BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 24 Apr 07 - 06:21 PM

Its really cashew butter with truffles and imported century old champagne jelly from France.

---------------------


They blew up their (Pat Tillman) poster boy.
said Pat Tillman's mom today.

In this respondsible free administration there is no one who is to blame for the Pat Tillman fiction.
Even the 4 authors of the official military Silver Star citation said that they did not know who inserted the made for TV version of Tillman's death.

Whenever some one in our goverment does claim respondsibility for something it is the respondsibility to vigorously investigate themselves.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 25 Apr 07 - 12:20 AM

"what changed when" What Clinton said will not change. It reflects the attitudes toward Saddam Hussein and beliefs of his WMDS. Now everybody is allowed to backpedal but Bush and his administration.

A double standard, according to the World Book Dictionary, is a standard applied more leniently to one group than to another.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 25 Apr 07 - 03:00 AM

Total Bull, amigo.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 25 Apr 07 - 09:49 AM

"Bush argues: "An artificial timetable of withdrawal would say to an enemy, 'Just wait them out.' It would say to the Iraqis, 'Don't do hard things necessary to achieve our objectives,' and it would be discouraging for our troops."

The reality is just the opposite.

The American occupation itself means that the Iraqis — both the warring groups and the government — can procrastinate all they like. American troops become both the targets of all and the excuse for doing nothing.

The only thing that will thoroughly concentrate Iraqi minds on confronting the challenges of a postwar Iraq is to put those challenges right in their face through a pullout timetable.
Philip G. Cerny

Newark, April 24, 2007
(Letter to the NY Times)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 25 Apr 07 - 11:22 AM

Excerpt from a story in Bloomberg concerning the scandal rising up aroound the coverup of Pat Tilman's death from friendly fire in Afghanistan in 2004. IT does seem that lying to the public is a standard and primary instinct in the current Administration, who value appearance and message over substance and understanding over and over:

"April 24 (Bloomberg) -- Government officials told ``deliberate and calculated lies'' to conceal that Army Ranger Pat Tillman, a former professional football player, was killed in Afghanistan by friendly fire, not during a heroic battle against U.S. enemies, his brother told lawmakers today.

Tillman's death, during an April 22, 2004, night patrol in Afghanistan, occurred in the wake of reports about the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and was ``yet another political disaster,'' Kevin Tillman said in Washington. ``So the truth had to be suppressed.''

``Pat's death at the hands of his comrades is a terrible tragedy,'' Tillman told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. ``But the fact that the Army, and what appears to be others, attempted to hijack his virtue and his legacy is simply horrific.''

The committee is investigating how ``accurate information from the battlefield was delayed, distorted or suppressed'' to serve public relations goals, said Representative Tom Davis of Virginia, the top Republican on the panel.

Tillman, 27 when he died, left the Arizona Cardinals to join the U.S. Army Rangers after the Sept. 11 attacks, leaving behind a new bride and a $3.6 million National Football League contract. He was one of the most prominent fatalities of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was celebrated as a war hero by the Pentagon and the National Football League.

Ordered Not to Tell

Specialist Bryan O'Neal, who was with Tillman when he died, said he was ordered not to tell Tillman's brother that the death was the result of friendly fire.

``I wanted right off the bat to let the family know what had happened,'' O'Neal said. ``I was quite appalled that when I was actually able to speak to Kevin, I was ordered not to tell him what happened.''

Defense Department Inspector General Thomas Gimble said in a March 26 report that Army commanders recommended Corporal Tillman for the Silver Star for gallantry in action, while withholding evidence of friendly fire from his family for five weeks.

Gimble recommended that the Army examine for possible punishment nine senior officers involved in three ``deficient'' probes of the 2004 incident in Afghanistan and in a false citation for the Silver Star. The failure to follow Army regulations in those investigations contributed to ``perceptions of concealment,'' Gimble said last month.

A Series of Mistakes

Gimble said he found a series of mistakes rather than any attempt to cover up the truth of Tillman's death.

A document released by the committee, written to Army General John Abizaid seven days after Tillman's death, said it was ``highly possible'' Tillman was killed by friendly fire. It warned that President George W. Bush shouldn't refer to how Tillman was killed in a speech he was to deliver on May 1.

``I felt that it was essential that you received this information as soon as we detected it in order to preclude any unknowing statements by our country's leaders which might cause public embarrassment if the circumstances of Corporal Tillman's death become public,'' Major General Stanley McChrystal wrote.

According to Gimble, Abizaid said he didn't find out about the friendly fire suspicions until sometime between May 6-13, because he was in Iraq. Still, Bush made no mention of the way Tillman died in his speech two days after the memo was dated.

Representative Henry Waxman, the panel' chairman, said today that he will continue to investigate the circumstances surrounding Tillman's death and how his family was informed that he had been killed by friendly fire.

`Eliminate Evidence'

``These aren't things that are done by mistake, there had to be a conscious attempt to put a story out and keep with that story and eliminate evidence to the contrary and distort the record,'' Waxman said.

The hearing also examined the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch in Iraq. Early news of Lynch's capture included misleading reports that she was shot and stabbed after fighting off attackers until she ran out of ammunition. Lynch was injured when her Humvee was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, and she later said she never fired her weapon because it jammed.

``I am still confused as to why they chose to lie and tried to make me a legend when the real heroics of my fellow soldiers that day were, in fact, legendary,'' Lynch said ``The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining their own ideals for heroes and they don't need to be told elaborate tales.''

---

Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive...


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 26 Apr 07 - 09:36 AM

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps


From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all

Tuesday April 24, 2007
The Guardian

"As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.

Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens' ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don't learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of "homeland" security - remember who else was keen on the word "homeland" - didn't raise the alarm bells it might have.

It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable - as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise."

Ms Wolf's Ten Symptoms, in brief:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

2. Create a gulag

3. Develop a thug caste

4. Set up an internal surveillance system

5. Harass citizens' groups

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release

7. Target key individuals

8. Control the press

9. Dissent equals treason

10. Suspend the rule of law

See link above for her description of Bush's effect on each of these planks.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 26 Apr 07 - 10:02 AM

The Times reports on another dubious firing of an attorney general adding fuel to the embarassing charges of Executive branch manipulation of Justice.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 26 Apr 07 - 10:04 AM

"If President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney believe the belligerently partisan and misleading things they have been saying about Congress's war spending bill, their grip on the few options left in this disastrous war is even more tenuous than we'd guessed. The sooner Mr. Bush and his allies drop the pretense that military victory is still possible in Iraq and their charges of "defeatism" against those who know better, the closer the nation will be to rescuing what can still be rescued from the debacle.

Obviously, the White House and Congress will eventually have to arrive at some kind of compromise. But that compromise cannot be on the "my way or the highway" terms Mr. Bush is demanding. The fact is, Congress has served the country well by finally forcing open debate about how America can best extricate itself from Iraq while minimizing the long-term damage to itself and the Iraqi people.

The "dramatically different" military strategy Mr. Bush now claims to be carrying out in response to the frustrations voters expressed in last November's election is nothing fundamentally new at all. It is just an escalated version of the failed approach — 99 parts military — that the administration has clung to for the past four years. "

(TImes editorial, New York, 4-26-07)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 26 Apr 07 - 10:23 AM

Two letters from citizens:

To the Editor:

The president accuses Democrats of making military decisions that should be left to the generals, but isn't that what he and his team have done since the war planning started and a large reason we're in the mess we're in now?

And why should anyone listen to the president or his supporters? They've had more than four years to resolve the situation and have done nothing but botched it, with no end in sight.

Calvin Hilton
Jacksonville, Fla., April 25, 2007

•

To the Editor:

Given the low regard in which President Bush has historically held bills passed by Congress with his signing statements, I am mystified by his sudden desire to start respecting the legislative process.

If he disagrees with only the timetable part of the bill, why does he suddenly hesitate to single out this provision with a signing statement, as he has with every other legislative provision that has not been to his liking?

The president's sudden appreciation for process strikes me as both cynical and ineffective in the face of public opinion.

Elizabeth Statmore
San Francisco, April 25, 2007

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 26 Apr 07 - 12:06 PM

From: Amos - PM
Date: 25 Apr 07 - 03:00 AM

Total Bull, amigo.

When I critique your echo chamber postings I detail the reasons.

You evidently feel so superior that you do not need to explain anything like Rameses. "When he told a joke you would chortle for days"


Perhaps you can explain where the "bull" is? What changed when? Why does the date of an article change anything? How old is our constitution? is it old and therefore not in force? Do you ever quote Jefferson?

Please explain where the "Bull" is.

    "Democracy Now! is a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on over 450 stations in North America. Pioneering the largest public media collaboration in the U.S., Democracy Now! is broadcast on Pacifica, NPR, community, and college radio stations; on public access, PBS, satellite television (DISH network: Free Speech TV ch. 9415 and Link TV ch. 9410; DIRECTV: Link TV ch. 375); as a "podcast," and on the internet.

    The DCTV Center The program is hosted by award-winning journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez and produced out of the Downtown Community Television Center, a community media center in New York City's Chinatown.

    Democracy Now!'s War and Peace Report provides our audience with access to people and perspectives rarely heard in the U.S.corporate-sponsored media, including independent and international journalists, ordinary people from around the world who are directly affected by U.S. foreign policy, grassroots leaders and peace activists, artists, academics and independent analysts. In addition, the War and Peace Report hosts real debates - debates between people who substantially disagree, such as between the White House or the Pentagon spokespeople on the one hand, and grassroots activists on the other."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Dickey
Date: 26 Apr 07 - 12:17 PM

Vermont House votes no on impeachment

April 26, 2007 By Daniel Barlow Vermont Press Bureau

MONTPELIER – The Vermont House rejected a resolution calling for President Bush and Vice President Cheney's impeachment in an 87-60 vote Wednesday, a move that puts that chamber at odds with the Senate's actions last week.

House lawmakers supporting the resolution were almost entirely Democrats and Progressives, although 41 Democrats broke ranks on the hotly partisan issue and joined the Republicans in opposing the symbolic impeachment resolution.

"One of the lessons we learned from the Clinton impeachment is that it should not be treated lightly," said Rep. Thomas Koch, R-Barre Town. "It ought to be reserved for the most egregious, most urgent high crimes and misdemeanors. It should not be about whether or not you support the president or the war."

Rep. David Zuckerman, P-Burlington, a strong impeachment supporter in the House, said Wednesday's vote was a statement that Vermonters are disappointed with the Bush administration...."

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070426/NEWS01/704260369/1002

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 27 Apr 07 - 10:24 AM

Yeah, we shouldn't get all stirred up about impeachment on minor issues, like slaughter, warmongering, lying to the American public, constitutional malfeasance, and such trifles. We should save the big guns of impeachment for more important things...sexual relations, things like that. Eh, Mister Dick?


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration
From: Amos
Date: 27 Apr 07 - 10:57 AM

"...William Glaberson reported in The Times yesterday that the Justice Department had asked a federal appeals court to remove some of the last shreds of legal representation available to the prisoners.

The government wants the court to allow intelligence and military officers to read the mail sent by lawyers to their clients at Guantánamo Bay. Lawyers would also be limited to three visits with each client, and an inmate would be allowed only a single visit to decide whether to authorize an attorney to handle his case. Interrogators at Guantánamo Bay have a history of masking their identities, so the rule would make it much harder than it already is to gain the trust of a prisoner.

Perhaps the most outrageous of the Justice Department's proposals would allow government officials — on their own authority — to deny lawyers access to the evidence used to decide whether an inmate is an illegal enemy combatant. Not even the appalling Military Commissions Act of 2006, rammed through in the last days of the Republican-controlled Congress, goes that far.

The filing, with the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., says lawyers have caused unrest among the prisoners and improperly relayed messages to the news media. The administration offered no evidence for these charges, probably because there is none. This is an assault on the integrity of the lawyers, reminiscent of a former Pentagon official's suggestion that they are unpatriotic and that American corporations should boycott their firms.

The Justice Department also said lawyers had no right to demand access to clients at Guantánamo Bay because the clients are "detained aliens on a secure military base in a foreign country."

The Supreme Court has already rejected that argument, and President Bush can hardly be worried about the sensibilities of Fidel Castro's government. (The camp is on land leased to Washington after the Spanish-American War.)

It's obvious why the administration is attacking the lawyers. It does not want the world to know more than it already does about this immoral detention camp. And brave lawyers have helped expose abuse and torture there, as well as detentions of innocent men — who are a large portion, if not a majority, of the inmates at Guantánamo Bay. The Bush administration does not want these issues aired in public, and certainly not in court.

Mr. Bush thinks that he has the right to ignore the Constitution when it suits him. But this is a nation of laws, not the whims of men, and giving legal rights to the guilty as well as the innocent is a price of true justice. The only remedy is for lawmakers to rewrite the Military Commissions Act to restore basic rights to Guantánamo Bay and to impose full accountability for what has happened there."

NEw York Times editorial, April 27, 2007

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)

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 - 11:24 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: 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: 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 - 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 - 04:06 PM

Well that tears it then
IMPEACH CLINTON !

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 - 04:24 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 - 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: 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 - 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 - 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 - 04:32 PM

Your conflation is subtle beyond all words, Mister D.


A

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 - 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 - 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 - 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 - 08:50 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: 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.