BS: Bush inner circle crumbling

Subject: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: 282RA
Date: 01 Apr 07 - 09:46 PM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chief strategist of George W. Bush's 2004 re-election campaign said he had lost faith in the U.S. president over       Iraq and other issues, in a high-level rupture of Bush's famously loyal inner circle.

Matthew Dowd, a polling expert who switched parties to become a Republican and also served as a senior strategist in Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, told The New York Times in an interview on Sunday that Bush must face up to Americans' growing disillusionment with the war.

Dowd said he had found himself agreeing with calls by Democratic Sen.       John Kerry of Massachusetts, Bush's opponent in 2004, for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

"If the American public says they're done with something, our leaders have to understand what they want," Dowd said. "They're saying, 'Get out of Iraq."'

[snip]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070401/pl_nm/bush_dowd_dc_2

For those dumb enough to believe this surge is working, Senator McCain, they might like to explain how over 600 Iraqis died LAST WEEK ALONE and that 6 US soldiers were killed this weekend. Not to mention that since pushing the insurgents out of Baghdad, the violence has now not only moved to the surrounding areas, it has intensified--about 1900 Iraqis died last month. Moreover, Senator, how is it that this surge was supposed to push the Iraqi up fron while the US acted as backup and yet last month's tallies also show twice as many US soldiers killed as Iraqi soldiers?

How is it that Senator McCain states that Baghdad is now safe to walk around in when journalists who have been in Iraq for a year or more riase their eyebrows in disbelief that your assertion, sir. One stating that an American walking out of the Green Zone might last 20 minutes. Of course, you proved them wrong by appearing outside the Green Zone to prove you are right. Of course, you were surrounded by what amounted to your own private army nad you weren't out there very long but I have to wonder whose point you were trying to prove. You pretty much destroyed your own with that little stunt.

Why, Senator McCain, have you thrown away your credibility for George Bush?? In all my years, I have never seen so many people willing to stick their dicks out so far for someone so utterly fucking worthless as George Bush. I've never seen anything like this and I pray I never will again. You've destroyed yourself politically siding with him. What the hell were you thinking? You're so far behind in the polls you may as well give it up now. There was a time when I respected you. Now I can't stand the sight of you.

Oh, and one more thing, Senator. According to Henry Kissinger, this victory in this war is impossible as it is even more complex and contradictory than Vietnam. You remember Vietnam, right? That was the last war we lost and, as I remember, you spent part of it in a prison camp. Apparently, you learned nothing from the experience.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Apr 07 - 09:54 PM

...That was the last war we lost....

Correction: that was the war the politicians lost for us. Just as then, the politicians are playing soldiers now. And the result is going to be far, far worse....

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: 282RA
Date: 01 Apr 07 - 10:01 PM

Why is it that all these people are disillusioned with George Bush and yet voted for him, aided him, defended him? I just read a post from a woman who badmouthed Bush because he sent her husband to Iraq--a war she called immoral and brutal. Then she admits she voted for Bush BOTH times!!!

I mean, it's fine that they are now finally waking up but I still want to kick them in their stupid arses! What are they only now seeing about Bush that they HAD NO GODDAMN RIGHT NOT TO SEE before November 2004???? Dumb fucks!

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: Mrrzy
Date: 01 Apr 07 - 10:18 PM

I like the bumber sticker that says Impeach Cheney First.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: 282RA
Date: 01 Apr 07 - 10:24 PM

If Bush is impeached, Cheney will not sit one day as president. That bastard's likely to keel over any minute.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: GUEST,Throf
Date: 01 Apr 07 - 10:42 PM

I think they're going to sacrifice GW politically. Been planned that way all along. Maybe "shame" him with some pointless impeachment, then it's on to the "other party's" monster. I mean, we're 3 months into 2007, and they already have America's attention fixed on the presidential election at the end of 2008.

Bush and Cheney need to be led away in shackles as of yesterday. Get them away from the nuclear codes. And if Pelosi gets near them, break her knees or something. House cleaning. No more phony two-party system.

Cheney's probably going to step aside so Condi Rice or Liebermann can become the first Female/Black/Jewish Vice-President, or whatever, and then Democrats will be hopping mad that Republicans beat them to the punch, and the charade will go on. Just shut the govt down and send them all home, declare our national debt to be an "odious debt," cancel it. Start over. We have the blueprint in the constitution.

As if that will ever happen. But it is good to see GW's support falling away. I hope he's the last one to realize it and we get to see that deer in the headlights look again...the one he had when he was reading the goat story on 9/11.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Apr 07 - 03:56 PM

Now, to make things more interesting, comes this tidbit.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: artbrooks
Date: 02 Apr 07 - 04:00 PM

At Maroni U? Wow!

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: Barry Finn
Date: 03 Apr 07 - 02:41 AM

So 282RA, you don't care for Bush & Cheney all that much, mildly put.






"GET IN THE BACK OF THE LINE" an' wait your turn,,,,,please.

Barry

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: Peace
Date: 03 Apr 07 - 02:48 AM

It's like that scene from "Airplane" . . . .

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: skipy
Date: 03 Apr 07 - 05:20 AM

Guess which bit of "Airplane" is my favourite bit!
Skipy

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Apr 07 - 06:23 PM

The rats are abandoning the sinking ship, huh?

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Apr 07 - 06:33 PM

Any rat that had even one iota of intelligence would abandon a sinking ship, would he not? Seems like a kind of silly saying to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: GUEST,282RA
Date: 03 Apr 07 - 06:35 PM

>>So 282RA, you don't care for Bush & Cheney all that much, mildly put.






"GET IN THE BACK OF THE LINE" an' wait your turn,,,,,please.

Barry<<

Oh no! Mememememememememe!

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: bobad
Date: 03 Apr 07 - 06:35 PM

It's metaphoric not literal.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: Rapparee
Date: 03 Apr 07 - 09:56 PM

Actually, the rats are supposed to abandon a ship that is GOING to sink. I think that plenty of rats, both two and four legged, have gone down on ships that ARE sinking.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Apr 07 - 10:02 PM

Yeah. Generally because they had no choice.

Okay, so if you see a lot of rats abandoning a ship that is still moored at the dock...then it's a sign that you might better not embark on that ship, right? Is that the original meaning of the phrase?

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: Rapparee
Date: 03 Apr 07 - 10:44 PM

As I understand it, yes. And there might be some truth in it, because the rats would be living in areas humans wouldn't normally see. A leak, which might become catastrophically large in bad weather or over time, in one or more of those areas could drive the rats off the ship by flooding their living quarters.

So the ship would already be "sinking" even if it wasn't immediately apparent.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: Peace
Date: 03 Apr 07 - 10:47 PM

"When Rats Leave a Sinking Ship

During the first century A.D. Pliny the Elder wrote in his Natural History that "when a building is about to fall down, all the rats desert it." A more modern proverb suggests that rats always leave a sinking ship.

This proverbial phenomenon has been observed for centuries and led to the belief that rats possess some mystical power to anticipate disaster. A dread warning that a ship would be making its final voyage was foretold if rats were seen scurrying off the ship before it sailed. In The Tempest, Shakespeare described the boat on which the duke and his infant daughter had been set adrift as so unseaworthy that "the very rats instinctively have quite it."

It is not unusual for rats to leave a ship in great columns or masses if it is sinking. Therefore the sight of hordes of rats scurrying to upper decks of a ship might suggest to fellow passengers that the ship is on its way down. This has nothing to do with the rat's extrasensory perception or powers of prognostication but with its awareness of what is happening at that very moment.

Being burrow dwellers by nature, rats live in the deepest recesses of the ship, in the bilge. This area is so low as to be almost inaccessible to the sailors. Thus the rats become aware of water entering the ship some time before the crew is alerted. As their nesting places are flooded, the rodents are impelled to flee the ship. Their continuous shrill cries of alarm quickly summon the rest of the rats from the hold. They build up into a large, frightened mass of rodents making a panicky exodus. This is, of course, a final calamity for the rats, since they will try to swim to eternity and usually do.

It is quite natural that a sight such as this would incite the passengers and crew to an equally hasty, harried departure but one that ends less disastrously."

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Apr 07 - 11:04 PM

Don't kid yourself, W and his bunkered buddies have 700 days to start an intractable war with tactical nukes that can lock down this country in 72 hours.


btw when a rat is cornered it will fight.


Peace The first time I vistited the Capitol building I found a rat on the steps. NO ordinary rat. this thing was dessicated and flat as if people had been walking on it for months.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: Peace
Date: 03 Apr 07 - 11:20 PM

I am at a loss for words . . . .

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 04 Apr 07 - 08:02 AM

"when a rat is cornered it will fight."

Not if you can dope it up enough - say on TV.... wait on, George doesn't watch TV...

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: Amos
Date: 10 May 07 - 09:45 PM

"Thursday, May 10, 2007

The Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Rove's, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.


Justice Department Probe

Previous coverage from National Journal:
• DOJ Official Directed To Call Fired Prosecutors (5/3/07)
• Gonzales Order Gave Aides Extraordinary Powers (4/30/07)
• Aborted Probe Probably Would Have Targeted Gonzales (3/15/07)
• Bush Blocked DOJ Probe (7/18/06)

More stories from Murray Waas



The withheld records show that D. Kyle Sampson, who was then-chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, consulted with White House officials in drafting two letters to Congress that appear to have misrepresented the circumstances of Griffin's appointment as U.S. attorney and of Rove's role in supporting Griffin.

In one of the letters that Sampson drafted, dated February 23, 2007, the Justice Department told four Senate Democrats it was not aware of any role played by senior White House adviser Rove in attempting to name Griffin to the U.S. attorney post. A month later, the Justice Department apologized in writing to the Senate Democrats for the earlier letter, saying it had been inaccurate in denying that Rove had played a role.

Brad Berenson, an attorney for Sampson, said in an interview that his client did not intend to mislead Congress. Sampson, he said, signed off on the February 23 letter based on representations made by the White House that it was accurate.

The withheld e-mails show that Sampson's draft was forwarded for review to Chris Oprison, an associate White House counsel, who approved the language saying that Justice was not aware of Rove having played any role in supporting Griffin. But an earlier e-mail from Sampson to Oprison that has already been made public indicates that the two men discussed Rove and then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers as being at the forefront of Griffin's nomination.


Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the committee, said he was infuriated that he knew nothing of the existence of the order.






Several of the e-mails that the Bush administration is withholding from Congress, as well as papers from the White House counsel's office describing other withheld documents, were made available to National Journal by a senior executive branch official, who said that the administration has inappropriately kept many of them from Congress.

The senior official said that Gonzales, in preparing for testimony before Congress, has personally reviewed the withheld records and has a responsibility to make public any information he has about efforts by his former chief of staff, other department aides, and White House officials to conceal Rove's role.

"If [Gonzales] didn't know everything that was going on when it went down, that is one thing," this official said. "But he knows and understands chapter and verse. If there was an effort within Justice and the White House to mislead Congress, it is his duty to disclose that to Congress. As the country's chief law enforcement official, he has a higher duty to disclose than to protect himself or the administration."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto denied that the White House was withholding records in the Justice Department's possession, and he said that Gonzales could make many of them public at any time. "The White House is neither guiding nor directing the Justice Department's decisions on privileged documents," Fratto said. "They make those decisions on their own."

Two senior administration officials told National Journal they were frustrated with decisions by Gonzales not to release some of the documents held by the Justice Department. One of the officials charged that "Gonzales is doing this to save his own neck," at the expense of the administration. The same official said that senior aides to Gonzales have been refusing to turn over many relevant documents to Congress, and that the attorney general's top aides have been selectively leaking portions of them to the media to portray themselves in a favorable light.

Last week, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., subpoenaed the Justice Department, demanding all e-mails between department officials and Rove and others at the White House regarding the firings of eight U.S. attorneys.

In a May 2 letter to Gonzales, Leahy said that the committee was subpoenaing the records because "the department's production of documents has been selective and incomplete.... In addition, to date, the department has yet to provide the committee with... any assurance that a preservation order was issued to prevent the loss or destruction of documents."

Separately, six senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee -- three Democrats and three Republicans -- complained to Gonzales last week that they had not been told anything about a confidential order he signed in March 2006, which delegated the authority to hire and fire many of the department's most senior political appointees to Sampson and to Monica Goodling, who at the time was the Justice Department's liaison to the White House.

Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the committee, said he was infuriated that he knew nothing of the existence of the order until it was disclosed by National Journal.

"Pardon me if I raise my voice," Specter said.

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd denied that the department was withholding any records from Congress to conceal wrongdoing by administration officials. "The Justice Department has already turned over 6,000 pages of documents and e-mails to House and Senate committees and voluntarily provided for interviews of numerous senior DOJ officials," Boyd said.

In earlier correspondence with Congress, the department said it had not turned over many documents that Congress had requested because of "confidentiality and privacy" concerns; it also said it would not turn over documents related to answering queries from Congress and the press about the U.S. attorney firings.

Fratto, the White House spokesperson, said, "No White House documents are available except under the conditions offered by White House counsel Fred Fielding to the Judiciary committees." Fielding has offered to allow Congress to interview Rove and other White House officials on the condition that they wouldn't be required to provide formal testimony under oath and that no transcript would be made of what they said. Fratto said that if Congress agreed to those conditions, the White House "would make available the relevant documents at that time."

In the interim, Fratto said, "the White House retains its rights and privileges over those documents.""

Full story at the National Circle.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: Sorcha
Date: 10 May 07 - 10:27 PM

Deeper and deeper they go.....

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 11 May 07 - 12:01 AM

"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive"

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: michaelr
Date: 11 May 07 - 12:44 AM

Almost three screens' worth of copy/paste. No music content.

Come on, guys. Are there rules? Are they selectively enforced? You're giving the enemy ammunition. Joe?

Cheers,
Michael

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: dianavan
Date: 11 May 07 - 02:07 AM

Not only is the inner circle crumbling, the military is lining up against him. Does this man have any support?

"I am outraged, as are the majority of Americans. I'm a lifelong Republican, but it's past time for change," retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste told reporters.

"Our strategy in Iraq today is more of the same, a slow grind to nowhere which totally ignores the reality of Iraq and the lessons of history," Batiste said. "Our president ignores sound military advice and surrounds himself with like-minded and compliant subordinates."

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/05/09/ap3704905.html

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: Donuel
Date: 11 May 07 - 10:02 AM

Gonzales can't say he remembers anything. it would be purgury now that he said he forgot.

Most people here know that the Federal attorney firings will open the can of worms involving fixing elections. I think the can will get opened close enogh before the elections so that the short attention span of the publuc will remember how the Bush gang was fixing elections.


There was a time George Bush would still have made a good martyr if anything happened to him, but now he doesn't even have that cache'.

Subject: RE: BS: Bush inner circle crumbling
From: Amos
Date: 11 May 07 - 10:18 AM

Public to Bush: Enough Already
From foreignaffairs.org — April 4, 2007



The latest results from the Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index show that public anguish over Iraq is spilling into other areas of U.S. foreign policy in ways that are likely to curtail the freedom action of the Bush administration and its successors. Specifically, the vast majority of the U.S. public rejects a military response to the problems posed by Iran.

The Index is a joint venture of Public Agenda and Foreign Affairs, produced with major support from the Ford Foundation. It tracks the changing state of mind of average Americans toward foreign policy, probing deeper than typical polls and examining core strategies and beliefs about the United States' role in the world. This latest study:

Provides mounting evidence of widespread public doubt about the country's international position. Using a scale of 1 to 200, the Index's "Anxiety Indicator" gauges Americans' anxiousness or contentment with the nation's foreign policy (where 1 is most content and 200 most anxious). The Spring 2007 Anxiety Indicator stands at 137, well above the neutral mid-point of 100 and a seven-point increase since September 2006.