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BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect
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Subject: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 05 Mar 09 - 12:54 PM There was a great deal of hidden motion at the top of the government hierarchy during the years Junior Bush was Resident. A lot of it will only come into view slowly. This thread is for insights gleaned from the rear-view mirror concerning the thankfully replaced Bush Administration. From today's NYT: (The )"Central Intelligence Agency redacted the number of tapes destroyed when it provided an accounting for a federal lawsuit that seeks release of its interrogation records. On Monday, the Justice Department said there were 92 — a stunning amount of evidence-shredding that needs further scrutiny. The released memos were written by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which is supposed to ensure policies comply with the Constitution and the law. They make it chillingly clear how quickly that office was rededicated to finding ways for Mr. Bush to evade, twist or ignore both. Some low points: • In an Oct. 23, 2001, memo, John C. Yoo, then a Justice Department lawyer, explained how Mr. Bush could ignore the Fourth Amendment and the Posse Comitatus Act and deploy the military within the United States in "anti-terrorist operations." In the same memo, Mr. Yoo argued that Mr. Bush could also suspend First Amendment rights to free speech and a free press. • On March 13, 2002, Jay Bybee, the head of the office at the time, wrote that Mr. Bush could ignore the Geneva Conventions and the anti-torture treaty. Mr. Bybee, who now has a lifetime seat as a judge on a federal court, said Mr. Bush was free to send prisoners to countries known to employ torture — a practice known as extraordinary rendition — as long as there was no agreement to do the torturing. • On Jan. 15, 2009, five days before Mr. Bush left office, Steven G. Bradbury, the head of the counsel's office in Mr. Bush's second term, repudiated the earlier memos and tried to excuse them by saying they were made "in a time of great danger and under extraordinary time pressure." They were, but that should have led honest lawyers to exercise extra prudence, not to rush into sweeping away this country's most cherished rights. The Justice Department's internal ethics office is reviewing these and other memos and trying to decide whether political appointees knowingly twisted their interpretations of the law to provide legal cover for decisions made by the White House. At least two Congressional committees are, quite rightly, also looking into these issues. "... I think we shall have a lot to learn as this continues. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: DougR Date: 05 Mar 09 - 01:04 PM New York Times, Amos? I think you would be hard put to sell the fact that the NYT is capable of presenting an objective view of anything related to the Bush years (other than to your fellow travelers of course). I think it's a bit early to do a retrospect of the Bush years. DougR |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Wesley S Date: 05 Mar 09 - 01:35 PM So would Fox News do a better job Doug? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 05 Mar 09 - 02:02 PM Well, it is never too early to reveal crime, especially white-collar crime clouded over with smoke and mirrors, Doug. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Donuel Date: 05 Mar 09 - 02:22 PM I have heard about the "dictatorship memos" from several Justice dept officials on at least 4 different TV stations. Also the CIA was decimated and purged of "ideologically dangerous/democrats" Homeland Security still operates under the Bush doctrine as well as domestic spying. SWAT team invasions of private homes went from 45 a month to over 100 per day. 2000 tons of nuclear waste in the form of munitions was used in Iraq and is still blowing east. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: gnu Date: 05 Mar 09 - 02:23 PM Up here, in Canuckistan (British Commonwealth), the saying goes, "Time does not run against the crown." I assume, down there, it's, "Time does not run against the clown." |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Bobert Date: 05 Mar 09 - 02:27 PM Ya'll got a couple months??? I mean, where does one start??? (The stolen 2000 election, Boberdz, is a good place to start...) Yeah... So it is... B~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 05 Mar 09 - 02:36 PM DougR: By your use of the expression "fellow travelers" you directly, and obviously intentionally, imply that I am a Communist sympathizer or a member of the Communist Party. I am not. Nor have I ever been a member of said party. Have you no decency? A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Barry Finn Date: 05 Mar 09 - 03:13 PM It true Doug that "I think you would be hard put to sell the fact that the NYT is capable of presenting an objective view of anything related to the Bush years" but that i snot the fault of the NYT nor the fault of the general media as a whole nor is it the fault that the public has an objective veiw of the "Bush Yeras". It is the fault of Bush, that he lead in such a fashion that most find now what was done throught out his reign was criminal! He'll get no mercy as history is now starting look back on him. "He never made a move that didn't help those that didn't need it and at a cost to those that couldn't afford it." (me) Barry |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Donuel Date: 05 Mar 09 - 03:39 PM right wing radio says no one was ever critisized for complaining about Bush, but say one thing about B Hussein Obama and you're called a racist. thats problably because the caller is racist. I remember it was called Bush bashing and you were unamerican and a traitor. At least no one was ever Dixie Chicked. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 05 Mar 09 - 03:45 PM Isn't it great to be able to have a thread with this for a heading!! |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: gnu Date: 05 Mar 09 - 04:18 PM The Chicks were dixed. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Bill D Date: 05 Mar 09 - 04:57 PM "Central Intelligence Agency redacted the number of tapes destroyed....etc" What we have learned is that when something does not exist, like, say, gods or Unicorns or Elves, anyone may describe or define it anyway they wish. In the case of destroyed tapes, those who destroyed them may give any semi-plausible description of what was on them. If Richard Nixon had thought about this, he might have finished his 2nd term. (In that other thread, Amos, you noted a video about money.....which simply states that money is 'created' when banks make a loan in exchange for a 'promise' to repay it with interest.) In a similar way, 'information' is created when claims are made about contents of such tapes. This data/information is used to support actions and defend them later. Unlike 'information' about WMDs or Yellow Cake uranium, claims about the contents of now non-existent tapes are hard to dispute. UNLESS there are individuals who saw the tapes and are willing to dispute the 'official' version, we can only surmise. Karl Rove is still a free man because he allowed very little information about his machinations to be written down, taped, emailed or overheard by anyone who was not trusted. Thus, we have "gleaned from the rear view mirror" that enough lies, well-crafted and lacking clear evidence of their nature & intent, can obfuscate JUST enough to make prosecution difficult. When lies and deception and disreputable doings are piled high enough, it is even difficult to know where to start. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Peace Date: 05 Mar 09 - 06:06 PM "I think you would be hard put to sell the fact that the NYT is capable of presenting an objective view of anything related to the Bush years (other than to your fellow travelers of course)." It does NOT matter whether the reporting paper is objective. Just matters whether they got the facts straight. I think you boy is in for some jail time. I sure as hell hope so. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Don Firth Date: 05 Mar 09 - 06:28 PM ". . . fellow travelers. . . ." You're quite a piece of work, Doug. Definition of "liberal media": any part of the news media that expresses even the mildest skepticism that George W. Bush could actually walk on water. Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Riginslinger Date: 05 Mar 09 - 07:06 PM Every time the topic of George W. Bush comes up, I'm continually amazed that he got reelected in 2004. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Bill D Date: 05 Mar 09 - 07:16 PM In 2004, many still thought we were 'winning' in Iraq. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Peace Date: 05 Mar 09 - 07:33 PM I beg to differ, Rig. IMO, he was elected in 2004. NOT re-elected. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 05 Mar 09 - 07:37 PM "...Earlier this week, Holder made good on his promise, releasing nine Bush-era memos that formed the basis for the previous administration's policies on issues such as torture, wiretapping, and the suppression of free speech. Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch said the memos "read like a how-to document on how to evade the rule of law." "Americans deserve a government that operates with transparency and openness," read a statement by Holder, underscoring the clean break with the Bush administration. "It is my goal to make OLC [Office of Legal Counsel] opinions available when possible while still protecting national security information and ensuring robust internal executive branch debate and decision-making." Also this week, the Obama administration revealed in court documents that the CIA destroyed 92 tapes showing interrogations of detainees -- far more than the Bush administration was willing to admit. In December 2007, the New York Times reported that the CIA had destroyed at least two videotapes documenting suspected al Qaeda operatives being subjected to "severe interrogation techniques." WHAT THESE MEMOS REVEAL: Some of the memos were released in response to a lawsuit against former OLC attorney John Yoo, by Jose Padilla, whom the United States held for years as an enemy combatant. The"e Obama administration concluded that there was no classified information in these documents; this admission was a stunning contrast to the Bush era, when officials attempted to maximize government secrecy by increasing the classification of government documents. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) praised Holder's quick release of the memos, saying that they finally "provide details of some of the Bush administration's misguided national security policies." The picture they end up painting is of an administration that believed "the president had broad authority to set aside constitutional rights," as the Associated Press reported. Furthermore, several of the memos -- including ones on extraordinary rendition and First Amendment rights -- were eventually rescinded, reflecting the "major legal errors committed by Bush administration lawyers during the formulation of its early counterterrorism policies." CREATING A DICTATORSHIP: A memo written by Yoo on Oct. 23, 2001, contained one of the most surprising revelations: the Bush administration considered suspending First Amendment rights. "Freedom of speech is integral to a free society," President Bush said in May 2008. However, seven years earlier, Yoo wrote, "First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully. ... The current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically." After reading the memos, Harpers' Scott Horton wrote, "We may not have realized it at the time, but in the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship." In fact, Yoo's memo was too much even for Steven Bradbury, the man who failed to gain Senate confirmation to head the OLC because of his extreme views on torture. On Oct. 6, 2008, Bradbury wrote a memo saying that Yoo's suggestions to ignore free speech were "overbroad" and "not sufficiently grounded." A BLANK CHECK: Yoo's October 2001 memo also dismissed the Fourth Amendment, claiming that protections against unwarranted searches and seizures could be subordinated in the war on terrorism. Yoo similarly proposed invading Americans' privacy in a Sept. 25, 2001 memo, advocating "warrantless searches for national security reasons." The Associated Press noted that the document "did not specifically attempt to justify the government's warrantless wiretapping program, but it provided part of the foundation." In fact, one of the most controversial memos from the Bush era that many lawmakers have been asking to be released is one explicitly justifying the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping. Another major focus of the memos is the treatment of detainees. A March 13, 2002 memo written by then-assistant attorney general in the OLC Jay Bybee argued that the president had the authority to transfer detainees to other countries, whether or not they may be tortured there. Recognizing his controversial proposals, Bybee provided ways for the Bush administration to avoid being held legally liable. "So long as the United States doe[s] not intend for a detainee to be tortured post-transfer, however, no criminal liability will attach to a transfer even if the foreign country receiving the detainee does torture him," he wrote. "These memos were meant to provide the president with a blank check with respect to the rights of not only prisoners overseas but people in the United States as well," concluded the ACLU's Jameel Jaffer. FINDING THE TRUTH: The release of these memos came as Congress determines how to investigate -- and perhaps even prosecute -- the Bush administration's misdeeds. Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the creation of a "truth commission" to investigate these wrongdoings. Leahy initially hinted at providing "blanket immunity" to Bush officials willing to testify, but both Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) have warned against this approach. The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility has also put together a report looking at whether Yoo, Bybee, and Bradbury "knowingly signed off on an unreasonable interpretation of the law to provide legal cover for a program sought by Bush White House officials." Whitehouse and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) have called on the Justice Department to release this report." Some of us kinda realized it at the time... |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Art Thieme Date: 05 Mar 09 - 07:51 PM One need not look hard to see that Bush's providing an atmosphere of rampant greed, combined with the administrations complete disregard for for legal limits and common sense has led us to the financial and constitutional impotence we are all victims of now. The man and his cohorts were a perfect storm disaster for this country, and we ought not allow them to never answer for what they have wrought. The details noted in this thread, as they unfold, hopefully, will beam needed light on the heinous workings and dynamics inherent in the dark deeds of these people. Art |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Bobert Date: 05 Mar 09 - 07:55 PM Elected, re-elected in 2004??? Nope... He probably was neither... Seems that one heck of a lot of funny stuff happened in Ohio... B~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: dick greenhaus Date: 05 Mar 09 - 08:03 PM Facts, as Colbert pointed out, seem to have a notoriously liberal bias. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Peace Date: 05 Mar 09 - 08:14 PM LOL |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Don Firth Date: 05 Mar 09 - 08:43 PM At Barack Obama's inauguration, whenever the television cameras zeroed in on Bush, he looked to me like he had aged about twenty years. And when he and Laura were walking to the helicopter, he looked like a whipped dog. I think he may well have been thinking of the striking contrast between himself and Obama, and agonizing over how history is going to judge him. At the same time, I thought "there goes the patsy for Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rove." And even cheerleader Grover Norquist is now trying to distance himself from the Bush administration. Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Greg F. Date: 06 Mar 09 - 10:31 AM DougR: .... Have you no decency? Just no intelligence. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Stringsinger Date: 06 Mar 09 - 03:31 PM I think ensuing years will bring out more damage that Bush did to the country. We've just tapped the surface. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Donuel Date: 06 Mar 09 - 08:10 PM The war on science and research was a dictatorship that set back the quest for knowledge, action and wisdom. Not for any rightious values of an antique religion but for political points with a notion that stem cell research was somehow equated with an abortion. The editing of global climate enabled another decade of oil dominence. The damage to the quest for science reached down to an entire generation of children. Instead of anthropolgy and archeology and geology many fo them were indoctrinated with creationism and and a 6,000 year old universe. I am glad that this damage was briefly mentioned in the inauguration address by Barak Obama. Don, Watcing the inauguration again tonight I saw how embarrassed Bush senior was when Barak said "those days are surely gone". Jr. felt so isolated he tried to strke up converseations with guards too the point Laura had to pull him away to allow all the people behind to eagerly exit the cold. Art There is much truth in what you say but the total ineptness of W belies that he let it happen more than he made it happen. If you want to believe in a globalist agenda to destroy populations if not by war and pestilence but by the economy, I would not disuade you. The failure of global Population control is still the greatest unmentioned threat to this planet. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: GUEST,Deda Date: 06 Mar 09 - 11:44 PM There is no corner of this planet, and almost no individual, whose future was not damaged by eight years of the Bush administration. The oceans are dying, the polar caps are melting, the forests are being clearcut at a pace that just keeps speeding up. These are not liberal delusions, and there are no serious, trained or respected scientists who seriously dispute them anymore. Al Gore clearly won the 2000 election. I am heartsick when I consider how much better off planet earth and the human race would have been if Bush had just not been appointed by, what was it, one or two members of the Supreme Court. I have two grandchildren, and a third on the way, and a step-grand-daughter. A Buddhist friend advises me, "Never look at the big picture. There is no big picture. There's just now." |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: kendall Date: 07 Mar 09 - 08:42 AM I'm amazed by the fact that a president can be impeached for lying about a blow job when another president gets away with starting a war on the basis of lies and getting tens of thousands killed. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Riginslinger Date: 07 Mar 09 - 03:57 PM Maybe it's a matter of scale. If you tell a lie, you get impeached. If you tell a big lie, he get to command millions of forces in a foreign war. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 07 Mar 09 - 04:24 PM Death and destruction on a massive scale, dismemberment, orphaning of children and the death of infants, bloody maiming of citizens, torture, secretive deception, covert manipulation, etc., etc., etc. These were the earmarks of the Bush Administration. A slippery slope of justified dictatorship justified by sycophants with JDs after thier names. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Peace Date: 07 Mar 09 - 04:26 PM And a bit over half of America bought into that shit. (Just juxtaposing that with the 'What Makes America Great' thread.) |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 07 Mar 09 - 04:48 PM A bit less, I believe. Remember Ohio and (earlier) Florida, and the concerted efforts at disenfranchisement operated by Bush's backers and cronies. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 07 Mar 09 - 04:54 PM "The national debt was about $5.7 trillion when Bush took office in January 2001. Today, after almost eight years and a couple of wars, the debt has risen to about $9.7 trillion. And, by the way, that figure might rise another $1 trillion or so before Bush steps down on Jan. 20. The national debt ceiling today is $10.6 trillion. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wants Congress to raise that to $11.3 trillion to clear the decks for massive borrowing to deal with the nation's financial crisis. A national debt of $11.3 trillion would come to more than $37,000 each for every man, woman and child in the United States." (written in September 08.) This means Bush nearly doubled the national debt while in office. Just in case someone thinks he was doing his job. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: GUEST,Slag Date: 07 Mar 09 - 05:01 PM Bush in retrospect??? How about your preconceived notions and prejudices on display? This thread is like an attempt to describe the grand scale of the Sierra Nevadas while you're still in the rugged hills and forests of the slope. I'm not saying that Bush was "Grand" either so don't take any more out of the analogy than face value. I'm saying that there simply has not been enough time lapsed to title a thread as a "retrospect". Think "Woodrow Wilson"! He is in pretty sharp view as far as his policies and promises went. We can see the good intentions and the bad outcomes. We see his grasp for power or at least "legacy" in establishing the League of Nations. I don't believe it will be our generation or even the next that has a clear retrospect of the Bushies, good or bad. PS I am no fan of the Bush administration and that is based on my own leanings but I know it and can separate it from the facts. To that end the facts need to be established. Amos and some others have clearly done this. Context and relationship are a must. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Bill D Date: 07 Mar 09 - 05:15 PM I guess we should consider ourselves lucky that we were able to vote for a 'change'. Think about Venezuela, Russia, Zimbabwe...and others. Karl Rove & others had some notion of emulating those 'others' in a general way, but they got to greedy too fast. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Peace Date: 07 Mar 09 - 05:19 PM In the words of an old mayor of Montreal: If you want me as your mayor, then put a big X beside my name. If you don't want me as your mayor, then put a small x beside my name. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: kendall Date: 07 Mar 09 - 07:38 PM The passage of time may remove some of the smell from a turd, but it's still a turd. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Greg F. Date: 08 Mar 09 - 10:58 AM And a bit over half of America bought into that shit.... A bit less, I believe. Remember Ohio and (earlier) Florida, and the concerted efforts at disenfranchisement operated by Bush's backers and cronies. Size of the group be damned- that anyone with pretensions to having a functioning brain would buy into it then and now when it has been totally discredited STILL DEFEND AND SUPPORT THAT BULLSHIT surpasses all understanding. Oh, ye generation of morons. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: kendall Date: 08 Mar 09 - 12:08 PM They defend it because they can not admit that they were snookered. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Peace Date: 08 Mar 09 - 02:33 PM Nice metaphor in a verbical kinda way. NOW, we're ALL behind the 8 ball. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Azizi Date: 08 Mar 09 - 07:41 PM Frank Shaeffer is the son of evangelical leaders Francis and Edith Schaeffer, two of the founders of the Religious Right. He left the Reigious Right in the mid 1980s and registered as an Independent in 2000 after McCain lost the Republican primary to G.W. Bush. Here's an excerpt of a recent article he wrote that is posted on Huffington Post: Open Letter to the Republican Traitors (From a Former Republican) -Frank Schaeffer Posted March 8, 2009 ..."How can anyone who loves our country support the Republicans now? Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan defined the modern conservatism that used to be what the Republican Party I belonged to was about. Today no actual conservative can be a Republican. Reagan would despise today's wholly negative Republican Party. And can you picture the gentlemanly and always polite Ronald Reagan, endorsing a radio hate-jock slob who crudely mocked a man with Parkinson's and who now says he wants an American president to fail?! With people like Limbaugh as the loudmouth image of the Republican Party -- you need no enemies. But something far more serious has happened than an image problem: the Republican Party has become the party of obstruction at just the time when all Americans should be pulling together for the good of our country. Instead, Republicans are today's fifth column sabotaging American renewal. President Obama has been in office barely 45 days and the Republican Party has the nerve to blame him for the economic and military cataclysm he inherited. I say economic and military cataclysm because without the needless war in Iraq you all backed we would not be in the economic mess we're in today. If that money had been spent here at home on renovating our infrastructure, taking us toward a green economy, putting our health-care system in order we'd be a very different situation... For the party that created our crisis's of misbegotten war, mismanaged economy, the lack of regulation of our banking industry, handing our country to rich crooks... to obstruct the one person who is trying to repair the damage is obscene... After Obama was elected, you Republican leaders had a unique last chance to send a patriotic message of unity to the world -- and to all Americans. You could have backed our president's economic recovery plan. Since we all know that half of our problem is one of lost confidence and perception, nothing would have done more to calm the markets and project resolve and confidence than if you had been big enough to take Obama's offered hand and had work with him -- even if you disagreed ideologically. You had the chance to put our country first. You utterly failed to rise to the occasion. The worsening economic situation is your fault and your fault alone. The Republicans created this mess through 8 years of backing the worst president in our history and now, because you put partisan ideology ahead of the good of our country, you have blown your last chance to redeem yourselves. You deserve the banishment to the political wilderness that awaits all traitors." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/open-letter-to-the-republ_b_172822.html |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Don Firth Date: 08 Mar 09 - 08:04 PM Thanks for posting that Azizi! In these days of revisionist history and Limbauffish ravings, it's amazing that that comes from a genuine conservative. But what Frank Schaeffer says is right on target. I don't share Schaeffer's enthusiasm for Ronald Reagan (I consider Reagan to be one of those who set the stage for the current mess with his efforts at wholesale deregulation), but I have visions of Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley doing about 7200 rpm in their graves at what the conservative movement and the Republican Party has turned into. Don Firth |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: GUEST,Slag Date: 08 Mar 09 - 11:35 PM Kendall, you certainly hit the nail a square one. We vote for folks because we WANT to believe what they say is true. They are going to deliver on their promises. They are going to do their best, etc. We pull for our candidate and some even work to help him or her implement their visions of how things should be. And when the candidate can't pull it off, we should admit it. And when they outright lie and go against the vision they foisted off on their loyal followers, the same should have the courage and resolve to not only admit it but to advertise the same. DF, I remember the vitriol heaped on Goldwater ("Au H2O, In your guts, you know he's nuts" countered "In your heart, you know he's right"). And much derogatory was said against Buckley and yet both these men conducted an intelligent dialogue with opponents of honestly held opposing views. I wish Reagan could have done for the US what he did for California but time was against him as well as partisan ideologues. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Greg F. Date: 09 Mar 09 - 10:34 AM I wish Reagan could have done for the US what he did for California... But he did! He fu$ked BOTH of them over & neither has recovered yet from the disasters he created. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Donuel Date: 09 Mar 09 - 06:43 PM If the high court had not voted Bush Jr. President, we would not have many of the new towns, homes and inventions we have today. The EDAR rolling tent for urban homeless people , commonly called the hobo condo, would not have been invented. It was developed by an idea of the director of the film "Revenge of the Nerds" www.EDAR.org. The tent cities growing near suberbs in California would not exist. The widows and orphanes of today would not exist. The integrity and full faith of the USA would not be crippled. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 13 Apr 09 - 05:40 PM "Gone But Not Forgotten It has now been three months since President Bush and his family boarded their plane back to Texas and handed the reins of power over to President Obama. Yet Bush administration officials are pushing to make sure that the American public remembers them -- or rather, remembers what they want them to remember. While Bush has been focusing on fundraising for his presidential library and hitting the lecture circuit, his top aides have been aggressively taking to the airwaves to criticize Obama. With Obama's approval rating still above 60 percent, these aides are pulling out all the stops to shape Bush's legacy and pass blame on to his successor. However, there's little proof that these attacks are working. In a recent C-SPAN poll of presidential historians, Bush made a list of the top 10 worst presidents in U.S. history. Even abroad, officials are attempting to hold the Bush administration accountable. Last month, a Spanish court "agreed to consider opening a criminal case against six former Bush administration officials...over allegations they gave legal cover for torture at Guantanamo Bay." THE DECIDER: Even while still in office, Bush was looking forward to making a "ridiculous" amount of money on the lecture circuit. According to his bio on the Washington Speakers Bureau website, the point of his speaking tour is to promote his policies that were "controversial at times" but "kept the country safe for more than seven years." Bush is now lecturing approximately once a week. His first appearance was in Canada, where activists and human rights lawyers tried to bar his entry into the country. Bush has also been working to raise $300 million for his presidential library, although "the prospect" of being identified "in perpetuity" with Bush's agenda "freezes the blood" of some of Southern Methodist University's leading academics. Even though he is writing a book on his time in office, Bush is not sitting around and reflecting on his missteps and regrets. "He's secure in the place he's in. He's confident in the decisions he made. There's none of that 'Shoulda, woulda, coulda,'" said former aide Dan Bartlett. One event that Bush is trying to wipe from the American public's minds is the Iraq war. His advisers have said that the war is "unlikely" to be one of the topics of focus at the presidential library; in fact, Bush's official 483-word bio on the library website doesn't have a single mention of Iraq. A newly released five-minute promo video for the library mentions the word "Iraq" just once, although it devotes a full 35 seconds to clips showing extensive footage of 9/11 and Bush's subsequent reaction. THE LOYAL BUSHIES: Finding work has been tough for many former loyal Bushies. A Washington job recruiter estimated that only "25% to 30% of ex-Bush officials seeking full-time jobs have succeeded," a rate that is "much, much worse" than when Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton left office. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has been one of the most high-profile job seekers; he has blamed his troubles on the "rough economy" rather than his incompetence while in the Bush administration. Others have been lucky enough to stay in the public light by appearing on cable news. Fox News contributor Karl Rove continues to use his platform to attack the Obama administration -- even though Bush has said that Obama deserves his "silence." Last week, for example, Rove called Vice President Biden a "blowhard" and a "liar." He also went after Obama for praising the "Turkish secular movement" while abroad, even though Bush did the same thing while in office. Former chief of staff Andrew Card's objections have been less substantive, focusing on the fact that unlike Bush, Obama does not require his staff to wear a jacket at all times in the Oval Office. In January, Card said that the new dress code showed a lack of "respect" for the office and created a "kind of locker room experience." Most recently, the President's brother, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, has made headlines for telling Obama to leave his brother alone. "If I had one humble criticism of President Obama, it would be to stop this notion of somehow framing everything in the context of, 'Everything was bad before I got here,'" Jeb Bush told Fox News's Sean Hannity last week, not noting that his brother also repeatedly attacked Clinton. In addition to attacking Obama, these Bushies have banded together to create a Bush-Cheney Alumni Association, committed to "help build a lasting legacy for President George W. Bush and the Bush-Cheney Administration." SAME OLD DICK: The former vice president has been one of Obama's loudest and most controversial critics. On March 15, Cheney received widespread attention -- and criticism -- for saying that Obama is "making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack." Senior White House Adviser David Axelrod responded that although Bush has "behaved like a statesman...I just don't think the memo got passed down to the vice president." Both Biden and Attorney General Eric Holder similarly came out and condemned Cheney's comments. Cheney is also up to his old secrecy tricks, refusing to transfer his records and gifts to Bush's presidential library. Next week, top administration officials will be gathering in Dallas for a reunion with the ex-president. One person who won't be there? Cheney, who is still reportedly at odds with Bush over his decision not to pardon Scooter Libby...." (Progressive) |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 13 Apr 09 - 07:00 PM "The current torture case began in the spring of 2004, when photographs of abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib surfaced. Sands said that he read the protestations of innocence from Bush Administration officials, who blamed a few "bad apples" for the incidents, with the eye of a barrister. He recalled, "I could spot right away that they were speaking as advocates of a cause. So I decided to find out what really happened." While keeping up his busy law practice, he travelled to America to interview the key players in what he described as "a writing project I am engaged in on international law and the war on terror." Many Bush officials, including Feith and William J. Haynes II, the former Pentagon general counsel, who was also named in the Spanish lawsuit, agreed to meet with Sands, perhaps expecting a friendly chat. "I spent two years trekking around the country, finding out that they were manifestly untruthful," Sands said. "I've got a particular bugbear about lawyers," he added. "If not for lawyers, none of these abuses would have ever occurred." As Sands went about his research, he conferred with human-rights experts all over Europe on his findings. Word spread that he had the makings of a high-level war-crimes case. Sands won't reveal exactly which human-rights authorities he consulted. But, in recent months, one of them was Gonzalo Boye, the Chilean-born Spanish lawyer who last week filed the criminal complaint against the Bush officials, on behalf of five former prisoners who were, they allege, tortured in the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay. Boye said last week of Sands, "Let me just say that he played a very big role in my thinking. His book showed me who the targets were." Feith, reached on the phone, called Sands's book "wildly inaccurate." He said, "It's not a happy thing for the Spanish Court to think of prosecuting Americans for advice they gave to the President of the United States!" It is hard to predict what will happen next, but, if arrest warrants are issued, the Obama Administration may be forced either to extradite the former officials or to start its own investigation. Sands, who admires Obama, said, "I regret that I have added to his in-box when he has so much else to sort out. But I hope he does the right thing. There's not much dispute anymore: torture happened, and the law is clear—torture must be punished." Meanwhile, Sands reiterated a warning that he made in his book. "If I were they," he said, referring to the former officials in question, "I would think carefully before setting foot outside the United States. They are now, and forever in the future, at risk of arrest. Until this is sorted out, they are in their own legal black hole." ♦..." From "THE BUSH SIX" by Jane Mayer APRIL 13, 2009 The New Yorker |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Barry Finn Date: 14 Apr 09 - 02:26 AM Maybe some "Extreme Rendition" is in order here. What I find amusing is Bush on a lecture tour & writing a book. He couldn't speak properly & can barely read. "Bush has also been working to raise $300 million for his presidential library" Hah, hah, hah. He thinks the public's as dumb as he is. $300 mil to house 4 coloring books & only 2 that are completed is just ridiculous. The tapes should should him trying to read to the kids as he found out the 'Twin Towers' were hit. "7 blank minutes". "IMBECILE" Barry |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity Date: 14 Apr 09 - 02:42 AM Well, think of it this way, or try to, If Obama does not rescind the policies of Bush's Administration, then he is just as bad..and 'enjoying' the benefits! Personally, I think we started this wholesale downhill slide on November 22, in Dallas, 1963. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Riginslinger Date: 14 Apr 09 - 10:13 AM Exactly right, Sanity, that's what I've been thinking for years. All of these pieces must fit together somehow. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 14 Apr 09 - 10:41 AM IT could be that that was just a symptom, and the source of malaise was the unfortunate confluence of Sicilian immigration policies in the late 1940s, the commercial success of tobacco and Wonder Bread, and the invention of LSD. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: beardedbruce Date: 14 Apr 09 - 10:45 AM What about the failure of Wilson to get the League of Nations through the Senate??? Or a few years earlier (1913?), when the Income Tax was created, allowing for unlimited growth of government? Or the 1790's when the Whiskey Rebellion was put down? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 21 Apr 09 - 05:49 PM Last week, President Obama released four Bush-era Office of Legal Counsel memos that had authorized torture. "In dozens of pages of dispassionate legal prose, the methods approved by the Bush administration for extracting information from senior operatives of Al Qaeda are spelled out in careful detail -- like keeping detainees awake for up to 11 straight days, placing them in a dark, cramped box or putting insects into the box to exploit their fears," The New York Times writes. The earliest memo, from 2002, was signed by Jay Bybee, then an Assistant Attorney General and now a federal judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Bybee's memo provided "a legal authorization for a laundry list of proposed C.I.A. interrogation techniques," including waterboarding. The techniques Bybee approved are illegal by U.S. statute and an international treaty to which the U.S. is a signatory. Bybee attempted to give legal cover to illegal acts, and thus broke the ethical, professional, and legal standards that govern lawyers. For this, Judge Jay Bybee should be impeached. The Progress Report has launched a campaign to persuade the House Judiciary Committee to initiate impeachment hearings against Bybee. Already, more than 3,000 of you have taken action. Join our effort to convince the committee to launch hearings. WHAT BYBEE APPROVED: "[I]n the finest legalese" and with "grotesque, lawyerly logic," Bybee wrote 40 pages of justification for treatment that clearly constituted "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." He approved a method called "walling," which entailed slamming a detainee against a wall. Bybee claimed that "any pain experienced is not of the intensity associated with serious physical injury." He also gave a thumbs up to slapping a detainee's face as long as the interrogator took off any rings. "The facial slap does not produce pain that is difficult to endure," he insisted. And feel free to place detainees in stress positions, Bybee said: these "simply involve forcing the subject to remain in uncomfortable positions." Most notoriously, Bybee declared that waterboarding -- a technique perfected during the Spanish Inquisition that the United States later prosecuted Japanese officers for conducting against U.S. POWs -- was both legal and safe. "The waterboard…inflicts no pain or actual harm whatsoever," Bybee claimed. He said that U.S. law bans only techniques that cause "pain and suffering," a phrase "best understood as a single concept, not distinct concepts of 'pain' as distinguished from 'suffering.'" Since waterboarding causes no "pain," Bybee declares it legal. In fact, he wrote, even one separates "pain" from "suffering," waterboarding would still be acceptable: "The waterboard is simply a controlled acute episode, lacking the connotation of a protracted period of time generally given to suffering." HOW TO IMPEACH BYBEE: The Progress Report is asking readers to sign a petition to be sent to the House Judiciary Committee, urging it to hold hearings on Bybee. After the hearings, the Committee would draw up articles of impeachment, and pass them with a simple majority vote. From there, the articles move to the full House, which can also approve them with a simple majority. The House sends two "managers" to serve as prosecutors in the impeachment trial, conducted in the Senate if a majority agrees to move forward. It takes 67 Senators to convict -- and a conviction would remove Bybee from the bench. Calling for his impeachment in January, Yale Law professor Bruce Ackerman wrote, "[Bybee's] impeachment is not a prelude to a sweeping political vendetta. It focuses on a very particular problem: Jay Bybee may serve for decades on one of the highest courts in the land. Is his continued service consistent with his role in the systematic perpetration of war crimes?" The New York Times called for Bybee's impeachment this weekend, writing that the "memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution." "His flagrant contempt for the rule of law is utterly inconsistent with his judicial position and speaks directly to his competency to function in that office," stated the Center for Constitutional Rights. "He ought to be impeached," House Judiciary Committee member Jerry Nadler (D-NY) told the Huffington Post yesterday. "It was not an honest legal memo. It was an instruction manual on how to break the law. "Senate Judiciary Committee member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) agreed that impeachment is "certainly possible." "The idea of the author of one of these memos sitting on the federal bench makes a farce of the whole legal system," wrote the Center for American Progress Action Fund's Matthew Yglesias. A PATH TO ACCOUNTABILITY: In 2003, Bybee was nominated by President Bush and approved by the Senate to sit on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. During his confirmation hearing, Bybee refused to answer questions, citing executive privilege at least 20 separate times. "If the Senate had known the truth, it would have rejected him," Ackerman wrote. Launching the impeachment process would force Bybee to finally answer questions. And with the Obama administration hesitant to launch prosecutions of any kind, an impeachment hearing might be the closest thing Americans get to a full accounting of Bush's torture program. Indeed, when pressed yesterday on why Obama was refusing to hold Bush administration lawyers who authored the torture memos "accountable," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs stated simply, "The president is focused on looking forward. That's why." Looking forward, however, "it is simply obvious that, if there is no accountability when wrongdoing is exposed, future violations will not be deterred," House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) said yesterday. ... |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 21 Apr 09 - 06:02 PM |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 21 Apr 09 - 06:03 PM Posted Tuesday, April 21, 2009, at 6:39 AM ET The New York Times leads with word that Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat who has long been involved in intelligence matters, agreed to push for leniency from the Bush administration on behalf of two lobbyists of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel organization. In calls intercepted by the National Security Agency, Harman apparently agreed to speak up for the lobbyists in exchange for help in convincing party leaders that she should be the chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee after her party gained control of Congress in 2006. The wiretapped calls were first reported by Congressional Quarterly and the NYT gets three sources to confirm much of the information. The Wall Street Journal banners word that cyberspies managed to repeatedly penetrate the Pentagon's $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter, the "Defense Department's costliest weapons program ever," as well as the Air Force's air traffic control system. The spies were even able to copy "several terabytes" of data relating to the fighter-jet program. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Little Hawk Date: 21 Apr 09 - 06:23 PM In retrospect: they were 8 years during which I made the conscious decision not to visit the USA, because I felt it was ruled by an extremely dangerous and irresponsible government. I kid you not. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Riginslinger Date: 21 Apr 09 - 10:13 PM And the people who control both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, also control Jane Harman. So this is news, why...? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 21 Apr 09 - 11:02 PM An interesting retrospective on the composite incompetence which led the U.S. to adopt extreme interrogation techniques reveals it was not eorge's fault, personally. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 22 Apr 09 - 03:56 PM Report Gives New Detail on Approval of Brutal Techniques By BRIAN KNOWLTON Published: April 21, 2009 WASHINGTON — A newly declassified Congressional report released Tuesday outlined the most detailed evidence yet that the military's use of harsh interrogation methods on terrorism suspects was approved at high levels of the Bush administration. The report focused solely on interrogations carried out by the military, not those conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency at its secret prisons overseas. It rejected claims by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others that Pentagon policies played no role in harsh treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq or other military facilities. The 232-page report, the product of an 18-month inquiry, was approved on Nov. 20 by the Senate Armed Services Committee, but has since been under Pentagon review for declassification. Some of the findings were made public in a Dec. 12 article in The New York Times; a spokesman for Mr. Rumsfeld dismissed the report at the time as "unfounded allegations against those who have served our nation." The Senate report documented how some of the techniques used by the military at prisons in Afghanistan and at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as well as in Iraq — stripping detainees, placing them in "stress positions" or depriving them of sleep — originated in a military program known as Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape, or SERE, intended to train American troops to resist abusive enemy interrogations. According to the Senate investigation, a military behavioral scientist and a colleague who had witnessed SERE training proposed its use at Guantánamo in October 2002, as pressure was rising "to get 'tougher' with detainee interrogations." Officers there sought authorization, and Mr. Rumsfeld approved 15 interrogation techniques. The report showed that Mr. Rumsfeld's authorization was cited by a United States military special-operations lawyer in Afghanistan as "an analogy and basis for use of these techniques," and that, in February 2003, a special-operations unit in Iraq obtained a copy of the policy from Afghanistan "that included aggressive techniques, changed the letterhead, and adopted the policy verbatim." Months later, the report said, the interrogation officer in charge at Abu Ghraib obtained a copy of that policy "and submitted it, virtually unchanged, through her chain of command." This ultimately led to authorization by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez of the use of stress positions, "sleep management" and military dogs to exploit detainees' fears, the report said. ... (NYT) |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Donuel Date: 22 Apr 09 - 04:07 PM The response to the release of these torture method memos by the right wing pundits sound like Obama, while on worldwide TV, just commited felltio on Bo Disgusting, Ruinous, Disasterous, etc. Or as Peggy NOonan said "There are some things that should remain private and then just walk on , walk on and never look back, Some things should remain oneof life's mysteries." |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Little Hawk Date: 22 Apr 09 - 05:56 PM I daresay that Himmler and Goebbels and their most avid supporters would have been similarly outraged by a public disclosure of SS torture techniques... |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Donuel Date: 23 Apr 09 - 05:15 PM In retrospect I wonder about the friends I might have had in the community. I wonder about the families that may have prosepered and in turn were able to share some aspect of their good fortune instead of now standing in the unemployment line. I wonder about the millions of bodies that have been torn to shreds by bullets and bomb explosions as well as the Iraqi genome that is now poisoned by hundreds of tons of Uranium. I wonder about what advances that could have been made with a renewable energy policy instead of the Cheney war energy policy. I wonder about the damage to streams rivers lakes and oceans under the the most ludicrous enviormental lapse since Nixon. I wonder about the evangelical movement if hate baiting and science trashing policies had not been presidentially endorsed. I wonder what the radical Islamic movement would have done without the daily proof of American bombs and bullets killing virtually indisriminately. I wonder if the phrase 'shock and awe' might have been used to describe something beautiful that had happened. I wonder if the Enronization of virtually every Corporation and bank in America would have spread like the plague it has now become. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Donuel Date: 23 Apr 09 - 05:22 PM I wonder what the tone, tenor and caring of American discourse would be like without the shouting down techniques and insulting attacks that are exclusive to FOX TV and Clear Channel radio. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 23 Apr 09 - 11:24 PM Report: Bush Officials Relied On Communist Torture Techniques To Press Detainees For Al Qaeda/Iraq Link Late yesterday, the Senate Armed Services Committee made public an unclassified version of its November 2008 report, "Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody." The report reveals that top Bush administration officials were so eager to start harsh interrogations on detainees that they often ignored warnings from military advisers, skipped a thorough legal review process, and failed to fully investigate the origins of the dangerous techniques. Moreover, the consequences of their actions trickled down to lower-ranking officers and led directly to the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Here are some highlights from the report: -- Top Officials Were Unaware Of The Gruesome Origins Of The Interrogation Program. The Bush administration's interrogation program was based on the U.S. military program known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE), which is used to train U.S. troops if they are ever tortured by an enemy that doesn't adhere to the Geneva Conventions. However, none of the top CIA, Cabinet, or congressional officials who approved of the Bush administration's recommendations knew that SERE was designed around "torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War...that had wrung false confessions from Americans." These officials were unaware that veteran SERE trainers said the methods were ineffective for getting useful information and the former military psychologist who recommended that the CIA adopt SERE "had never conducted a real interrogation." One CIA official called the process "a perfect storm of ignorance and enthusiasm." -- Military Officials Warned That Harsh Interrogation Was Illegal And Ineffective. In November 2002, the Deputy Commander of the Defense Department's Criminal Investigative Task Force at Gitmo raised concerns that SERE techniques were "developed to better prepare U.S. military personnel to resist interrogations and not as a means of obtaining reliable information." The Air Force cited "serious concerns regarding the legality of many of the proposed techniques." The Army, Navy, and Marine Corps raised similar issues, citing "maltreatment" that would "arguably violate federal law." -- Abusive Tactics Were Used To Search For A Non-Existent Al-Qaeda/Iraq Link. In 2006, former U.S. Army psychiatrist Maj. Charles Burney told investigators that interrogators at Gitmo were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties between Iraq and al Qaeda, even though they were ultimately unsuccesful. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link...there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results." -- Top Bush Officials Bypassed Military Concerns. Less than a month after the military voiced their concerns, then-Defense Department general counsel William Haynes sent then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a one-page memo recommending that he approve 15 out of 18 of the torture techniques requested for use at Gitmo. Haynes indicated that he had discussed the issue with Doug Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, and Gen. Richard Myers, all of whom agreed with him. The only legal opinion Haynes cited in the memo was one that senior military advisers had called "legally insufficient" and "woefully inadequate." Five days later, Rumsfeld signed off on the request. -- Officials Began Preparing Harsh Interrogation Techniques Before They Were Granted Legal Approval. Military and intelligence officials were "exploring ways to break Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees in early 2002, up to eight months before Justice Department lawyers approved the use of waterboarding and nine other harsh methods," and weeks before the CIA captured its first high-ranking terrorism suspect. In fact, in July 2002 -- a month before the Justice Department approved its list of interrogation techniques -- instructors at a training seminar told intelligence officials that the harsh measures were already deemed acceptable. -- Bush's Torture Policies Led To Abuses At Abu Ghraib. In one of its conclusions, the Armed Services Committee writes, "The abuses of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own. ... Rumsfeld's December 2, 2002 authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques and subsequent interrogation policies and plans approved by senior military and civilian officials conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. custody." UPDATEBrigadier General Janis Karpinski, who ran Iraq prisons -- including Abu Ghraib -- in 2003, told CBS that she was "scapegoated" by the administration for the abuses at Abu Ghraib. "The line is clear," she said. "It went from Washington, D.C. From the very top of the administration with the legal opinions through Bagram to Guantanamo Bay and then to Iraq via the commander from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Stringsinger Date: 24 Apr 09 - 02:51 PM The Bush years will be characterized by the overseeing of a so-called president who is a bona fide sociopath, a casebook study. Cheney is another. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Riginslinger Date: 25 Apr 09 - 09:28 AM I'm not sure that works. If they were both on the same page and in agreement with one-another, does that fit the definition of "sociopath?" |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 25 Apr 09 - 01:42 PM "The military agency that provided advice on harsh interrogation techniques for use against terrorism suspects referred to the application of extreme duress as "torture" in a July 2002 document sent to the Pentagon's chief lawyer and warned that it would produce "unreliable information." "The unintended consequence of a U.S. policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured U.S. personnel," says the document, an unsigned two-page attachment to a memo by the military's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency. Parts of the attachment, obtained in full by The Washington Post, were quoted in a Senate report on harsh interrogation released this week. It remains unclear whether the attachment reached high-ranking officials in the Bush administration. But the document offers the clearest evidence that has come to light so far that technical advisers on the harsh interrogation methods voiced early concerns about the effectiveness of applying severe physical or psychological pressure." (WaPo) |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Riginslinger Date: 25 Apr 09 - 09:47 PM It all depends on what your definition of "is" is! |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity Date: 25 Apr 09 - 10:26 PM You mean the 'Bush years' are over???? ..Then again, maybe they weren't his to begin with....and whose ever they are, are still with us.......(oh no, here come the parrots, going to tell us things aren't what we all know they are....) |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 26 Apr 09 - 10:04 PM "...Perhaps some new facts may yet emerge if Dick Cheney succeeds in his unexpected and welcome crusade to declassify documents that he says will exonerate administration interrogation policies. Meanwhile, we do have evidence for an alternative explanation of what motivated Bybee to write his memo that August, thanks to the comprehensive Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainees released last week. The report found that Maj. Paul Burney, a United States Army psychiatrist assigned to interrogations in Guantánamo Bay that summer of 2002, told Army investigators of another White House imperative: "A large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful." As higher-ups got more "frustrated" at the inability to prove this connection, the major said, "there was more and more pressure to resort to measures" that might produce that intelligence. In other words, the ticking time bomb was not another potential Qaeda attack on America but the Bush administration's ticking timetable for selling a war in Iraq; it wanted to pressure Congress to pass a war resolution before the 2002 midterm elections. Bybee's memo was written the week after the then-secret (and subsequently leaked) "Downing Street memo," in which the head of British intelligence informed Tony Blair that the Bush White House was so determined to go to war in Iraq that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." A month after Bybee's memo, on Sept. 8, 2002, Cheney would make his infamous appearance on "Meet the Press," hyping both Saddam's W.M.D.s and the "number of contacts over the years" between Al Qaeda and Iraq. If only 9/11 could somehow be pinned on Iraq, the case for war would be a slamdunk." (NYT) This was something several of us presented as a likely explanation at the time, and yet were roundly chastised for spreading skeptical doubt. It shows clearly that there was an independent drive for the war in Iraq, wholly seperate from the national trauma of 9-11, and that the Administration was taking advantage of the shock and horror in the post-9/11 period to pursue their own devices and rationalize them. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Donuel Date: 27 Apr 09 - 11:58 AM Lets not forget that a large number of people said NO, spoke up or resigned. A small and sad number of people blew the whistle. I understand how people were intimidated into agreeing with torture. The urgency to not look weak or be labled an enemy enabler or ironicly enough 'anti American'. Those who now object to even looking at this travesty are evil on two levels. On one level for supporting an evil past and on the other by seeking to hide the evil from the future. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 16 Jun 09 - 12:09 PM "Nearly four years ago, Harriet Miers was one of the-most pursued women on Capitol Hill. President Bush nominated the former White House Counsel for the Supreme Court. And a cadre of television cameras traced the path of the nominee as she traveled from meeting after meeting with senators. Miers soon withdrew her nomination and Mr. Bush nominated Samuel Alito for the High Court instead. But on Monday, Harriet Miers came and went from Capitol Hill with barely a notice. But the stakes were nearly as high as four years ago. FOX has learned that House Judiciary Committee staffers deposed Miers behind closed doors Monday morning in the Rayburn House Office Building. They wanted to ask her questions about the alleged politicization of the Bush Justice Department. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales asked Miers to consider implementing a "targeted for removal and replacement" system for some US Attorneys. It's alleged that the former administration didn't believe these officials were on the same page as the Bush White House. Democrats launched investigations into the dismissals. The House and Senate Judiciary Committees subpoenaed Miers and other officials to testify about their role in the firings. But Miers refused to appear. The House eventually voted to hold Miers and former White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten in contempt of Congress. But despite the contempt citation, both Miers and Bolten still refused to testify, sparking a constitutional standoff between two, co-equal branches of government. The House then sued the Bush Administration in an effort to force Miers and Bolten to appear. In March, Miers and former Bush adviser Karl Rove agreed to testify under oath. Miers testified today behind closed doors. It remains unclear when Bolten could be deposed. But a senior House Democrat familiar with the inquiry described Bolten as "a tasty little morsel." The senior lawmaker indicated to FOX that Rove "is really the big catch." But there is still no agreement for Rove to appear." |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 16 Jun 09 - 03:25 PM "Cheney tied to cash theft and possible murder in Iraq By Wayne Madsen Online Journal Contributing Writer Jun 16, 2009, 00:22 (WMR) -- According to an informed source, Dick Cheney, while vice president, amassed a fortune in cash stolen by U.S. occupation forces in Iraq from Saddam Hussein and some of his leading officials and advisers. Sources report to WMR that U.S. troops confiscated "billions" in currency found stored in aluminum containers in various secret caches in Baghdad and elsewhere. Our sources report that the seized cash was transferred to accounts run by Cheney and the money is now being partly used to fund Cheney's growing political opposition movement to the Obama administration, including secretive payments to a "stay behind" group of Cheney loyalists who burrowed into senior civil service positions from political appointee jobs during the Bush administration. Cheney's loyalists are now in key positions to stymie Obama's programs and policies within a variety of cabinet departments and federal agencies. The recent intelligence about Iraqi cash ending up in the coffers of American officials is not the first time WMR has reported on the theft of Iraqi cash by U.S. forces. On November 14, 2005, WMR reported: "In one of the worst intelligence fiascoes carried out by the neocon administration of Iraq under Paul "Jerry' Bremer, Saddam Hussein's chief money mover and financial adviser was beaten to death by US interrogators in Tikrit after the U.S. invasion . . . As Saddam's chief financial adviser and money mover, Abu Seger [Sa'ad Hassan Ali], a man who was fluent in American-style English, knew where all the "financial skeletons" were buried -- details of Halliburton's involvement with the UN's Oil-for-Food program, the purchase by Iraq of VX nerve gas and other WMD components from US and British sources in the 1980s, and various counter-intelligence operations run by Saddam against the United States and Britain. Abu Seger was also one of Saddam's trusted counter-intelligence agents . . . After Samara was occupied by US forces, it was discovered that Abu Seger lived in a home on the Tigris River just 200 yards from the main U.S. military position in the city. It did not take long for U.S. troops to break down Seger's door and haul him off to a detention center. Seger's wife Sada, an English teacher, and U.S. military intelligence officers were witnesses to what soon transpired. U.S. forces discovered $30 million in plastic garbage bags in an armoire in Seger's bedroom. Contained in the bags was $14 million in US currency, $28 million in convertible Iraqi dinars, and $12 million in euros. Although the money was counted, signed for by two U.S. military witnesses, and transported to U.S. military headquarters in Samara, it was never seen again. A knowledgeable source present at the time revealed that the $30 million was stolen by U.S. authorities in Iraq." Amid the other scandals surrounding Cheney, including his countenance of torture, the theft of cash and his possible involvement in the murder of Abu Seger may be added to the former vice president's rap sheet of crimes perpetrated in Iraq and in the United States. Cheney recently built a multi-million dollar home in McLean, Virginia, a stone's throw from the CIA headquarters. He also owns luxury houses in Jackson, Wyoming, and St. Michael's, Maryland. Corporate U.S. news media drastically downplayed the amount of cash stolen from Iraq by U.S. forces and that the maximum amount of cash discovered in "cottages" was around $760 million, when, in fact, it was much higher. A handful of U.S. troops were charged with stealing some bundles of $100 bills. According to the May 28, 2004, Los Angeles Times some of the troops who admitted to stealing Iraqi cash tried to tell Army Criminal Investigative Division (CID) investigators that "higher-ups" stole much more, but their information was ignored." ( This article, about which I am highly skeptical, is from this site.) A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 16 Jun 09 - 04:13 PM House Judiciary Committee staffers deposed Miers behind closed doors Pedantic point: Surely in this legal context the word "deposed" is equivalent to "testify", and refers to the person answering questions, not to the people asking them. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: GUEST,TonyA Date: 16 Jun 09 - 05:10 PM from yesterday's Los Angeles Times: Opinion Torture, the painful truth It may be a blow to our self-image, but torture has been part of the American way for decades. By Ben Ehrenreich June 15, 2009 Perhaps we protest too much. Torture, after all, is a venerable American tradition. If not quite as homespun as apple pie or lynching, it is at least as old as our imperial aspirations. We were waterboarding captives in one of our earliest wars of occupation, the Philippine-American War, which cost as many as 1 million civilian lives. In 1902, Teddy Roosevelt himself wrote with laconic praise of "the old Filipino method." Other techniques, crude or sophisticated, have filled the war bag since. CIA interrogation manuals from the 1960s, which lay out the basic stress-position and sleep- and sensory-deprivation techniques later applied at Bagram and Guantanamo, have been public since 1997. Despite our protestations, we have little to be surprised about. The Bush administration's great act of hubris was not to allow torture -- that was nothing new -- but to attempt to shelter it within the law. Now, when President Obama vows that "the United States does not torture" and spars with the former vice president over details, he crosses his fingers behind his back and saves himself a loophole. Via "extraordinary rendition" -- a Clinton administration innovation -- our government is still free to outsource torture and claim it doesn't know. The Obama administration has been relying increasingly on foreign intelligence services to detain and interrogate our suspects for us. Our hands, in a way, are clean. Yet as more classified documents dribble into the headlines, we hold tight to our outrage. The scandal has been slowly breaking for five full years (I wrote about the abuse of detainees in these pages in April 2004), but still we claim not to recognize ourselves. Despite hundreds of front-page stories, we pretend we didn't know, that it was all somehow kept secret from us. " 'Secret,' " author Mark Danner has observed in the New York Review of Books, "has become an oddly complex word." It refers not to things we don't know but to things we won't admit to seeing. This blindness serves a function. By declaring torture anomalous, by pushing it once again to the margins of legality, we can preserve a vision of U.S. military power -- and of American empire -- that is essentially benevolent. That vision -- of our nation's messianic role, its unique destiny to shower the world with freedom and democracy -- has for more than a century been at the root of our self-image. Even when we know better, we are loath to let it go, even when we understand that those showers often take the form of 500-pound bombs and that self-determination is not something that can be bestowed at gunpoint. Maintaining military and economic hegemony over the planet remains an inherently bloody affair. Seen from the other side, empire is a synonym for subjugation, and hence for violence on a massive scale. You don't have to be Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to find our self-regard wanting. All that's required is minimal attention to the fates suffered by the citizens of the nations to which we are currently delivering democracy. Take the residents of the Bala Baluk district of Afghanistan's western Farah province, where, on the evening of May 6, U.S. airstrikes killed either 147 or 20 to 30 civilians, depending whether you prefer to believe, respectively, the people bombed or the ones who bombed them. Survivors described extended families wiped out, a nightmare landscape littered with human limbs. Being waterboarded 183 times suddenly doesn't sound so bad. That bombing was hardly extraordinary. You may remember the 37 civilians killed outside Kandahar last Nov. 4, the 90 killed near Herat on Aug. 22, the 47 killed in Nangarhar province on July 6 or the 15 killed in Nuristan two days earlier. If not, don't blame yourself. Unless the body count approaches 100, these kinds of deaths barely merit a word on CNN's crawl. And as our war spreads into Pakistan, such incidents are on the rise. Missiles launched from unmanned drones have killed 700 civilians in Pakistan since 2006 and, we are assured, 14 Al Qaeda leaders. (Obama has been drastically increasing the number of drone strikes, which Leon Panetta, his CIA director, has called "the only game in town.") Meanwhile, back in Iraq, one of the more moderate estimates of the civilian death toll hovers near 100,000. Doesn't it seem odd that it's only torture that appalls us? As the deaths mount, we will continue to beat our breasts about the treatment of detainees. The outcry is not unjustified. My point is not to relativize torture: We should not torture anyone. But we do, and have done so, both directly and with the help of client states, for many years. Just as in war after war, the alleged costs of our well-being have been borne by people we will never see, most of them noncombatants. This is the price of global sovereignty, of being, in Colin Powell's words, "the biggest bully on the block." President Bush and Dick Cheney knew this, and they were unapologetic. Obama knows it too, but he has worked hard to let us believe otherwise, to patch up the tattered fantasy that we are the country we imagine ourselves to be. Our outrage over torture, like the president's rhetoric, lets us maintain the belief that we had innocence to lose. It allows us to deny the everyday violence of empire and to forget the many thousands of lives that we continue to sacrifice for something that we persist in calling freedom. I don't mean that we should be less outraged, but more, and more broadly. The rest of the world cannot afford our good conscience. Ben Ehrenreich is the author of the novel "The Suitors" and a fellow of the Horizon Institute. Copyright 2009 Los Angeles Times |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: DougR Date: 17 Jun 09 - 01:30 AM Amos: Online Journal? I'm not familiar with that publication Amos. "Informed sources." Who are they Amos? Crap like this just takes up space on the Mudcat. DougR |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Peace Date: 17 Jun 09 - 01:36 AM Rough day, Doug? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Little Hawk Date: 17 Jun 09 - 02:12 AM TonyA has it right. This is what great empires do. They invade, occupy, exploit, and kill. They kill not a few people, but many, many people. They torture and devastate. They do it so that those running the great empire, meaning the richest few at the top of that empire, can profit. They tell their ordinary citizens that they are doing it for the most laudable of reasons...to spread democracy, to spread education, to improve the lives of other people...and their citizens mostly believe it. But that's not what great empires are after. They're after resources, trade areas, money, and strategic advantage. Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Persia, Greece, Rome, Spain, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, Japan, the USA. They all invaded, occupy, and kill when they have the power to do so. They all torture. They always have. Their own people are usually fooled by the excuses they make for their imperial measures. Others are not so easily fooled. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: 3refs Date: 17 Jun 09 - 02:27 AM We all know the golden rule-"He who has the most gold rules!" When is enough......enough? Or is there such a thing? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 20 Jun 09 - 01:41 PM An interesting argumeent for compensation of those whose lives were brutally interrupted, not by terrorism, but by our unthinking and over-zealous reactions to it. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Art Thieme Date: 20 Jun 09 - 04:38 PM And bush goes on more speaking tours for big bucks... Not surprising. Even a dead whale on a flatcar draws crowds.---Art |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 23 Jun 09 - 09:36 AM In 2002, Justice Department lawyer John Yoo wrote a memo recommending that Jose Padilla, arrested in Chicago in the wake of 9/11 and held on suspicion of plotting a dirty-bomb attack, be classified as an enemy combatant. Yoo also wrote memos arguing that American law does not prevent the president from ordering such enemy combatants tortured. This January, after enduring years of abuse in prison, Padilla sued Yoo for violating his constitutional rights. And a week ago, Judge Jeffrey White ruled that Padilla's allegations were plausible enough to justify denying Yoo's motion to dismiss the lawsuit. White was appointed by George W. Bush the year Yoo was writing his memos. White's decision is the first of its kind: Until now, although other lawsuits have been brought, no government official has faced personal liability for his role in the torture or deaths of detainees. But it probably won't be the last. These cases are just beginning to address the fraught questions of justice that have emerged in the aftermath of the Bush era‹what atrocities were committed in the name of national security, who bears responsibility, and how should they be punished? Although neither the Obama administration nor most members of Congress want to deal with these questions directly, they're even more opposed to letting judges (and juries) take a crack at them. Padilla v. Yoo is an example of a surprising development: a conservative judge putting pressure on the Democrats in Washington to create some system of accountability for the Bush administration. It could help spawn more such rulings.(...) From Slate magazine |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 30 Jun 09 - 04:14 PM A WaPo columnist writes in his last column for the Post: I started my column in January 2004, and one dominant theme quickly emerged: That George W. Bush was truly the proverbial emperor with no clothes. In the days and weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks, the nation, including the media, vested him with abilities he didn't have and credibility he didn't deserve. As it happens, it was on the day of my very first column that we also got the first insider look at the Bush White House, via Ron Suskind's book, The Price of Loyalty. In it, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill described a disengaged president "like a blind man in a room full of deaf people", encircled by "a Praetorian guard," intently looking for a way to overthrow Saddam Hussein long before 9/11. The ensuing five years and 1,088 columns really just fleshed out that portrait, describing a president who was oblivious, embubbled and untrustworthy. When I look back on the Bush years, I think of the lies. There were so many. Lies about the war and lies to cover up the lies about the war. Lies about torture and surveillance. Lies about Valerie Plame. Vice President Dick Cheney's lies, criminally prosecutable but for his chief of staff Scooter Libby's lies. I also think about the extraordinary and fundamentally cancerous expansion of executive power that led to violations of our laws and our principles. And while this wasn't as readily apparent until President Obama took office, it's now very clear that the Bush years were all about kicking the can down the road – either ignoring problems or, even worse, creating them and not solving them. This was true of a huge range of issues including the economy, energy, health care, global warming – and of course Iraq and Afghanistan. How did the media cover it all? Not well. Reading pretty much everything that was written about Bush on a daily basis, as I did, one could certainly see the major themes emerging. But by and large, mainstream-media journalism missed the real Bush story for way too long. The handful of people who did exceptional investigative reporting during this era really deserve our gratitude: People such as Ron Suskind, Seymour Hersh, Jane Mayer, Murray Waas, Michael Massing, Mark Danner, Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau (better late than never), Dana Priest, Walter Pincus, Charlie Savage and Philippe Sands; there was also some fine investigative blogging over at Talking Points Memo and by Marcy Wheeler. Notably not on this list: The likes of Bob Woodward and Tim Russert. Hopefully, the next time the nation faces a grave national security crisis, we will listen to the people who were right, not the people who were wrong, and heed those who reported the truth, not those who served as stenographers to liars. It's also worth keeping in mind that there is so very much about the Bush era that we still don't know. Now, a little over five months after Bush left office, Barack Obama's presidency is shaping up to be in large part about coming to terms with the Bush era, and fixing all the things that were broken. In most cases, Obama is approaching this task enthusiastically – although in some cases, he is doing so only under great pressure, and in a few cases, not at all . I think part of Obama's abiding popularity with the public stems from what a contrast he is from his predecessor -- and in particular his willingness to take on problems. But he certainly has a lot of balls in the air at one time. And I predict that his growing penchant for secrecy – especially but not only when it comes to the Bush legacy of torture and lawbreaking – will end up serving him poorly, unless he renounces it soon. Obama is nowhere in Bush's league when it comes to issues of credibility, but his every action nevertheless needs to be carefully scrutinized by the media, and he must be held accountable. We should be holding him to the highest standards – and there are plenty of places where we should be pushing back. Just for starters, there are a lot of hugely important but unanswered questions about his Afghanistan policy, his financial rescue plans, and his turnaround on transparency. So now I'm off. I wish The Washington Post well. I'm proud to have been associated with it for 12 years (I was a producer and editor at the Web site before starting the column.) I remain a big believer in the "traditional media," especially when it sticks to traditional journalistic values. The Post was, is and will always be a great newspaper, and I have confidence that it will rise to the challenges ahead. (Dan Froom) |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 02 Jul 09 - 10:08 AM "In the Bush years, federal regulators not only failed to protect borrowers, they aggressively prevented the states from doing it. New York's attorney general sued, challenging the regulators' interference. This week, the Supreme Court ruled that federal regulators cannot prevent the states from enforcing consumer protection and fair lending laws against national banks. As the current mortgage crisis was building, banks engaged in a wide array of bad practices. They lent to borrowers who could not afford to pay off the loans. They misrepresented loan terms, and they employed deceptive "teaser" rates to mislead their customers. State attorneys general opened investigations and filed lawsuits. In 2005, then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer of New York asked several national banks about lending practices to determine whether blacks and Hispanics had been charged higher interest rates than whites — and whether the banks had violated fair lending laws. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, part of the Treasury Department, sued to block Mr. Spitzer. It claimed that a regulation it issued under the National Bank Act barred the states from enforcing state fair-lending laws. Two lower courts agreed. The Supreme Court sided with the states by a vote of 5 to 4. In an opinion by Antonin Scalia — one of the most conservative justices, who voted with the court's four liberals — the court ruled that the comptroller had exceeded its authority under the National Bank Act. The bank act, which dates to 1864, prohibits state officials from having "visitorial" powers over national banks. "Visitorial" powers, Justice Scalia explained, have to do with directly overseeing corporate affairs. Even though the states cannot supervise banks, he said, they do have the right to enforce their own laws. The ruling sends a clear message that state officials have the power to rein in banks that behave badly. It was especially timely, since the banking and mortgage industries are trying to kill a proposal by the Obama administration to create a new agency to regulate consumer finance — a job now scattered around the government. Congress should support that proposal and keep in mind the court ruling by making it clear that any rules the new agency sets are a minimum, and that states may impose more stringent standards." NYT Editorial |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 02 Jul 09 - 11:13 AM The real reason the invasion was a mistake demonstrates the liability of having unintelligent people with poor intell resources, incapable of understanding the situation on the ground, and arrogant int heir own ignorance, empowered with military decision making. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 05 Jul 09 - 09:02 PM words and music by John McCutcheon The election of George W. Bush made us realize that Dan Quayle was a man way ahead of his time. Based entirely on W's speeches. I was born in West Texas, pretty near California Far away from Dad's home in DC When I'm talkin' 'bout myself and They're talking 'bout myself All of us are talkin' about me Now some may retort to personal attacks Take the high horse then claim the low road But I'm not revengeful person I'll simply respond with this ode When I delivered the State of the Budget Address I offered a question or two How can a man still put food on his family Will the tollbooth to the middleclass become more few? It's time to make the pie higher This idea's sure to resignate This is no time to be subliminable It's a time to unificate If there's more trade, there's more commerce And we'll bring this solution to an end Even if your business is Hispanically owned If you speak French or Mexican We're working for a hopefuller country No longer vulcanized Where humans and fish can coexist And each act civilized I think we agree, the past is over Still we're held hostile everywhere Today we're not so sure who "they" are But still, we know that they're there No longer inoculated from what is coming With a foreign-handed foreign policy Keep good relations w/ Kosovoans and Grecians And resist emotionality We know reading is the basics of learning And learning…well…I forget the rest But teach a child to read and he or her Will sure pass a literacy test So I ask you, "Is our children learning?" Will we tolerate failed subsidation Or will this be where wings finally take dream Not a cufflink of federalization So if you're tired of the politics of polls and of principles It's time that you join this campaign We're looking for women who while serving our country Never the house will they stain Where our priorities is our faith Where a troop can house his family We'll find power to power the power of the power plants No, you'd best not misunderestimates me Sung: With every word and every breath Our language dies a slow, sad death Hail to the Chief, let's give him hail Part Yogi Berra Part Dan Quayle |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 08 Jul 09 - 11:21 PM WASHINGTON (NYT)— "The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta, has told the House Intelligence Committee in closed-door testimony that the C.I.A. concealed "significant actions" from Congress from 2001 until late last month, seven Democratic committee members said. In a June 26 letter to Mr. Panetta discussing his testimony, Democrats said that the agency had "misled members" of Congress for eight years about the classified matters, which the letter did not disclose. "This is similar to other deceptions of which we are aware from other recent periods," said the letter, made public late Wednesday by Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, one of the signers. In an interview, Mr. Holt declined to reveal the nature of the C.I.A.'s alleged deceptions,. But he said, "We wouldn't be doing this over a trivial matter." The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas, referred to Mr. Panetta's disclosure in a letter to the committee's ranking Republican, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, Congressional Quarterly reported on Wednesday. Mr. Reyes wrote that the committee "has been misled, has not been provided full and complete notifications, and (in at least one occasion) was affirmatively lied to." In a related development, President Obama threatened to veto the pending Intelligence Authorization Bill if it included a provision that would allow information about covert actions to be given to the entire House and Senate Intelligence Committees, rather than the so-called Gang of Eight — the Democratic and Republican leaders of both houses of Congress and the two Intelligence Committees. A White House statement released on Wednesday said the proposed expansion of briefings would undermine "a long tradition spanning decades of comity between the branches regarding intelligence matters." Democrats have complained that under President George W. Bush, entire programs were hidden from most committee members for years." |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Wolfgang Date: 09 Jul 09 - 07:42 AM The expression "fellow traveler" is never used for people who are members of a (in most contexts, communist) party, only for those who sympathize with its aims. Wolfgang |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 09 Jul 09 - 10:16 AM IS your comment in relation to something in particular, Wolfgang? Disjointed remarks are not usually your style... :>) A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 09 Jul 09 - 07:37 PM A lawsuit weighing whether a sitting U.S. president may create a spying program to eavesdrop on Americans' electronic communications without warrants or congressional authorization took another turn Thursday as a federal judge was asked to answer that question with a "no." The nearly 5-year-old case, despite its tortured procedural history, is the furthest along in challenging the Bush administration's warrantless, electronic surveillance program adopted in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks. The case was brought by two former American lawyers for a now-defunct Saudi charity. They allege some of their 2004 telephone conversations to Saudi Arabia were siphoned to the National Security Agency without warrants. The allegations were based on classified documents the government accidentally mailed to the former Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation lawyers. After a mountain of paperwork, a trip to the appellate courts and countless hearings, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled last month the lawyers must make their case without the documents, which both the Bush and Obama administrations claimed were a state secret. So on Thursday, counsel for those lawyers submitted a 41-page brief to Judge Walker, citing a bevy of circumstantial evidence, that they claim shows the two charity lawyers were unlawfully spied upon. The evidence presented (.pdf) includes speeches by government officials discussing an investigation that concluded with the listing of al-Haramain as a terror organization to the FBI's public disclosure that it monitored Al-Haramain officials. Jon Eisenberg, an attorney for the al-Haramain lawyers – Wendell Belew and Asim Gafoor, urged Walker to order the government to disclose whether the alleged surveillance "was authorized by a warrant." Eisenberg said the point of the lawsuit was to prevent future presidents from adopting a so-called Terror Surveillance Program, which was President George W. Bush's once-secret warrantless wiretapping program disclosed in 2005 by The New York Times. Bush said his war powers granted him the power to create the TSP program. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Stringsinger Date: 10 Jul 09 - 02:13 PM Bush has the attributes of a classic sociopath. There are those who relate to that. Bush was a puppet for big business lobbyists such crooks as Hank Paulson who make Bernie Madoff pale by comparison. Sociopaths can be personally charming on the outside as they steer their ship. The problem is the system where Wall Street banking lobbyists control the government while complaining about it being too strong. My fear is that Obama is turning into Bush on some issues such as wiretaps, Iraq, Af-Pak and AIPAC. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 10 Jul 09 - 08:11 PM "Report: Bush surveillance program was massive By PAMELA HESS – 25 minutes ago WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration built an unprecedented surveillance operation to pull in mountains of information far beyond the warrantless wiretapping previously acknowledged, a team of federal inspectors general reported Friday, questioning the legal basis for the effort but shielding almost all details on grounds they're still too secret to reveal. The report, compiled by five inspectors general, refers to "unprecedented collection activities" by U.S. intelligence agencies under an executive order signed by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Just what those activities involved remains classified, but the IGs pointedly say that any continued use of the secret programs must be "carefully monitored." The report says too few relevant officials knew of the size and depth of the program, let alone signed off on it. They particularly criticize John Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general who wrote legal memos undergirding the policy. His boss, Attorney General John Ashcroft, was not aware until March 2004 of the exact nature of the intelligence operations beyond wiretapping that he had been approving for the previous two and a half years, the report says. Most of the intelligence leads generated under what was known as the "President's Surveillance Program" did not have any connection to terrorism, the report said. But FBI agents told the authors that the "mere possibility of the leads producing useful information made investigating the leads worthwhile." The inspectors general interviewed more than 200 people inside and outside the government, but five former Bush administration officials refused to be questioned. They were Ashcroft, Yoo, former CIA Director George Tenet, former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and David Addington, an aide to former Vice President Dick Cheney." ... WaPo |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 11 Jul 09 - 10:31 PM Reporting from Washington (LA Times) -- The CIA kept a highly classified counter-terrorism program secret from Congress for eight years at the direction of former Vice President Dick Cheney, according to sources familiar with an account that agency Director Leon E. Panetta provided recently to House and Senate committees. The sources declined to provide any details on the nature of the program, but said that the agency has opened an internal inquiry in recent days into the history of the program and the decisions made by a series of senior officials to withhold information about it from Congress. Cheney's involvement suggests that the program was considered important enough by the Bush administration that it should be monitored at the highest levels of government, and that the White House was reluctant to risk disclosure of its details to lawmakers. Panetta killed the program on June 23 after learning of it for the first time, four months after he had become director of the CIA. He then called special sessions with both the House and Senate intelligence committees. The CIA's relationship with Congress has become a source of controversy in Washington in recent months, after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) accused the agency of lying to members about its use of waterboarding and other interrogation measures in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. The secret counter-terrorism program was first put in place shortly after those attacks, but it was never fully operational, sources said. Current and former intelligence and congressional officials have offered different viewpoints on the program's significance. A senior congressional aide said the magnitude of the program and the decision to keep it secret should not be downplayed. "Panetta found out about this for the first time and within 24 hours was in the office telling us," the aide said. "If this wasn't a big deal, why would the director of the CIA come sprinting up to the Hill like that?" |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 12 Jul 09 - 09:16 AM Attorney General Eric Holder is leaning toward launching a probe into the Bush administration's torture policies, it was reported Saturday. Sources told Newsweek that Holder, after months of careful consideration, appears likely to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate whether top Bush lawyers twisted the law in authorizing torture techniques. The official decision could come in a matter of weeks. If Holder opts to investigate, it will almost certainly increase tensions in a White House that has insisted it wants to focus on the future. "I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the President's agenda," Holder told Newsweek. "But that can't be a part of my decision." The development comes three months after it was revealed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003. After Holder read through the reports, he reportedly told a colleague it "turned my stomach." Daily News |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 12 Jul 09 - 10:25 PM Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Sunday that the Bush administration may have broken the law if the Central Intelligence Agency concealed a covert spy program from Congress. Related Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project (July 12, 2009) Blog The Caucus The latest on President Obama, the new administration and other news from Washington and around the nation. Join the discussion. More Politics News The New York Times reported on Sunday that the agency's current director, Leon E. Panetta, had told the Senate and House intelligence committees that the C.I.A. withheld the information about a secret counterterrorism program on direct orders from then Vice President Dick Cheney. The Times said that according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter, Panetta ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23 and briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day. Ms. Feinstein, a Democrat of California, said on "Fox News Sunday" that Mr. Panetta had told senators last month about Mr. Cheney ordering that the program not be disclosed to Congress. If Congress were kept in the dark, she said on Fox News Sunday, "that's something that should never, ever happen again." Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, a Democrat, said that "absolutely" warranted an investigation. "The executive branch cannot create programs like this one and keep Congress in the dark," he said on ABC's "This Week." "To give the president unbridled authority goes way beyond the United States Constitution." But Senator John S. McCain said he did not know enough about Mr. Cheney's involvement to say whether laws had been broken. "The vice president, I think, should obviously be heard from if the accusations are leveled in his direction," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "I think it's, frankly, too early for me to reach any conclusion." (NYT) |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 17 Jul 09 - 11:17 AM Illegal, and Pointless * Sign in to Recommend * comments (108) * * Send To Phone * ShareClose o Linkedin o Digg o Facebook o Mixx o MySpace o Yahoo! Buzz o Permalink o Article Tools Sponsored By Published: July 16, 2009 We've known for years that the Bush administration ignored and broke the law repeatedly in the name of national security. It is now clear that many of those programs could have been conducted just as easily within the law — perhaps more effectively and certainly with far less damage to the justice system and to Americans' faith in their government. Skip to next paragraph Related Times Topics: Wiretapping and Other Eavesdropping Devices and Methods Readers' Comments Readers shared their thoughts on this article. * Read All Comments (108) » That is the inescapable conclusion from a devastating report by the inspectors general of the intelligence and law-enforcement community on President George W. Bush's warrantless wiretapping program. The report shows that the longstanding requirement that the government obtain a warrant was not hindering efforts to gather intelligence on terrorists after the 9/11 attacks. In fact, the argument that the law was an impediment was concocted by White House and Justice Department lawyers after Mr. Bush authorized spying on Americans' international communications. We know less, so far, about the Bush administration's plan to send covert paramilitary teams to assassinate Al Qaeda leaders. But what is overwhelmingly clear is that there was no legal or rational justification for Vice President Dick Cheney's order to conceal the program from Congress. The plan was never put into effect, apparently because it was unworkable. But it's hard to imagine Congress balking at killing terrorists. So why break the law, again and again? Two things seem disturbingly clear. First, President Bush and his top aides panicked after the Sept. 11 attacks. And second, Mr. Cheney and his ideologues, who had long chafed at any legal constraints on executive power, preyed on that panic to advance their agenda. According to the inspectors general, the legal memo justifying warrantless wiretapping was written by John Yoo, then the deputy head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and author of other memos that twisted the law to justify torture. In this case, the report said, he misrepresented both the law and the details of the wiretapping operation to make it seem as if the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was outdated and that Mr. Bush could ignore it. And, according to the report, Mr. Yoo bypassed his bosses at the Justice Department and delivered his reports directly to, you guessed it, Mr. Cheney's office. For four years, until The Times revealed the warrantless wiretapping, Mr. Bush reauthorized the eavesdropping every 45 days based on memos from the intelligence community and Justice Department. The report said that when the "scary memos," as they came to be called, were not sufficiently scary, lawyers under the direction of Alberto Gonzales, White House counsel and later attorney general, revised them or ordered up additional "threat information." Each ended with a White House-written paragraph asserting that communications were intercepted from terrorists who "possessed the capability and intention" to attack this country. After Mr. Yoo and his boss, Jay Bybee, left the Justice Department, their replacements concluded that the wiretapping program was illegal. The White House did eventually change parts of the program and then demanded that Congress legalize it, but only after the White House tried to force the Justice Department to ignore its own conclusions and after Robert Mueller, the director of the F.B.I., threatened to resign. Mr. Cheney has tried to head off a reckoning by claiming that the warrantless wiretapping saved thousands of lives. The report said the C.I.A. could point to little direct benefit. The F.B.I. said most of the leads it produced were false. Others never led to an arrest. This is not an isolated case. Once the Bush team got into the habit of breaking the law, it became their operating procedure that any means are justified: ordering the nation's intelligence agents to torture prisoners; sending innocents to be tortured in foreign countries; creating secret prisons where detainees were held illegally without charge. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 17 Jul 09 - 12:08 PM A federal appeals court in Manhattan on Friday reversed a lower court ruling that had allowed the government to bar a prominent Muslim scholar from entering the United States in 2004 on grounds he had contributed to a charity that had connections to terrorism. Court Ruling # American Academy v. Napolitano The scholar, Tariq Ramadan, 46, a Swiss academic, had lined up a position to be a tenured professor at the University of Notre Dame, but the Bush administration revoked his visa. The government cited evidence that from 1998 to 2002, he donated about $1,300 to a Swiss-based charity which the Treasury Department later categorized as a terrorist organization. Professor Ramadan had said in an affidavit that he was not aware of any connections between the charity, Association de Secours Palestinien, and terrorism, and that he believed the organization was involved in legitimate humanitarian projects. In its ruling on Friday, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held unanimously that the government was required to "confront Ramadan with the allegation against him and afford him the subsequent opportunity to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that he did not know, and reasonably should not have known, that the recipient of his contributions was a terrorist organization." The record was unclear whether a consular officer who had denied the visa had done so, the panel said in its 52-page ruling, written by Judge Jon O. Newman and joined by Judges Wilfred Feinberg and Reena Raggi. The appeals court ordered the lower court to give Professor Ramadan an opportunity to demonstrate the claims in his affidavit. ...(NYT) Slow and painful steps to cure the ills of Bushian madness... |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 17 Jul 09 - 01:22 PM The Interior Department is dropping controversial plans to dramatically increase logging in western Oregon's forests, some of the nation's densest carbon stores. The move scraps a Bush-era decision to rezone 2.6 million acres of Bureau of Land Management forests, which would have tripled current logging production and opened old-growth forests to clear-cutting. The attempt prompted a lawsuit by 13 environmental groups after the rule was finalized late last year. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar yesterday called the Western Oregon Plan Revisions "legally indefensible" because BLM had ignored key Endangered Species Act consultation requirements. Also yesterday, Salazar announced that he will ask a court to annul last year's changes to the northern spotted owl's protected habitat, which enabled the timber plan to go through. Conservation groups proclaimed the announcement a victory not only for wildlife but for the climate, as well. "A lot more big, old-growth trees will remain standing and continue to suck up carbon," said Michael Francis, national forest director at the Wilderness Society. (NYT) (Repair, repair, repair....) |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Leadfingers Date: 17 Jul 09 - 01:57 PM 100 |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 17 Jul 09 - 02:38 PM Gee, Terry, for a moment there I thought you were going to say something contributing to the discussion. Silly of me, I know... |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 27 Jul 09 - 10:55 AM Federal immigration squads with shotguns and automatic weapons forcing their way into citizens' homes without warrants or lawful consent, shoving open doors and climbing through windows in predawn darkness, pulling innocent people from their beds, holding groggy occupants at gunpoint, taking people away without explanation — after invading the wrong house. This is a true account of the depths to which the Bush administration sank in its twilight, when immigration enforcement was ramped up to a feverish extreme. The details are in a report released Wednesday by the Immigration Justice Clinic of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. It describes a campaign of illegal home invasions waged by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from 2006 to 2008 on Long Island and in New Jersey. The report, written by a panel led by Lawrence Mulvey, the police commissioner of Nassau County on Long Island, examined 700 arrest records obtained through Freedom of Information lawsuits, and found a shameful pattern of abuses. The raids were supposed to be a hunt for gang members and other dangerous criminal fugitives, but two-thirds of those arrested were happenstance targets — Latinos with civil immigration violations. Although agents lacked judicial warrants, and thus could not legally enter private homes without a resident's informed consent, they routinely did so anyway — in 86 percent of the Long Island cases studied and 24 percent of those in New Jersey. And while ICE was legally required to have reasonable suspicion before detaining and questioning anybody, in two-thirds of arrest reports studied, no explanation for the initial arrest was given. It hardly needs saying that the raids were tactical failures as well as moral outrages. Three days of raids in Nassau County, for example, netted only 6 of 96 targets. Commissioner Mulvey and the Nassau county executive, Tom Suozzi, fiercely denounced the raids at the time as reckless, lawless and dangerous — ICE agents, they said, were flagrantly undisciplined, to the point of mistakenly drawing weapons on county police officers. The Cardozo report powerfully confirms their judgment. The Department of Homeland Security, under Secretary Janet Napolitano, says it has been trying to undo the worst excesses of Bush-era immigration enforcement. It should hasten to adopt the Cardozo report's recommendations, including no home raids except as a last resort to catch dangerous fugitives; no raids without judicial warrants; videotaping of agents in action, and retraining them on procedures; beginning an inspector general's investigation to see how far the abuses spread. (NYT) |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: alanabit Date: 28 Jul 09 - 05:35 AM It was a great time for satirists. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 06 Aug 09 - 11:41 AM A French Revelation, or The Burning Bush JAMES A. HAUGHT Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible's satanic agents of the Apocalypse. Honest. This isn't a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God. Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their "common faith" (Christianity) and told him: "Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins." This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its "coalition of the willing" to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush's call and "wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs." After the 2003 call, the puzzled French leader didn't comply with Bush's request. Instead, his staff asked Thomas Romer, a theologian at the University of Lausanne, to analyze the weird appeal. Dr. Romer explained that the Old Testament book of Ezekiel contains two chapters (38 and 39) in which God rages against Gog and Magog, sinister and mysterious forces menacing Israel. Jehovah vows to smite them savagely, to "turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws," and slaughter them ruthlessly. In the New Testament, the mystical book of Revelation envisions Gog and Magog gathering nations for battle, "and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them." In 2007, Dr. Romer recounted Bush's strange behavior in Lausanne University's review, Allez Savoir. A French-language Swiss newspaper, Le Matin Dimanche, printed a sarcastic account titled: "When President George W. Bush Saw the Prophesies of the Bible Coming to Pass." France's La Liberte likewise spoofed it under the headline "A Small Scoop on Bush, Chirac, God, Gog and Magog." But other news media missed the amazing report. Subsequently, ex-President Chirac confirmed the nutty event in a long interview with French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, who tells the tale in his new book, Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai (If You Repeat it, I Will Deny), released in March by the publisher Plon. Oddly, mainstream media are ignoring this alarming revelation that Bush may have been half-cracked when he started his Iraq war. My own paper, The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, is the only U.S. newspaper to report it so far. Canada's Toronto Star recounted the story, calling it a "stranger-than-fiction disclosure … which suggests that apocalyptic fervor may have held sway within the walls of the White House." Fortunately, online commentary sites are spreading the news, filling the press void. The French revelation jibes with other known aspects of Bush's renowned evangelical certitude. For example, a few months after his phone call to Chirac, Bush attended a 2003 summit in Egypt. The Palestinian foreign minister later said the American president told him he was "on a mission from God" to defeat Iraq. At that time, the White House called this claim "absurd." Recently, GQ magazine revealed that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld attached warlike Bible verses and Iraq battle photos to war reports he hand-delivered to Bush. One declared: "Put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground." It's awkward to say openly, but now-departed President Bush is a religious crackpot, an ex-drunk of small intellect who "got saved." He never should have been entrusted with the power to start wars.... Council for Secular Humanism |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 12 Aug 09 - 10:54 AM WASHINGTON — Thousands of pages of internal e-mail and once-secret Congressional testimony showed Tuesday that Karl Rove and other senior aides in the Bush White House played an earlier and more active role than was previously known in the 2006 firings of a number of United States attorneys. Aides to former President George W. Bush have asserted that the Justice Department took the lead in the dismissals, which set off a political firestorm that lasted months. Mr. Rove played down his role in the firings in a recent interview and in closed testimony last month before Congressional investigators. But the documents, released by the House Judiciary Committee after a protracted fight over access to White House records and testimony, offer a detailed portrait of a nearly two-year effort, from early 2005 to 2007, by senior White House officials, including Mr. Rove, to dismiss some prosecutors for what appear to be political reasons. Internal e-mail messages in the spring of 2005 at the White House showed that there was widespread unhappiness with David Iglesias, the United States attorney in New Mexico, because of the perception among top Republicans that he was dragging his feet on voter fraud and corruption investigations involving Democrats. In a June 2005 message, Scott Jennings, a top political aide to Mr. Rove, wrote a colleague that Mr. Iglesias should be removed because Republicans in New Mexico "are really angry over his lack of action on voter fraud stuff." "Iglesias has done nothing," it continued. "We are getting killed out there." Mr. Iglesias was ultimately let go in December 2006, along with seven other federal prosecutors in an unusual dismissal of top presidential appointees. Mr. Iglesias had received positive evaluations from the Justice Department in Washington for his performance and his "exemplary leadership." It is unclear who made the final decision to have him dismissed. "The amount of backstabbing and treachery involved is just breathtaking," Mr. Iglesias said of the White House e-mail, in an interview on Tuesday. "It's astounding that without reviewing the evidence or talking to the F.B.I. or anything, the White House would assume that these were provable cases and that I needed to file them for the political benefit of the party. That's not what U.S. attorneys do." ... |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 20 Aug 09 - 02:29 PM Aug 20 2009, 11:00 am by Marc Ambinder (The Atlantic) Don't Cry For Tom Ridge The news this morning that former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge believed that President Bush and his top advisers manipulated the terror threat alert system for their political gain is really -- and it ought to be -- a major story. Ridge was in a position to know, for certain, whether this was the case. And though he's hinted at it before, he now says, in his soon-to-be-released book, that he was pressured into raising the alert level before the 2004 election. Let's see what Ridge actually writes before making too many conclusions. Let's talk to other Bush officials and try to figure out whether we need to exercise caution about Ridge's own perspective. For one thing, Ridge didn't immediately resign. He resigned after the election. If he believed at the time that manipulating the terror alert system was damaging to the country, and he said nothing, and when he did resign, he said nothing, then he doesn't come off as a particularly sympathetic figure. Ridge left the White House in 2005. He's joined several corporate boards, has made a lot of money consulting on homeland security, and has been mostly silent. He's probably been saving it for the book. Journalists, including myself, were very skeptical when anti-Bush liberals insisted that what Ridge now says is true, was true. We were wrong. Our skepticism about the activists' conclusions was warranted because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence. [Addition: That's a hasty generalization. Many of the loudest voices were reflexively anti-Bush, but I can't accurately describe the motivations of everyone, much less a majority, of those who were skeptical. There were plenty of non-liberals who believed that the terror threats were exaggerated.] But journalists should have been even more skeptical about the administration's pronouncements. And yet -- we, too, weren't privy to the intelligence. Information asymmetry is always going to exist, and, living as we do in a Democratic system, most journalists are going to give the government the benefit of some doubt, even having learned lessons about giving the government that benefit. My colleague Justin Miller adds this caution: The question that needs to be asked of the raising the threat level before the election matter is whether there was a) any intelligence that led people to believing there was a greater risk of attack. If not, then raising the threat level was unquestionably a political move. B) If there was intelligence - and different people had different judgments on whether it was credible or spoke of an imminent threat - and Ridge landed on the side that said it was not so dangerous, that's another matter. Maybe "pressure" in that sense was the pressure of an abundance of caution, the "one-percent doctrine" and the example of the pre-election attacks in Madrid several months before our presidential. It's not as if the idea that al Qaeda may try to throw the U.S. election or wreak havoc was implausible. We'll have a better picture once Ridge's book is directly quoted. Rest assured the Cheney team will come out swinging against this too. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Donuel Date: 20 Aug 09 - 02:33 PM In retrospect the Bush Years were all about 9-11 and the collapse of world trade and the world trade center. WTC watching terror come, with total confusion walls trembled calamitously wasted cubicles crumbled with terrible consequences. we totally crumbled wailing tortured cries. where tiny corpses withered to chalk. we talked constantly who took control? wild terrorist cowboys washed their cash whipped the country who took cash. why this crisis? who's to change? weary terrorist commandos? weak timid cowards? western tradition continued when tensions cooled Widows taught children. Wives told Congress. Wisdom taught cautiously Weary troops cried War time cruelty Worried taunted crowds we took consolation we tivo'd comedies. while things change world trade creeps. Wallstreet trade collapsed wishful thinking careened without thoughtful care when traders cheated we thoroughly crashed. world trade centered with triumphant China when time came we took charge white terrorists conspired while toting colts watching townhall citizens wishing they could wipe them clear wanting to change what thousands created wonderful thoughtful change with tremendous care when they come we'll trap criminals dh 2009 |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: DougR Date: 20 Aug 09 - 02:37 PM Check out Karl Rove's article in today's on-line edition of the Wall Street Journal. I think you will love it! DougR |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Donuel Date: 20 Aug 09 - 03:34 PM Wow, Rove says the recent findings show he had no political involvment with firing US attorneys! That is so typically Orwellian of Karl since the "findings" show he had total involvment in the political firing of US attorneys. Amos Oh Magog and Gog. GWB could be easily deprogrammed from the cult religion that kidnapped him. Simple people are simply more gullible especially when alterior father son issues are in the balance. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 20 Aug 09 - 04:55 PM What would really clear the air around Karl Rove would be hearing him come clean about what he DID do. OF course, that is about as likely as hell freezing over. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Donuel Date: 20 Aug 09 - 05:52 PM Tom Ridge of the Bush Homeland Security has a book out in two weeks that says that the raised terror alerts were for political scare tactics after the Dem Convention and before election day. ALSO the it was discovered that the CIA paid Blackwater USA $22 million for hit squads that would not be under the scrutiny of Congress. This is a biggie! |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: DougR Date: 20 Aug 09 - 09:31 PM Amos, Donuel: Fess up. Now you really didn't read Karl Rove's article did you? DougR |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 20 Aug 09 - 10:48 PM Ah. but I did. I found it defensive, and self-serving, but no more than I would expect. However, Rove' version of the story is not exactly consistent with other reports on the same findings. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Ron Davies Date: 20 Aug 09 - 10:56 PM I also read it. Bingo. Defensive, self-serving. Uninformative. And in one of the few fora where he will not be pilloried for it--in fact preaching to the choir--at least the few tenors and a bass or two who are left. But I'm sure he has a contract with the WSJ editorial page. Usually he just attacks Obama, This is the first time I can recall he's whined about his own treatment. Pobrecito. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Stringsinger Date: 21 Aug 09 - 11:48 AM Objectivity is often in the eye of the beholder. The Bush years proved that nothing worthwhile could be done in government. Name one good thing that Bush did for the American people? He protected us by ignoring the threats of 911. He eviscerated the FDA, and all other government agencies. He lead us into the senseless occupation of Iraq. He justified torture. He promoted jingoism, deception, subterfuge, and political baiting to a prominent level. He ran like an ostrich to his home in Texas to clear brush. He abused the English language to the point of embarrassment throughout the world. He gave Merkel a back rub as if it were his "right" as a man to violate a woman's space He did so much to make the US ashamed of our role in world affairs. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 21 Aug 09 - 02:21 PM Frank: In all justice I think you will find he did do a few positive things while in office. While I do not remember them, and have not the time just now to go looking, I believe I remember hearing of things I approved of. However they were few and minor in contrast to the major embarrassments he brought to office. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 24 Aug 09 - 02:04 PM Memo Reveals Details of Blackwater Targeted Killings Program By Gabor Steingart in Washington A US district court will decide this week whether one of the darkest chapters of the Bush era, the relationship between the administration and the private security company Blackwater, should be reexamined. Former Blackwater employees want to shine light on the company's shadowy activities. Susan Burke supported the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, during the 2008 US presidential campaign. But now that Obama is in office, she finds her views diverging widely from his. Obama is opposed to investigating the excesses of the administration of his predecessor, former President George W. Bush. Burke, an attorney, favors an investigation. Obama has thus far avoided answering the question of whether the US Constitution was violated in Bush's so-called "war on terror." Burke wants an investigation to focus on precisely this question. Obama is looking forward, while Burke is looking back. IMAGE GALLERY * * * 7 Photos Photo Gallery: Outsourcing War What Burke sees when she looks into the rearview mirror is indeed ugly. She sees 17 dead, including women and children, lying on Nisoor Square in Baghdad, killed on Sept. 16, 2007 by mercenaries working for Blackwater, a private American security firm. She sees Blackwater employee Andrew Moonen who, after a Christmas party in 2006, drove through Baghdad, heavily armed, and shot a man for no reason. She hears the shot, fired from a Blackwater helicopter, that killed an innocent man on Baghdad's Wathba Square on Sept. 9, 2007. But most of all, Burke sees Erik Prince, Blackwater's founder and former owner. In her suit, she refers to him as a "modern-day merchant of death," and she alleges that the 40-year-old created a "culture of lawlessness and unaccountability" at Blackwater, where the "excessive and unnecessary use of deadly force" was commonplace. In her motion, Burke also accuses Blackwater of war crimes. The US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, in Alexandria, Virginia, will now decide whether to take on Burke's civil suit. Committed In the Name of America The political world will also have to make some decisions. The first question is whether the US government will make public on Monday the most comprehensive report to date on the treatment of terrorism suspects. That alone would trigger a political hurricane in Washington, says former CIA Director Porter Goss. It would also make it much more difficult for the government to rebuff calls for it to finally investigate all the alleged illegal activity carried out in the fight against terrorism. It was not until the end of June that US Attorney General Eric Holder read the report, which was prepared by the CIA's inspector general in 2004. But then he spent a full two days in his office in Washington D.C. studying the document. When he had finished reading it, he apparently stood at the window for a long time, staring out at Constitution Avenue. Horrified over what had been done in the name of America, Holder looked into the possibility of appointing a special prosecutor. Sources in Washington say that he has now achieved his goal, which puts him more squarely in Burke's camp than Obama's. Blackwater characterizes Burke's accusations as "scandalous and baseless," and claims that the cases she cites were isolated incidents. According to Blackwater attorneys, "no diplomat under the protection of this service died or even was injured during the entire duration of the contract." Symbol of an Era Prince, who earlier in his career claimed to have "the heart of a warrior," is intent on preventing the civil suit from going to trial. To that end, he has hired a team of lawyers working for the law firm of Mayer Brown, which also represents 89 companies on Fortune magazine's list of the top 500 US companies ranked by revenues. Peter White, the head of the Mayer Brown team, plans to convince the judges in Alexandria this week that the Blackwater case isn't a case at all. In his written response to Burke's lawsuit, White argues that any public disclosure of Blackwater's methods would endanger its personnel in war zones, and her suit should be dismissed. White also argues that if there is any culpability, it rests with the individuals who committed the acts in question, not the entire company. He points to unsuccessful lawsuits that were filed against US corporations after the Vietnam War, including the case of Vietnamese plaintiffs who tried and failed to sue the US multinational corporation Dow Chemical, the manufacturer of the defoliant Agent Orange. In one respect, the comparison is apt: Blackwater has become a symbol of an entire era, just as Agent Orange was a potent symbol of the Vietnam War. Outsourcing War After the al-Qaida attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney began using large numbers of private security contractors for the first time. The mercenaries were intended to make up for a lack of manpower, especially in the area of personal security, as well as to perform the dirty work, such as interrogating detainees, thereby leaving US military personnel untainted. Erik Prince's company turned into an empire practically overnight, collecting more than $1 billion (€700 million) in revenues from US taxpayers. Seventy percent of Blackwater's contracts with the government were no-bid contracts. The company's most important personnel, its fighters, who were known internally as "shooters," were recruited around the world, including from places like the Philippines and Latin America. In 2007, the company proudly changed its name to Blackwater Worldwide. The advantage of privatizing the war was obvious for the Bush administration. Blackwater contractors are cheaper than regular US soldiers. When they were killed, their widows received only minor compensation, while the US military pays lifelong survivor benefits. Besides, Blackwater employees died quietly -- in other words, they were never part of the official death statistics, which was convenient for the president. With the end of the Bush administration, Blackwater received fewer contracts and the company changed its name to Xe Services. But its founder's most determined adversary, Susan Burke, continued her fight. 'A Christian Crusader' Burke now plans to call 40 witnesses to testify against Prince. If the court agrees to hear her suit on Friday, eyewitnesses to the various killings will be summoned from Baghdad. In the United States, Burke, who made a name for herself defending detainees subjected to abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, will ask the court to subpoena several former Blackwater employees, including a former executive.... (Excerpted from der Spiegel.) |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: alanabit Date: 24 Aug 09 - 02:09 PM It is very hard work to find anything good to say about Bush or find anything to thank him for. However, I owe my Martin guitar to him and it would be churlish not to give thanks. He cocked up the economy so badly and drove the relative price of your exports so low that even I could afford one. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 24 Aug 09 - 09:11 PM The NYT reports: "WASHINGTON — The Justice Department's ethics office has recommended reversing the Bush administration and reopening nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases, potentially exposing Central Intelligence Agency employees and contractors to prosecution for brutal treatment of terrorism suspects, according to a person officially briefed on the matter. Susan Walsh/Associated Press Eric H. Holder Jr. Related Times Topics: C.I.A. Interrogations Blog The Caucus The latest on President Obama, the new administration and other news from Washington and around the nation. Join the discussion. More Politics News Readers' Comments Readers shared their thoughts on this article. Read All Comments (388) » The recommendation by the Office of Professional Responsibility, presented to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in recent weeks, comes as the Justice Department is about to disclose on Monday voluminous details on prisoner abuse that were gathered in 2004 by the C.I.A.'s inspector general but have never been released. When the C.I.A. first referred its inspector general's findings to prosecutors, they decided that none of the cases merited prosecution. But Mr. Holder's associates say that when he took office and saw the allegations, which included the deaths of people in custody and other cases of physical or mental torment, he began to reconsider. With the release of the details on Monday and the formal advice that at least some cases be reopened, it now seems all but certain that the appointment of a prosecutor or other concrete steps will follow, posing significant new problems for the C.I.A. It is politically awkward, too, for Mr. Holder because President Obama has said that he would rather move forward than get bogged down in the issue at the expense of his own agenda."... This is a tone of humility and attention to justice yu would never have heard from John Ashcroft, et al. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 26 Aug 09 - 10:11 AM The Torture Papers NYT Published: August 25, 2009 "The Obama administration has taken important steps toward repairing the grievous harm that President George W. Bush did to this nation with his lawless and morally repugnant detention policies. President Obama is committed to closing the Guantánamo Bay camp and creating legitimate courts to try detainees. He has rescinded the executive orders and the legal rulings that Mr. Bush used to excuse the abuse of prisoners. The Defense Department has taken the important step of reversing policy and notifying the International Committee of the Red Cross of the identities of militants who were being held in secret at camps in Iraq and Afghanistan. And Attorney General Eric Holder has appointed a prosecutor to investigate the interrogation of prisoners of the Central Intelligence Agency, whose inhuman treatment was detailed in a long-secret report written by the agency's inspector general in 2004 and released on Monday. Yet despite these commendable individual steps, Mr. Obama and his political advisers continue to shrink from the broad investigation of the full range of his predecessor's trampling on human rights, civil liberties and judicial safeguards that would allow this country to make sure this sordid history is behind it for good. Indeed, the administration seemed reluctant to make public the C.I.A. report, which was released under a court order and was heavily censored, with whole pages blacked out — including the four pages of recommendations. Before Mr. Holder announced his investigation, the White House made it clear that it was unhappy with his decision — repeating its sadly familiar line about "looking forward, not backward." Mr. Holder displayed real courage and integrity in ordering the investigation. But he stressed that it was limited to the specific interrogations outlined in the C.I.A. report, and did not amount to a full-blown criminal investigation of the Bush-era detention policies. The interrogations are certainly worthy of criminal investigation. The report describes objectionable and cruel practices well beyond waterboarding. They included threatening a detainee's family members with sexual assault and threatening to kill another's children; the staging of mock executions; and repeatedly blocking a prisoner's carotid artery until he began to faint...." |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Arkie Date: 26 Aug 09 - 02:21 PM Perhaps with the current economic situation in America, Obama does not wish to place the country at risk for law suits due to actions of people one might construe were working for the U.S. government. My own feeling is that the people of this country should not be held responsible for the actions of the Bush-Cheney administration. While their actions were supported by some citizens, they were not acting in behalf of the country but on their own in pursuit of power or perhaps in the interest of major oil in grabbing control of Iraq oil fields. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 10 Sep 09 - 12:36 PM "...The typical American household made less money last year than the typical household made a full decade ago. To me, that's the big news from the Census Bureau's annual report on income, poverty and health insurance, which was released this morning. Median household fell to $50,303 last year, from $52,163 in 2007. In 1998, median income was $51,295. All these numbers are adjusted for inflation. In the four decades that the Census Bureau has been tracking household income, there has never before been a full decade in which median income failed to rise. (The previous record was seven years, ending in 1985.) Other Census data suggest that it also never happened between the late 1940s and the late 1960s. So it doesn't seem to have happened since at least the 1930s. And the streak probably won't end in 2009, either. Unemployment has been rising all year, which is a strong sign income will fall. What's going on here? It's a combination of two trends. One, economic growth in the current decade has been slower than in any decade since before World War II. Two, inequality has risen sharply, so much of the bounty from our growth has gone to a relatively small slice of the population."...NYT Gee, George, that was quite the slippery slope you sent us down. Whadya think? Time to cut some more brush? A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Donuel Date: 10 Sep 09 - 10:35 PM Yogi Quayle hmmm For the Republicans to come up with another success like George just deny education benefits to those with pre existing IGNORANCE. You'll have a whole crop to choose from. PS I have noticed that the lily white military officers (below generals and admirals) in this DC area have hundreds, no, thousands of Obama nigger jokes they spread by email. Do you think I should release some of these to MSNBC? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Sawzaw Date: 11 Sep 09 - 07:39 PM "Until the network under Ben Laden is dust, however it is achieved, we will not be able to put paid to this account, not because of blood-hunger but because of survival." |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 15 Sep 09 - 03:01 PM fter leaving prison, Muntadar al-Zaidi went straight to al Baghdadiya - the TV station he was working for at the news conference where he threw the shoes. Addressing his own news conference, he said he had been tortured: "At the very moment that the Prime Minister Mr al-Maliki was on TV saying he wouldn't rest until he was sure I was sleeping on a comfortable bed, I was being hideously tortured. "I was being given electric shocks, and being hit with cables and steel roods... I was left handcuffed and immersed in water until dawn in cold weather. I demand that Mr al-Maliki apologise for concealing the truth." An advisor to the prime minister told the BBC that the torture allegation should be investigated. When I saw the war criminal Bush, I wanted to show my resentment - after six years of occupation, this killer came to my country smiling and bragging about victory Muntadar al-Zaidi And a spokesman for the ministry of human rights told us they do not believe he was tortured in the jail where he spent the past nine months, as it is a "detention centre with acceptable human rights standards". They concluded that, if he was tortured, it must have happened soon after he was arrested and before his trial. At his news conference, Mr Zaidi offered an explanation for his shoe-throwing protest. "I'm not a hero," he said, "but when I saw the war criminal Bush, I wanted to show my resentment - after six years of occupation, this killer came to my country smiling and bragging about victory." He went on: "When I saw the pictures of the dead, it kept me awake at night." He also addressed objections that journalists should throw questions at presidents, and not shoes: "If I gave the profession of journalism a bad name, I apologise," he said. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: beardedbruce Date: 15 Sep 09 - 04:03 PM Obama supports extending Patriot Act provisions Devlin Barrett, Associated Press Writer – 10 mins ago WASHINGTON – The Obama administration supports extending three key provisions of the Patriot Act that are due to expire at the end of the year, the Justice Department told Congress in a letter made public Tuesday. Lawmakers and civil rights groups had been pressing the Democratic administration to say whether it wants to preserve the post-Sept. 11 law's authority to access business records, as well as monitor so-called "lone wolf" terrorists and conduct roving wiretaps. The provision on business records was long criticized by rights groups as giving the government access to citizens' library records, and a coalition of liberal and conservative groups complained that the Patriot Act gives the government too much authority to snoop into Americans' private lives. As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama said he would take a close look at the law, based on his past expertise in constitutional law. Back in May, President Obama said legal institutions must be updated to deal with the threat of terrorism, but in a way that preserves the rule of law and accountability. In a letter to lawmakers, Justice Department officials said the administration supports extending the three expiring provisions of the law, although they are willing to consider additional privacy protections as long as they don't weaken the effectiveness of the law. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote Sen. Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that the administration is willing to consider stronger civil rights protections in the new law "provided that they do not undermine the effectiveness of these important (provisions)." Leahy responded with a statement saying it is important for the administration and Congress to "work together to ensure that we protect both our national security and our civil liberties." The committee has scheduled a hearing next week on the Patriot Act. From 2004 to 2007, the business records provision was used 220 times, officials said. Most often, the business records were requested in combination with requests for phone records. The lone wolf provision was created to conduct surveillance on suspects with no known link to foreign governments or terrorist groups. It has never been used, but the administration says it should still be available for future investigations. The roving wiretaps provision was designed to allow investigators to quickly monitor the communications of a suspects who change their cell phone or communication device, without investigators having to go back to court for a new court authorization. That provision has been used an average of 22 times a year, officials said. Michelle Richardson of the American Civil Liberties Union called the administration's position "a mixed bag," and said that the group hopes the next version of the Patriot Act will have important safeguards on other issues, particularly the collecting of international communications, and a specific bar on surveillance of protected First Amendment activities like peaceful protests or religious assembly. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Sawzaw Date: 16 Sep 09 - 10:00 AM President Obama, who eagerly claimed ownership of the war on Afghanistan, calling it a "war of necessity," has already committed an additional 21,000 U.S. troops to the occupation. That escalation brings the total number of U.S. forces to approximately 62,000. Four thousand additional troops from the 82nd Airborne Division will be sent in September to train Afghan soldiers. This is in addition to private U.S.-paid military contractors in Afghanistan, which were estimated at 130,000 to 180,000 in mid-2007. In addition, Obama has authorized predator drone attacks on Pakistan—killing civilians, expanding the violence, and destabilizing that country. Afghan resistance fighters, who took a wait-and-see attitude, avoiding direct combat as 4,000 U.S. troops surged into the Helmand province in southern Afghanistan in early July, have fought back with improvised explosive devices, dramatically increasing foreign casualties. As of press time, more than 300 foreign troops had already been killed in Afghanistan in 2009, making it the deadliest year for the occupying foreign armies, with four months to go for the body count to further rise. During August, 47 U.S. troops were killed, making it the deadliest month of the entire eight-year-long war for the United States. The administration, well aware of the heavy political costs they will incur as more troops return home in body bags, is looking to increase the use of unmanned predator drones. The fiscal year 2010 budget calls for $3.5 billion to be spent on unmanned aerial vehicles. There are several different UAVs made by defense industry contractors. The Reapers, made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, are priced at $10 to $12 million apiece. Use of Predator drones may minimize U.S. military deaths, but it becomes a vicious Catch-22 for the war effort. Any attempt to lessen civilian support for resistance to the occupation is doomed from the start, when drones have rained death from the sky on entire families, on wedding celebrations and funerals. Hundreds of civilians have been killed in the attacks. The United States has attempted a bribery campaign to win hearts and minds, paying money from a fund created by Congress, the Commander Emergency Relief Program, which has $250 million allocated this year for southern Afghanistan alone. The United States plans to dole out $2,500 to compensate for each civilian killed. The payment for killing a cow would be roughly equivalent, according to The Washington Post. The new administration faces increased opposition at home. A Sept. 1 CNN poll found that 57 percent of respondents opposed the war in Afghanistan. That rising tide of opposition is also seen in England, where a survey showed 52 percent calling for immediate withdrawal of British troops. Scrambling to avoid defeat in Afghanistan, the Pentagon is searching for a strategy that will help maintain U.S. dominance over the country and the region. U.S. workers have nothing to gain from the war on Afghanistan. In the month of October, a wide variety of actions will take place on the 8th Anniversary of the war on Afghanistan as people take to the streets across the United States to oppose the war. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 17 Sep 09 - 12:17 AM From The Atlajntic, an excerpt: Sep 11 2009, 10:41 am by Ronald Brownstein Closing The Book On The Bush Legacy "Thursday's annual Census Bureau report on income, poverty and access to health care-the Bureau's principal report card on the well-being of average Americans-closes the books on the economic record of George W. Bush. It's not a record many Republicans are likely to point to with pride. On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush's two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country's condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton's two terms, often substantially. The Census' final report card on Bush's record presents an intriguing backdrop to today's economic debate. Bush built his economic strategy around tax cuts, passing large reductions both in 2001 and 2003. Congressional Republicans are insisting that a similar agenda focused on tax cuts offers better prospects of reviving the economy than President Obama's combination of some tax cuts with heavy government spending. But the bleak economic results from Bush's two terms, tarnish, to put it mildly, the idea that tax cuts represent an economic silver bullet. Economists would cite many reasons why presidential terms are an imperfect frame for tracking economic trends. The business cycle doesn't always follow the electoral cycle. A president's economic record is heavily influenced by factors out of his control. Timing matters and so does good fortune. But few would argue that national economic policy is irrelevant to economic outcomes. And rightly or wrongly, voters still judge presidents and their parties largely by the economy's performance during their watch. In that assessment, few measures do more than the Census data to answer the threshold question of whether a president left the day to day economic conditions of average Americans better than he found it. If that's the test, today's report shows that Bush flunked on every relevant dimension-and not just because of the severe downturn that began last year. Consider first the median income. When Bill Clinton left office after 2000, the median income-the income line around which half of households come in above, and half fall below-stood at $52,500 (measured in inflation-adjusted 2008 dollars). When Bush left office after 2008, the median income had fallen to $50,303. That's a decline of 4.2 per cent. That leaves Bush with the dubious distinction of becoming the only president in recent history to preside over an income decline through two presidential terms, notes Lawrence Mishel, president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. The median household income increased during the two terms of Clinton (by 14 per cent, as we'll see in more detail below), Ronald Reagan (8.1 per cent), and Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford (3.9 per cent). As Mishel notes, although the global recession decidedly deepened the hole-the percentage decline in the median income from 2007 to 2008 is the largest single year fall on record-average families were already worse off in 2007 than they were in 2000, a remarkable result through an entire business expansion. "What is phenomenal about the years under Bush is that through the entire business cycle from 2000 through 2007, even before this recession...working families were worse off at the end of the recovery, in the best of times during that period, than they were in 2000 before he took office," Mishel says. Bush's record on poverty is equally bleak. When Clinton left office in 2000, the Census counted almost 31.6 million Americans living in poverty. When Bush left office in 2008, the number of poor Americans had jumped to 39.8 million (the largest number in absolute terms since 1960.) Under Bush, the number of people in poverty increased by over 8.2 million, or 26.1 per cent. Over two-thirds of that increase occurred before the economic collapse of 2008. The trends were comparably daunting for children in poverty. When Clinton left office nearly 11.6 million children lived in poverty, according to the Census. When Bush left office that number had swelled to just under 14.1 million, an increase of more than 21 per cent. The story is similar again for access to health care. When Clinton left office, the number of uninsured Americans stood at 38.4 million. By the time Bush left office that number had grown to just over 46.3 million, an increase of nearly 8 million or 20.6 per cent. The trends look the same when examining shares of the population that are poor or uninsured, rather than the absolute numbers in those groups. When Clinton left office in 2000 13.7 per cent of Americans were uninsured; when Bush left that number stood at 15.4 per cent. (Under Bush, the share of Americans who received health insurance through their employer declined every year of his presidency-from 64.2 per cent in 2000 to 58.5 per cent in 2008.) When Clinton left the number of Americans in poverty stood at 11.3 per cent; when Bush left that had increased to 13.2 per cent. The poverty rate for children jumped from 16.2 per cent when Clinton left office to 19 per cent when Bush stepped down. Every one of those measurements had moved in a positive direction under Clinton. The median income increased from $46,603 when George H.W. Bush left office in 1992 to $52,500 when Clinton left in 2000-an increase of 14 per cent. The number of Americans in poverty declined from 38 million when the elder Bush left office in 1992 to 31.6 million when Clinton stepped down-a decline of 6.4 million or 16.9 per cent. Not since the go-go years of the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson administrations during the 1960s, which coincided with the launch of the Great Society, had the number of poor Americans declined as much over two presidential terms. The number of children in poverty plummeted from 15.3 million when H.W. Bush left office in 1992 to 11.6 million when Clinton stepped down in 2000-a stunning decline of 24 per cent. (That was partly because welfare reform forced single mothers into the workforce at the precise moment they could take advantage of a growing economy. The percentage of female-headed households in poverty stunningly dropped from 39 per cent in 1992 to 28.5 per cent in 2000, still the lowest level for that group the Census has ever recorded. That number has now drifted back up to over 31 per cent.) The number of Americans without health insurance remained essentially stable during Clinton's tenure, declining from 38.6 million when the elder Bush stepped down in 1992 to 38.4 million in 2000. Looking at the trends by shares of the population, rather than absolute numbers, reinforces the story: The overall poverty rate and the poverty rate among children both declined sharply under Clinton, and the share of Americans without health insurance fell more modestly. So the summary page on the economic experience of average Americans under the past two presidents would look like this: Under Clinton, the median income increased 14 per cent. Under Bush it declined 4.2 per cent. Under Clinton the total number of Americans in poverty declined 16.9 per cent; under Bush it increased 26.1 per cent. Under Clinton the number of children in poverty declined 24.2 per cent; under Bush it increased by 21.4 per cent. Under Clinton, the number of Americans without health insurance, remained essentially even (down six-tenths of one per cent); under Bush it increased by 20.6 per cent. Adding Ronald Reagan's record to the comparison fills in the picture from another angle. Under Reagan, the median income grew, in contrast to both Bush the younger and Bush the elder. (The median income declined 3.2 per cent during the elder Bush's single term.) When Reagan was done, the median income stood at $47, 614 (again in constant 2008 dollars), 8.1 per cent higher than when Jimmy Carter left office in 1980. But despite that income growth, both overall and childhood poverty were higher when Reagan rode off into the sunset than when he arrived. The number of poor Americans increased from 29.3 million in 1980 to 31.7 million in 1988, an increase of 8.4 per cent. The number of children in poverty trended up from 11.5 million when Carter left to 12.5 million when Reagan stepped down, a comparable increase of 7.9 per cent. The total share of Americans in poverty didn't change over Reagan's eight years (at 13 per cent), but the share of children in poverty actually increased (from 18.3 to 19.5 per cent) despite the median income gains...." |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 17 Sep 09 - 06:51 PM From The Atlajntic, an excerpt: Sep 11 2009, 10:41 am by Ronald Brownstein Closing The Book On The Bush Legacy "Thursday's annual Census Bureau report on income, poverty and access to health care-the Bureau's principal report card on the well-being of average Americans-closes the books on the economic record of George W. Bush. It's not a record many Republicans are likely to point to with pride. On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush's two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country's condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton's two terms, often substantially. The Census' final report card on Bush's record presents an intriguing backdrop to today's economic debate. Bush built his economic strategy around tax cuts, passing large reductions both in 2001 and 2003. Congressional Republicans are insisting that a similar agenda focused on tax cuts offers better prospects of reviving the economy than President Obama's combination of some tax cuts with heavy government spending. But the bleak economic results from Bush's two terms, tarnish, to put it mildly, the idea that tax cuts represent an economic silver bullet. Economists would cite many reasons why presidential terms are an imperfect frame for tracking economic trends. The business cycle doesn't always follow the electoral cycle. A president's economic record is heavily influenced by factors out of his control. Timing matters and so does good fortune. But few would argue that national economic policy is irrelevant to economic outcomes. And rightly or wrongly, voters still judge presidents and their parties largely by the economy's performance during their watch. In that assessment, few measures do more than the Census data to answer the threshold question of whether a president left the day to day economic conditions of average Americans better than he found it. If that's the test, today's report shows that Bush flunked on every relevant dimension-and not just because of the severe downturn that began last year. Consider first the median income. When Bill Clinton left office after 2000, the median income-the income line around which half of households come in above, and half fall below-stood at $52,500 (measured in inflation-adjusted 2008 dollars). When Bush left office after 2008, the median income had fallen to $50,303. That's a decline of 4.2 per cent. That leaves Bush with the dubious distinction of becoming the only president in recent history to preside over an income decline through two presidential terms, notes Lawrence Mishel, president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. The median household income increased during the two terms of Clinton (by 14 per cent, as we'll see in more detail below), Ronald Reagan (8.1 per cent), and Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford (3.9 per cent). As Mishel notes, although the global recession decidedly deepened the hole-the percentage decline in the median income from 2007 to 2008 is the largest single year fall on record-average families were already worse off in 2007 than they were in 2000, a remarkable result through an entire business expansion. "What is phenomenal about the years under Bush is that through the entire business cycle from 2000 through 2007, even before this recession...working families were worse off at the end of the recovery, in the best of times during that period, than they were in 2000 before he took office," Mishel says. Bush's record on poverty is equally bleak. When Clinton left office in 2000, the Census counted almost 31.6 million Americans living in poverty. When Bush left office in 2008, the number of poor Americans had jumped to 39.8 million (the largest number in absolute terms since 1960.) Under Bush, the number of people in poverty increased by over 8.2 million, or 26.1 per cent. Over two-thirds of that increase occurred before the economic collapse of 2008. The trends were comparably daunting for children in poverty. When Clinton left office nearly 11.6 million children lived in poverty, according to the Census. When Bush left office that number had swelled to just under 14.1 million, an increase of more than 21 per cent. The story is similar again for access to health care. When Clinton left office, the number of uninsured Americans stood at 38.4 million. By the time Bush left office that number had grown to just over 46.3 million, an increase of nearly 8 million or 20.6 per cent. The trends look the same when examining shares of the population that are poor or uninsured, rather than the absolute numbers in those groups. When Clinton left office in 2000 13.7 per cent of Americans were uninsured; when Bush left that number stood at 15.4 per cent. (Under Bush, the share of Americans who received health insurance through their employer declined every year of his presidency-from 64.2 per cent in 2000 to 58.5 per cent in 2008.) When Clinton left the number of Americans in poverty stood at 11.3 per cent; when Bush left that had increased to 13.2 per cent. The poverty rate for children jumped from 16.2 per cent when Clinton left office to 19 per cent when Bush stepped down. Every one of those measurements had moved in a positive direction under Clinton. The median income increased from $46,603 when George H.W. Bush left office in 1992 to $52,500 when Clinton left in 2000-an increase of 14 per cent. The number of Americans in poverty declined from 38 million when the elder Bush left office in 1992 to 31.6 million when Clinton stepped down-a decline of 6.4 million or 16.9 per cent. Not since the go-go years of the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson administrations during the 1960s, which coincided with the launch of the Great Society, had the number of poor Americans declined as much over two presidential terms. The number of children in poverty plummeted from 15.3 million when H.W. Bush left office in 1992 to 11.6 million when Clinton stepped down in 2000-a stunning decline of 24 per cent. (That was partly because welfare reform forced single mothers into the workforce at the precise moment they could take advantage of a growing economy. The percentage of female-headed households in poverty stunningly dropped from 39 per cent in 1992 to 28.5 per cent in 2000, still the lowest level for that group the Census has ever recorded. That number has now drifted back up to over 31 per cent.) The number of Americans without health insurance remained essentially stable during Clinton's tenure, declining from 38.6 million when the elder Bush stepped down in 1992 to 38.4 million in 2000. Looking at the trends by shares of the population, rather than absolute numbers, reinforces the story: The overall poverty rate and the poverty rate among children both declined sharply under Clinton, and the share of Americans without health insurance fell more modestly. So the summary page on the economic experience of average Americans under the past two presidents would look like this: Under Clinton, the median income increased 14 per cent. Under Bush it declined 4.2 per cent. Under Clinton the total number of Americans in poverty declined 16.9 per cent; under Bush it increased 26.1 per cent. Under Clinton the number of children in poverty declined 24.2 per cent; under Bush it increased by 21.4 per cent. Under Clinton, the number of Americans without health insurance, remained essentially even (down six-tenths of one per cent); under Bush it increased by 20.6 per cent. Adding Ronald Reagan's record to the comparison fills in the picture from another angle. Under Reagan, the median income grew, in contrast to both Bush the younger and Bush the elder. (The median income declined 3.2 per cent during the elder Bush's single term.) When Reagan was done, the median income stood at $47, 614 (again in constant 2008 dollars), 8.1 per cent higher than when Jimmy Carter left office in 1980. But despite that income growth, both overall and childhood poverty were higher when Reagan rode off into the sunset than when he arrived. The number of poor Americans increased from 29.3 million in 1980 to 31.7 million in 1988, an increase of 8.4 per cent. The number of children in poverty trended up from 11.5 million when Carter left to 12.5 million when Reagan stepped down, a comparable increase of 7.9 per cent. The total share of Americans in poverty didn't change over Reagan's eight years (at 13 per cent), but the share of children in poverty actually increased (from 18.3 to 19.5 per cent) despite the median income gains...." |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: beardedbruce Date: 18 Sep 09 - 06:05 AM Amos, I think you are being repetative and redundent. Perhaps you only need to post this long message once, and then use clickies to refer to it? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 18 Sep 09 - 10:40 AM SOrry--it kept not posting. So I must have persisted too hard! A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 22 Sep 09 - 11:10 AM Members of Congress who voted for the Southwest border fence as the fix for illegal immigration professed shock — shock at the news that the project is running years behind, and billions of dollars ahead, of the Bush administration's early, rosy projections. Auditors reported last week that the high-tech, 28-mile "virtual" section of the fence was running a mere seven years behind this month's planned opening. Initially, designers talked of using off-the-shelf technology for the radar, cameras and other sensors, but problems cropped up. (Imagine, discovering that cameras tremble in rough weather.) "I'm trying to figure out why this is so difficult," said Representative Michael McCaul of Texas. "These are basically cameras on a pole." The current cost estimate for the Buck Rogers barrier? $1.1 billion. Investigators from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office report that the larger, actual fence — covering a 600 mile-plus stretch between San Diego and Brownsville, Tex. — cost $2.4 billion to build and will cost an extra $6.5 billion in upkeep across two decades. ... |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 23 Sep 09 - 11:54 AM To the Editor: Re "The Self-Correcting Presidency," by Ross Douthat (The New York Times on the Web, Sept. 21), assessing the administration of George W. Bush: Mr. Douthat is correct that many prominent Democrats supported the Iraq war resolution, but more politicians might have expressed their reservations if the Bush administration and its cheering section hadn't made an honest discussion of the merits of invading Iraq impossible. It's very hard to have a reasoned discussion when you're being called an "America hater" and an "appeaser." While I personally opposed the Iraq misadventure from the start and would never vote for anyone who voted in favor of the resolution, it's unrealistic to expect politicians to commit political suicide by opposing a war against a government that was alleged to be linked to the Sept. 11 attacks and was alleged to be building nuclear, chemical and biological weapons that would be used in further attacks on America. Not only is truth the first casualty of war, but in this case it was the first casualty of the run-up to war. Larry Lubin New York, Sept. 21, 2009 |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 02 Nov 09 - 10:26 AM ..."Gibbs had some back up from retired Army Gen. Paul Eaton, who oversaw the training of the Iraqi military in 2003-2004: The record is clear: Dick Cheney and the Bush administration were incompetent war fighters. They ignored Afghanistan for 7 years with a crude approach to counter-insurgency warfare best illustrated by: 1. Deny it. 2. Ignore it. 3. Bomb it. While our intelligence agencies called the region the greatest threat to America, the Bush White House under-resourced our military efforts, shifted attention to Iraq, and failed to bring to justice the masterminds of September 11. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: GUEST,Teribus Date: 02 Nov 09 - 11:55 AM Amos, I think that you find that at no time did the Intelligence Agencies EVER call Afghanistan "the greatest threat to America" - If they did please provide a reference for that assessment. On two occasions however they did carry out threat evaluations as to who posed "the greatest threat to America", once for President Bill Clinton in 1998 and once for George W. Bush in 2002. In both cases their reasoning and their conclusions were the same - IRAQ. Besides which the "US" contribution to Afghanistan has never been subject to accusations of being under resourced or underfunded. I take it that you do realise that the US contribution is the United States of America's - Operation Enduring Freedom-Afghanistan. The area in which accusations of under resourcing and underfunding abound is the NATO-ISAF mission to Afghanistan. US-OEF was tasked with denying Afghanistan to Al-Qaeda and fighting their Taliban hosts whenever and wherever they are encountered. In that they have been pretty successful, since 2001 Al-Qaeda has been in hiding over the border in Pakistan, playing no significant role in anything. NATO-ISAF, of which US General Stanley McChrystal is the commander was tasked with providing security for the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) and with training the Afghan Security forces. In 2006 when this force was given responsibility for Helmand and Kandahar Provinces the Taliban went onto the offensive and attacked. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 02 Nov 09 - 01:01 PM Teribus: Your corrections should be sent to the New York TImes, from whose editorial pages the quotes from General Eaton were taken. Or, perhaps, to General Eaton himself. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Teribus Date: 02 Nov 09 - 05:06 PM Might just do that Amos. PS: How's the impeachment thing progressing? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 02 Nov 09 - 06:40 PM YEah, you know man, we couldn't hang hin so we starved him to death. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 29 Nov 09 - 11:56 PM A report released by the Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee blamed the Bush administration for failing to capture or kill Osama bin Laden when the al Qaeda leader was cornered in Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountain region in December 2001. The report, released Sunday, said the situation in Afghanistan presented greater problems today because of the failure to nab bin Laden eight years ago. Bin Laden had written his will, apparently sensing he was trapped, but the lack of sufficient forces to close in for the kill allowed him to escape to tribal areas in Pakistan, according to the report. It said former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and top U.S. commander Gen. Tommy Franks held back the necessary forces for a "classic sweep-and-block maneuver" that could have prevented bin Laden's escape. "It would have been a dangerous fight across treacherous terrain, and the injection of more U.S. troops and the resulting casualties would have contradicted the risk-averse, 'light footprint' model formulated by Rumsfeld and Franks," the report said. When criticized later for not zeroing in on bin Laden, administration officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, responded that the al Qaeda leader's location was uncertain. "But the review of existing literature, unclassified government records and interviews with central participants underlying this report removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear that Osama bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora," the report said. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: DougR Date: 30 Nov 09 - 03:09 PM And the source for the report Amos quotes: the staff of the Democratic Foreign Relations Committee. (A truly non-partisan group), eh Amos? Hindsight certainly is a marvelous tool. Does the complete report state that General Frank called GWB on his cellphone to ask what should be done? If he did, and Bush stopped the troops from capturing bin Laden, that would be another thing he could personally be blamed for, right? DougR |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 30 Nov 09 - 04:01 PM WHy, sure it would, Dougie, yer right. But the report omits that detail... A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Greg F. Date: 30 Nov 09 - 04:52 PM Three words, Douggie-boy: Commander In Chief. As Truman (a REAL president) reminded us: the buck stops with Dubya. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Bobert Date: 30 Nov 09 - 05:05 PM Osama is nuthin' more than a red herring... So what if Osama had been killed??? Bush was going to invade Iraq anyway... Iraq is the cornerstone of the Bush administration... Not Afganistan or Osama... We need to keep that in perspective... Just about all of Bush's failures can be traced either directly or indirectly to his insane decision... It crippled our international reputation... It drained our treasury and it was the most immoral decision made by any president on our nation's history... B~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 15 Dec 09 - 09:18 AM WASHINGTON - Computer technicians have found 22 million missing White House e-mail messages from the administration of President George W. Bush, and the Obama administration is searching for dozens more days' worth of potentially lost e-mail from the Bush years, according to two private groups that sued over the Bush White House's failure to install an electronic recordkeeping system. The groups - Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and the National Security Archive - said yesterday that they were settling the lawsuits they filed against the Executive Office of the President in 2007. It will be years before the public sees any of the e-mail, because it will now go through the National Archives' process for releasing presidential and agency records. Former Bush White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said that the 22 million e-mail messages had already been recovered while Bush was still in office and that misleading statements about the former administration's work demonstrate "a continued anti-Bush agenda, nearly a year after a new president was sworn in." "The liberal groups CREW and National Security Archive litigate for sport, distort the facts and have consistently tried to create a spooky conspiracy out of standard IT issues," he said in a statement. Anne Weismann, chief counsel for CREW, said the 22 million e-mail messages "would never have been found but for our lawsuits and pressure from Capitol Hill." Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D., Vt.) said the Bush administration had been dismissive of congressional requests that it recover the e-mail. The tally of missing e-mail, the additional searches, and the settlement are the latest development in a political controversy that stemmed from the Bush White House's failure to install a properly working electronic recordkeeping system. Two federal laws require the White House to preserve its records. The two groups say there is not yet a final count on the extent of missing White House e-mail and may never be a complete tally. "Many poor choices were made during the Bush administration," Meredith Fuchs, general counsel to the National Security Archive, said, "and there was little concern about the availability of e-mail records, despite the fact that they were contending with regular subpoenas for records and had a legal obligation to preserve their records." The two groups say the 22 million White House e-mail messages were previously mislabeled and effectively lost. The government now can find and search 22 million more e-mail messages than it could in late 2005, and the settlement means the Obama administration will restore 94 calendar days of e-mail from backup tape, said Kristen Lejnieks, an attorney for the National Security Archive. Sheila Shadmand, another lawyer for the National Security Archive, said the Obama administration was making a strong effort to clean up "the electronic data mess left behind by the prior administration." |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 19 Jan 10 - 04:14 PM The FBI violated the law in collecting about 2,000 U.S. telephone records during the Bush administration, though the violations weren't intentional, officials said Tuesday. Citing internal memos and interviews, the Washington Post said the FBI invoked nonexistent terrorism emergencies or persuaded phone companies to provide information as it illegally gathered records between 2002 and 2006. The bureau said in 2007 that it had improperly obtained some phone records, and the Justice Department inspector general is expected to release a report later this month detailing the extent of the problem. FBI spokesman Michael Kortan said Tuesday the pending report "is not expected to find — nor were there — any intentional attempts to obtain records that counterterrorism personnel knew they were not legally entitled to obtain." The problem centered around requests to phone companies for records of incoming and outgoing calls to a particular number — not the actual content of the conversations. In seeking the information, the FBI sometimes cited nonexistent emergencies to justify seeking the records, in violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The fact that the violations had occurred was previously known; what had not been understood was the extent and scope of the problem. Since the issue arose in 2007, the bureau says it has reformed its practices to make sure such violations don't re-occur. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: DougR Date: 19 Jan 10 - 04:40 PM Right now the Bush years look awfully good! Obama has been in office a year and he's a disaster! DougR |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 19 Jan 10 - 04:48 PM Sure. We should revitalize the economy the way Bush did, by invading someone and killing a whole mess of folks. Doug, are you completely uncognizant of the state in which the country stood last January? WHile I have a couple of strong disagreements with Secretary of the Treasury Geithner, I have to say that Obama has dome more good than he has harm, which could not be said about the Big W. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: DougR Date: 19 Jan 10 - 05:16 PM Only time will tell, Amos. DougR |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Greg F. Date: 19 Jan 10 - 06:09 PM Doug, are you completely uncognizant of the state in which the country stood last January? That's only the beginning- he's uncognizant (or blissfully or willfilly ignorant) of a hell of a lot more than that! |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Stringsinger Date: 19 Jan 10 - 06:28 PM When it comes to Bush, there is no case for positive reporting of an objective nature. His administration was a disaster and we're still recovering from it. I don't believe Obama has done more good than harm, however. He seems to be carrying out Bush's foreign policy by invading Mid-East countries. The more troops on the ground, the stronger will be insurgent resolve. That means more suicide bombings, terrorist organizations (not just Al Qaeda) and the criticism of the world. The idea that the US can create peace through military buildup is ludicrous. BTW, he blew the efforts in Copenhagen to curb global warming. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: mousethief Date: 20 Jan 10 - 12:15 AM I'm disappointed with Obama. He could have done more, including dismantling the Patriot Act. On the other hand, the Repuglicans have stopped at nothing to oppose him at any point they possibly could. So while I am disappoined with Obama, I am disgusted with the Repuglicans who clearly care more for their party than they do for their nation. As for Bush Jr, he was a disaster, the absolute worst president in the history of the Union. He had the whole world's attention and good will in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, and he pissed it away like so much cheap beer. Plus lying to get us into a war we had no business being in. Starting with a balanced budget and nearly doubling our debt. Further driving the wedge between the richest of us and the rest of us, moving more wealth from those who make it to those who have obscene amounts of it that they can never use. Money definitely trickles up, and anyone who says otherwise is either a liar or an idiot. It's like he wanted to really prove Reagan's adage that the government is not the solution, it's the problem. We got 8 solid years of how very, very true that can be. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Sawzaw Date: 20 Jan 10 - 01:35 AM Amos has run out material to pimp for Obama with so he has to go back and beat up on Bush some more. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: mousethief Date: 20 Jan 10 - 02:15 AM Until Bush is tried for his crimes, no amount of "beating up" is sufficient. O..O =o= |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Mr Happy Date: 20 Jan 10 - 11:17 AM ..........at least O'Bama never behaves like this! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rToKEnySb7s |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: DougR Date: 20 Jan 10 - 12:48 PM "Uncognizant"? What dictionary did you find that word in, Amos? DougR |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: olddude Date: 20 Jan 10 - 08:03 PM The accomplishments for history purposes in full between the quotes right here on mudcat for history to cherish " ". The end |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: mousethief Date: 20 Jan 10 - 09:27 PM If you can't answer a man's argument, make fun of his spelling and pretend that's the same thing. O..O =o= |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 15 Feb 10 - 01:54 PM Americans point finger of shame at George W. Bush By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist Here's some encouraging news: Many Americans understand that former President George W. Bush and his Republican administration played a major role in creating the nation's current financial mess. In fact, a new poll shows the Obama administration is held far less responsible by the American people -- despite months of demagoguery by the GOP. As part of a longer series of questions, The New York Times/CBS News poll asked this: "Who do you blame most for the economy?" -- 31 percent faulted the Bush administration. -- only 7 percent faulted Obama and his administration. The other causes lined up pretty much as you would think, with Wall Street being blamed by 23 percent of respondents, Congress by 13 percent and all of them by 19 percent. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Sawzaw Date: 16 Feb 10 - 01:05 AM So that means only 31% blame Bush and 62% did not blame Bush. I guess this means Bush is off the hook. Is this why Obama's job approval is at 46%? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 16 Feb 10 - 03:11 AM Demagoguery seems to be the right word. By the way, you need to update your figures. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Bobert Date: 16 Feb 10 - 08:06 AM I am not surprised that there are so many defections from Congress a year after Bush... He played class warfare for 8 years pitting stupid people against educated and intellegent people... It has really set into the culture in Congress... It's no wonder that so many people have had enough... I mean, whereever you look there is wreckage from the Bush administration but perhaps none worse, other than his dumbass wars, that has been so damaging to the country as Bush's massive efforts to be the "Divider"... I mean, every time he was given a chance to be the "Uniter" he passed and went straight ot "Divider"... That will a good portion of his legacy... He broke the governemnt in more ways than one... B~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Greg F. Date: 16 Feb 10 - 03:48 PM Many Americans understand that former President George W. Bush and his Republican administration played a major role in creating the nation's current financial mess..,. 31 percent faulted the Bush administration. 31%??? Gimmie a fu$king break. Who do they think is responsible? The Klingons? Oh ye generation of morons. Abandon hope all ye who enter here |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Charley Noble Date: 16 Feb 10 - 08:19 PM The best thing about this thread is its title. The "Bush Years" are in retrospect. Someone probably has already pointed that out. Charley Noble |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Sawzaw Date: 17 Feb 10 - 12:34 AM 62% blamed Obama, Wall Street & Congress. 31% blamed GWB The Jury is 1 to 2 in favor of Bush. Feb. 12-15, 2010 Do you think Barack Obama deserves to be reelected, or not?
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Bobert Date: 17 Feb 10 - 07:51 AM Garbage in, garbage out... |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: beardedbruce Date: 17 Feb 10 - 08:07 AM Bobert, "Garbage in, garbage out... " Obviously. Just look at whom those voters put in office this last presidential election. If you want to call them all stupid and racist, there is the proof. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: beardedbruce Date: 17 Feb 10 - 08:08 AM Or is that only when they disagree with you, Herr Ubermensch? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 17 Feb 10 - 09:27 AM Your bitterness is showing, Bruce. Sawz' statistics are unatrributed and IMO very dubious. There's no indication how many people from where were asked what. Without atttribution he could have pulled them out of his ass. HE ignores the fact that 97% of the people in a recent poll felt Obama was "doing better than Bush at leading the country." The facts are that Bush's eight years left this country on the brink of ruin. Obama's year so far as seen it come back from that brink, though not out of the woods. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: beardedbruce Date: 17 Feb 10 - 09:31 AM My bitterness at the obvious bigotry here that applies one standard to a conservative, and another, different one to a liberal. The present White House keeps saying that the conservatives are unfair to critisize Obama, since he is doing what Bush did- YET the Left is silent. So, Obama is saying he is acting as Bush did, and YOU keep silent. Shame, shame, shame. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: beardedbruce Date: 17 Feb 10 - 09:56 AM Amos, I posted this: CNN poll: 52% say Obama doesn't deserve reelection in 2012 By Michael O'Brien - 02/16/10 01:35 PM ET 52 percent of Americans said President Barack Obama doesn't deserve reelection in 2012, according to a new poll. 44 percent of all Americans said they would vote to reelect the president in two and a half years, less than the slight majority who said they would prefer to elect someone else. Obama faces a 44-52 deficit among both all Americans and registered voters, according to a CNN/Opinion Research poll released Tuesday. Four percent had no opinion. The reelection numbers are slightly more sour than Obama's approval ratings, which are basically tied. 49 percent of people told CNN that they approve of the way Obama is handling his job, while 50 percent disapprove. If you think CNN is dubious, yet accept the NYT as gospel, I have to wonder if it is safe for you to have a D-35- it deserves better. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: beardedbruce Date: 17 Feb 10 - 10:14 AM "The CNN poll, conducted Feb. 12-15, has a three percent margin of error." http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/02/16/rel4a.pdf |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 17 Feb 10 - 10:23 AM Bruce, you better leave my damn D-35 out of this, is all I can say. The notion that a certain per cent of an ill-defined wad of folks have a bad opinion about Obama is scarcely news. I'd like to see more positive suggestions from you and Sawz. The guy trying to take responsibility for the tough issues is SUCH an easy target for nabobs and natterers. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 17 Feb 10 - 10:44 AM All this shamecasting is silly, anyway. The White House does not "keep saying it is doing what BUsh did". Apparently some of Bush's policies are being continued, but I haven't seen the WH say it is doing what Bush did. And it really requires specifics to be able to even think about what you might be trying to say instead of the frenetic assertions about general conditions with no granularity to them. If some conservatives criticize a policy that is a continuation of what Bush did, when they did not criticize it coming from Bush, the question deserves to be asked why it seems different now. The obvious conclusion is they are motivated not by what they see, but by their political ambitions. As for me being hypocritical, the number of times I did NOT comment on some stupidity by the Bush administration exceeds by orders of magnitude the number of times I did. Obama hasn't gotten a tenth of the passes I gave those guys. Give Obama eight years and THEN count them up, eh? Finally, in case you haven't noticed, things are gradually getting better under Obama's guidance despite the chaos that was left at his doorstep a year ago. Chill out. Be easy. Heal. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: beardedbruce Date: 17 Feb 10 - 10:58 AM " The guy trying to take responsibility for the tough issues is SUCH an easy target for nabobs and natterers" And when the guy was Bush, and YOU the nabob/natterer? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 17 Feb 10 - 11:41 AM Well, I have said before that you are ignoring the differences. Bush was a cartoon, militaristic adventurer who ran up huge debts and sought no means of confronting them except undermining Social Security while enabling the very people who would doom his privitization efforts to failure. He was an anti-constitutionalist and an anti-intellectual, anti-science dry-alky dumkopf. Obama is none of these, for whatever faults he may have. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 18 Feb 10 - 07:08 PM Wall Street's Bailout Hustle Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren't just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy - they're re-creating the conditions for another crash Rolling Stone report |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 23 Feb 10 - 11:15 AM BERLIN — Two human rights groups released government flight logs Monday that showed aircraft linked to the Central Intelligence Agency's program for secretly detaining, moving and housing terrorism suspects had landed in Poland. Polish authorities have long denied that the country hosted one of the "black sites," part of a network of clandestine overseas prisons where suspected prisoners from Al Qaeda were subjected to brutal interrogation methods under the C.I.A.'s so-called rendition program. Prosecutors in Poland are investigating the country's possible participation in the program. The Polish Air Navigation Services Agency confirmed that it provided the flight logs to the two rights groups, the Open Society Justice Initiative and the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights. The logs showed six flights in 2003 by two aircraft, a Gulfstream V and a Boeing 737, five of which originated in Kabul, Afghanistan, and one in Rabat, Morocco, before landing at Szymany airport. Former American intelligence officials have said that the chief plotter of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, was interrogated at the secret base near Szymany airport after his capture in 2003, but the agency has refused confirm that. "The agency does not discuss publicly where facilities related to its past detention program may, or may not, have been located," said a C.I.A. spokesman, Paul Gimigliano. Adam Bodnar, head of the legal division at the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, based in Warsaw, said that after years of anonymous reports, the flight records were the first official confirmation of the C.I.A. flights to Poland. "We are getting closer to the truth," he said. "Of course Polish authorities may help the C.I.A. in the fight against terrorism, but they are bound by the Polish Constitution, which prohibits torture," Mr. Bodnar said. The Polish government declined to comment on the contents of the rights groups' report. "The prosecutor's office is investigating the reports about the alleged use of the Szymany airport," said Piotr Paszkowski, a Foreign Ministry spokesman. Robert Majewski, the prosecutor in charge of the investigation, told the Polish news agency PAP on Monday that he did not expect the investigation "to end soon." C.I.A. officials have said that fewer than 100 prisoners were kept in the secret prisons between the creation of the program in 2002 and the transfer of the remaining 14 prisoners to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba in 2006. Maciej Rodak, vice president of the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency, confirmed that the agency had sent the records to the human rights groups. He said that the agency could not provide passenger lists, which the groups had also requested. "The thing that is quite shocking is that the European investigations requested these specific flight records some four years ago," said Darian Pavli, a lawyer with the Open Society Justice Initiative, a human rights group in New York. "The Poles all these years said they could not locate them, the flights didn't exist." |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 25 Feb 10 - 10:02 AM The original investigation found that the lawyers, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, had committed "professional misconduct" in a series of memos starting in August 2002. First, they defined torture so narrowly as to make it almost impossible to accuse a jailer of torturing a prisoner, and they finally concluded that President Bush was free to ignore any law on the conduct of war. The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility said appropriate bar associations should be asked to look at the actions of Mr. Yoo, who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, and Mr. Bybee, who was rewarded for his political loyalty with a lifetime appointment to the federal bench. It was a credible accounting, especially since some former officials, like Attorney General John Ashcroft, refused to cooperate and e-mails from Mr. Yoo were mysteriously missing. But the more senior official, David Margolis, decided that Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee only had shown "poor judgment" and should not be disciplined. Mr. Margolis did not dispute that Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee mangled legal reasoning and produced work that ultimately was repudiated by the Bush administration itself. He criticized the professional responsibility office's investigation on procedural grounds and excused Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee by noting that everyone was frightened after Sept. 11, 2001, and that they were in a hurry. Americans were indeed frightened after Sept. 11, and the Bush administration was in a great rush to torture prisoners. Responsible lawyers would have responded with extra vigilance, especially if, like Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee, they worked in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. When that office renders an opinion, it has the force of law within the executive branch. Poor judgment is an absurdly dismissive way to describe giving the green light to policies that have badly soiled America's reputation and made it less safe. As the dealings outlined in the original report underscore, the lawyers did not offer what most people think of as "legal advice." Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee were not acting as fair-minded analysts of the law but as facilitators of a scheme to evade it. The White House decision to brutalize detainees already had been made. Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee provided legal cover. We were glad that the leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, Representative John Conyers Jr. and Senator Patrick Leahy, committed to holding hearings after the release of the Justice Department documents. The attorney general, Eric Holder Jr., should expand the investigation into "rogue" interrogators he initiated last year to include officials responsible for facilitating torture. While he is at it, Mr. Holder should assign someone to look into the disappearance of Mr. Yoo's e-mails. The American Bar Association should decide whether its rules are adequate for deterring and punishing ethical failures by government lawyers. The quest for real accountability must continue. The alternative is to leave torture open as a policy option for future administrations. NYT 2-25-10 |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 25 Feb 10 - 12:47 PM From "Counterpunch" in January 2009, just as the Administration was being transferred: "According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nonfarm payroll employment declined by 3,445,000 from December 2007 through December 2008. The collapse in employment is across the board. Construction lost 520,000 jobs. Manufacturing lost 806,000 jobs. Trade, transportation and utilities lost 1,495,000 jobs (retail trade accounted for 1,120,000 of this loss). Financial activities lost 145,000 jobs. Professional and business services lost 713,000 jobs. Even government lost 188,000 jobs. Only in health care and social assistance has the economy been able to eke out a few new jobs. Many analysts believe the job losses will be as great or greater during 2009. Moreover, the reported job losses are likely understated. Noted statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reports that biases in measurement have understated the job loss over the last 12 months by 1,150,000 jobs. Williams reports the unemployment rate as it was measured prior to "reforms" designed to minimize the measured rate of unemployment. According to the methodology used in 1980, the US unemployment rate in December 2008 reached 17.5 percent. Yes, "our" government lies to us about economic statistics, just as it lies to us about "terrorists," "weapons of mass destruction," "building freedom and democracy in the Middle East," and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An objective person would be hard pressed to find any statement made by the US government that is reliable. The collapse of the job market means even harder times for last year's and this year's crops of college graduates. The offshoring of professional jobs and the widespread use by US corporations of H-1b, L-1, and other work visa programs for foreigners have left many recent American university graduates without careers. Recently, Bill Gates of Microsoft was pleading with Congress to allow even more foreigners in on work visas. According to Gates, there is a shortage of American workers despite a 17.5 percent unemployment rate. I personally know American computer engineers, both seasoned and recent graduates, who cannot find jobs. What Gates and American corporations want is cheap labor, in effect indentured servants, unprotected people who don't demand an American standard of living and who have no student loans to repay. If Congress expands the work visas as US unemployment mounts, we will have one more piece of evidence that "our" representatives have no sympathy for the American people. Where were America's leaders while the economy slipped over the precipice? Our leaders were telling us lies in behalf of special interests into whose pockets Washington was pouring the taxpayers' money. Our leaders engineered wars that put billions of dollars into such disreputable pockets as Halliburton's, the firm of the American outlaw, Dick Cheney, and into Blackwater, supplier of the overpaid mercenaries that the Bush Regime uses to beef up its military force in Iraq. Some of the taxpayers' billions, of course, recycled into "our" representatives reelection campaign funds. " |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 25 Feb 10 - 12:51 PM AMazon.com Review:The People V. Bush: One Lawyer's Campaign to Bring the President to Justice and the National Grassroots Movement She Encounters Along the Way Charlotte Dennett (Author) "Charlotte Dennett--one of the gutsiest women in America--has written an energized, no-holds-barred account of her efforts to hold our leaders criminally accountable for shredding the Constitution. This is a woman who is not scared to call illegality by its true name and who believes in the rule of law the way the Founders intended. The 'accountability' movement deserves broad attention and deep support from across the political spectrum and this book is an unmissable part of its story."--Naomi Wolf, bestselling author of The End of America and Give Me Liberty "Dennett's book describes, from the inside, the birth of a movement to hold top US officials to the rule of law. The eventual success of that movement will be furthered by the success of this remarkable book. Dennett has done us a great service, first by her work and now by her chronicling of it."--David Swanson, cofounder of AfterDowningStreet.org and author of Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union "In November 2008, after an 18-month study, the Senate Armed Services Committee concluded, without dissent, that President Bush's Executive Memorandum of Feb. 7, 2002 'opened the door' to the use of torture techniques--crimes under U.S. and international law. And the corporate media yawned. I, for one, am grateful that Charlotte Dennett is not yawning. Although it has become a benighted view in Washington that everyone is accountable under the law, Dennett is in hot pursuit of criminals-in-chief and their cronies to bring them to justice. You ought to read this book."--Ray McGovern, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) George Bush took America to war in Iraq on a lie, causing incalcuable death, horror, and suffering. In this very important and consequential book, Charlotte Dennett, a true American patriot who has been on the front lines of trying to bring Bush to justice, informs all who care deeply about this country what has to be done so that it never happens again.--Vince Bugliosi, bestselling author of The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder Product Description When journalist-turned-lawyer Charlotte Dennett became outraged that Bush White House officials were acting above the law, she did something that surprised even herself. She ran for a state attorney general seat on a platform to prosecute George W. Bush for murder. She lost the race, but found a movement—one that continues its quest to hold leaders accountable to U.S. law and preserve a Constitutional presidency. In The People v. Bush, Dennett recounts her seminal effort to prosecute the former president, introduces readers to a world where the actions of a few can indeed empower the many, and reports on the current state of the movement to hold Bush accountable for high crimes and misdemeanors. Dennett's wild ride through politics began when she read The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder by lawyer Vincent Bugliosi (best known for his prosecution of Charles Manson). In it, Bugliosi stated that one path to prosecuting George W. Bush could be taken by a state attorney general—should one take up the cause. Soon after, Dennett launched her attorney-general race in Vermont—a state known as much for its progressive edge as its pioneering spirit—signed up Bugliosi as her special prosecutor in the event that she won, and together the two made headlines across Vermont and the nation for changing the face of American grassroots democracy. Dennett's book also explores the political triumphs of other Vermonters such as Kurt Daims, who imagined, with two human rights lawyers, Bush's arrest should he enter the town of Brattleboro; Dan DeWalt, who launched a call for impeachment in thirty-six towns; and Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, who received wide support—but also criticism—for his 9/11 Truth Commission. With these stories and her own, Dennett shows that it's not just possible but necessary to hold higher-ups responsible for heinous acts—not out of revenge, but to preserve justice. ..." |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 10 Mar 10 - 06:01 PM Oh, and about that war thing...--this video really captures the spirit of the times. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Riginslinger Date: 10 Mar 10 - 07:37 PM If they end up with a functioning democracy in Iraq, Bush is going to look like a hero to future historians. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Bobert Date: 10 Mar 10 - 07:54 PM BTW, Karl Rove wants you to buy his book... Says that Bush never so much as passed gas, that's how perfect he was as president... B~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 10 Mar 10 - 08:21 PM Rig: Maybe, maybe not. Will we embrace the doctrine of unilateral judgement on and invasion of other nations based solely on our misunderstandings of their conditions? Is that what he will go down in history for? A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 14 Mar 10 - 09:04 PM nvestigators looking into corruption involving reconstruction in Iraq say they have opened more than 50 new cases in six months by scrutinizing large cash transactions Ñ involving banks, land deals, loan payments, casinos and even plastic surgery Ñ made by some of the Americans involved in the nearly $150 billion program. Some of the cases involve people who are suspected of having mailed tens of thousands of dollars to themselves from Iraq, or of having stuffed the money into duffel bags and suitcases when leaving the country, the federal investigators said. In other cases, millions of dollars were moved through wire transfers. Suspects then used cash to buy BMWs, Humvees and expensive jewelry, or to pay off enormous casino debts. Some suspects also tried to conceal foreign bank accounts in Ghana, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Britain, the investigators said, while in other cases, cash was simply found stacked in home safes. There have already been dozens of indictments and convictions for corruption since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But the new cases seem to confirm what investigators have long speculated: that the chaos, weak oversight and wide use of cash payments in the reconstruction program in Iraq allowed many more Americans who took bribes or stole money to get off scot-free. ÒIÕve had a continuing sense that there is ongoing fraud that we have not been able to nail down,Ó said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., who leads the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent oversight agency. ÒThis spate of new cases is evidence that that sense was reasonably well placed.Ó The cases were uncovered during the first phase of a new, systematic inquiry into financial activities, which investigators said began in earnest last summer. A related investigation of rebuilding funds for Afghanistan began in February. Mr. BowenÕs office agreed to answer general questions on the new inquiry but declined to divulge the names of the suspects, who include private contractors, military officers and civilian officials. Developed in the Treasury Department, the financial monitoring effort goes by the generic name of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or Fincen, which continually generates data on suspicious financial transactions in support of more than 275 federal and state law enforcement agencies, according to a December report by the Government Accountability Office. Stephen Hudak, a spokesman at the Treasury Department for Fincen, said it generated 15 million to 16 million reports a year on suspicious financial activity or major currency transactions, including cash deposits of more than $10,000. He said that transactions in banks, check-cashing outlets, wire services, casinos, stockbrokersÕ offices and insurance companies were covered. (NYT) |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 19 Mar 10 - 09:10 PM Today is the 7th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of the Iraq War. There's a temptation as we begin to end our combat presence in Iraq to search for a happy ending. But there has been no 'victory' in Iraq. We created this video as a reminder of the damage done to Iraq and to our country over the last seven years. Moreover, we know that there will be no economic recovery here at home as long as we're spending $100 billion a year on another war that isn't making us any safer - the war in Afghanistan. That's why we're asking everyone to report the Afghanistan War as an example of waste, fraud and abuse on the White House's official economic recovery website, Recovery.gov, today. Simply scroll down to the field marked "What" and paste this message into the text box: "I'd like to report the waste of billions of dollars of our national wealth in Afghanistan on a war that doesn't make us safer. It's fraud to portray this as a war that increases our security, and it's abusive of U.S. troops and local civilians to drag out this war any longer. End the war so we can have real economic recovery." Thanks to Bush, the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been a massive waste of human life and treasure. Let's not let the Obama administration make the same mistake again in Afghanistan. Video here |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Riginslinger Date: 19 Mar 10 - 09:17 PM At this point, even if it turned out well it would seem like a mistake. Was the question ever answered satisfactoraly: why did he do it? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 25 Mar 10 - 02:43 PM One of the important things Bush ignored is what he was unleashing on the minds of American men. Anyone who understood history (his major) would have seen this kind of story coming and if decent and responsible acted to prevent or avoid it altogether. The link goes to a short photo essay on the life and death of hero Joe Dwyer. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: DougR Date: 25 Mar 10 - 06:00 PM For the absolutely best retrospective of the Bush Years, I would suggest that Mudcatters read, "Courage and Consequence," by Karl Rove. He has a front row seat. And it's a darn good read! DougR |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 25 Mar 10 - 08:05 PM A completely first-rate work of fantasy and fiction rolled into self-serving polemic. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: maple_leaf_boy Date: 26 Mar 10 - 06:09 PM George Bush Junior once said that Wiccans shouldn't have religious status in the military. I was pretty angry when I read that on a Wicca website. I'm a polytheist who incorporates some Wicca elements. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 16 Jun 10 - 03:55 PM "Can somebody remind me how my tax dollars wound up going to pay 12-year-old Somali boys to walk around with rifles and, when circumstances seem to warrant it, kill people? Oh, wait, it's all coming back — which is good, because the lessons go well beyond Somalia, and help explain why the war on terrorism hasn't gone well lately. A guy my tax dollars were devoted to killing, back in 2006, is now the guy my tax dollars are devoted to arming as he fights guys we inadvertently helped empower. Back in 2006, President George W. Bush supported and helped finance Ethiopia's military intervention in Somalia. The idea was to prop up a faltering Somali government and fend off an insurgent force called the Islamic Courts Union — even though observers warned that a) the I.C.U., by bringing order to long-chaotic parts of Somalia, had become more popular than the government we were backing; b) there were I.C.U. leaders who, by local Islamist standards, were moderate, so maybe we should try to work with them instead of kill them; c) backing a Christian government's armed intervention in a Muslim country wasn't the best way to win hearts and minds in the war on terrorism, and indeed might weaken those moderates within the I.C.U. and empower their radical rivals. Sure enough, the American-Ethiopian intervention backfired. It wound up strengthening a radical wing of the I.C.U., which, under the name al-Shabaab, became the dominant insurgent group. In retrospect, the moderates in the I.C.U. looked pretty good, and the United States helped one of them, Sharif Sheik Ahmed, become head of the government that we continued to try to resuscitate. So a guy my tax dollars were devoted to killing, back in 2006, is now the guy my tax dollars are devoted to arming as he fights guys we inadvertently helped empower. (And his operations seem not to be going very well.)" R. Wright, NYT |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Greg F. Date: 16 Jun 10 - 04:29 PM Courage and Consequence," by Karl Rove... And it's a darn good read! AND its also 100% 24-karat bullshit! For good fantasy literature Lloyd Alexander is a much better bet. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: mousethief Date: 16 Jun 10 - 05:45 PM I wouldn't trust Karl Rove to give me the time if I had just told him the time. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: GUEST,Riginslinger Date: 16 Jun 10 - 10:05 PM Two years ago I thought nothing could be worse than George W. Bush, and then we got Obama. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Bobert Date: 16 Jun 10 - 10:13 PM Pee in the cup, Rigs... |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 17 Jun 10 - 12:45 AM And check your meds, dude... |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Bobert Date: 17 Jun 10 - 08:27 AM Me thinks that Rigs is turning into a very bitter Obama hater, Amos... Any meds for those symptoms??? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 21 Jul 10 - 11:42 AM Looking at this description of Obama's Energy Secretary in action I am struck by the contrast in competency demonstrated compared to the Bush years, when a fawning ineptitude was the order of the day. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Richard Bridge Date: 21 Jul 10 - 04:03 PM 200 |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 23 Jul 10 - 09:35 AM For a couple of years, it was the love that dared not speak his name. In 2008, Republican candidates hardly ever mentioned the president still sitting in the White House. After the election, the G.O.P. did its best to shout down all talk about how we got into the mess we're in, insisting that we needed to look forward, not back. And many in the news media played along, acting as if it was somehow uncouth for Democrats even to mention the Bush era and its legacy. Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Paul Krugman Go to Columnist Page »Blog: The Conscience of a Liberal Related Times Topic: George W. BushReaders' Comments Readers shared their thoughts on this article. Read All Comments (28) » The truth, however, is that the only problem Republicans ever had with George W. Bush was his low approval rating. They always loved his policies and his governing style — and they want them back. In recent weeks, G.O.P. leaders have come out for a complete return to the Bush agenda, including tax breaks for the rich and financial deregulation. They've even resurrected the plan to cut future Social Security benefits. But they have a problem: how can they embrace President Bush's policies, given his record? After all, Mr. Bush's two signature initiatives were tax cuts and the invasion of Iraq; both, in the eyes of the public, were abject failures. Tax cuts never yielded the promised prosperity, but along with other policies — especially the unfunded war in Iraq — they converted a budget surplus into a persistent deficit. Meanwhile, the W.M.D. we invaded Iraq to eliminate turned out not to exist, and by 2008 a majority of the public believed not just that the invasion was a mistake but that the Bush administration deliberately misled the nation into war. What's a Republican to do? You know the answer. There's now a concerted effort under way to rehabilitate Mr. Bush's image on at least three fronts: the economy, the deficit and the war. On the economy: Last week Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, declared that "there's no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue, because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy." So now the word is that the Bush-era economy was characterized by "vibrancy." I guess it depends on the meaning of the word "vibrant." The actual record of the Bush years was (i) two and half years of declining employment, followed by (ii) four and a half years of modest job growth, at a pace significantly below the eight-year average under Bill Clinton, followed by (iii) a year of economic catastrophe. In 2007, at the height of the "Bush boom," such as it was, median household income, adjusted for inflation, was still lower than it had been in 2000. But the Bush apologists hope that you won't remember all that. And they also have a theory, which I've been hearing more and more — namely, that President Obama, though not yet in office or even elected, caused the 2008 slump. You see, people were worried in advance about his future policies, and that's what caused the economy to tank. Seriously. ... (NYT) More here. Good read. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Bobert Date: 23 Jul 10 - 10:25 PM Well, yeah, Amos... For progressives everywhere we fully understand what the Repubs see as the answers to the nation's probels: tax cuts... Break yer leg??? Fix it with tax cuts... Yer dog died??? More tax buts... Yer wife just called an' someone backed into the car at the Farmers Grocery??? Tax cuts!!! I mean, yeah, the Dems oughtta make the November election 100% about Bush;'s failed policies: the tax cuts the rich and Iraq should be enough to at least keep majorities in both houses... They just gotta pick the timing right and then... ...pounce on Bush!!! It will work... B~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 05 Sep 10 - 10:16 AM "In recent polls, 60 percent of those surveyed thought the war in Iraq was a mistake, 70 percent thought it wasnÕt worth American lives, and only a quarter believed it made us safer from terrorism. This sour judgment is entirely reality-based. The war failed in all its stated missions except the toppling of Saddam Hussein. While we were distracted searching for IraqÕs nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, Iran began revving up its actual nuclear program and Osama bin Laden and his fanatics ran free to regroup in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We handed Al Qaeda a propaganda coup by sacrificing AmericaÕs signature values on the waterboard. We disseminated untold billions of taxpayersÕ dollars from BaghdadÕs Green Zone, much of it cycled corruptly through well-connected American companies on no-bid contracts, yet Iraq still doesnÕt have reliable electricity or trustworthy security. IraqÕs Òexample of freedom,Ó as President Bush referred to his project in nation building and democracy promotion, did not inspire other states in the Middle East to emulate it. It only perpetuated the Israeli-Palestinian logjam it was supposed to help relieve. For this sad record, more than 4,400 Americans and some 100,000 Iraqis (a conservative estimate) paid with their lives. Some 32,000 Americans were wounded, and at least two million Iraqis, representing much of the nationÕs most valuable human capital, went into exile. The warÕs official cost to U.S. taxpayers is now at $750 billion. Of all the commentators on the debacle, few speak with more eloquence or credibility than Andrew Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University who as a West Point-trained officer served in Vietnam and the first gulf war and whose son, also an Army officer, was killed in Iraq in 2007. Writing in The New Republic after ObamaÕs speech, he decimated many of the warÕs lingering myths, starting with the fallacy, reignited by the hawks taking a preposterous victory lap last week, that Òthe surgeÓ did anything other than stanch the bleeding from the catastrophic American blundering that preceded it. As Bacevich concluded: ÒThe surge, now remembered as an epic feat of arms, functions chiefly as a smokescreen, obscuring a vast panorama of recklessness, miscalculation and waste that politicians, generals, and sundry warmongers are keen to forget.Ó Bacevich also wrote that Òcommon decency demands that we reflect on all that has occurred in bringing us to this moment.Ó AmericansÕ common future demands it too. The warÕs corrosive effect on the home front is no less egregious than its undermining of our image and national security interests abroad. As the Pentagon rebrands Operation Iraqi Freedom as Operation New Dawn Ñ a Òname suggesting a skin cream or dishwashing liquid,Ó Bacevich aptly writes Ñ the whitewashing of our recent history is well under way. The price will be to keep repeating it." (NYT columnist Frank Rich |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Stringsinger Date: 05 Sep 10 - 08:35 PM The NY Times has been wrong about many things including attempting to sell the Iraq War. We will learn more in times to come thanks to whistle-blowers such as Julian Assange and Bradley. Bacevich, Paul Krugman and Frank Rich are brilliant and oases in a news-deprived desert. Bush years were just a continuation of policies put in place by Nixon and Reagan with a little help from Clinton as well. (Repeal of Glass-Steagal for example). The Bush years may turn out to show that Americans haven't learned much. Obama continues many of his policies. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: GUEST,heric Date: 05 Sep 10 - 11:34 PM Obama's is the worst form of government, except for all others that have been tried in recent memory. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 06 Sep 10 - 02:01 AM WTF? A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: GUEST,heric Date: 06 Sep 10 - 02:11 AM oh, I had a few brews |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Stringsinger Date: 06 Sep 10 - 11:45 AM The Bush years in retrospect will be remembered as an almost-dicatorship. Bush got almost everything he wanted passed. (Not Obama, however). |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: LadyJean Date: 07 Sep 10 - 12:12 AM In March of 1993, I slipped on a concrete floor and smashed my left elbow. It is now held together by no less than nine screws. Following the surgery, I learned something about metal detectors. They have different levels of sensitivity. They can be turned up, or down, depending on how concerned security personnel are about threats to national security. After the Oklahoma City bombings, I had an interesting time getting past security for about six months. Happily the scar was still pretty large, so I had no trouble convincing people that my arm was full of hardware. After 9/11, I set off metal detectors for about six months. By the summer of 2002, I had no trouble, even during the terror alerts of 2004 I breezed through security. Then Obama was elected president. Christmas 2008, I had some problems with security. I was stopped again this summer, coming home from my sister's, during another orange alert. Conclusion: Most of Bush's orange alerts were phoney, and TSA knew it. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity Date: 07 Sep 10 - 02:25 AM So, he was a spoiled corrupt lying brat...what else is new??? Let me see....was that Bush? Clinton? Obama? Ford? Reagan? the 'other Bush? Carter? Johnson? Nixon?..Hmmm...I think singling out just one, from the 'Rogues Gallery', is a little discriminatory,..don't you??? (I guess it is how you define 'IS') GfS |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Bobert Date: 07 Sep 10 - 08:26 AM Try learning a new song, GfinS... This one startin' to sound a whole lot like Bobby Goldsboro's "Honey"... B~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity Date: 07 Sep 10 - 12:45 PM Bobert: "Try learning a new song, GfinS.." ....Try learning 'music theory'. Pretty soon, you can understand how it's written!...and how it works, and what DOESN'T work! THEN, you stop making stupid NOISE! GfS |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Bobert Date: 07 Sep 10 - 01:13 PM LOL, GfinS... Why would I want to learn music theory??? As fir makin' "stupid noise"??? That's purdy arrogant on yer part... Different styles of music for different folks... Me and you in a blues club doin' battle of the bands and you loose big time... But then again you probably think the blues is "stupid noise"... B~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity Date: 08 Sep 10 - 11:40 AM Well, in the case of politics, if you hum a few bars, they can fake it! Wink! GfS P.S. I'd jam with YA! |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 08 Sep 10 - 05:29 PM "...But still we know two things: It has been nine years since Sept. 11, 2001, and the war goes on. "What happened was that an act of terrorism was allowed to redefine U.S. grand strategy. The United States operates with a grand strategy derived from the British strategy in Europe Ñ maintaining the balance of power. For the United Kingdom, maintaining the balance of power in Europe protected any one power from emerging that could unite Europe and build a fleet to invade the United Kingdom or block its access to its empire. British strategy was to help create coalitions to block emerging hegemons such as Spain, France or Germany. Using overt and covert means, the United Kingdom aimed to ensure that no hegemonic power could emerge. "The Americans inherited that grand strategy from the British but elevated it to a global rather than regional level. Having blocked the Soviet Union from hegemony over Europe and Asia, the United States proceeded with a strategy whose goal, like that of the United Kingdom, was to nip potential regional hegemons in the bud. The U.S. war with Iraq in 1990-91 and the war with Serbia/Yugoslavia in 1999 were examples of this strategy. It involved coalition warfare, shifting AmericaÕs weight from side to side and using minimal force to disrupt the plans of regional aspirants to gain power. This U.S. strategy also was cloaked in the ideology of global liberalism and human rights. ... The most significant effect of 9/11 was that it knocked the United States off its strategy. Rather than adapting its standing global strategy to better address the counterterrorism issue, the United States became obsessed with a single region, the area between the Mediterranean and the Hindu Kush. Within that region, the United States operated with a balance-of-power strategy. It played off all of the nations in the region against each other. It did the same with ethnic and religious groups throughout the region and particularly within Iraq and Afghanistan, the main theaters of the war. In both cases, the United States sought to take advantage of internal divisions, shifting its support in various directions to create a balance of power. That, in the end, was what the surge strategy was all about. The American obsession with this region in the wake of 9/11 is understandable. Nine years later, with no clear end in sight, the question is whether this continued focus is strategically rational for the United States. Given the uncertainties of the first few years, obsession and uncertainty are understandable, but as a long-term U.S. strategy Ñ the long war that the U.S. Department of Defense is preparing for Ñ it leaves the rest of the world uncovered. Consider that the Russians have used the American absorption in this region as a window of opportunity to work to reconstruct their geopolitical position. When Russia went to war with Georgia in 2008, an American ally, the United States did not have the forces with which to make a prudent intervention. Similarly, the Chinese have had a degree of freedom of action they could not have expected to enjoy prior to 9/11. The single most important result of 9/11 was that it shifted the United States from a global stance to a regional one, allowing other powers to take advantage of this focus to create significant potential challenges to the United States. One can make the case, as I have, that whatever the origin of the Iraq war, remaining in Iraq to contain Iran is necessary. It is difficult to make a similar case for Afghanistan. Its strategic interest to the United States is minimal. The only justification for the war is that al Qaeda launched its attacks on the United States from Afghanistan. But that justification is no longer valid. Al Qaeda can launch attacks from Yemen or other countries. The fact that Afghanistan was the base from which the attacks were launched does not mean that al Qaeda depends on Afghanistan to launch attacks. And given that the apex leadership of al Qaeda has not launched attacks in a while, the question is whether al Qaeda is capable of launching such attacks any longer. In any case, managing al Qaeda today does not require nation building in Afghanistan. But let me state a more radical thesis: The threat of terrorism cannot become the singular focus of the United States. Let me push it further: The United States cannot subordinate its grand strategy to simply fighting terrorism even if there will be occasional terrorist attacks on the United States. Three thousand people died in the 9/11 attack. That is a tragedy, but in a nation of over 300 million, 3,000 deaths cannot be permitted to define the totality of national strategy. Certainly, resources must be devoted to combating the threat and, to the extent possible, disrupting it. But it must also be recognized that terrorism cannot always be blocked, that terrorist attacks will occur and that the worldÕs only global power cannot be captive to this single threat...." Read more: 9/11 and the 9-Year War | STRATFOR |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Bobert Date: 08 Sep 10 - 08:13 PM 9/11 didn't knock US off our strategy... The neo-cons did... They were the happiest poeple on the planet on 9/11... They'd allready been thrown outta Bill Clinton's office with their geo-political theories... Bush should have done the sdame except Bush was allready brainwashed by them before the 2000 election (selection) and so he was ready and willin' to take anything (think Gulf of Tonkin here) that ruffled the waters as an excuse to turn loose the neo-cons... And turn them loose, he did... And, like they say, the rest is hostory... B~ p.s. Yo, GfinS... You wanta jam in my band then callin' then the music "stupid noise" kinda has to, ahhhhh, go... Wink back atcha... |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 14 Sep 10 - 04:22 PM Group offers $100,000 for 'information leading to the arrest and conviction of Karl Rove' Amid the launch of a new campaign to encourage greater scrutiny of the right-wing "American Crossroads" groups known to many as the "shadow RNC," an activist organization declared that it would give $100,000 to any person who comes forward with "information leading to the arrest and conviction of Karl Rove." The campaign is being conducted by American Crossroads Watch, an offshoot of Velvet Revolution, which promotes issues key to many progressives activists and represents the political will of dozens of organizations and unions nation-wide. Their newly launched Web site declares: Karl Rove created American Crossroads to continue his 40-year history of unfairly manipulating elections on behalf of oligarchs. He joined with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a cabal of corporate barons, and other CEOs that want Big Business to control our elections and our government. In a request for an advisory opinion [PDF link] filed with the Federal Election Commission, an attorney for Protect Our Elections cites reporting by RAW STORY, Rolling Stone and The Huffington Post to build a case alleging that Rove and his groups have effectively replaced the official RNC, hence they should be subject to the same rules and not be allowed unlimited donations. A second request [PDF link], filed with the Department of Justice, urges the protection of the 2010 elections from wealthy individuals and groups who seek to win "by hook or crook." They further insist that the DOJ "[launch] a specific criminal investigation into American Crossroads/American Crossroads GPS for its coup d'etat of the RNC for the purpose of controlling the United States Government." Naturally, the offer of a reward for Rove's arrest and conviction was issued by way of an online wanted poster. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: ollaimh Date: 14 Sep 10 - 09:33 PM the real tragedy of the bush years is if they had put all that deficit money inot alternative energyn they would energy independent by now--or very soon. however in the grey back rooms i think the theorists of the republicans are planning on bankruptcy as a weapon against the people who own american debt instruments. can you say china. of course these ideologs are playing dice with our lives. they had to know that the debt they were running up is crippling in conventional terms. spain defaulted with its debt twice. both times they were happy to destroy backers who they had to use but felt were against their strategy for a ubited europe. this kind of geo politics id madness i love that quote that facts have a very liberal bias |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Bobert Date: 14 Sep 10 - 09:58 PM Yeah, yer right, ollz... Purdy messed up... But hetre's the rub... I mean, think about this... China really doesn't much care about the dollars they are stashin' away... They have a fully employed, robust economy... I mean, they could have $5Gazzion US dollars locked up in their safes and guess what??? Who cares??? They are just collecting dust... Well, seems that dust-collectin' greenabacks sittin' unner Boss Hog's mattress and thems in in China me thinks there is a reason that banks ain't makin' no loans here in the good ol' US of A.... The money ain't in them banks... It's all in China and under Boss Hog's mattress... Can I get a "Duhhhhhh"?... B~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 21 Sep 10 - 09:04 PM Fearing a soaring deficit, many analysts favor letting Bush tax cuts expire y From foreclosure to food shortages, the recession set in motion by the financial crisis of 2008 is having a broad and deeply-felt global impact. Tax cuts enacted under former president George W. Bush are set to expire at year's end, and lawmakers are battling over whether to extend them before the November elections. By Lori Montgomery Washington Post Staff Writer The tax cuts at the heart of a fierce pre-election battle on Capitol Hill were designed when the economy was booming, the federal budget was in surplus and George W. Bush was campaigning for president on a promise to return the extra cash to taxpayers. Today, the economy is sluggish and the national debt is soaring to worrisome levels. As lawmakers bicker over whether to extend the Bush-era tax cuts, not just for the middle class but also for the wealthy, many economists and budget analysts say there's a simple way to curb borrowing: Let the tax cuts expire for everyone. Official and independent budget estimates show that letting tax rates spring back to pre-Bush levels for all taxpayers would bring the country within striking distance of meeting President Obama's goal of balancing the budget, excluding interest payments on the debt, by 2015. "If we actually ended the Bush-era tax cuts, that would pretty much do it," Obama's recently departed budget director, Peter Orszag, said in an interview last week with CNN's Fareed Zakaria. "If you do a bit on the spending side and then end the tax cuts, you pretty much get there." But for all the election-year hand-wringing about deficits, no one in Washington is talking about letting the tax cuts lapse on schedule in January. Instead, Senate Republicans have offered a measure that would extend all the cuts, adding nearly $4 trillion to the debt over the next decade. This week, Senate Democrats say they plan to unveil a bill that would preserve most of the cuts for most Americans. That would add nearly $2 trillion to deficits by 2020. Obama argues that allowing the cuts to expire for the wealthiest 3 million taxpayers - one of the chief differences between the two Senate proposals - is more fiscally responsible than the GOP's position. "The first thing you do when you're in a hole is not dig it deeper," he said at a town hall meeting Monday in Washington. But the Democrats' plan also represents a pretty big shovel, budget analysts said. "Both parties are being disingenuous here," said Robert Bixby, executive director of the nonprofit Concord Coalition, which advocates balanced budgets. "When I hear the Democrats saying Republicans are willing to add to the deficit, well, the Democrats are willing to add $2 trillion to the deficit themselves. The Democrats are doing almost as much damage to the deficit as the Republicans are." Although the down economy might offer good reason to keep tax rates low for another year or two, putting more money in the hands of consumers, Bixby and other budget experts say it makes no sense to maintain that level of taxation permanently when the government is borrowing more than 40 cents of every dollar it spends. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that the economy would be stronger with the cuts, but only through 2012, when the extra borrowing they require "would reduce or 'crowd out' investment in productive capital." Even former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, an early advocate of the cuts, now says Congress should let them expire. "I am very much in favor of tax cuts, but not with borrowed money," Greenspan said in an interview last month. The budget outlook was far rosier when Bush conceived the cuts, which were one of the biggest tax reductions since World War II. Thanks to tax increases and robust economic growth, the Clinton administration had balanced the budget for the first time since the 1960s and was starting to pay down the national debt. ... |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Bobert Date: 22 Sep 10 - 08:57 AM Yeah, Amos... I read that story... Too bad you couldn't import the graphs, too... But it does seem that at least the Seante Repubs and alot of the House Repubs, as well, are in a pickle on this one... The reality is that the tax cuts have controbuted heavily to the deficit... And continuing them while saying you want to cut the deficit is, ahhhhhhh, insane... No, really... It is insanity... I mean, people try to make economics difficult... It isn't... It so simple that even a caveman can figure it out... Behind on yer bills??? Get a 2nd job (more income, stupid...)... Ain't rocket surgery here... Can we get a big ol' "Duhhhhhhh"??? B~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Sawzaw Date: 22 Sep 10 - 02:00 PM "a dollar of tax cuts raises the G.D.P. by about $3" "each dollar of government spending increases the G.D.P. by $1.40" |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Bobert Date: 22 Sep 10 - 02:11 PM That pure bull, Sawz... The reality is that the Fortune 500 CEOs admit that their corpo0artions are sitting on atleast $1.8T that is not invested in squat... This has been reported in several reputable news sources included the right of center NBC... So, maybe you'd like to tell the good folks how sitting money adds anything to the GNP... It doesn't... Not even flat=earth economists would argue that obviously wrong point... Try again, Sawz... The dog not only don't hunt but it ain't even a dog... It's a stuffed animal... B~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Sawzaw Date: 22 Sep 10 - 02:17 PM Again the "facts" put forth by some Democrats are characterized as "pure bull" by other Democrats. All three Stooges must have been Democrats. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 22 Sep 10 - 02:33 PM Sawz: Where did you get those statements offered as quotes? Under what conditions are they true, do you think (if you do)? A dollar of tax cuts does nothing to the economy unless the cuttee uses the dollar. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Sawzaw Date: 22 Sep 10 - 11:03 PM I am not an economist Amos. Are you? "a dollar of tax cuts raises the G.D.P. by about $3" "each dollar of government spending increases the G.D.P. by $1.40" |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Sawzaw Date: 22 Sep 10 - 11:20 PM Here's a good one Amos. In 2004 the top 20% of households got an 8.56% tax break while the bottom 20% got a 13.65% tax break. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Bobert Date: 23 Sep 10 - 10:22 AM Still waiting for an answer, Sawz, on how money sitting (uninvested) adds to the GNP??? Purdy important question these days, too... Seems that the Repubs won't answer it... They run from that question like pigs from a gun... Why???... Because they are 100% wrong and so are you... You don't have to be an economist to know that sitting money doesn't help the GNP... Read Paul Klugman's article... He's not only an economist but has won international acclaim for what he knows and has contributed... Yeah, go read him... It's one thing to be ignorant ("I'm not an economist") but quite another, when facts are made available to you, to ignore them... B~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 23 Sep 10 - 11:40 AM Sawz: You might have mentioned that the FULL excerpt on tax cut returns says: "The evidence, however, is hard to square with the theory. A recent study by Christina D. Romer and David H. Romer, then economists at the University of California, Berkeley, finds that a dollar of tax cuts raises the G.D.P. by about $3. According to the Romers, the multiplier for tax cuts is more than twice what Professor Ramey finds for spending increases. Why this is so remains a puzzle. One can easily conjecture about what the textbook theory leaves out, but it will take more research to sort things out. And whether these results based on historical data apply to our current extraordinary circumstances is open to debate. " So the source of this profound insight--which you have offered as a concrete, ironclad conclusion--is one recent study without an explanation, and the guy you got it from says it needs more research to sort out, and he doesn't know if this applies to the present situation or not. A little less absolute than you implied, no? A |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Sawzaw Date: 24 Sep 10 - 11:26 AM "So, maybe you'd like to tell the good folks how sitting money adds anything to the GNP" No it doesn't and when did I say it did? Perhaps you could explain why an absurd question means anything because someone did not answer it. I put forth two quotes. You can determine if they are correct or not. But your method of determining facts consists of ad hominem attacks rather than studying the actual facts. You won't answer questions about statements you make but you demand that I answer about a statement I did not make. Mr Amos: You read implications into things. I did nothing but present two quotes. It is you that must put some sort of rhetorical spin on your posts as if it adds to the validity or invalidity of the statement. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 11 Oct 10 - 02:45 PM "...Ever wonder why Goldman-Sachs CEO Henry Paulson took that low-paying government job as Dubya's Treasury Secretary? Think it was to nobly serve his country? Gary Gordon of McClatchy News: while Goldman CEO, "Paulson had presided over the firm's plunge into the business of buying up subprime mortgages ... and then repackaging them into securities.... During Paulson's first 15 months as the treasury secretary..., Goldman unloaded more than $30 billion in dicey residential mortgage securities ... and became the only major Wall Street firm to dramatically cut its losses and exit the housing market safely. Goldman also racked up billions of dollars in profits by secretly betting on a downturn in home mortgage securities." Experts say it's obvious Paulson's inaction at Treasury was designed to maximize Goldman profits despite the disastrous consequences for the markets & the American economy. CW: and Paulson will never suffer any consequences...." (Realitychex.com) |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Sawzaw Date: 12 Oct 10 - 12:44 AM Conflict of interest claims It has been pointed out that Paulson's plan could potentially have some conflicts of interest, since Paulson was a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, a firm that may benefit largely from the plan. Economic columnists called for more scrutiny of his actions. Questions remain about Paulson's interest, despite the fact that he had no direct financial interest in Goldman, since he had sold his entire stake in the firm prior to becoming Treasury Secretary, pursuant to ethics law. The Goldman Sachs benefit from AIG bailout was recently estimated as USD 12.9 billion and GS was the largest recipient of the public funds from AIG. Creating the collateralized debt obligations (CDO's) forming the basis of the current crisis was an active part of Goldman Sach's business during Paulson's tenure as CEO. Opponents[ argued that Paulson remained a Wall Street insider who maintained close friendships with higher-ups of the bailout beneficiaries. If passed into law as originally written, the proposed bill would have given the United States Treasury Secretary unprecedented powers over the economic and financial life of the U.S. Section 8 of Paulson's original plan stated: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." Some time after the passage of a rewritten bill, the press reported that the Treasury was now proposing to use these funds ($700 billion) in ways other than what was originally intended in the bill. Career after public service Since leaving his role as Treasury Secretary, Paulson has joined the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University as a distinguished visiting fellow, and a fellow at the university's Bernard Schwartz Forum on Constructive Capitalism. His memoir, On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System, was published by Hachette Book Group on February 1, 2010. Civic activities Paulson has been described as an avid nature lover. He has been a member of The Nature Conservancy for decades and was the organization's board chairman and co-chair of its Asia-Pacific Council. In that capacity, Paulson worked with former President of the People's Republic of China Jiang Zemin to preserve the Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yunnan province. Paulson is also on the Board of Directors of the Peregrine Fund; was the founding Chairman of the Advisory Board of the School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University in Beijing; and, previously served as chairman of the influential trade group, the Financial Services Forum. Notable among the members of Bush's cabinet, Paulson has said he is a strong believer in the effect of human activity on global warming and advocates immediate action to decrease this effect. During his tenure as CEO of Goldman Sachs, Paulson oversaw the corporate donation of 680,000 acres (2,800 km2) on the forested Chilean side of Tierra del Fuego, bringing criticism from Goldman shareholder groups. He further donated to conservancy causes US$100 million of assets from his wealth, and has pledged his entire fortune for the same purpose upon his death. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Donuel Date: 12 Oct 10 - 09:38 PM Having read virtually all of sawz writings and copy pastes, it is clear to methat he is in the closet. The closet of right wing conservative radicals who carry on a pretense of centrism while quoting Rovian party lines and Beckian distortions of history which the rest of us know as lies. "yeah buddy I'm one of you" Sure sawz, just like Christine O'Donnel is "you" ------------------- All the wrongs that I warned about going back 10 years, that have since come to pass, are the very same issues that sawz, Doug R BB and their like, celebrated as being right. They went even further and engaged in horrible accusations and ad hominum attacks as they rode the wave of the Bush administration. The triumph they celeprated that are now known to be mistakes are deep and systemic enough that they too shall suffer deeply and for a long time to come. This is not lost to them but they are unable to own their mistakes. Instead all associations and personalities respondsible for the systemic collapse, they merely blamed on Obama. The mistakes I announced over the years did not take a brain surgeon to notice. Some were as simple as obeying the rule "Never wage a war in Asia, Never wage a war on 2 seperate fronts. Never bankrupt the middle class to the point that they can not afford purchasing power of any kind, since 72% of our economy is domestic consumer based buying." Whether people are paid to hold views which enable to destroy this nation over time or simply hold these views to please a father or emplyer, the result is the same. What saved the USA the last time we had a serious depression is that right wing demogogery and left wing solidarity both shut up long enough to wage a war against a common enemy. This time around we have even less domestic industry left in this country but the idea of coming together is as likely as Fox News giving Obama a million dollars to run in 2012. The 400 wealthiest Greedonauts will simply not allow it. Its time all of you ask why. Why do foreign banks and individuals give money to the Republican Parety to run commercials against Democrats? They know that the Republican Party has always delivered when it came to outsourcing American jobs to their country to the great benefit of foreign nations. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Bobert Date: 12 Oct 10 - 09:54 PM That scariest part of the equation, Donuel, is that the Goldman-Sachs have been able to rally the dumbest among us and those who have and will be the hurt the most by the Goldman-Sachs "ideal world" to shill for them??? I mean, one day historians will look back upon these times as if the Jews were shilling for Hitler... I mean, this is complete insanity on Redneck Nation's part.... They are voting to screw themselves... B~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 21 Oct 10 - 10:46 PM ÒI loved being your president,Ó George W. Bush said, speaking to an audience at a university fundraiser in Alabama earlier this month. ÒBut frankly,Ó he added, ÒIÕm having the time of my life not being your president.Ó Last night, Bush told a sold out crowd in Texas why he loved being president so much: Bush said he misses certain aspects of the presidency. ÒI miss being pampered; I miss Air Force One; I miss being commander in chief of an awesome group of (people),Ó he said. Showing 116 comments Random_Chaos Yesterday 02:17 PM Im'e sorry, is this newsworthy? WGAF? (Edited by author 1 day ago) 4 people liked this. Like Reply SVrob Yesterday 02:32 PM in reply to Random_Chaos What do you have against clown stories? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 22 Oct 10 - 07:49 PM .US. military officials failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and murders, according to classified documents examined by the Guardian, a British newspaper. The documents cited by the Guardian said that as recently as December 2009, U.S. authorities were passed a video of Iraqi soldiers executing a bound detainee. The documents, given to the Guardian and the New York Times by WikiLeaks, also indicate that as far back as 2005, Iran armed and trained squads to kill senior Iraqi politicians and undermine U.S. and British military operations, the Guardian reported. Der Spiegel of Germany and France's Le Monde also were given advance copies of almost 400,000 documents generated between 2003 and 2010 by U.S. military units. WikiLeaks.org receives confidential material that governments and businesses want to keep secret and posts the information on the Internet. The group plans a news conference in London tomorrow. The U.S. Defense Department "strongly" condemns the unauthorized release of the documents, spokesman Geoff Morrell said in an e-mailed statement. Morrell declined to comment on the documents themselves, other than to call them initial, raw observations by tactical units. The documents indicate that the number of Iraqi civilians killed was greater than the U.S. revealed during the Bush administration, according to the New York Times. While the documents don't give a precise count, they list more than 100,000 deaths over five years ending in 2009, with some incidents counted twice or inconsistently, the newspaper said. Mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by their own forces appeared to be even more graphic than the accounts of abuse by the U.S. military at the Abu Ghraib prison, the Times said. The documents contain references to at least six prisoners who died in Iraqi custody during the six years covered as well as hundreds of accounts of beatings, burnings and lashings. A Pentagon spokesman said international practice makes Iraqi authorities responsible for investigating abuses by their own forces, the Times said. Release of the information poses a risk to U.S. national security and relations with Iraq, Pentagon spokesman Colonel David Lapan told reporters earlier today. He said the documents might identify Iraqis who worked closely with the U.S. ... |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 09 Nov 10 - 11:13 AM "...You can't have a coherent conversation about deficit reduction if tax increases are off the table and the country is still at war. This is fantasyland economics, the equivalent of believing that John Boehner can fly. People traveling in the real world understand that the federal budget deficits are sky high because of the Bush-era tax cuts, the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the spending that was needed to keep the Great Recession from spiraling into another Great Depression. Even if deficit reduction right now were a good idea — which it is not, given the sorry state of the economy and the vast legions of the unemployed — the deficit zealots have no viable plan for getting their misguided mission accomplished. What's needed now is the same thing that has been needed for the past two years and more, a bold plan to put millions of Americans back to work and paying taxes, and a careful, thoughtful, strategic but unequivocal withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Iraq. If we don't engage these two issues effectively, there is little hope of getting to the other enormous challenges facing the country, including the metastasizing presence of poverty, the worsening problems facing already chronically underperforming public schools, and the deteriorating economic and social conditions that have drained the vitality of so many cities, rust-belt communities and rural areas. The golden doors of opportunity are closing on America's young. The United States, once the world's leader in the percentage of young people with college degrees, is now a sorry 12th among 36 developed nations, according to the College Board. As a society, we've lost our way, and there is no chance of getting reoriented if we can't find the courage to make some really tough decisions about warfare, taxes, public investment, the crying need to educate all young people, and the paramount importance of gainful employment as the cornerstone of a revitalized America. Great sacrifices will have to be made if the U.S. is to get its act together, and those sacrifices will have to be shared. We can start now, or we can wait and continue to fantasize about an eventual triumph in Afghanistan, or about cutting budgets with some magic cleaver until they're finally balanced and all's right with the world, or whatever other impossible dream is floated by the chronically dissembling political class to blind us to the real world. " NYT Columnist Bob Herbert |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Donuel Date: 09 Nov 10 - 02:13 PM The new Bush memoir has been good for the economy. Vast hoardes of Bush interpretors got a job to go back on FOX to justify all the alleged crimes as family values at their best or innocent high jinx at the worst. "When I asked myself if water boarding was torture, I didn't have to ask the Lord or my conscience, I asked my lawyers" |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 09 Nov 10 - 07:12 PM IRAQ -- 'I WAS A DISSENTING VOICE': Bush doubles down on the disastrous war in Iraq, writing, "Saddam Hussein didn't just pursue weapons of mass destruction. He had used them." "He deployed mustard gas and nerve agents against the Iranians and massacred more than five thousand innocent civilians," Bush said, adding that he believed Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was stunned to find out that he didn't. It was "unbelievably frustrating," Bush told Fox News' Sean Hannity. "Of course, it was frustrating. It -- everybody thought he had WMD. Everybody being every intelligence service, everybody in the administration ." "No one was more shocked or angry than I was when we didn't find the weapons. I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it. I still do," Bush writes in his book. When asked by NBC's Matt Lauer if he filtered out dissenting voices against the war, Bush retorted, "I was a dissenting voice. I didn't want to use force. I mean force is the last option for a president. And I think it's clear in the book that I gave diplomacy every chance to work. And I will also tell you the world's better off without Saddam in power. And so are 25 million Iraqis." Recently declassified documents and press accounts, however, contradict Bush's version of events and reveal that his administration was looking for a way to "decapitate" the Iraqi government since 2001. As Bush's Treasury Secretary Paul OÕNeill -- who Bush fired for "disagreeing too many times" with him -- puts it, Bush was "all about finding a way to [go to war]. That was the tone of it. The President saying 'Go find me a way to do this.'" In 2002, Bush also reportedly told then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, while she was in a meeting with three U.S. Senators on how to approach Iraq diplomatically, "F--- Saddam. We're taking him out." In "talking about why we needed this war," Bush also later referenced an alleged Iraqi assassination plot against Bush's father: "We need to get Saddam Hussein...that Mother F----- tried to take out my Dad." Asked by Lauer if he ever considered apologizing to the American people over the war and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, Bush replied, "I mean, apologizing would basically say the decision was a wrong decision," Bush replied. "And I don't believe it was the wrong decision." (The Progress Report) |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 10 Nov 10 - 03:09 PM Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder said Tuesday that former President George W. Bush "is not telling the truth" in his new memoir "Decision Points," according to the German magazine Der Spiegel. Schroder, who lost power in 2005, takes issue with a passage in the book in which Mr. Bush describes a 2002 meeting between the two men. The former president writes that when he said he was considering the use of force in Iraq, Schroder said, "'What is true of Afghanistan is true of Iraq. Nations that sponsor terror must face consequences. If you make it fast and make it decisive, I will be with you.'" Mr. Bush writes that he "took that as a statement of support. But when the German election arrived later that year, Schroder had a different take. He denounced the possibility of force against Iraq." Schroder says Mr. Bush's description of the exchange is false. He said in that meeting and in others he told Mr. Bush that Germany would stand by the United States if Iraq is shown "to have provided protection and hospitality to al-Qaida fighters." He added, however, that it became clear in 2002 that the alleged connection between Iraq and al-Qaida "was false and constructed." Schroder ultimately opposed the invasion of Iraq. Mr. Bush writes in "Decision Points" that though he continued to work with the German leader on some issues, "as someone who valued personal diplomacy, I put a high premium on trust. Once that trust was violated, it was hard to have a constructive relationship again." He also writes that he was "shocked and furious" that a German official (then-Justice Minister Herta Daubler-Gmelin) compared him to Hitler for what she cast as trying "to distract people from his domestic difficulties" through war. (Daubler-Gmelin ultimately lost her job for the comment.) As Der Spiegel notes, Mr. Bush and Schroder's relationship was seriously strained by the Iraq war, which Schroder has called "the mother of all misjudgments." (The former president did offer kind words for Schroder in his memoir for "his leadership on Afghanistan.") In his memoir "Decisions: My Life in Politics," Schroder wrote that Mr. Bush spoke in "almost Biblical semantics" and gave off the impression "that political decisions are a result of this conversation with God." Fom CBS News That's two people calling him a liar on specifics... |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: gnu Date: 10 Nov 10 - 03:54 PM I know I shouldn't, but.... There WERE WMDs. WERE!!! The west sold them to Saddam so he DID have them. They were spirited Libya in the dark of night before the invasion. Next thing ya know, Tony and Quackdaffy are the best of buddies. Imagine that shit! And BP is now in Libya setting up ops for drilling. Who could have guessed? Bush? At least a fall guy (which is inane). At best, a good old boy from Texas that played the part of a well paid rootin tootin shootin cowboy.... = a pawn of the British Empire. Yes, a pawn of a member of the rulers of this earth. And, that shite about Tony being his bitch... stop that... it's just plain silly. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 10 Nov 10 - 04:17 PM "According to an item published on the Financial Times's website, this happened when a group of British dignitaries visited George W. Bush in the White House in the middle of the 2008 presidential election: Trying to be even-handed and polite, the Brits said something diplomatic about McCain's campaign, expecting Bush to express some warm words of support for the Republican candidate. Not a chance. "I probably won't even vote for the guy," Bush told the group, according to two people present. "I had to endorse him. But I'd have endorsed Obama if they'd asked me." Endorse Obama? Cue dumbfounded look from British officials, followed by some awkward remarks about the Washington weather. Even Gordon Brown's poker face gave way to a flash of astonishment. Over at AOL News, David Knowles suggests that there may be evidence in Bush's new book that the then-president favored Obama over McCain. "In 'Decision Points,' Bush's newly released memoir, the former president makes no bones about the fact that of the two candidates, he much preferred the way Obama handled the news of the financial sector meltdown." Of course, if the report is true, it's worth pointing out that even if Bush would have wanted to endorse Obama, it's doubtful that Obama would have even wanted it. There's a reason he didn't ask. " Hmmmm. Maybe there was a reason... |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 17 Nov 10 - 12:20 PM Giving the Lie to Bush's Memoirs is an eye opening piece that shows the underhanded indifference to truth in stark highlight. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Don(Wyziwyg)T Date: 18 Nov 10 - 11:12 AM ""The documents indicate that the number of Iraqi civilians killed was greater than the U.S. revealed during the Bush administration, according to the New York Times. While the documents don't give a precise count, they list more than 100,000 deaths over five years ending in 2009, with some incidents counted twice or inconsistently, the newspaper said."" Attributed to Confucius (I'm not sure I believe that, but the wisdom of the quote is inescapable). "War does not determine who is right, War only determines who is LEFT!" Don T. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 24 Nov 10 - 06:36 PM ay McGovern, Consortium News: "Why should George W. Bush have been 'angry' to learn in late 2007 of the unanimous judgment of all 16 US intelligence agencies that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon four years earlier? Seems to me he might have said 'Hot Dog!' rather than curse under his breath. Nowhere in his memoir, Decision Points, is Bush's bizarre relationship to truth so manifest as when he describes his dismay at learning that the intelligence community had redeemed itself for its lies about Iraq by preparing an honest Estimate that stuck a rod in the wheels of the juggernaut rolling toward war with Iran." Read the Article (Warning: slow server). |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 24 Nov 10 - 06:41 PM "But someone should ask Bush why he was not relieved, rather than angered, to learn from a National Intelligence Estimate that Iran had had no active nuclear weapons program since 2003. Also, one might ask why Bush thought Israel should have been Òfurious with the United States over the NIE.Ó It seems likely that Bush actually dictated this part of the book himself. For, in setting down his reaction to the NIE on Iran, he confirmed the insight that Dr. Justin Frank, M.D., who teaches psychiatry at George Washington University Hospital, gave us veteran intelligence officers into how Bush comes at reality Ñ or doesnÕt. ÒHis pathology is a patchwork of false beliefs and incomplete information woven into what he asserts is the whole truth... He lies Ñ not just to us, but to himself as well... What makes lying so easy for Bush is his contempt Ñ for language, for law, and for anybody who dares question him.... So his words mean nothing. That is very important for people to understand.Ó" Ibid |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Donuel Date: 24 Nov 10 - 07:12 PM Amos, according the the new Bush book Decision Points, most or all your criticisms of Bush and his administration are either wrong or outright lies. When Bush speaks of Saddam's WMD program he employs the conditional future pluperfect tense. Wow Bush is a much better writer than a speaker. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Greg F. Date: 25 Nov 10 - 08:35 AM Amos, according the the new Bush book Decision Points, most or all your criticisms of Bush and his administration are either wrong or outright lies. I don't think you copuld ask for better proof that the book is merely a tributary of the Republican River Of Bullshit. P.S.: two words: ghost writer |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 14 Dec 10 - 06:50 PM Halliburton Offers Nigeria $250 Million in Exchange for Dropping Charges Against Cheney, Company Jason Leopold, Truthout: "Nigerian authorities said Tuesday they may drop bribery and corruption charges against Halliburton and former Vice President Dick Cheney over bribes company executives paid to government officials in Nigeria during Cheney's tenure at the oil services firm in exchange for securing contracts to build a liquefied natural gas facility in the country. Last week, Nigeria's anti-corruption unit, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), met with representatives for Halliburton and Cheney in London in an attempt to hammer out a deal. Halliburton reportedly offered to pay $250 million in fines to settle the case." (truthout.org) |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 25 Dec 10 - 05:40 PM Bush Deception Points Former President George W. BushÕs book Decision Points is apparently selling quite well. The book includes a defense of the presidentÕs fiscal record, and a table on page 447 compares Bush to prior presidents on spending and debt (you can see the table on AmazonÕs search inside feature). One problem with the table is that Bush claims credit for the low spending and debt of President ClintonÕs last year, fiscal 2001. The first budget Bush crafted was for fiscal 2002. Here are the data reported by Bush, and data recalculated to better reflect the budgets that each president had some control over. Figures are averages over the fiscal year periods, measured as a share of GDP: Decision Points Comparison: Clinton (1993-2000) 19.8%, Bush (2001-2008) 19.6%. More Accurate Comparison: Clinton (1994-2001) 19.4%, Bush (2002-2009) 20.4%. The book makes Bush look better on spending, but a more accurate comparison shows Clinton to have a better record. ItÕs true that Bush was not responsible for some of fiscal 2009 spending, and if we take that year out Bush would have average spending of 19.8%. But consider the direction of spending under the two presidentsÐspending fell under Clinton from 21.4% to 18.2%, but it increased under Bush from 18.2% to 20.7% by fiscal 2008 (and even higher in fiscal 2009). (Spending data are here). The table in Decision Points also shows Bush looking better than Clinton on public debt as a share of GDP, averaged over each presidentÕs tenure. But the debt data has the same time period problem as the spending data. More importantly, Clinton delivered surpluses his last four years in office, which handed Bush a budget with very low debt and low interest costs. The low interest costs helped mask the spending-increase policies of Bush for a number of years. But BushÕs profligacy eventually became clear to analysts and the public alike, and this autobiography cannot undo his record as the biggest spender since LBJ. Final note: yes, I understand that Congress plays a large role in federal budgeting, but so do presidents. Presidents propose annual budgets, they twist arms and use the bully pulpit to increase or cut programs, they support legislation to expand or contract entitlement programs, and they sign or veto appropriation and authorization bills. (Cato Institute blog) |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 01 Feb 11 - 09:23 AM An End to Bush-Era PoliticsJanuary 31, 2011 Every White House since the days of President Jimmy Carter has had a political affairs office to assess the effects of policy on voters and make sure that presidents are aware of the nation's political temperature. The office has grown in power alarmingly with each presidency, but the most recent Bush administration became so consumed with Republican politics that it crossed a legal red line, according to a new federal investigative report. The report, by the federal Office of Special Counsel, found that the Bush White House routinely violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits most federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity. It depicts the Bush Office of Political Affairs, run by Karl Rove, as virtually indistinguishable from the Republican Party. And it makes a strong case that the office — shut down by the Obama administration last week just before the report came out — can no longer co-exist with the law. (NYT Editorial) |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Amos Date: 08 Feb 11 - 02:25 PM Article Source: Reuters Voters in two Vermont towns on Tuesday approved a measure that would instruct police to arrest President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for "crimes against our Constitution," |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: GUEST,999 Date: 08 Feb 11 - 04:11 PM Any chance they can be renditioned? |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: TIA Date: 08 Feb 11 - 04:17 PM Bush cancelled his trip to Switzerland for just this reason. |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: freda underhill Date: 08 Feb 11 - 08:18 PM Geneva - Bush torture indictment |
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Subject: RE: BS: The Bush Years In Retrospect From: Bobert Date: 08 Feb 11 - 08:29 PM One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter... Final score between Bush and his cousin Osama??? Osama 3000 Bush 1,000,000 Who's the bigger, make that successful, terrorist??? Does anyone think that a mother is any less grieved to have her son killed by George Bush than by Osama??? Problem here is that instead of 300 mothers it was upwards of a million mothers... I got some bad news for Bush... He says he is a Christian but he ain't gettin' by St Peter... No sir... Daddy can't buy salvation... Let Bush rot in Hell... That's what Hell is for... Of course, his buddy Osama will be there, too... Hope they enjoy it... They sho nuff earned it... B~ |
