BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 04 May 07 - 10:31 PM

I INDICT YOU! You know who you are.

I listened to the actual neocons, war contractors and PNAC think tank people in the same room, what I heard was an amazing pattern of congratulating each other on what they perceived to be the "strength" in which something was said
AND NEVER QUESTION THE VALIDITY OF WHAT IS SAID

After someone said something, you heard a quick "that was strong" or "yes that had power", when in fact what was said was nonsense in the light of cultural understanding, historic fact and common sense.

After listening for 10 minutes, a voice inside me said "everything these guys have learned, they learned in junior high school".



It makes me terribly sad to see how this country is controlled by shallow egos, shallow thinkers and shallow ethics.

It makes me angry that a arch criminal like Ossama bin Laden can see the predictable cowboy mentality of our administration and manipulate our "leaders" with a prophetic clarity of thought and systematically bankrupt and isolate the United States of America.

Any numbers of people on this forum know this to be true. We knew this to be true 6 years ago.



Now we are being told that we acted with the best of intentions or that mistakes were made but "we must deal with where we are now"

They were either cowards or active war criminals then, and they are cowards and war criminals to this day.

We began this fiasco touting 21st century weapons of surgical precision guided by satellites in space...

and now we use 1st century walls and medieval torture.

We drive young men around until they get blown up so that we can locate the enemy.

We all know this.

Some of us know the real threat to national security is the coming global warming droughts, floods, famines, fires and a frozen Europe who will evacuate to the south.

What is our civilized response to these events?

Our response is similar to the war criminals.

We are cowards and criminally negligent.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Don Firth
Date: 04 May 07 - 08:51 PM

Like King Canute, George W. Bush stands on the shore and orders the tide to recede.

Didn't work then. Won't work now.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 04 May 07 - 08:41 PM

ANopen letter from the Campaign to Defend the Constitution:

"Yesterday, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a bill that promises to extend protection from violent or discriminatory acts of hate to gay and lesbian Americans.

In a shocking turn of events, even for this administration, President Bush has threatened to veto this anti-hate bill. With the overwhelming congressional and public support for this legislation, many are asking who the President could possibly be serving with such a commitment; the answer unfortunately is the religious right.

Over the last few months the religious right has waged a deceptive campaign opposing this pro-equality legislation. They have employed a range of excuses; Chuck Colson compared the law to something out of George Orwell's famous novel 19841, Tony Perkins has stated that the legislation is "contrary to our heritage and our values,"2 and just this week James Dobson told listeners of Focus on the Family Radio, "there's a vote coming up on some insidious legislation in the United States Congress that could silence and punish Christians for their moral beliefs. That means that as a Christian - if you read the Bible a certain way with regard to morality - you may be guilty of committing a 'thought crime."3

Such sentiments beg the question: does the religious right truly believe that hate speech is an integral component of their faith?

This notion is preposterous and simply goes to show just how out of touch the religious right is, not only with real American values, but with mainstream Christian values as well.

While most Americans see the religious right's campaign for what it is -- an attempt to make gay and lesbian Americans second class citizens -- their bigoted views have found audience with at least one man, President Bush."


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 04 May 07 - 11:55 AM

Rewriting History

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, May 4, 2007; Page A23

George Tenet has a very mixed legacy. On the one hand, he presided over the two biggest intelligence failures of this era -- Sept. 11 and the WMD debacle in Iraq. On the other hand, his CIA did devise and carry out brilliantly an astonishingly bold plan to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan. Tenet might have just left it at that, gone home with his Presidential Medal of Freedom and let history judge him.

Instead, he's decided to do some judging of his own. In his just-released book, and while hawking it on television, Tenet presents himself as a pathetic victim and scapegoat of an administration that was hellbent on going to war, slam dunk or not.

Tenet writes as if he assumes no one remembers anything. For example: "There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat."

Does he think no one remembers President Bush explicitly rejecting the imminence argument in his 2003 State of the Union address in front of just about the largest possible world audience? Said the president, " Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent" -- and he was not one of them. That in a post-Sept. 11 world, we cannot wait for tyrants and terrorists to gentlemanly declare their intentions. Indeed, elsewhere in the book Tenet concedes that very point: "It was never a question of a known, imminent threat; it was about an unwillingness to risk surprise."

Tenet also makes what he thinks is the damning and sensational charge that the administration, led by Vice President Cheney, had been focusing on Iraq even before Sept. 11. In fact, he reports, Cheney asked for a CIA briefing on Iraq for the president even before they had been sworn in.

This is odd? This is news? For the entire decade following the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Iraq was the single greatest threat in the region and therefore the most important focus of U.S. policy. U.N. resolutions, congressional debates and foreign policy arguments were seized with the Iraq question and its many post-Gulf War complications -- the weapons of mass destruction, the inspection regimes, the cease-fire violations, the no-fly zones, the progressive weakening of sanctions.

Iraq was such an obsession of the Clinton administration that Bill Clinton ultimately ordered an air and missile attack on its WMD installations that lasted four days. This was less than two years before Bush won the presidency. Is it odd that the administration following Clinton's should share its extreme concern about Iraq and its weapons?

Tenet is not the only one to assume a generalized amnesia about the recent past. One of the major myths (or, more accurately, conspiracy theories) about the Iraq war -- that it was foisted upon an unsuspecting country by a small band of neoconservatives -- also lives blissfully detached from history.

The decision to go to war was made by a war cabinet consisting of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld. No one in that room could even remotely be considered a neoconservative. Nor could the most important non-American supporter of the war to this day -- Tony Blair, father of new Labor.

The most powerful case for the war was made at the 2004 Republican convention by John McCain in a speech that was resolutely "realist." On the Democratic side, every presidential candidate running today who was in the Senate when the motion to authorize the use of force came up -- Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd-- voted yes.

Outside of government, the case for war was made not just by the neoconservative Weekly Standard but -- to select almost randomly -- the traditionally conservative National Review, the liberal New Republic and the center-right Economist. Of course, most neoconservatives supported the war, the case for which was also being made by journalists and scholars from every point on the political spectrum -- from the leftist Christopher Hitchens to the liberal Tom Friedman to the centrist Fareed Zakaria to the center-right Michael Kelly to the Tory Andrew Sullivan. And the most influential tome on behalf of war was written not by any conservative, let alone neoconservative, but by Kenneth Pollack, Clinton's top Near East official on the National Security Council. The title: "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq."

Everyone has the right to renounce past views. But not to make up that past. It is beyond brazen to think that one can get away with inventing not ancient history but what everyone saw and read with their own eyes just a few years ago. And yet sometimes brazenness works.

[e-mail]

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 03 May 07 - 10:36 PM

Mebbe 'tis so. and mebbe not, Dickey. But taking too steps backl and then one forward is not a good definition of progress.

If it turns out to be true, well and good. Huzzah, even.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 03 May 07 - 09:48 PM

"...Our deficit projections show that the US is slightly ahead of the actual 1990s deficit path. In 1996 – almost six years into recovery – the deficit was still 1.4% of GDP. The first surplus arrived in 1998. We expect the deficit to be just under 1% of GDP for Fiscal 2007 (almost six years into the recovery), with surpluses arriving in 2009 or earlier.

As in the 1990s, revenue is being lifted by a productivity-driven surge in incomes, profits, and rising equity prices. As people earn higher incomes, a larger share of their income gets taxed at higher marginal rates – a tax hike without new legislation. Those who argued that the tax cuts in 2001-03 would create deficits as far as the eye could see are being proven wrong. And, unlike the 1990s, the budget will be balanced without the help of a post-Cold War "peace dividend."..."

http://www.ftportfolios.com/Common/research/economicresearch-317.pdf

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 03 May 07 - 09:44 PM

Revenue Blow Out

The U.S. Treasury Department reported a gusher of tax revenue last week. Tuesday alone, the Treasury received $48.7 billion from individual taxpayers as their final tax payment for 2006, an all-time single-day record, and one-third higher than the same day last year.

Based on information available through Friday, we estimate federal receipts at about $390 billion in April. This would be the largest tax take for any month in American history, up 25% versus last April, and up 18% versus the previous record high in April 2001.

With incomes and profits growing rapidly, the U.S. budget deficit will fall to about $145 billion during the twelve months ending in April. To put this in perspective, the deficit was $455 billion as recently as three years ago (the twelve months through April 2004).}
the rest

Apparently the administration is doing something right.

The deficit problem is not in the collection of taxes, it is in CONGRESS. Since the dems have taken over congress, have the earmarks subsided? I think not!!

It is damn easy to spend money that is not your own. Especially when these jerks are competition to see who can spend the most.
It does not matter if it is a republican or democrat,both with fiddle while entitlement dollars creep higher and higher.
Do even one of the so called "PUBLIC SERVANTS" GIVE A DAMN?
We need a few honest folks in congress.We need the reincarnation of folks like Sen.Proxmire that will expose congress for what it really is...

http://socialize.morningstar.com/NewSocialize/asp/FullConv.asp?forumId=F100000035&convId=199652

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 03 May 07 - 09:01 PM

Amos: Why don't you get together with al-Qaeda and end the war bilaterally? And make sure you go unarmed. You don't want them to perceive you as a threat, just a nice guy who wnats peace.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 03 May 07 - 02:36 PM

I have condemned a lot of things in my posts, here, Bruice, which struck me as stupid, destructive or inhumane.

But I have no saber to rattle, and if the Republicans proposed to the Democrats some sort of bilateral, rational discourse to jointly revitalize the ideals and heal the bruised sanity of the nation, I'd be completely behind it.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 03 May 07 - 02:16 PM

"But this partisan saber-rattling is not what the nation needs right now."

As opposed to the Democratic saber-rattling? Or your own, as seen by the majority of posts here?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 03 May 07 - 01:32 PM

Seems to me that he'd be better off preparing a huge reform campaign to oust corruption and undo the moral turpitude that has characterized so many of the Republican principals and their cronies. Something about their approach to getting things done inevitably leads them to the sewer.

Maybe its the fanatacism, or the practiced ignoral and lack of compassion, or the carefully sequestered and compartmented sense of responsibility, that drives them to act so weird. I dunno. But this partisan saber-rattling is not what the nation needs right now.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 03 May 07 - 12:36 PM

from the Washington Post:

The Road to a GOP House

By George F. Will
Thursday, May 3, 2007; Page A25

Tom Cole earned a PhD in British history from the University of Oklahoma, intending to become a college professor, but he came to his senses and to a zest for politics, and now, in just his third term in the House of Representatives, he is chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. As such, he is charged with recruiting the candidates and honing the tactics that will transform Speaker Nancy Pelosi back into House minority leader. "We are looking," says Cole, speaking unminced words about the Republican Party, "like a beaten-down stock." Nevertheless, he is sanguine regarding 2008: "The positioning is good for us" because "we don't have to conquer new territory, we have to reclaim old territory."

That is, 61 Democrats represent districts that George W. Bush carried in 2004. A 16-seat gain in 2008 would restore Republican control to the House.

Consider the Second Congressional District in Kansas. Jim Ryun held the seat easily for five terms. In 2006, he lost to Nancy Boyda, who won with just 50.6 percent. In 2008, President Bush will not be, as he was in 2006, a burden at the top of the ticket. And Kansas's popular Republican senator, Pat Roberts, will be on the ticket. And Kansas's popular Democratic governor, Kathleen Sebelius, who helped Democrats down the ballot in 2006, will be in the middle of her second term.

Might Democrats gain some seats they nearly won in 2006 -- for example, the then-open Chicago area seat previously held for 16 terms by Republican Henry Hyde? The Democrats' novice candidate, Tammy Duckworth, who lost both legs in the Iraq war, got 48.65 percent against Republican Peter Roskam. Cole says he hopes the Democrats will throw resources at that seat because they will be wasting dollars, given that they could not win it as an open seat. He is too polite to add that they could not win it with Bush as a weight in Republican saddles.

Although Cole is playing to win, and expects to win, in 2008, retaking the House may be, he says, "a two-step dance for us." He thinks Republicans have a good chance of winning control even if they do not win the White House. He notes that after Republicans lost 48 House seats in 1958, they gained 21 seats in 1960, when John Kennedy was narrowly elected president. And if Republicans do not win control of the House in 2008 and a Democrat is elected president, they have a really excellent chance of capturing the House in 2010, because the party that wins the presidency usually loses House seats in the next midterm election.

Cole wishes he "could make every [Republican] donor watch C-SPAN," to see what House Democrats are doing. He can't, but he savors such attention-riveting events as Pelosi's trip to Syria, which he thinks was so "wonderful" for Republicans that he would gladly finance a trip by her to Iran.

The last time House Republicans suffered a defeat as large as they did in 2006 (30 seats lost) was in the 1974 post-Watergate election (48 seats lost). That was the year their third-ranking leader was born -- Florida's Adam Putnam, the House Republican Conference chairman.

Still, Democrats have their smallest House majority since 1955. And Republicans still hold 10 more seats than they did at their peak during Ronald Reagan's presidency. This, in spite of the fact that Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 and his winning margin of 2.5 points in 2004 was the smallest in history for a reelected president.

Cole is planning as though Republicans will have to retake the House the unusual way they did in 1994 -- forming a majority without the help of a Republican president and perhaps without much help from the Republican presidential candidate. Because perhaps 21 states are going to hold presidential primaries on Feb. 5, 2008, some states that "we are not going to carry" in the 2008 presidential election (he does not list any, but surely he has in mind such states as Illinois and New York) are going to be important in selecting the Republican nominee.

But Republican House candidates may get considerable help from the Democrats' presidential candidate. Cole thinks that Democrats, who he says have more litmus tests for their presidential candidates than Republicans do, are so convinced that they are going to win the White House, they are not resisting what they enjoy surrendering to -- the tug from the party's left.

Americans seem to like the government at least somewhat divided. They are apt to have that for a while.

[e-mail]

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 03 May 07 - 09:31 AM

Readers write to the TImes from all over:

To the Editor:

As President Bush signed his second veto, you note another seven "Names of the Dead," for a total of 3,344. How many more brave men and women must die before the president and his Congressional allies finally realize that having no exit strategy and no firm benchmarks is the real "prescription for chaos and confusion" in Iraq that marks the ultimate failure of the administration?

The president's continued insistence on a blank check for financing the war after four years is itself completely "irresponsible" and totally unacceptable.

Paul M. Wortman
Setauket, N.Y., May 2, 2007

•

To the Editor:

The president complains that Congress is trying to do his job as military commander in chief for him. If this upsets him, he should do his job himself, and offer well-defined goals for Iraq with specific target dates.

Setting a timeline with clear goals is not "artificial." It is leadership.

Paul Cantrell
Minneapolis, May 2, 2007

•

To the Editor:

So the president signs his order using a pen given to him by the father of a fallen marine. How facile this vainglorious White House is, putting evocative symbols before the public, trading on Americans' politeness and compassion — and how utterly shameless and hypocritical.

Whether it's posing next to a disabled veteran, a widowed spouse, a disaster victim, a ghetto child, a senior or the bereft parents of a soldier killed in his still-inexplicable failing vanity war in Iraq, President Bush puts form over substance every time. He has served none of the victims with whom he purports to grieve and pray. His obliviousness is the stuff of deposed kings.

Mark Miller
Los Angeles, May 2, 2007

•

To the Editor:

President Bush defended his veto of the Iraq war spending bill on Tuesday by stating that commanders in Iraq should not be taking "fighting directions from politicians 6,000 miles away in Washington, D.C."

Has the president forgotten that as commander in chief of the armed forces, he is also a politician in Washington, D.C., giving fighting directions to commanders in Iraq 6,000 miles away?

Civilian control of our military is one of the most firmly embedded traditions of our democratic system. And civilian control has always meant control by politicians in Washington, in most cases far from the front lines.

The problem with President Bush's current position is that he is shirking his responsibilities as commander in chief. Whether President Bush likes it or not, the decision of whether our country should continue the current campaign in Iraq is not and should not be with the commanders in Iraq. That decision rests quite properly with politicians in Washington.

Jorge L. Baron
Seattle, May 2, 2007

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 03 May 07 - 09:19 AM

From a Times oped:

...Even if perjury were not a felony, lying to Congress has always been understood to be an impeachable offense. As James Iredell, later a Supreme Court justice, said in 1788 during the debate over the impeachment clause, "The president must certainly be punishable for giving false information to the Senate." The same is true of the president's appointees.

The president may yet yield and send Mr. Gonzales packing. If not, Democrats may decide that to impeach Alberto Gonzales would be politically unwise. But before dismissing the possibility of impeachment, Congress should recognize that the issue here goes deeper than the misbehavior of one man. The real question is whether Republicans and Democrats are prepared to defend the constitutional authority of Congress against the implicit claim of an administration that it can do what it pleases and, when called to account, send an attorney general of the United States to Capitol Hill to commit amnesia on its behalf.

Frank Bowman, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 03 May 07 - 08:50 AM

The Democrats' Gonzales

"...Schumer offered this clarification of Reid's off-the-cuff comment. "What Harry Reid is saying is that this war is lost -- in other words, a war where we mainly spend our time policing a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis. We are not going to solve that problem. . . . The war is not lost. And Harry Reid believes this -- we Democrats believe it. . . . So the bottom line is if the war continues on this path, if we continue to try to police and settle a civil war that's been going on for hundreds of years in Iraq, we can't win. But on the other hand, if we change the mission and have that mission focus on the more narrow goal of counterterrorism, we sure can win."

Everyone got that? This war is lost. But the war can be won. Not since Bill Clinton famously pondered the meaning of the word "is" has a Democratic leader confused things as much as Harry Reid did with his inept discussion of the alternatives in Iraq...."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/25/AR2007042502407.html

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 03 May 07 - 08:40 AM

'Loss' in Iraq and the Arkin Plan

Nevada Democratic Sen. Harry M. Reid's plan is no way to end the war.

"...Reid decries the current course in Iraq and the prospect of "endless war" under the Bush plan while offering a long list of military adventures and confrontations -- "the challenges we face" -- that he prefers to Iraq: increasing the U.S. force size in Afghanistan, defeating al Qaeda (somewhere else), confronting Iran, intervening in Darfur, addressing Venezuela and even Russia.

Somehow, Reid says, his plan "prevents the jihadists from being able to claim victory over America, and begins to restore America's prestige, power and influence in the region."

He defines a responsible end as one that "protects our strategic interests, strengthens our security, and brings our troops home."

To bolster his position, Reid refers to various "facts on the ground."

"There is no evidence that the escalation is working," Reid says.

But what if there was? Is Reid saying that he could be convinced otherwise? Is he playing a game with his rhetoric?

At the risk of provoking the true Bush haters out there, there isn't a doubt in my mind that everyone, Dick Cheney included wants to bring the Iraq war to what Reid calls a "responsible" end.

Reid's plan sounds to me an awful like the Bush plan. The differences are the embrace of loss and the timetable for withdrawal. The foreign policy blather of some alternative world after removal of combat troops is merely window-dressing for the agenda of withdrawal. And the compromises conceding an ongoing American counter-terrorism and training mission in Iraq could justify pretty much all of what we WERE doing in Iraq before.

In the end, the Reid plan makes no sense as an intellectual articulation of U.S. withdrawal...."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 03 May 07 - 08:30 AM

Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Unpopular Iraq compromise looms over congressional Democrats
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Senior Democratic sources tell CNN that Democratic congressional leaders realize they must drop a timeline for troop withdrawal from an Iraq war spending bill, and that doing so will cost the votes of several anti-war lawmakers.

Congress passed the $124 billion spending bill last week which would have removed most U.S. troops from Iraq by March 2008 at the latest, but President Bush vetoed the measure Tuesday.

Democratic leaders find themselves in a bind because they have repeatedly promised not to cut funding for troops already in harm's way, but they realize that doing so requires sending the president a bill that he will sign by the end of the month. Sources say the leaders know full well that that means they cannot send the president another war funding bill with troop withdrawal language.

The sources also say that Democratic leaders in both the House and Senate are aware that they will anger their base in the short-term and that a significant number of Democratic legislators will refuse to support a compromise war funding bill that does not include a troop withdrawal plan.

In an effort to calm the outrage among many in their caucus, Democratic leaders are already promising to take up the fight again soon as part of the defense authorization and appropriation bills.

-- CNN Congressional Correspondent Dana Bash

http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/blogs/politicalticker/

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 03 May 07 - 01:11 AM

Ah -- it's been liberation on his mind all along, has it? Well, he made his goal to liberate Iraq from Saddam and the Baathists. About two years a go. So everything since then has been "leadership"?

Dear lord, spare me from such leadership.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 02 May 07 - 10:04 PM

Tara wrote:
The majority of Americans honestly have absolutley no clue what is really going on in Iraq and why exactly our troops are there. The middle East has been at war over religion for hundreds of years; obviously if they haven't been able to solve it on their own to this day, they most likely never will be. That is where America steps in. If we want to remain the leading country, we have to do just that: LEAD the world! And that involves taking risks and spending large amounts of money and risking the lives of incredibly brave soldiers to help out another country that is in desperate need. Americans are so wrapped up in themselves and too worried about gas prices increasing by one dollar when there are MUCH bigger issues at hand going on the world. We are the richest country and naturally the most selfish country. Our poorest communities don't even come close to comparing to the poverty in entire COUNTRIES in the middle east. Their women are treated like slaves and their children are raised at the age of 4 to be martyrs! How can our country prosper when the entire world is at stake??? Everyone has this false hatred for Bush, but when you ask them why they hate him, they have no substantial supporting reasons; they are just basing their opinion off of what the majority of the nation thinks. Everyone thinks we are in Iraq for the oil, but that is not entirely true. Bush has to tell white lies; just like every normal president does. He has to say things in order to obtain support from the people with the money. And the only way he will get financial backing from those people is if they are under the impression that they are going to get something out of it. So yes, maybe we are there for some oil; but Bush's main goal is to first establish a democracy and liberate the women and children so that in the future, we will never have to fear another terrorist attack like 9/11. My parents were frustrating me the other day because they were complaining about the rising costs of gas in the U.S. and they were blaiming everything on Bush and saying how terrible of a President he is, so I had to bring them back to reality. I said to them, "Listen to yourselves! You have three cars, a beautiful home with no mortgage payment, a brand new trailer, a huge back yard, vacations, steady jobs, substantial income, freedom, laughter, love, and all you can moan about is gas prices????" I told them exactly what I am writing to all of those reading this blog! WAKE UP AMERICA! There are way more important issues at hand going on in the world! If we vote for a president that plans to pull out of Iraq, we are in for some hell for the next 4 years or longer! I am not by any means fond of Bush, but we need to give him a break and a little credit sometimes. He has had to lead a nation through some of its toughest times in our nation's history - Hurricane Katrina, Tsunami, 9/11, the world hating him, etc. He can't please everyone; no one can. He has his downfalls, but one thing I am sure of as an American citizen is that we NEED to be in Iraq and the minute we pull our troops out and scratch this whole plan, we are doomed. It will just open the door for more terrorist attacks. So please, I hope that you do some solid research before you make your vote for 2008.

One more thing I wanted to point out is that everyone hates Bush; but the same was the case with Lincoln, and yet today, he is considered one of the best and most influential presidents in US History! At the time of his presidency, Americans hated him for wanted to abolish slavery, but of course now he is a hero and changed the entire world! Maybe 20 years from now, Americans will look back and regret their hatred for Bush and think of him as a hero for his relentless efforts to liberate Iraq and the Middle East!

--Tara
05/02/2007 10:52:28

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 02 May 07 - 12:59 PM

Also from WaPo, an interesting editorial column concerning the observation that there was never any due deliberation about pros and cons in the ramp up to war in Iraq. An excerpt:

"No Doubts, Then and Now

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, April 30, 2007; 2:28 PM

As President Bush drove the country to what has turned out to be a disastrous war in Iraq, did he ever have any doubts about whether it was the right call? Did he ever even consider there might be another way?

The new book by former CIA director George Tenet adds more evidence to the conclusion that once the president's mind was made up, there was no looking back. Inside the White House, the only debate about the war would appear to have been about how to sell it.

The administration's response to this latest charge has been angry -- yet vague. Bush's defenders are still unable to offer up one concrete piece of evidence suggesting that the costs that could (and would) be suffered by American troops and the Iraqi people weighed heavily enough upon the president that he ever seriously questioned his initial decision.

Credibility is Bush's biggest problem these days across the board, whether it's related to his continued assertions about progress in Iraq, his stealthy transformation of the tools of government to partisan purposes, or the trustworthiness of his top aides.

So his certainty about something that went so wrong is not ancient history. It's context.

"

Details and particulars at above link.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 02 May 07 - 12:32 PM

Four years to the day after President Bush made his now-infamous landing on the aircraft carrier, lawmakers observed the anniversary with the dignity Americans have come to expect of their leaders.

"Today is the fourth anniversary of the president of the United States announcing 'Mission Accomplished,' " Rep. Stephen Cohen (D-Tenn.) proclaimed on the House floor. These days Bush "has been channeling Warren Zevon, who said, 'I'm caught between a rock and a hard place. Send lawyers, guns and money,' " Cohen said, paraphrasing the rest just a little: " 'The Shiites have hit the fan.' "


All parties in Washington had their goals for yesterday's remembrance of that day back in 2003, when an unduly optimistic Bush donned a flight suit and stood beneath a "Mission Accomplished" banner on the USS Abraham Lincoln.

The Democrats' objective: Draw attention to their efforts to end the Iraq war by forcing Bush to veto their legislation on the awkward anniversary. The result: Mission Accomplished.

The Republicans' objective: Complain about the Democrats' cheap political stunt at their own cut-rate political event. The result: Mission Accomplished.

Bush's goal: Make the bad memory go away. The result: Well, two out of three ain't bad. ...

(WaPo, 5-2-07)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 02 May 07 - 10:43 AM

Spying on Americans




Published: May 2, 2007

For more than five years, President Bush authorized government spying on phone calls and e-mail to and from the United States without warrants. He rejected offers from Congress to update the electronic eavesdropping law, and stonewalled every attempt to investigate his spying program.

Suddenly, Mr. Bush is in a hurry. He has submitted a bill that would enact enormous, and enormously dangerous, changes to the 1978 law on eavesdropping. It would undermine the fundamental constitutional principle — over which there can be no negotiation or compromise — that the government must seek an individual warrant before spying on an American or someone living here legally.

To heighten the false urgency, the Bush administration will present this issue, as it has before, as a choice between catching terrorists before they act or blinding the intelligence agencies. But the administration has never offered evidence that the 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, hampered intelligence gathering after the 9/11 attacks. Mr. Bush simply said the law did not apply to him.

The director of national intelligence, Michael McConnell, said yesterday that the evidence of what is wrong with FISA was too secret to share with all Americans. That's an all-too-familiar dodge. Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who is familiar with the president's spying program, has said that it could have been conducted legally. She even offered some sensible changes for FISA, but the administration and the Republican majority in the last Congress buried her bill.

Mr. Bush's motivations for submitting this bill now seem obvious. The courts have rejected his claim that 9/11 gave him virtually unchecked powers, and he faces a Democratic majority in Congress that is willing to exercise its oversight responsibilities. That, presumably, is why his bill grants immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated in five years of illegal eavesdropping. It also strips the power to hear claims against the spying program from all courts except the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which meets in secret.

According to the administration, the bill contains "long overdue" FISA modifications to account for changes in technology. The only example it offered was that an e-mail sent from one foreign country to another that happened to go through a computer in the United States might otherwise be missed. But Senator Feinstein had already included this fix in the bill Mr. Bush rejected.

Moreover, FISA has been updated dozens of times in the last 29 years. In 2000, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, who ran the National Security Agency then, said it "does not require amendment to accommodate new communications technologies." And since 9/11, FISA has had six major amendments.

The measure would not update FISA; it would gut it. It would allow the government to collect vast amounts of data at will from American citizens' e-mail and phone calls. The Center for National Security Studies said it might even be read to permit video surveillance without a warrant.

This is a dishonest measure, dishonestly presented, and Congress should reject it. Before making any new laws, Congress has to get to the truth about Mr. Bush's spying program. (When asked at a Senate hearing yesterday if Mr. Bush still claims to have the power to ignore FISA when he thinks it is necessary, Mr. McConnell refused to answer.)

With clear answers — rather than fearmongering and stonewalling — there can finally be a real debate about amending FISA. It's not clear whether that can happen under this president. Mr. Bush long ago lost all credibility in the area where this law lies: at the fulcrum of the balance between national security and civil liberties.
...

(Times editorial 5-2-07)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 02 May 07 - 10:28 AM

Some letters in response to an article inthe Times called "Bridging the Divide in Wartime":

May 1st,
2007
1:11 pm I don't believe it's fair to compare President Bush with other past presidents. it's almost like comparing a group of champion swimmers with a kid that can slow across the pool alone. President Bush has proven himself completely out of league of past presidents, plunging the presidency into its darkest days ever. Incompetence, cronyism and cynicism have been the gifts this White House has brought the American people. But we have only ourselves to blame. When you elect an inexperienced frat boy to the most important elected office in the world should anyone be surprised that he doesn't know how to communicate and work with others? working with others requires confidence, courage and foresight all characteristics Bush's public record shows as absent.

— Posted by Kamau
9.May 1st,
2007
1:37 pm Bush is not capable of making the thoughtful kinds of decisions Lincoln and FDR had to make. Nor are his true believer companions. As a man of ignorance and hubris, he may never understand the tragedy and suffering he has wrought.

This war is an ideologue's war, a pre-emptive armchair war hatched in the isolated planning rooms of Washington without the tests of reality required to balance fantasy and preconceived notions against the real consequences of real war. And we see the result.

— Posted by James Costello
10.May 1st,
2007
1:42 pm From the outset, it has been a conceptual error to characterize the situation in Iraq as a "war." Unlike Kuwait, 9/11 was not Pearl Harbor redux in which one sovereign nation attacked another and international redress was indicated.

George Bush and his coterie chose to wage aggression in both Afghanistan and Iraq against people rather than other nations. As such, the situation in the Middle East most closely resembles a Crusade rather than a legitimate war, and Bush himself actually put the proper, but politically incorrect, name on it early in the day.

The Bush administration had perpetrated a series of blunders who consequences will plague our nation and the world at least for decades, probably generations, and perhaps centuries.

The fundamental blunder was failure to understand at any level the realities of the Middle East and the Muslim World and from that to grasp the enormity and futility America's intervention there would entail.

Arguably, George Bush has been the wrongest person in the wrongest place at the wrongest time in all of American history and, having foolishly opened Pandora's box, there can be no redemption for him.

— Posted by Tom Billings
11.May 1st,
2007
1:47 pm Bush 43 is making Nikita Khruschev look very good! So far as I am concerned, a Harvard MBA is meaningless since the institution gave one to Bush.

Before his first term, Bush was billed as a "bridge builder." It sounded good at a time when there was significant polarization in the U.S.

Now,we have deeply entrenched and well financed positions on everything from Global Warming, to guns, to Immigration…you name it. Consensus on anything is totally out of the question.

Show me a man who never admits an making a mistake and I will show you a man who makes no intelligent decisions whatsover. The same man will also cast blame for his many failures on others…the perfect narcissist. He is not a decider…he is a derider. He believes that, but portraying a tough guy, he can bluff forever. He sure bluffed the media for 6 years. They were his lapdogs.

History will treat this man brutally, and deservedly so.

Ed

— Posted by Ed Boyle
12.May 1st,
2007
2:00 pm The Republicans led by Bush and his neocon friends own this war. No matter how they try to twist history we all know who started the war and who is trying to stop it. The American people clearly spoke in 2006 but Bush did not hear. In 2008 he will hear and any Republican running for office will hear loud and clear. Bush is the best thing for Democrats to get elected that could have possibly been imagined. What we are going to see in 08 is a complete wipeout of any Republican who dares run. Unfortunately we cannot share political power as we once could in this country because we no longer deal with people of honor who keep their
word. When someone tells a lie now we call it, "Bushing it"
Jim

— Posted by Jim Denton
13.May 1st,
2007
2:15 pm PLEASE: Just impeach him before he does any further damage. He doesn't have the depth to understand what and who he disagrees with. He is a mental midget and dangerous. Will the media make up for it's past mistakes by coming out and calling for his impeachment? Our lives and the lives of our children are at stake and cannot remain in his or his administrations hands.

— Posted by gfaigen

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 02 May 07 - 09:37 AM

Hot tamale prose from the Redheaded Terror of the Times, Ms. Maureen Dowd (excerpt), in which she lays the soul of George Tenet bare:

"If Colin Powell and George Tenet had walked out of the administration in February 2003 instead of working together on that tainted U.N. speech making the bogus case for war, they might have turned everything around. They might have saved the lives and limbs of all those brave U.S. kids and innocent Iraqis, not to mention our world standing and national security.

It would certainly have been harder for timid Democrats, like Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and John Edwards, to back up the administration if two members of the Bush inner circle had broken away to tell an increasingly apparent truth: that Dick Cheney, Rummy and the neocons were feverishly pushing a naïve president into invading Iraq with junk facts.

General Powell counted on Slam Dunk — a slender reed — to help him rid the speech of most of the garbage Mr. Cheney's office wanted in it. Slam, of course, tried to have it both ways, helping the skeptical secretary of state and pandering to higher bosses. Afterward, when the speech turned out to be built on a no-legged stool, General Powell was furious at Slam. But they both share blame: they knew better. They put their loyalty to a runaway White House ahead of their loyalty to a fearful public.

Slam Dunk's book tour is mesmerizing, in a horrifying way.

"The irony of the whole situation is, is he was bluffing," Slam said of Saddam on "Larry King Live" on Monday night, adding, "And he didn't know we weren't." Mr. He-Man Tenet didn't understand the basics of poker, much less Arab culture. It never occurred to him that Saddam might feign strength to flex muscles at his foes in the Middle East? Slam couldn't take some of that $40 billion we spend on intelligence annually and get a cultural profile of the dictator before we invaded?

If he was really running around with his hair on fire, knowing the Osama danger, shouldn't he have set off alarms when W. and Vice went after Saddam instead of the real threat?

Many people in Washington snorted at his dramatic cloak-and-dagger description of himself to Larry King: "I worked in the shadows my whole life."

He was not Jason Bourne, lurking in dangerous locales. He risked life and limb on Capitol Hill among the backstabbers and cutthroat bureaucrats — from whom he obviously learned a lot. He spent nine years on the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, four as staff director. When Bill Clinton appointed him to run the C.I.A. in 1997, the profile of him in The Times was headlined "A Time to Reap the Rewards of Being Loyal." It observed that old colleagues had said "he had an ability to make many different superiors feel at ease with him."

Six former C.I.A. officials sent Mr. Tenet a letter via his publisher — no wonder we're in trouble if spooks can't figure out the old Head Spook's home address — berating him for pretending he wrote his self-serving book partly to defend the honor of the agency and demanding that "at least half" of the profits be given to wounded soldiers and the families of dead soldiers (there needs to be a Son of Slam law). One of the signers, Larry Johnson, told CNN that Slam "is profiting from the blood of American soldiers."

"By your silence you helped build the case for war," the former C.I.A. officials wrote. "You betrayed the C.I.A. officers who collected the intelligence that made it clear that Saddam did not pose an imminent threat. You betrayed the analysts who tried to withstand the pressure applied by Cheney and Rumsfeld."

They also said, "Although C.I.A. officers learned in late September 2002 from a high-level member of Saddam Hussein's inner circle that Iraq had no past or present contact with Osama bin Laden and that the Iraqi leader considered Bin Laden an enemy ... you still went before Congress in February 2003 and testified that Iraq did indeed have links to Al Qaeda. ...

"In the end you allowed suspect sources, like Curveball, to be used based on very limited reporting and evidence." They concluded that "your tenure as head of the C.I.A. has helped create a world that is more dangerous. ... It is doubly sad that you seem still to lack an adequate appreciation of the enormous amount of death and carnage you have facilitated."

Thus endeth the lesson in our class on "The Ultimate Staff Guy." If you have something deadly important to say, say it when it matters, or just shut up and slink off. "


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 01 May 07 - 09:45 PM

Wow! An interesting and relevant counterpoint, Mister Dickey!! Thank you.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 01 May 07 - 09:44 PM

Iraqis: Dems can't force pullout
Many think Bush will get funds, informal poll finds

By Chris Kraul
Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times
Published April 28, 2007

BAGHDAD -- An informal poll of Iraqis suggests many think President Bush holds the upper hand in the struggle with the U.S. Congress over funding the Iraq war and doubt that Democrats can force a phased withdrawal of troops as a condition of passing a spending bill.

"Bush is a fox who knows how to play the game and turn it to his own advantage," said Razaq Hobi Karreem, a 40-year-old laborer in Baghdad, confident that Bush will get his way on the budget.

Karreem was one of 20 Iraqis in several cities interviewed Friday on the spending battle and the outcome's effect on their future. They were about 4-to-1 in favor of coalition troops staying until Iraq's security forces are ready to take over.

Muhammad Abdul-Ameer, a university lecturer in Najaf, said a U.S. withdrawal would cause a "catastrophe" because the Iraqi army and police are not ready to shoulder security. The U.S. military is here for the long haul, he and others said, if for no other reason than to protect American economic interests and keep chaos from enveloping the region.

"After all our security has broken down and our infrastructure smashed, the Americans want to leave now? That's not going to work. They would give terrorists and militias the green light to prevail," said Dhia Saleem, a worker at a Baghdad restaurant.

"There would be no security, and regional battles would follow with outside countries interfering," said Isam Mohammed Ali, a 33-year-old merchant in Basra...."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 01 May 07 - 09:28 PM

Conflation is when a convict eats too many beans right?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 01 May 07 - 08:57 PM

(05-01) 16:00 PDT -- President Bush carried through on his often-repeated threat today and vetoed a war spending bill that called for a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, but on Capitol Hill key Republicans started moving away from the administration's hard line against compromising with Democrats.

"Setting a deadline for withdrawal will be setting a date for failure and that's unacceptable,'' Bush said in a televised statement this afternoon from the White House.
Moments before Bush had vetoed the $124.2 billion bill, which would have provided about $100 billion to pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through September, but would also have set a Democratic-backed goal of withdrawing almost all U.S. combat forces from Iraq by March 2008.

Bush said the legislation, only the second bill he has vetoed, was dangerous because it "substitutes the opinion of politicians for the judgment of our military commanders.''
Democratic leaders, who had appealed to Bush to sign the bill up until the moment he vetoed it, said the president was denying the will of American voters who last November elected an anti-war Democratic majority in Congress.

"The president wants a blank check and Congress is not going to give it to him,'' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said to reporters just minutes after Bush's veto.
"We had hoped the president would have treated with the respect that a bipartisan majority of both houses supported by the overwhelming majority of the American people deserved,'' she added.

A Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll released late last week showed voters back the congressional withdrawal plan 56 to 37 percent. The poll also found that 55 percent said victory in Iraq -- a war that has lasted more than four years and claimed more than 3,350 American lives -- is no longer possible.

Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., vowed to press on. "If the president thinks that by vetoing this bill he will stop us from working to change the direction of the war in Iraq he is mistaken,'' Reid said.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 01 May 07 - 04:32 PM

Your conflation is subtle beyond all words, Mister D.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 01 May 07 - 04:05 PM

I think this al-Masri fellow, like you, held a very dim view of the Bush administration.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 01 May 07 - 10:11 AM

Giventhat he was killed by insurgents, Dickey, why is this germane to this thread? Or are you just in a cluttery sort of mood today?


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 01 May 07 - 08:41 AM

Iraq's al-Qa'ida head killed
May 01, 2007

THE leader of al-Qai'da in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was killed today in an internal fight between insurgents north of Baghdad, the Interior Ministry spokesman said. Brigadier-General Abdul Kareem Khalaf told Reuters: "we have definite intelligence reports that al-Masri was killed today".

Another source in the ministry also said Masri had been killed. Khalaf said the battle happened near a bridge in the small town of al-Nibayi, north of Baghdad...."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 30 Apr 07 - 02:47 PM

from the Washington Post:

The Right Man for the World Bank

By Andrew Young
Monday, April 30, 2007; Page A15

"Daddy King" -- the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. -- was always reminding us that "hate is too great a burden to bear." Even after a childhood of racist oppression and the cruel assassination of both his son Martin by white men and his wife by a deranged black man as she sat at the organ of Ebenezer Baptist Church playing the Lord's Prayer, he daily affirmed that we must never stoop to hate.

Yet I came closer to hating Paul Wolfowitz than I ever came to hating Bull Connor, the Ku Klux Klan or the killers of Martin Luther King Jr.

You see, I saw Wolfowitz as the neocon policy wonk who led us into a war in Iraq but who had never even been in a street fight himself. My personal fantasy was to catch him alone and give him a good thrashing.

It seems our European friends are now indulging my fantasy. But I've come to realize how wrong that impulse is and how right Archbishop Desmond Tutu is when he says there's "no future without forgiveness."

I've also come to believe that the impatience of Wolfowitz and others with Saddam Hussein's violence grew from a more massive destruction than the world could ignore -- Hussein's murder of more than a million Shiites, Kurds, Kuwaitis and Iranians, even without possessing atomic weapons. I was in Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion of 1990. I saw the horror and bloodshed of their occupation, and I knew Hussein had to be restrained. I may disagree with the means that were used, but not with the problem.

At the World Bank, however, an aggressive impatience with the evils of disease and poverty is exactly what is needed.

I first spent time with Paul Wolfowitz in Anacostia in 2005, when I participated in a program of the Operation Hope financial literacy initiative. In reading the program notes, I discovered that his PhD from the University of Chicago concerned the politics and economics of water resources management and that George Shultz had been his mentor at the State Department. When he was Treasury secretary, Shultz took me on my first trip to Africa as a congressional delegate to a World Bank gathering in Nairobi. Shultz also opened the diplomatic dialogue with the African National Congress at a time when much of Europe and America wrote off Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki as hopeless communist terrorists.

I therefore decided to work with Paul Wolfowitz as a brother, and I have not been disappointed. We were together in Nigeria in 2006 for a Leon H. Sullivan Summit. I saw his effectiveness and warmth at work in a setting of 12 heads of state and 2,000 delegates from 22 countries.

His commitment and aggressiveness in promoting African development, as well as his abhorrence of needless bureaucratic "CYA" behavior, have been welcomed by those who love Africa and the developing world as well as by those willing to admit the complicity of the haves in the crisis of the have-nots.

It is my sincere hope that our European friends and allies can make the distinction between the U.S. Defense Department and the World Bank. While we still abhor the mismanagement and hubris of the Iraq invasion, we can share an aggressive impatience with poverty, disease, illiteracy and bureaucratic nitpicking and get on with our efforts to prevent the future wars and environmental crises.

France, Norway and the Netherlands have always been at the forefront of this struggle. I'm hopeful they will see the greater good of working together at the World Bank on these present evils and allow history, the World Court or the United Nations to judge Wolfowitz on his role in our previous conflicts.

We must get beyond the current crisis at the World Bank, a careful examination of which will show that Wolfowitz was operating in what he felt was the best interest of the institution and with the guidance of its ethics committee.

This crisis also should not redound to the detriment of Wolfowitz's companion, Shaha Riza, a British Muslim woman who is an admired World Bank professional and a champion of human rights in the Muslim world.

I am a Protestant Christian minister, a product of America's excessive Puritanism. I've always looked to Europe for sophistication, temperance and the tolerance the world needs to survive. It is my appeal that we offer Paul Wolfowitz the same chance to learn from the misjudgments of the past and move on together to construct a more just, prosperous and nonviolent world.

Andrew Young has served as executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, as mayor of Atlanta and as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He is co-chairman of Good Works International, a consulting firm offering advice in emerging markets in the Caribbean and Africa.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 30 Apr 07 - 01:57 PM

An interesting array of comments on Bush's stance on the budget bill and his promise to veto same, in the Times.

I would say there is a pretty angry population out there. But read it for yourself.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 29 Apr 07 - 02:43 PM

Th LA Times, Sunday, 4-29-07:

"...GOP has uphill climb for cash and candidates
The party feels the drag of investigations and minority status in Congress. And then there's Bush.
By Michael Finnegan, Times Staff Writer
April 29, 2007

WASHINGTON — President Bush's unpopularity and a string of political setbacks have created a toxic climate for the Republican Party, making it harder to raise money and recruit candidates for its drive to retake control of Congress.

Some of the GOP's top choices to run for the House next year have declined, citing what Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) called a "poisonous" environment. And Republicans' fundraising edge, an important advantage over the last five years, has dwindled.

With GOP clout diminished after November's election losses, the Republicans' national committee and their House and Senate campaign committees together raised the same amount as the Democrats in the first quarter of the year — and Democrats ended the period with more cash in the bank. At this point four years ago, Republicans had more than twice the money Democrats did.

"The reality is the Republican brand right now is just not a good brand," said Tim Hibbitts, an independent Oregon pollster. "For Republicans, the only way things really get better … is if somehow, some way, Iraq turns around."

Jennifer Duffy of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report said the party was "desperately in need of some Prozac."

The problems can be seen in such places as Florida's 22nd Congressional District, which hugs the coast north of Fort Lauderdale. Republicans held that House seat for a quarter-century. But since losing it last year, the party has had trouble finding a top-tier candidate for it.

Two of the GOP's choices, both state legislators, declined to run. A third, Boca Raton's mayor, said he was weighing whether a Republican had any hope of retaking the district.

"You have to sort of lay a bet down now on what will be the environment in 18 months," said Mayor Steven Abrams, who must leave his current office because of term limits.

Though Republicans have recruited many solid candidates in their effort to retake Capitol Hill — and they have more than 18 months to improve their fortunes — the environment could get worse.

Damaged by ethics scandals in 2006, the GOP in recent weeks has seen FBI raids at businesses or homes connected to two of its congressmen. A federal agency last week began an investigation into Bush advisor Karl Rove's political operation, and congressional panels authorized a flurry of subpoenas related to White House political activities and the run-up to the Iraq war.

Three-term Rep. Rob Simmons of Connecticut, who lost his seat last year by 83 votes, said he turned down an appeal from the GOP to run again in 2008, partly because of the dismal political climate. In a district dominated by Democrats, he said, it has become impossible for even a moderate Republican like himself to win — especially since he voted to authorize the war in Iraq. Republicans in recent days said they had found a solid candidate to run in Simmons' place: the former commander of the area's naval base.

In Colorado, Republican Sen. Wayne Allard's decision not to seek reelection set the stage for one of the nation's most competitive 2008 races. But the top choice of party leaders, former Rep. Scott McInnis, has taken a pass, citing family reasons. McInnis had nearly $1 million stockpiled for the race.

Broader signs of Republican distress also are turning up across the country.

When voters five years ago were asked which party they identified with, neither Democrats nor Republicans held an advantage. Now 50% of voters say they are aligned with the Democrats, and 35% with Republicans, according to a survey released last month by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

And in New Hampshire, nonpartisan pollster Dick Bennett said the atmosphere was so sour that he was having a tough time getting Republicans to participate in surveys. The war, high gas prices and unhappiness with the Bush administration have dampened their interest sharing opinions, he said.

A few years ago, "they would make arguments in favor of the president, and they don't anymore," Bennett said. "They don't defend the president on anything."

Republicans do hold some advantages in the 2008 congressional elections, including district lines for many contested House seats that are drawn in their favor.

More than 60 Democrats will have to defend seats in districts where voters backed President Bush in 2004, Republicans say, suggesting that many of those incumbents will be too liberal to win. By contrast, only seven Republicans are defending seats in districts that went for Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry, they say.

Moreover, GOP officials say conditions are likely to improve once the party settles on a presidential nominee — who they believe will eclipse Bush in the public eye and diminish his drag on Republican prospects...."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Apr 07 - 02:09 PM

For that matter, why don't Americans know the full truth about Mr. Bush's illegal domestic spying program or his decisions on how to handle prisoners ?
----------------------------------------------------------------
This question is worth answering.

While it is ostensibly true that the Bush House is commiting the equivalent of a Watergate scandal every second 24/7.

Nixon had only federal departments to engage in illegal activities for his own benefit.

W has family (President dad, Govenor Jeb, WTC Marvin).
W has privatized covert military units. W has Diebold.
W has PNAC(Cheney Rumsfeld etc).
W has FOX. W has all of Reagan's Iran conspirators.
W has the NSA. W has the Supreme Court. W has a new Homeland Security.

W has a war which he considers a mandate to ignore the Constitution.

W has loyalty from those who know that loyalty is their get out of jail free card.

Bush has an Ace kicker 9-11, whether it was LIH or MIH.

W also has friends, something Nixon did not.


No wonder that George is AWOL, he doesn' need to be there except for photo ops.

He is insulated distanced bubbled and has plausible deniability by ignorance alone.
---------------------------------------------------------------------


Who will bring down his house of Cards?

Andrew Card
Ray McGovern
Paul Roberts
Lt. Bob Bowman
Tenent
and 3 others I can not name here.

You will see how one little card among many at the bottom of this huge house of cards will weaken the whole structure much like WTC7.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 29 Apr 07 - 12:49 PM

The Times opines:

"Surely no one beyond a handful of the most self-deluded Republicans in Congress was surprised at the disclosure by George Tenet, the former intelligence director, that there was never a serious debate in the Bush administration about whether Iraq actually posed a threat to the United States.

It has long been evident that President Bush decided to invade Iraq first, and constructed his ramshackle case for the war after the fact. So why, after all this time, are Americans still in the dark about the details of that campaign?

For that matter, why don't Americans know the full truth about Mr. Bush's illegal domestic spying program or his decisions on how to handle prisoners of the war on terror? And now there are new questions begging for answers — about the purge of United States attorneys and about campaign pep rallies in executive branch agencies that might well have violated federal law.

For six years, the Republican majority in Congress ignored the administration's power grabs, misdeeds and incompetence or, worse, pushed through laws that gave legislative cover to some of Mr. Bush's most outrageous abuses of power. Now that the Democrats control Congress, they have opened the doors of government in welcome ways. But the list of questions just seems to grow.

We hope Representative Henry Waxman, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, enforces the subpoena of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to discuss prewar claims about Saddam Hussein's long-gone weapons programs. Ms. Rice, who was national security adviser before the war, says she has answered every possible question. Actually, we don't have room for all our questions.

Just a few: Did she vet the briefing Mr. Bush got from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's rogue intelligence shop on Iraq's alleged efforts to acquire uranium? The Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department thought, correctly, that the report was false. So why did Ms. Rice permit the president to repeat it to the world? Or did Mr. Bush also know what he was claiming was wrong?

The same applies to other claims about Iraq, including a false report about the purchase of aluminum tubes for bomb building, talk of mushroom clouds and fairy tales about links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. When it became clear the intelligence was false, why didn't Ms. Rice make sure the public found out? Before the war, Ms. Rice was not in a post requiring Senate confirmation, but she is now. If she refuses to testify, the House should hold her in contempt...."

(Nyew York Times editorial 4-29-07)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 29 Apr 07 - 10:24 AM

Democratic presidential candidates debate where to wage war next
By Jerry White
28 April 2007

In the first debate between candidates for the Democratic Party's 2008 presidential nomination, the leading contenders made clear that whatever their differences with the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq, they are all committed to maintaining the US occupation of the oil-rich country and that, if elected president, they would not hesitate to use US military power anywhere in the world to defend the geo-political interests of American imperialism.

The debate, which was broadcast by MSNBC television from South Carolina State University, included ostensible front runners New York Senator Hillary Clinton, Illinois Senator Barack Obama and former North Carolina senator and vice presidential candidate John Edwards, as well as Delaware Senator Joseph Biden, Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. Also included were Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich and former Alaska senator Mike Gravel.

The debate was overshadowed by the deep crisis over the war in Iraq and the growing popular hatred of for the war—particularly among Democrat voters, who according to a poll released this week are 78 percent in favor of total withdrawal and 54 percent in favor of immediate withdrawal.

While all of the candidates did their best to feign opposition to the war, the debate began just hours after the Senate approved a supplemental spending bill that will provide the White House with an additional $124 billion to continue the fighting and occupations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of those on the platform sought to cast the funding bill as an "antiwar" measure because of the toothless and non-binding timetable in the bill for the withdrawal of some troops from Iraq. "The Congress has voted, as of today, to end this war," Clinton declared....."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 29 Apr 07 - 09:48 AM

Your article raises a profound issue. It's not Reid's fault he can't name a winner. The entire operation is not a war in the normal sense, has no defined enemy, and was not declared against any nation. Mister Terror is not going to come out and surrender. The asininity of this situation is certainly not Reid's doing, but Bush's.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Apr 07 - 03:00 PM

GEORGE W BUSH RECEIVES PURPLE HEART MEDAL !

A US soldier who had honorably been awarded a purple heart felt that George W Bush was facing so much criticism and has suffered so many slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune that he offered his medal to the President. After a few go betweens a small ceremony was performed at the White House and the president was bestowed with his very own purple heart medal.




I'm not kidding.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 27 Apr 07 - 05:49 PM

Desperately Seeking Defeat in Iraq 27/04/2007 Amir Taheri

Without meaning to do so, Senator Harry Reid, leader of the Democrat majority in the US Senate, has pushed the debate over the war in Iraq away toward a new direction.
    Senator Reid claims that the war is lost and that US has already been defeated. By advancing that claim the senator has moved the debate away from the initial antiwar obsession with the legal and diplomatic controversies that preceded it. Reid is no longer interested in establishing the Bush administration's supposed guilt in manipulating intelligence data and ignoring the United Nations. Reid has distanced himself from such early anti-war figures as Howard Dean and Michael Moore.
    At the same time, Reid has parted way with other Democrat leaders, such as Senator Hillary Clinton who supported the war but now claims that its conduct has been disastrous. What they mean by implication is that a Democrat president would do better than George W Bush, and win the war. Reid's new position, however, means that even a Democrat president would not be able to ensure American victory in Iraq. For him Iraq is irretrievably lost.
    Some anti-war analysts have praised Reid for what they term "his clarity of perception." A closer examination, however, would show that Reid might have added to the confusion that has plagued his party over the issue from the start.
    Because all wars have winners and losers, Reid, having identified the US as the loser, is required to name the winner. And, this is what Reid cannot do.The reason is that, whichever way one looks at the situation, the US and its Iraqi allies, that is to say the overwhelming majority of the people of Iraq, remain the only objective victors in this war.
    Reid cannot name Al Qaeda as the winner because the terror organization has failed to achieve any of its objectives. It has not been able to halt the process of democratization, marked by a string of elections, and failed to destroy the still fragile institutions created in the post-Saddam era. Al Qaeda is also suffering from increasing failure to attract new recruits, while coming under pressure from Iraqi Sunni Arab tribes, especially west of the Euphrates.
    In military terms, Al Qaeda has failed to win any territory, and has lost the control it briefly exercised in such places as Fallujah and Samarra. More importantly, perhaps, Al Qaeda has failed to develop a political program, focusing instead on its campaign of mindless terror....
.....Despite continued violence, the US and it Iraqi allies are winning this third war as well. Their enemies are like the man in a casino, who wins a heap of tokens at the roulette table, but is told at the cashier that those cannot be exchanged for real money.
    The terrorists, the insurgents, the criminal gangs, and the chauvinists of all ilk are still killing lots of people in Iraq. But they cannot translate those killings into political gain for themselves. Their constituencies are shrinking, and the pockets of territory where they hide are becoming increasingly exposed. They certainly cannot drive the Americans out. No power on earth can. Unless, of course, Harry Reid does it for them."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Apr 07 - 04:24 PM

Didja hear that George Tenet just released a 'Cheney Dearest' tell all book that he wrote.

Dick made him do it
He also said that he thought long and hard about getting his meadal of freedom award.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Apr 07 - 04:16 PM

At the risk of being accused of repeating myself. . . .

CLICKY.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Apr 07 - 04:06 PM

Well that tears it then
IMPEACH CLINTON !

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 27 Apr 07 - 03:40 PM

After Clinton gutted the military to produce a budget surplus, who you gonna call?

Yeah, he reinvented government and privatized Military support activities to Halliburton with LOGCAP. Now Hallibuton is the evil boogey man.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 27 Apr 07 - 01:33 PM

Even if Clinton was/is at fault for everything that has gone wrong for the last 16 years...

Ya gotta hand it to em. He managed to go to war and still end up with a surplus in the treasury.

Of course he didn't hire expensive; Halliburton, Blackwater USA, Aegis and security guards to fight the war.

He used the US military.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 27 Apr 07 - 01:28 PM

"...The Clinton White House justified this atrocious conduct in terms that sound strikingly familiar today. Justice Department attorneys maintained that foreigners held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay have absolutely no legal rights, whether under the Constitution, federal statutes, or international law. According to this logic, the Clinton White House was free to treat the detainees however it pleased. (There was some plagiarism here. The Clinton folks took this argument from the Bush administration lawyers who'd first defended the camp...."

http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/19783.html

Where was the Pious Jack Balkin during the Clinton administration?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 27 Apr 07 - 11:24 AM

"WASHINGTON, April 26 — George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, has lashed out against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials in a new book, saying they pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a "serious debate" about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States.

The 549-page book, "At the Center of the Storm," is to be published by HarperCollins on Monday. By turns accusatory, defensive, and modestly self-critical, it is the first detailed account by a member of the president's inner circle of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the decision to invade Iraq and the failure to find the unconventional weapons that were a major justification for the war.

"There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat," Mr. Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years. Nor, he adds, "was there ever a significant discussion" about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.

"

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 27 Apr 07 - 11:15 AM

"Bush tries to kill all the Gitmo lawyers: "We should not forget this central point: The Justice Department is trying to do everything possible to prevent Guantanamo detainees from having any rights at all," writes Yale law professor Jack Balkin at the group legal blog Balkinization. "It wants to get as close as it can to what it the Bush Administration sought before [the Supreme Court decisions in] Rasul and Hamdan — a law-free zone. But the more the Justice Department tries to eliminate procedural protections and basic elements of fairness for the detainees, the more it undermines its argument that the detainees have a remedy that is just as good as habeas." Balkin continues:
The Bush Administration wants what it has always wanted — a legal black hole, a place where it can seize any non-citizen, declare them an enemy of the state and hold them without any means of redress. It wants, in other words, the very absence of law.
Although we have been momentarily distracted by the scandals over Alberto Gonzales, we should remember that the Administration's policies on detention and interrogation — all devised and approved by Justice Department lawyers — are the real reason why this Administration, and this Justice Department, have been such a disgrace to our country and to our traditions of government."

NYT, 4-27-07

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 27 Apr 07 - 11:03 AM

On the Pat Tilman fratricide coverup:

"...At a House hearing, a buddy who witnessed Corporal Tillman's death told of being ordered not to tell his family that "friendly fire" was the cause. (An early report by this witness was doctored by someone in the military — who? — in awarding Corporal Tillman the Silver Star.) The truth was evident, yet the family was not told for five weeks — until after the corporal was mourned in a nationally televised funeral as a soldier killed by terrorists.

The pain inflicted by the Pentagon's mendacious account was evident in the maternal gaze of Mary Tillman as she pleaded at the hearing for investigators to search unstintingly up the chain of command to track the cover-up that victimized her son. The truth remains elusive and eats at so many other tales of war. Ms. Tillman properly asks whether her son was exploited through official lies to offset such bad war news as prisoner abuses by the military. The Army has singled out a number of officers, including four generals, for possible disciplinary action, but says the cover-up goes no higher.

Congress must press forward, particularly in tracking an officer's memo sent to superiors in Washington a week after the tragedy to ask that word of the likely finding of friendly fire be quietly passed on to White House and Pentagon officials. The nation, like the Tillman family, deserves nothing less than the full truth of war."

(NYT, 4-27-07)