BS: Popular views of the Bush Administration

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: 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 - 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 - 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 - 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: 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: 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 - 09:48 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Amos
Date: 05 May 07 - 12:14 AM

From CNet.com:

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

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

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

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

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

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

By TIMES WIRES Published May 5, 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amos:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A

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

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

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

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

And of course nearly everyone blames Rumsfeld.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


A

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

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

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


A

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

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

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

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

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

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

A

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

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

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

A

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

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

The inherant double standard, not written into the Constitution.

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

Wrong. Read the post again.



A

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

To the Editor:

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

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

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

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

•

To the Editor:

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

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

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

Martha G. Little
Baltimore, May 3, 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's simply God's will

and he has plans for you.

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

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


A

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

A train of thought:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Dickey:

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

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

A

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

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


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

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

By definition, ideal descriptions are ideal. Doh!

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

A

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

One soldier's perspective.


A

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

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

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

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

Dickey:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A

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

Excerpt from some remarks on Condolezza :

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is Bill Clinton an apologist?

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

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

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

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

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

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

A

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

dear dickey dickey dickey


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

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

EVER!

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

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

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

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



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


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

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

The case of the missing presidential penis.

This is a case for Dickey or McGruff.

I bet McGruff solves this mysterious disappearence first.



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

Was he AWOL?

or just too embarrassed.

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

Donuel: Why are you so interested in dicks?

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

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

A

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

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

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

Doesn't Rove look a little swishy to you?

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

Ever seen Bohemian Grove?

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

W never looks happier than when he is with Tony.

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

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

A lesson in history, from the NY Times:

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

By Jean Edward Smith

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Democrats' Pledge

(NYT Editorial)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is one of those times."

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

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

(Youtube link).



A

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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