatened - was his undoing.

Tenet says Hussein was "a fool" for not understanding, especially after 9/11, that the United States "was not going to risk underestimating his WMD capabilities as we had done once before." The irony, says Tenet, is that [Hussein] could have allowed UN inspectors free run of the country, and if they found nothing, "UN sanctions would have melted. In that case, he might be alive and living in a palace today. Without sanctions, he would be well on his way to possessing WMD." Thus his bluff failed, and he miscalculated the will of the US to act with military force against him. .."

http://www.bostonnow.com/news/dialogue/2007/05/09/tenet_dia/

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 10 May 07 - 09:24 AM

"As the United States attorney scandal grows, so does the number of prosecutors who seem to have been pushed out for partisan political reasons. Another highly suspicious case has emerged in the appointment of Bradley Schlozman, a controversial elections lawyer, to replace a respected United States attorney in Missouri. From the facts available, it looks like a main reason for installing Mr. Schlozman was to help Republicans win a pivotal Missouri Senate race"...

Another slice of immorality from the Gonzalez wing. Story here (NY Times).

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 10 May 07 - 01:19 AM

Bush Told War Is Harming The GOP
A Warning on Eve Of Vote on New Bill
By Shailagh Murray and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, May 10, 2007; Page A01

"House Republican moderates, in a remarkably blunt White House meeting, warned President Bush this week that his pursuit of the war in Iraq is risking the future of the Republican Party and that he cannot count on GOP support for many more months.

The meeting, which ran for an hour and a half Tuesday afternoon, was disclosed by participants yesterday as the House prepared to vote this evening on a spending bill that could cut funding for the Iraq war as early as July. GOP moderates told Bush they would stay united against the latest effort by House Democrats to end U.S. involvement in the war. Even Senate Democrats called the House measure unrealistic.

But the meeting between 11 House Republicans, Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, White House political adviser Karl Rove and presidential press secretary Tony Snow was perhaps the clearest sign yet that patience in the party is running out. The meeting, organized by Rep. Charlie Dent (Pa.), one of the co-chairs of the moderate "Tuesday Group," included Reps. Thomas M. Davis III (Va.), Michael N. Castle (Del.), Todd R. Platts (Pa.), Jim Ramstad (Minn.) and Jo Ann Emerson (Mo.).

"It was a very remarkable, candid conversation," Davis said. "People are always saying President Bush is in a bubble. Well, this was our chance, and we took it."...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 09 May 07 - 08:19 PM

IF the State of the Union was re-written for complete honesty, it might sound like this. :D

(Youtube link).



A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 09 May 07 - 10:01 AM

The Democrats' Pledge

(NYT Editorial)

Published: May 9, 2007
Last year, Congressional Democrats allowed the Bush administration to ram through one of the worst laws in the nation's history — the Military Commissions Act of 2006. This year, the Democrats pledged to use their new majority to begin repairing the profound damage the law has done to the nation's justice system and global image.

But there are disturbing signs their pledge may fall victim to the same tactical political calculations and Bush administration propagandizing that allowed this scandalous law to pass in the first place.

Rewriting the act should start with one simple step: restoring to prisoners of the war on terror the fundamental right to challenge their detention in a real court. So far, promised measures to restore habeas corpus have yet to see the light of day, and they may remain buried unless Democratic leaders make them a priority and members of both parties vote on principle, not out of fear of attack ads.

President Bush turned habeas corpus into a partisan issue by declaring that the prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, even innocent ones, do not deserve a hearing. Lawmakers who objected were painted as friends of terrorists.

But let's be clear. There is nothing "conservative" or "tough on terrorism" in selectively stripping people of their rights. Suspending habeas corpus is an extreme notion on the radical fringes of democratic philosophy. As four retired military chief prosecutors — from the Navy, the Marines and the Army — pointed out to Congress, holding prisoners without access to courts merely feeds Al Qaeda's propaganda machine, increases the risk to the American military and sets a precedent by which other governments could justify detaining American civilians without charges or appeal.

Consider some of the other wild-eyed liberals calling on Congress to restore habeas corpus: William Sessions, director of the F.B.I. under the first President Bush; David Keene, head of the American Conservative Union; the National Association of Evangelicals; David Neff, editor of Christianity Today, founded by the Rev. Billy Graham; a long list of other evangelical leaders and scholars; and nearly two dozen sitting and retired federal judges.

...The Democratic majority has a long list of wrongs to right from six years of Mr. Bush's leadership. We are sympathetic to their concerns about finding a way to revive habeas corpus that won't die in committee or be subject to a presidential veto of a larger bill. But lawmakers sometimes have to stand on principle and trust the voters to understand.

This is one of those times."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 09 May 07 - 02:04 AM

A lesson in history, from the NY Times:

"May 7, 2007, 6:36 pm
The Peace Presidents

By Jean Edward Smith

On Feb. 8, 2004, George W. Bush proudly proclaimed to Tim Russert on "Meet the Press," "I am a war president." Like an 8-year-old playing with toy soldiers, Bush, an Air National Guard dropout, looked at war with vicarious enthusiasm. Contrast the attitude of the nation's "peace presidents" – supreme commanders who led the nation to victory in the greatest wars the country faced: men who had experienced the grim reality of battle and wanted no part of it.

Ulysses S. Grant condemned war as "the most destructive and unsavory activity of mankind." Surveying the carnage at Fort Donelson during the Civil War, he told an aide, "this work is part of the devil that is left in us."

Dwight D. Eisenhower, another former general, was equally outspoken: "I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, as only one who has seen its brutality, its futility and stupidity…. War settles nothing."

Both Grant and Eisenhower were elected with expectations that they would put a victorious end to conflicts in which the country was then engaged. Both presidents did end the fighting. But not in ways that their bellicose supporters anticipated. ...

..."In 1956, when Britain, France and Israel colluded to invade Egypt, Eisenhower forced them to withdraw, toppling Anthony Eden's government in London and threatening financial reprisals against Israel. That repudiation of what Ike called "old fashioned gunboat diplomacy" not only kept the peace but enhanced American prestige throughout the world.

George Bush and the neocons have no monopoly on glorifying military adventure. Madeleine Albright, President Clinton's secretary of state, caused General Colin Powell a case of near cardiac arrest when she asked at a meeting of the National Security Council, "Why do we have an Army if we are not willing to use it?"

War is not an instrument of policy. It is an act of desperation. "Any course short of national humiliation or national destruction is better than war," Grant told Prince Kung of China in 1879. "War itself is so great a calamity that it should only be invoked when there is no way of saving a nation from a greater [one].""

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 08 May 07 - 11:15 PM

Remember the male prostitute (blogger journalist) granted full access to the W White House?

Remember Ted Haggert's weekly meetings with the White House?

Doesn't Rove look a little swishy to you?

Haven't you thought George wears to many mountain cowboy hats and clears a bit too much brush?

Ever seen Bohemian Grove?

These guys can't reach across the aisle but they sure can reach around.

W never looks happier than when he is with Tony.

Yeah 5 million missing emails but George never emails. I bet those missing emails would make Mark Foley look like a saint.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 08 May 07 - 05:55 PM

One might ask the RNC the same question, Sir Dick.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 08 May 07 - 05:14 PM

Donuel: Why are you so interested in dicks?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 08 May 07 - 11:22 AM

The case of the missing presidential penis.

This is a case for Dickey or McGruff.

I bet McGruff solves this mysterious disappearence first.



Exactly why did W never shower with the other soldiers in the National Guard?

Was he AWOL?

or just too embarrassed.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 08 May 07 - 11:10 AM

dear dickey dickey dickey


Bill Clinton has a penis. There were news conferences and news releases regarding his penis based upon the observations of the white house physician during a physical exam. IT was reported to be normal.

There has been no mention or evidence of George Bush's penis.

EVER!

Unlike Dick Cheney, the cut of Geroge Jr's pants reveals nothing.

From W's behavior he does seem to be trying to over compensate for either a teeny weeny or no dick at all.

oooo he calls himself the war prisident, the decider, the commander guy and dresses up in uniforms. Methinks he is trying to prove he has balls even if he has a small penis and brain to match.

George is a dickless wonder and a puppet to the worst coup to occur in this country since FDR and the assasination of JFK.



so put up or shut up. Before you invoke even one more blame against Bill, prove that George has a dick Dickey.


ps
25 year old twins don't count, a needle can perform that trick.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 08 May 07 - 10:57 AM

Just goes to show ya, D -- he's a heap more gentleman, IMHO, than Bush will ever be.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 08 May 07 - 10:36 AM

Is Bill Clinton an apologist?

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House, attacked by critics for a now-retracted line about Iraq seeking uranium from Africa in President Bush's State of the Union address, has gotten some surprising support from former President Clinton.

"I thought the White House did the right thing in just saying 'we probably shouldn't have said that,' " Clinton told CNN's Larry King in a phone interview Tuesday evening.

"You know, everybody makes mistakes when they are president," Clinton said. "I mean, you can't make as many calls as you have to make without messing up once in awhile. The thing we ought to be focused on is what is the right thing to do now. That's what I think."

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/07/23/clinton.iraq.sotu/

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 08 May 07 - 10:00 AM

Excerpt from some remarks on Condolezza :

"It's now been nearly five years since Ms. Rice did her part to sell the Iraq war on a Sept. 8, 2002, Sunday show with her rendition of "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Yet there she was last Sunday on ABC, claiming that she never meant to imply then that Saddam was an imminent threat. "The question of imminence isn't whether or not somebody is going to strike tomorrow" is how she put it. In other words, she is still covering up the war's origins. On CBS's "Face the Nation," she claimed that intelligence errors before the war were "worldwide" even though the International Atomic Energy Agency's Mohamed ElBaradei publicly stated there was "no evidence" of an Iraqi nuclear program and even though Germany's intelligence service sent strenuous prewar warnings that the C.I.A.'s principal informant on Saddam's supposed biological weapons was a fraud.

Of the Sunday interviewers, it was George Stephanopoulos who went for the jugular by returning to that nonexistent uranium from Africa. He forced Ms. Rice to watch a clip of her appearance on his show in June 2003, when she claimed she did not know of any serious questions about the uranium evidence before the war. Then he came as close as any Sunday host ever has to calling a guest a liar. "But that statement wasn't true," Mr. Stephanopoulos said. Ms. Rice pleaded memory loss, but the facts remain. She received a memo raising serious questions about the uranium in October 2002, three months before the president included the infamous 16 words on the subject in his State of the Union address. Her deputy, Stephen Hadley, received two memos as well as a phone call of warning from Mr. Tenet.

Apologists for Ms. Rice, particularly those in the press who are embarrassed by their own early cheerleading for the war, like to say that this is ancient history, just as they said of the C.I.A. leak case. We're all supposed to move on and just worry about what happens next. Try telling that to families whose children went to Iraq to stop Saddam's nukes. Besides, there's a continuum between past deceptions and present ones, as the secretary of state seamlessly demonstrated last Sunday.

On ABC, she pushed the administration's line portraying Iraq's current violence as a Qaeda plot hatched by the Samarra bombing of February 2006. But that Qaeda isn't the Qaeda of 9/11; it's a largely Iraqi group fighting on one side of a civil war. And by February 2006, sectarian violence had already been gathering steam for 15 months — in part because Ms. Rice and company ignored the genuine imminence of that civil war just as they had ignored the alarms about bin Laden's Qaeda in August 2001.

Ms. Rice's latest canard wasn't an improvisation; it was a scripted set-up for the president's outrageous statement three days later. "The decision we face in Iraq," Mr. Bush said Wednesday, "is not whether we ought to take sides in a civil war, it's whether we stay in the fight against the same international terrorist network that attacked us on 9/11." Such statements about the present in Iraq are no less deceptive — and no less damaging to our national interest — than the lies about uranium and Qaeda- 9/11 connections told in 2002-3. This country needs facts, not fiction, to make its decisions about the endgame of the war, just as it needed (but didn't get) facts when we went to war in the first place. To settle for less is to make the same tragic error twice.

That Ms. Rice feels scant responsibility for any of this was evident in her repeated assertions on Sunday that all the questions about prewar intelligence had been answered by the Robb-Silberman and Senate committee inquiries, neither of which even addressed how the administration used the intelligence it received. Now she risks being held in contempt of Congress by ducking a subpoena authorized by the House's Oversight Committee, whose chairman, Henry Waxman, has been trying to get direct answers from her about the uranium hoax since 2003.

Ms. Rice is stonewalling his investigation by rambling on about separation of powers and claiming she answered all relevant questions in writing, to Senator Carl Levin, during her confirmation to the cabinet in January 2005. If former or incumbent national security advisers like Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski could testify before Congress without defiling the Constitution, so can she. As for her answers to Senator Levin's questions, five of eight were pure Alberto Gonzales: she either didn't recall or didn't know.

No wonder the most galling part of Ms. Rice's Sunday spin was her aside to Wolf Blitzer that she would get around to reflecting on these issues "when I have a chance to write my book." Another book! As long as American troops are dying in Iraq, the secretary of state has an obligation to answer questions about how they got there and why they stay. If accountability is ever to begin, it would be best if those questions are answered not on "60 Minutes" but under oath."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 08 May 07 - 12:54 AM

Dickey:

Let's talk about responsibility. The signature on the martching orders, the promoition of links between All Qeda and Iraq where none existed, the insistence on imminent threat, the announcement of the false datum about Niger's uranium, and a thousand other little pellets of piss-poor political propoganda came directly from the leadership and management of the Bush adminitration. To do this they repeatedly had to ignore data, ignore reason, override the voices of others trying to point out errors, and accuse of disloyalty anyone who quesitoned their irrationality.

They never came up with a straight story, they never spoke honestly and plainly, and they spun everything that came their way to support warmongering.

The amount of sheer brazen misdirection and distortion that came through thier media pipeling boggles the imagination.

And they have only made the skimpiest acknowledgement of the errors and lies, never owned up or apologiuzed for anything, and kept right on running and lying.

There are two threads of this title alone, which point to many of these affronts.

There are a dozen others as well, and in those threads are pointers to a hundred links with scores of pages documenting these points.

If you cannot studyt these things for yourself, don't ask someone else to do your homework for you.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 08 May 07 - 12:07 AM

Amos: Would you like sonme examples of "panic-mongering" by other members of the government who agreed with the administration, voted for the war and are now backpedaling and scapegoating the administration?

You don't have to look far. Mr Tenet receltly said he did say "it was a slam dunk". But he weasles out of any responsibilty for making that statement by saying it was not "pivotal" in the decision to go to war like the administration tried to claim. I don't recall any such claim by the administration.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 07 May 07 - 03:24 PM

One soldier's perspective.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 07 May 07 - 02:03 PM

By definition, ideal descriptions are ideal. Doh!

I would say it certainly does, apropros of your second question. If MCKinley had tried Bushian incursions on civil liberties during the Spansih American war he would have been impeached, Willie Randolph Hearst or no Willie Randolph Hearst, I suspect. Especially since Congress has not declared war in the present instance, merely abdicated its reserved right to do so in a pusillanimous "authority to use force" without bounds or limits, driven by a false scenario and panic-mongering by Rice, Cheney, Bush and their gang.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 07 May 07 - 01:16 PM

In other words, nobody can fit your idealistic expectations of a president.


Does the magnitude of a war indicate the level of "spying" a president can use?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 07 May 07 - 12:48 PM

Dear Dickey:

You have to get over this. When I said FDR had some virtues, that did not state that he had all of them. When I described an ideal candidate, I did not say FDR had all those qualities. Finally, for you to compare the situational values of WW II with Bush's invasion of Iraq is disingenuous in the extreme, and lacks merit.

If you continue to rebut things that have not been said and attack positions no-one has actually taken, you will fly in smaller and smaller circles until you disappear.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 07 May 07 - 12:28 PM

A train of thought:

One could ask, my feather-headed friend, for an honest, forthright President who lived within and under the law, sought prosperity, avoided violence except as a last resort, lead by example rather than by decree, protected and defended the Constitution rather than an elite base, and considered truth to be senior to political slickness.

We've had a few who came closer than the rest. Despite all the hatred stirred up about him, Clinton seemed to hold to those values, and he was literate, although he played political smokescreens on occasion. I think Ike was a representative despite his soft-spoken undramatic ways. FDR had some of those virtues, as did Washington and Lincoln, despite their shortcomings. Even GHB had many, or at least the ability to camouflage those he lacked. W, in my opinion, does not even do that much, and he is mushy at the very core.

during WWII FDR gave the FBI complete authority to lntercept all transAtlantic cables and a virtual free hand when it came to domestic surveillance, wiretapping and opening mail.

A woman got a commendation and a special medal from the government for finding a bit of microfilm under the stamp of an inocuous domestic letter that sent six German spies to the gallows.

As for FDR, you are just throwing red herrings about like a madman. You dragged him into this with your endless effort to prove the past justifies the present, which it does not. Fuck FDR.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 07 May 07 - 11:16 AM

Awesome! Inspiring!! I swan, Mister Donuel, you gonna make a BLEEFER outta me!!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 07 May 07 - 11:05 AM

Lambs of mercy sakes, when God tells people what to do it's our job to get out of the way or get in line and do the lords will.

Criticizing the lords messenger is as bad as questioning your faith.
They don't have Nixon to kick around anymore so they are picking on George.
Now for those who bash Bush, my dear, how can we judge lest we be judged ourselves? And if you were to be judged it is clear you will be cast into the lake of fire. You will have plenty of company like members of the World Court.

Oh my goodness gracious our lord and leader doesn't have a quit bone in his body. He is a straight shooter like his vice president and will not quit until God's work is done.

Who wants our lord to quit? oh I don't know, could it be SATAN?

Raise my rent and sack my museum, I don't for the life of me know how anyone can condemn our President.
Do you have a long lens of history?
I didn't think so.

If we knew what we didn't know now but knew what we didn't know that we were going to know tomorrow, we could count our blessings that God has told our strong leader what to do and tell us what our opinion should be.

So cheer up neighborlydidoo, there is no need to make things more complicated than they are...

It's simply God's will

and he has plans for you.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 07 May 07 - 10:39 AM

To the Editor:

Bob Herbert writes that Paul Rieckhoff believes that "part of the problem is that too many civilians have little or no understanding of what war is really like, and of the toll it takes beyond the obvious toll of the dead and wounded."

I would suggest that a great deal of the problem is that those who took us to war in Iraq — President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the rest — have little or no understanding of what war is really like. That is at least part of the disconnect.

If our "leaders" are oblivious to the real human cost of war, how can we expect ordinary citizens (who have no relatives or friends fighting this war) to be engaged?

Barbara B. Gilbert
Diamondhead, Miss., May 3, 2007

•

To the Editor:

Bob Herbert's column made for difficult, sad reading. The disillusionment of one articulate veteran in his book, "Chasing Ghosts, " speaks for many in the armed forces who do not understand our society's ignorance of what their brutal role in Iraq has been.

What is difficult for all of us to realize is that the war was a wrong, misguided undertaking from the start. What is sad is that idealistic young men and women who wanted to serve their country with honor are caught in the quagmire.

A majority of Americans now realize our country's tragic mistake. What are our veterans to think?

Martha G. Little
Baltimore, May 3, 2007

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 07 May 07 - 12:59 AM

Wrong. Read the post again.



A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 07 May 07 - 12:41 AM

Overruled because of Exception #1 "If history supports arguments against the current administration, it is allowable."

The inherant double standard, not written into the Constitution.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 06 May 07 - 12:35 PM

Bob Woodward gives an interesting review of Tenet's accounts of recent history recently published in Tenet's "Reaping the Whirlwind". Special focus is, of course, on the Cheney/Bush distortions and the decision to go to war.

Tenet does not believe the decision for war on Iraq predated 2003, which I find ingenuous, but I wasn;t there, either.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 06 May 07 - 10:30 AM

Objection overruled. The excerpt provides a current comment on the current view of the present administration, and is therefore germane and within bounds.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 06 May 07 - 09:49 AM

"as J.F.K. had it," Foul! Out of bounds! This is ancient history and does not have any bearing on the present state of affairs according to the Amos rules of debate.

Chapter 3, page 14 "Nothing that was done by a previous adminstration has any bearing on the horrible things that are being done by this administration."

Exception #1 "If history supports arguments against the current administration, it is allowable."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 06 May 07 - 09:42 AM

An excerpt from a review of Ronald Reagan's recently released diaries from his years in the White House:

"The lasting spellbinder proves to be Reagan the speech maker, not the diarist. "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem," he once declared, setting one of the worshiped pillars of Reaganism. It was a facile turn of rhetoric that has so sadly been turned into fact by this administration."


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 06 May 07 - 09:31 AM

In an interesting counterpoint, Frederick Kagan details the progress occurring in Iraq . AMong other things, he says:

"The strategy now under way in Iraq — we are providing an increased number of American forces, working closely with Iraqi troops, to establish and maintain security in Baghdad as a precondition for political, economic and social progress — will change the situation in Iraq significantly, whether or not it succeeds in its aims.

In fact, it has already done so, and for the better: the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has apparently fled to Iran; American and Iraqi forces have killed or captured more than 700 key leaders and allies of his Mahdi Army, causing the movement to fragment; sectarian killings in Baghdad in April were about one-third of the level in December."

Fair and balanced, that's us... :)


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 06 May 07 - 09:25 AM

Nor does the Times lighten the pressure on the Gonzales scandal:

"New reports of possible malfeasance keep coming fast and furious. They all seem to make it more likely than ever that the firings were part of an attempt to turn the Justice Department into a partisan political operation. There is, to start, the very strong appearance that United States attorneys were fired because they were investigating powerful Republicans or refused to bring baseless charges against Democrats. There is reason to believe that Carol Lam of San Diego, who put Randy Cunningham, the former Republican congressman, in jail, and Paul Charlton of Arizona, who was investigating Representative Rick Renzi, among others, were fired simply for their nonpartisan pursuit of justice.

The Justice Department opened an internal investigation last week into whether Monica Goodling, a former senior adviser to Mr. Gonzales, applied a political screen to applicants for assistant United States attorney positions. That kind of political test would violate department policy, and possibly the law. Ms. Goodling, who has invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, was also a key player in the United States attorney firings.

The National Journal brought to light an "internal order" in which Mr. Gonzales gave Ms. Goodling and his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, the power to hire and fire many of the department's top officials. His willingness to hand this authority off to two young, highly political staff members is further evidence that partisanship and not professionalism was the driving force in hiring and firing.

More testimony has also emerged that undermines the department's weak claim that the prosecutors were dismissed for poor performance. James Comey, who was deputy attorney general from 2003 to 2005, told a House committee last week that all but one of the prosecutors were worthy of remaining in office. He called Ms. Lam "a fine U.S. attorney" and Mr. Charlton "one of the best."

Mr. Gonzales, Mr. Sampson and the others have given so many conflicting, barely credible stories for the firings that it is impossible not to suspect a cover-up. Some of the fired prosecutors strengthened that impression last week in written statements to Congress, in which they described being pressured by Michael Elston, an aide to the deputy attorney general, not to talk about their dismissals. John McKay, of Seattle, said his impression was that "Mr. Elston's tone was sinister" and that he was "prepared to threaten me further if he concluded I did not intend to continue to remain silent about my dismissal."

...Ms. Lam said that she was given just weeks to pack up, and that Justice Department officials told her that her dismissal came "from the very highest levels of the government."

It is long past time for President Bush to fire Mr. Gonzales. But Congress, especially the Republicans who have dared confront the White House on this issue, should not be satisfied with that. There are strong indications that the purge was ordered out of the White House, involving at the very least the former counsel, Harriet Miers, and Karl Rove.

It is the duty of Congress to compel them and other officials to finally tell the truth to the American people."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 06 May 07 - 09:08 AM

Speaking of truth, Mr Rich, Times columnist, has some remarks about the circle of blame now being danced by the power crowd on thehill:

"IF, as J.F.K. had it, victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan, the defeat in Iraq is the most pitiful orphan imaginable. Its parents have not only tossed it to the wolves but are also trying to pin its mutant DNA on any patsy they can find.

George Tenet is just the latest to join this blame game, which began more than three years ago when his fellow Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Tommy Franks told Bob Woodward that Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's intelligence bozo, was the "stupidest guy on the face of the earth" (that's the expurgated version). Last fall, Kenneth Adelman, the neocon cheerleader who foresaw a "cakewalk" in Iraq, told Vanity Fair that Mr. Tenet, General Franks and Paul Bremer were "three of the most incompetent people who've ever served in such key spots." Richard Perle chimed in that the "huge mistakes" were "not made by neoconservatives" and instead took a shot at President Bush. Ahmad Chalabi, the neocons' former darling, told Dexter Filkins of The Times "the real culprit in all this is Wolfowitz."

And of course nearly everyone blames Rumsfeld.

This would be a Three Stooges routine were there only three stooges. The good news is that Mr. Tenet's book rollout may be the last gasp of this farcical round robin of recrimination. Republicans and Democrats have at last found some common ground by condemning his effort to position himself as the war's innocent scapegoat. Some former C.I.A. colleagues are rougher still. Michael Scheuer, who ran the agency's bin Laden unit, has accused Mr. Tenet of lacking "the moral courage to resign and speak out publicly to try to stop our country from striding into what he knew would be an abyss." Even after Mr. Tenet did leave office, he maintained a Robert McNamara silence until he cashed in.

Satisfying though it is to watch a circular firing squad of the war's enablers, unfinished business awaits. Unlike Vietnam, Iraq is not in the past: the war escalates even as all this finger-pointing continues. Very little has changed between the fourth anniversary of "Mission Accomplished" this year and the last. Back then, President Bush cheered an Iraqi "turning point" precipitated by "the emergence of a unity government." Since then, what's emerged is more Iraqi disunity and a major leap in the death toll. That's why Americans voted in November to get out.

The only White House figure to take any responsibility for the fiasco is the former Bush-Cheney pollster Matthew Dowd, who in March expressed remorse for furthering a war he now deems a mistake. For his belated act of conscience, he was promptly patronized as an incipient basket case by an administration flack, who attributed Mr. Dowd's defection to "personal turmoil." If that is what this vicious gang would do to a pollster, imagine what would befall Colin Powell if he spoke out. Nonetheless, Mr. Powell should summon the guts to do so. Until there is accountability for the major architects and perpetrators of the Iraq war, the quagmire will deepen. A tragedy of this scale demands a full accounting, not to mention a catharsis.

That accounting might well begin with Mr. Powell's successor, Condoleezza Rice. Of all the top-tier policy players who were beside the president and vice president at the war's creation, she is the highest still in power and still on the taxpayers' payroll. She is also the only one who can still get a free pass from the press. The current groupthink Beltway narrative has it that the secretary of state's recidivist foreign-policy realism and latent shuttle diplomacy have happily banished the Cheney-Rumsfeld cowboy arrogance that rode America into a ditch.

Thus Ms. Rice was dispatched to three Sunday shows last weekend to bat away Mr. Tenet's book before "60 Minutes" broadcast its interview with him that night. But in each appearance her statements raised more questions than they answered. She was persistently at odds with the record, not just the record as spun by Mr. Tenet but also the public record. She must be held to a higher standard — a k a the truth — before she too jumps ship.

It's now been nearly five years since Ms. Rice did her part to sell the Iraq war on a Sept. 8, 2002, Sunday show with her rendition of "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Yet there she was last Sunday on ABC, claiming that she never meant to imply then that Saddam was an imminent threat. "The question of imminence isn't whether or not somebody is going to strike tomorrow" is how she put it. In other words, she is still covering up the war's origins. On CBS's "Face the Nation," she claimed that intelligence errors before the war were "worldwide" even though the International Atomic Energy Agency's Mohamed ElBaradei publicly stated there was "no evidence" of an Iraqi nuclear program and even though Germany's intelligence service sent strenuous prewar warnings that the C.I.A.'s principal informant on Saddam's supposed biological weapons was a fraud.

Of the Sunday interviewers, it was George Stephanopoulos who went for the jugular by returning to that nonexistent uranium from Africa. He forced Ms. Rice to watch a clip of her appearance on his show in June 2003, when she claimed she did not know of any serious questions about the uranium evidence before the war. Then he came as close as any Sunday host ever has to calling a guest a liar. "But that statement wasn't true," Mr. Stephanopoulos said. Ms. Rice pleaded memory loss, but the facts remain. She received a memo raising serious questions about the uranium in October 2002, three months before the president included the infamous 16 words on the subject in his State of the Union address. Her deputy, Stephen Hadley, received two memos as well as a phone call of warning from Mr. Tenet.

Apologists for Ms. Rice, particularly those in the press who are embarrassed by their own early cheerleading for the war, like to say that this is ancient history, just as they said of the C.I.A. leak case. We're all supposed to move on and just worry about what happens next. Try telling that to families whose children went to Iraq to stop Saddam's nukes. Besides, there's a continuum between past deceptions and present ones, as the secretary of state seamlessly demonstrated last Sunday.

On ABC, she pushed the administration's line portraying Iraq's current violence as a Qaeda plot hatched by the Samarra bombing of February 2006. But that Qaeda isn't the Qaeda of 9/11; it's a largely Iraqi group fighting on one side of a civil war. And by February 2006, sectarian violence had already been gathering steam for 15 months — in part because Ms. Rice and company ignored the genuine imminence of that civil war just as they had ignored the alarms about bin Laden's Qaeda in August 2001.

Ms. Rice's latest canard wasn't an improvisation; it was a scripted set-up for the president's outrageous statement three days later. "The decision we face in Iraq," Mr. Bush said Wednesday, "is not whether we ought to take sides in a civil war, it's whether we stay in the fight against the same international terrorist network that attacked us on 9/11." Such statements about the present in Iraq are no less deceptive — and no less damaging to our national interest — than the lies about uranium and Qaeda- 9/11 connections told in 2002-3. This country needs facts, not fiction, to make its decisions about the endgame of the war, just as it needed (but didn't get) facts when we went to war in the first place. To settle for less is to make the same tragic error twice.

That Ms. Rice feels scant responsibility for any of this was evident in her repeated assertions on Sunday that all the questions about prewar intelligence had been answered by the Robb-Silberman and Senate committee inquiries, neither of which even addressed how the administration used the intelligence it received. Now she risks being held in contempt of Congress by ducking a subpoena authorized by the House's Oversight Committee, whose chairman, Henry Waxman, has been trying to get direct answers from her about the uranium hoax since 2003.

...

No wonder the most galling part of Ms. Rice's Sunday spin was her aside to Wolf Blitzer that she would get around to reflecting on these issues "when I have a chance to write my book." Another book! As long as American troops are dying in Iraq, the secretary of state has an obligation to answer questions about how they got there and why they stay. If accountability is ever to begin, it would be best if those questions are answered not on "60 Minutes" but under oath."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 05 May 07 - 05:00 PM

I quite concur about the truth, Dickey. I plead guilty to having a certain amount of passion about Bush's lying, ignorant, uncurious and unintelligent management of his office, as well as a number of other moral lapses I believe far too serious to ignore in a post as consequential as his.

Sorry I am not dispassionate enough for you, but at least I am not being covert about it, like some folks are.

I have included many reports in this thread that were simply summations of fact, often to find them rejected because of something Bill Clinton said....the epitome of illogic. So it gets a bit trying after a while.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 05 May 07 - 03:51 PM

Amos:

It is rather strange the way you accept you rhetoric laden (Moron in Chief, outright fiasco, fearmongering, stonewalling, pull the plug, tin ear, blind eye) postings without question but question the validity of anything to the contrary.

It is my understanding that truth does not need to be supported with rhetoric and namecalling.

"Your honor, this Moron in Chief created an outright fiasco with fearmongering and stonewalling. He pulls the plug on lawsuits, has a tin ear and a blind eye. It's obvious as a case of dripping clap on a priest"

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 05 May 07 - 02:33 PM

Nice, if true. Wonder when all this affluence is going to trickle down to the folks who foot the bills?

"While the White House and Democratic congressional leaders try to reach a compromise on supplemental Iraq War funding, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has shown no signs of slowing her attacks on President Bush.

Appearing in Chicago Friday at Rep. Jan Schakowsky's "Ultimate Women's Power Lunch," a fundraiser hosted by the North Shore Democratic congresswoman at the Chicago Hilton and Towers, Pelosi called the war "the biggest ethical issue facing our country."

Pelosi questioned whether it was ethical to send troops into war "under a false pretense without a strategy for success," without proper equipment and training and without "demanding accountability from the Iraqi government while we dishonored our commitment to our veterans here at home."

"In the elections, when the American people were calling for a new direction, the one place where they called for it in the clearest possible way was in the war in Iraq," Pelosi (D-Calif.) told an audience estimated at about 2,000 people. "They wanted the war to wind down," Pelosi said. "Instead, the president has escalated it. He has a tin ear in terms of listening to the people and a blind eye as to what is going on in Iraq."

Earlier, Pelosi defended Democrats from GOP criticism that their now-vetoed Iraq supplemental contained a U.S. troop withdrawal timetable that amounted to a script for insurgents or Al Qaeda to take over the country, creating new opportunities for terrorism.

"We'll fight terrorism," she said. "There is absolutely no question about the Democrats commitment to fighting terrorism."

Of warnings from the White House and Republicans that Al Qaeda is actively working in Iraq and threatening the country's stability, Pelosi said that Al Qaeda wasn't present before the U.S. invasion. She said Al Qaeda represents "a small percentage of the insurgents and militias and those who are fighting there.""

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 05 May 07 - 11:48 AM

Budget deficit in '07 could dip to $150-billion

By TIMES WIRES Published May 5, 2007

The federal budget deficit could go as low as $150-billion [near the 1995 level] this year, congressional analysts said Friday. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office had earlier seen a deficit for 2007 of about $200-billion, but continued strong revenue growth has led the CBO to lower its estimates. The CBO's estimate is necessarily imprecise since Congress and President Bush are wrestling over a $124-billion Iraq war funding bill [containing $20B of pork]. The CBO says the deficit might still reach $200 billion, though recent trends suggest a lower figure. Impressive tax receipts during the April filing season prompted the more optimistic estimates. This year's April receipts ran $70-billion higher than last year. Through the first seven months of the budget year, which ends Sept. 30, the government has posted an $83-billion deficit, about $100-million less than during a comparable period last fiscal year. The government registered a $248-billion deficit in 2006...."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 05 May 07 - 12:14 AM

From CNet.com:

"MONTREAL -- President Bush is backing a proposed law that would pull the plug on lawsuits alleging telephone companies illegally cooperated with the National Security Agency in its warrantless wiretap program.

We've written about this before, such as when the House Judiciary committee approved the measure last year as part of a bill to rework the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

At the time, last September, one backer of the measure said it would effectively "eliminate the 60 or more lawsuits filed because companies complied with government orders," such as the one brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against AT&T. Rep. Chris Cannon, the amendment's sponsor, said that without such protection in place, "an individual or company will be reluctant to cooperate with any government authorized surveillance program, which will severely undercut government's efforts (to prevent terrorist attacks)."

But it's worth noting again now for two main reasons. First, EFF's lawsuit is at a crucial stage right now before the 9th Circuit, as EFF attorney Lee Tien described at the 2007 Computers Freedom and Privacy conference here on Thursday afternoon. Second, the bill is back in play this year and now's the time to pay attention to it again...."