posted on July 14, 2003 03:12:02 PM new
CNN ran an online poll during the Wolf Blitzer report (5-6 p.m. Eastern) I got a pop-up after I voted but it wasn't linkable. Eighty-eight percent of the poll's respondents said they believe Bush lied. Obviously, this is not a scientific poll. But still. Eighty-eight. Pretty huge.
In the Washington Post poll, for the first time a majority of poll respondents (and this was a scientific poll) said they thought the level of casualties in Iraq was "unacceptable."
Bush is losing it.
------------------- We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are.
------------The Talmud
posted on July 14, 2003 03:37:22 PM new
"I think the intelligence I get is darn good intelligence and the speeches I have given are backed by good intelligence," Bush said.
Yes, darn good. What a load of crap! Oh, excuse me. I mean darn good crap.
More important than the names of people affiliated with neo-conservatism are the views they adhere to. Here is a brief summary of the general understanding of what neocons believe:
1. They agree with Trotsky on permanent revolution, violent as well as intellectual.
2. They are for redrawing the map of the Middle East and are willing to use force to do so.
3. They believe in preemptive war to achieve desired ends.
4. They accept the notion that the ends justify the means—that hard-ball politics is a moral necessity.
5. They express no opposition to the welfare state.
6. They are not bashful about an American empire; instead they strongly endorse it.
7. They believe lying is necessary for the state to survive.
8. They believe a powerful federal government is a benefit.
9. They believe pertinent facts about how a society should be run should be held by the elite and
withheld from those who do not have the courage to deal with it.
10. They believe neutrality in foreign affairs is ill-advised.
11. They hold Leo Strauss in high esteem.
12. They believe imperialism, if progressive in nature, is appropriate.
13. Using American might to force American ideals on others is acceptable. Force should
not be limited to the defense of our country.
14. 9-11 resulted from the lack of foreign entanglements, not from too many.
15. They dislike and despise libertarians (therefore, the same applies to all strict constitutionalists.)
16. They endorse attacks on civil liberties, such as those found in the Patriot Act, as being necessary.
17. They unconditionally support Israel and have a close alliance with the Likud Party.
Michael Ledeen, a current leader of the neoconservative movement praises: “Creative destruction…
both within our own society and abroad…(foreigners) seeing America undo traditional societies may fear us,
for they do not wish to be undone.”
Amazingly, Ledeen concludes: “They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them
to advance our historic mission.”
posted on July 15, 2003 08:46:04 AM new
America: Who's Steering The Ship of State?
By Bridget Gibson
07/14/03
The news is all about how "accepting" the blame for the botched speech is okay with George W. Bush. It is so nice to realize that words can be "blamed" on someone, anyone, but the one who uses the words.
Following the logic of the "blame" routine leads me down an interesting path.
If all George W. Bush does, is read prepared speeches written by others, vetted by others, put onto ready to read scrolling devices for the lips of the President, does that make the one that utters the words a puppet? A void and vacuous being whose only purpose is to mouth the threats and words of others.
If our illustrious President will not take the responsibility for the content and context in which his words are spoken - and spoken in a Constitutionally proscribed duty - then this person does not deserve to be called the “leader of the free world."
As of July 11, 2003, we had, as a nation, sustained the loss of two hundred and twelve men and women in the act of war -- a war that was whipped into being by the words of George W. Bush and his administration...
Descriptions of "mushroom clouds" within the borders of the United States, descriptions of tons of weaponized biological and bacterial materials, descriptions of unending horror at the hands of Saddam Hussein have been placed in the psyche of each and every citizen by the members of George W. Bush's cabinet and crew.
If George Tenet was responsible for standing in front of the Congress and the public on January 28, 2003, and uttering words of terror, then a "I accept the blame" statement is not enough.
If, eight days later, Colin Powell decided that those words should not be used by him in his testimony before the United Nations, was it because Colin Powell understood the gravity of lying under oath? Did George W. Bush not understand that by using those words in a Constitutionally mandated speech before Congress that he, too, was under oath?
This lie had been exposed - this forged document regarding uranium from Niger - long before January 28, 2003. This lie was further exposed before March 20, 2003 – the date that George W. Bush launched "shock and awe" on the Iraqi nation.
This administration has ignored the truth at each and every turn and has stolen the sons, husbands, brothers, fathers, daughters, wives, sisters and mothers of our fellow citizens. There will be children that will grow up without fathers or mothers.
Donald Rumsfeld has said that the losses since May 1, 2003, (the day that George W. Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln) are militarily insignificant. Each and every day, we have lost at least one more of our service men or women. I am certain that their families do not view their loss as "insignificant."
George Bush and Tommy Franks have called for those that attack us to "Bring 'em on." How easy and safe it must be for all of us here in our "secured" borders to just wait for the days numbers to be announced. Two die in landmine accidents, three die of complications from wounds, five die in an exchange of gunfire. My heart aches for each and every loss. Temperatures ranging from 100 to 110 degrees cannot bode well for an entire population who cannot depend on electricity to keep their food from spoiling and their waters from being polluted.
We are now told that the cost of the “war” will be Four Billion Dollars ($4,000,000,000) each and every month and that we will be there for at least four years. My calculations come to One Hundred ninety-two Billion Dollars ($192,000,000,000), not counting the loss of life for the American people and others.
We have someone in our highest office who will not take responsibility for his words. Do you think that George W. Bush will take responsibility for the rest of what he has created? George W. Bush demanded that our Congress give him the power to decide who, where and when our military would make this "pre-emptive" attack. George W. Bush demanded that we ignore the reservations of other nations on the United Nations Security Council. George W. Bush ordered the attacks. George W. Bush is responsible.
posted on July 16, 2003 07:57:36 AM new
what happened to FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY the Bush facists promised for the people of Iraq, what happened to all the care for the Iraq people the Bush facists said they went there for, to replace a dictator and give the people of Iraq freedom, yea right, oh i forgot, facists don't offer freedom, just words,
Concentration Camps in Baghdad
Families live in fear of midnight call by US patrols
by Daniel McGrory
The Times Online, 9 July 2003.
www.globalresearch.ca 14 July 2003
The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MCG307A.htm
NEVER again did families in Baghdad imagine that they need fear the midnight knock at the door. But in recent weeks there have been increasing reports of Iraqi men, women and even children being dragged from their homes at night by American patrols, or snatched off the streets and taken, hooded and manacled, to prison camps around the capital.
Children as young as 11 are claimed to be among those locked up for 24 hours a day in rooms with no light, or held in overcrowded tents in temperatures approaching 50C (122F).
On the edge of Baghdad International Airport, US military commanders have built a tent city that human rights groups are comparing to the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Remarkably, the Americans have also set up another detention camp in the grounds of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad. Many thousands of Iraqis were taken there during the Saddam years and never seen again.
Every day, relatives scuff their way along the dirt track to reach the razor wire barricades surrounding Abu Ghraib, where they plead in vain for information about the whereabouts of the missing.
The response from impassive American sentries is to point to a sign, scrawled in red felt-tip pen on a piece of cardboard hanging on the barbed wire, which says: “No visits are allowed, no information will be given and you must leave.”
Some, like Ghania Hassan, sink to their knees in despair. She holds a photograph of her eldest son, Mohammed Yasim Mohammed, a 22-year-old student. She said that he was walking through al-Shaab market with friends when passing troops saw him eating biscuits from an American military ration pack and accused him of being a looter. Allegedly he was pushed face down on the street while his friends tried to explain how a soldier a couple of streets away had given them the biscuits.
A month later nothing has been heard of the young man. His mother showed a fistful of letters and petitions that she has collected from US officials, local magistrates and a Muslim cleric, but she and the rest of the complainants were told at gunpoint to move away from the prison gates.
Such behaviour merely fuels the growing hostility between local people and the soldiers they had welcomed barely three months ago.
Families will naturally protest the innocence of their relatives, but the accounts, such as that of Aliah Khadoum, who describes how her son went out to buy cigarettes on June 1 and was arrested for breaking curfew, are rarely allowed to be tested by the local magistrates, who have begun daily court hearings in the capital.
Elizabeth Hodgkin, of Amnesty International, who has a bulging case file of arrests, said: “I cannot believe the Americans are so stupid and insensitive as to behave like this after all the trouble they have had over Guantanamo Bay. They must treat their detainees humanely and let them have visits from family and lawyers.”
Amnesty claims that 80 minors have been detained, accused of petty offences including writing anti-American graffiti or, in the case of two teenage boys, climbing on the back of a US troop carrier to hitch a lift through a main street in Baghdad.
One of the most disturbing incidents concerns Sufiyan Abd al-Ghani, 11, who was with his uncle in a car that was stopped near his home in Hay al-Jihad at just after 10pm on May 27. The boy’s father heard a commotion and rushed outside to see him sprawled face down on the road with a rifle muzzle pressed against his neck and US officers shouting that someone in the car had shot at them.
Sufiyan was made to stay on the ground for three hours, while more than 100 soldiers poured into the neighbourhood, searching houses and cars. Eventually he was taken away with his hands trussed behind his back and a hood draped over his head. No weapon had been found. The boy said that soldiers dug rifle butts into his neck and back and that the first night he was handcuffed and left alone in a tiny room open to the sky.
The following day he was moved to the airport, where he said for eight days he shared a tent with 22 adults, sleeping on the dirt, with no water to wash or change his clothes.
Sufiyan said that he was pulled from the tent one morning, hooded and manacled again, and driven to Sarhiyeh prison, to be kept in a room with 20 other youths aged 15 or 16 — regarded as minors by the Geneva Convention.
A woman inmate took his name and details and when she was released she alerted Sufiyan’s family. On June 21, the family obtained an injunction from a judge ordering the boy’s release, but they were told at the prison that the signature of an Iraqi judge no longer had legal authority. Even when an American military lawyer demanded his freedom, US troops refused to release him until the lawyer appeared at the prison. Privately US military lawyers say that they are appalled at how some of the arrests are being carried out.
At the gates of Abu Ghraib, frustration and anger force men such as Adnan Akhjan, 38, a former civil servant, to shout abuse at the US guards.
Mr Akhjan, whose 58-year-old father was arrested three weeks ago for driving a truck with no doors or headlights, said: “People are so sickened by what is happening they talk of wanting Saddam to come back. How bad can the Americans be that in three months we want that monster back?”
US officials say that they are struggling to cope with the continuing looting, as well as attacks on troops. They say that until the fledgeling Iraqi police force is fully operational and jails are repaired, they represent the only law and order.
Each morning at the Red Cross headquarters in Baghdad there is a silent line of Iraqis queueing to find out where a relative might be. The American authorities have said that they will not inform the Red Cross about detainees until 21 days after they have been arrested. The International Committe of the Red Cross has been allowed to see some of the prisoners, but says that it cannot even begin to guess at the numbers detained.
An Iraqi exile who had been in Baghdad for only three days after living in Denmark for the past 27 years found himself caught up in an American swoop after a shooting in a street market. Not realising that the man could read English, his interrogator made no attempt to cover up his case file, which described him as “suspected assassin”.
The man, who was held for more than 30 days, is afraid to give his name and says that he is now considering leaving Baghdad for good.
posted on July 16, 2003 08:12:08 AM new
Here are the results of another Bush Lie.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fed up with being in Iraq (news - web sites) and demoralized by their role as peacekeepers in a risky place, a group of U.S. soldiers aired their plight on U.S. television on Wednesday and said they had lost faith in the Army.
Told several times they would be going home only to have their hopes dashed this week, a small group of soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq, spoke of poor morale and disillusionment with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
"If Donald Rumsfeld were here, I'd ask him for his resignation," one disgruntled soldier told ABC's "Good Morning America" show.
Asked by a reporter what his message would be for Rumsfeld, one said: "I would ask him why we are still here. I don't have any clue as to why we are still in Iraq."
About 146,000 U.S. troops are serving amid mounting security threats in postwar Iraq. The death toll has now equaled the number killed in the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites).
Sgt. Filipe Vega, said they had expected to return home soon after the fall of Baghdad on April 9. "We were told the fastest way back home is through Baghdad and that's what we did. Now we are still here," he complained.
The 3rd Infantry Division was the first U.S. unit to enter Baghdad after driving through southern Iraq through Kuwait.
Sgt. Terry Gilmore described a phone call with his wife Stacey when he told her he would not be coming home soon.
"When I told her she started crying and I almost started crying. I just felt like my heart was broken. I could not figure out...how they could keep us here after they told us we were coming home."
In Washington, a Pentagon (news - web sites) spokeswoman said she understood the frustration, but said morale was still high. "It's obviously a frustrating situation for some of them, but it does not represent the entire 3rd Division."
She added: "When you get down to the individual soldier level, you can clearly see the dedication."
The wives of two of the soldiers appeared on the same show. "Just send my husband home -- send all the soldiers home. They have done the job they were supposed to do," said Rhonda Vega from Hinesville, Georgia.
Stacey Gilmore said U.S. troops were ill-prepared for the post-war phase. "They were told after the fighting ended they were coming home. All I know is that morale is low and they are just hanging in there, sticking through it." ((Writing by Sue Pleming, editing by Jackie Frank; Reuters Messaging [email protected])
posted on July 16, 2003 01:25:34 PM new
try and explain this one you right wing commie facists
It’s time to take back U.S.
July 16, 2003
I read in the paper that, “Bush erred in address on Iraq. A reference about uranium was inaccurate, the White House says.”
Bush “erred”?
In February 2002, Vice President Cheney sent former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate evidence that Iraq tried to buy uranium for developing nuclear weapons. Wilson soon found that the evidence involved was dubious at best. It was based on forged documents, not even very well executed.
Yet a year later, President Bush tells the nation that Iraq had recently sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer didn’t say that the president didn’t know the statement was incorrect. Maybe he’s trying to keep the whoppers to a minimum.
Immediately after a British parliamentary committee found, officially, that the intelligence was mishandled on Iraqi weapons, the White House tries, “the statement was incorrect.” Yeah! That’s it!
Meanwhile, friends and campaign donors to the administration profit enormously from the invasion of Iraq while young men and women in the armed services continue to sacrifice their lives.
If there were ever a time to become an active patriot, it is now. We can take back America.
"The White House doesn't accept responsibility. Tenet steps forward and accepts responsibility. And then the president says he hasn't lost confidence in the CIA. Something's wrong here," Lieberman said.
posted on July 16, 2003 06:33:37 PM new Tenet steps forward and accepts responsibility...
Which means that at best, the President is not responsible for his own words. He might as well have said " It's not my fault,I just say what they tell me to."
___________________________________
What luck for the leaders that men do not think. - Adolph Hitler
posted on July 17, 2003 07:05:17 AM new
this is what happens to loyalty, i said already, this President and his cronies will turn on you no matter what, everyone is expendable,
A White House Smear
07/16/2003 @ 4:13pm
E-mail this Post
Did senior Bush officials blow the cover of a US intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security--and break the law--in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?
It sure looks that way, if conservative journalist Bob Novak can be trusted.
In a recent column on Nigergate, Novak examined the role of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV in the affair. Two weeks ago, Wilson went public, writing in The New York Times and telling The Washington Post about the trip he took to Niger in February 2002--at the request of the CIA--to check out allegations that Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase uranium for a nuclear weapons program from Niger. Wilson was a good pick for the job. He had been a State Department officer there in the mid-1970s. He was ambassador to Gabon in the early 1990s. And in 1997 and 1998, he was the senior director for Africa at the National Security Council and in that capacity spent a lot of time dealing with the Niger government. Wilson was also the last acting US ambassador in Iraq before the Gulf War, a military action he supported. In that post, he helped evacuate thousands of foreigners from Kuwait, worked to get over 120 American hostages out Iraq, and sheltered about 800 Americans in the embassy compound. At the time, Novak's then-partner, Rowland Evans, wrote that Wilson displayed "the stuff of heroism." And President George H. W. Bush commended Wilson: "Your courageous leadership during this period of great danger for American interests and American citizens has my admiration and respect. I salute, too, your skillful conduct of our tense dealings with the government of Iraq....The courage and tenacity you have exhibited throughout this ordeal prove that you are the right person for the job."
The current Bush administration has not been so appreciative of Wilson's more recent efforts. In Niger, he met with past and present government officials and persons involved in the uranium business and concluded that it was "highly doubtful" that Hussein had been able to purchase uranium from that nation. On June 12, The Washington Post revealed that an unnamed ambassador had traveled to Niger and had reported back that the Niger caper probably never happened. This article revved up the controversy over Bush's claim--which he made in the state of the union speech--that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium in Africa for a nuclear weapons program.
Critics were charging that this allegation had been part of a Bush effort to mislead the country to war, and the administration was maintaining that at the time of the speech the White House had no reason to suspect this particular sentence was based on faulty intelligence. "Maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said days before the Post article ran. "But no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions." Wilson's mission to Niger provided more reason to wonder if the administration's denials were on the level. And once Wilson went public, he prompted a new round of inconvenient and troubling questions for the White House. (Wilson, who opposed the latest war in Iraq, had not revealed his trip to Niger during the prewar months, when he was a key participant in the media debate over whether the country should go to war.)
Soon after Wilson disclosed his trip in the media and made the White House look bad. the payback came. Novak's July 14, 2003, column presented the back-story on Wilson's mission and contained the following sentences: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate" the allegation.
Wilson caused problems for the White House, and his wife was outed as an undercover CIA officer. Wilson says, "I will not answer questions about my wife. This is not about me and less so about my wife. It has always been about the facts underpinning the President's statement in the state of the union speech."
So he will neither confirm nor deny that his wife--who is the mother of three-year-old twins--works for the CIA. But let's assume she does. That would seem to mean that the Bush administration has screwed one of its own top-secret operatives in order to punish Wilson or to send a message to others who might challenge it.
The sources for Novak's assertion about Wilson's wife appear to be "two senior administration officials." If so, a pair of top Bush officials told a reporter the name of a CIA operative who apparently has worked under what's known as "nonofficial cover" and who has had the dicey and difficult mission of tracking parties trying to buy or sell weapons of mass destruction or WMD material. If Wilson's wife is such a person--and the CIA is unlikely to have many employees like her--her career has been destroyed by the Bush administration. (Assuming she did not tell friends and family about her real job, these Bush officials have also damaged her personal life.) Without acknowledging whether she is a deep-cover CIA employee, Wilson says, "Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames." If she is not a CIA employee and Novak is reporting accurately, then the White House has wrongly branded a woman known to friends as an energy analyst for a private firm as a CIA officer. That would not likely do her much good.
This is not only a possible breach of national security; it is a potential violation of law. Under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, it is a crime for anyone who has access to classified information to disclose intentionally information identifying a covert agent. The punishment for such an offense is a fine of up to $50,000 and/or up to ten years in prison. Journalists are protected from prosecution, unless they engage in a "pattern of activities" to name agents in order to impair US intelligence activities. So Novak need not worry.
Novak tells me that he was indeed tipped off by government officials about Wilson's wife and had no reluctance about naming her. "I figured if they gave it to me," he says. "They'd give it to others....I'm a reporter. Somebody gives me information and it's accurate. I generally use it." And Wilson says Novak told him that his sources were administration officials.
So where's the investigation? Remember Filegate--and the Republican charge that the Clinton White House was using privileged information against its political foes? In this instance, it appears possible--perhaps likely--that Bush administration officials gathered material on Wilson and his family and then revealed classified information to lash out at him, and in doing so compromised national security.
Was Wilson's wife involved in sending him off to Niger? Wilson won't talk about her. But in response to this query, he says, "I was invited out to meet with a group of people at the CIA who were interested in this subject. None I knew more than casually. They asked me about my understanding of the uranium business and my familiarity with the people in the Niger government at the time. And they asked, 'what would you do?' We gamed it out--what I would be looking for. Nothing was concluded at that time. I told them if they wanted me to go to Niger I would clear my schedule. Then they got back to me and said, 'yes, we want you to go.'"
Is it relevant that Wilson's wife might have suggested him for the unpaid gig. Not really. And Wilson notes, with a laugh, that at that point their twins were two years old, and it would not have been much in his wife's interest to encourage him to head off to Africa. What matters is that Wilson returned with the right answer and dutifully reported his conclusions. (In March 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that the documents upon which the Niger allegation was based were amateurish forgeries.) His wife's role--if she had one--has nothing but anecdotal value. And Novak's sources could have mentioned it without providing her name. Instead, they were quite generous.
"Stories like this," Wilson says, "are not intended to intimidate me, since I've already told my story. But it's pretty clear it is intended to intimidate others who might come forward. You need only look at the stories of intelligence analysts who say they have been pressured. They may have kids in college, they may be vulnerable to these types of smears."
Will there be any inquiry? Journalists who write about national security matters (as I often do) tend not to big fans of pursuing government officials who leak classified information. But since Bush administration officials are so devoted to protecting government secrets--such as the identity of the energy lobbyists with whom the vice president meets--one might (theoretically) expect them to be appalled by the prospect that classified information was disclosed and national security harmed for the purposes of mounting a political hit job. Yet two days after the Novak column's appearance, there has not been any public comment from the White House or any other public reverberation.
The Wilson smear was a thuggish act. Bush and his crew abused and misused intelligence to make their case for war. Now there is evidence Bushies used classified information and put the nation's counter-proliferation efforts at risk merely to settle a score. It is a sign that with this gang politics trumps national security.
posted on July 17, 2003 04:07:22 PM new
Looks like the White House has come up with another scapegoat for the lies ...a National Security Council staff aide who works with "Scooter" Libbey and Cheney.
posted on July 17, 2003 08:39:16 PM new
This is the best Idea I've seen since 2000
CONCORD, N.H. (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bob Graham said on Thursday there were grounds to impeach President Bush (news - web sites) if he was found to have led America to war under false pretenses.
Reuters Photo
While Graham did not call for Bush's impeachment, he said if the president lied about the reasons for going to war with Iraq (news - web sites) it would be "more serious" than former President Bill Clinton (news - web sites)'s lie under oath about his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
"If in fact we went to war under false pretenses that is a very serious charge," Graham, the senior U.S. senator from Florida, told reporters in New Hampshire.
"If the standard of impeachment is the one the House Republicans used against Bill Clinton, this clearly comes within that standard," he said.
Democrats and some Republicans have raised questions about the unsubstantiated claim Bush made in his January State of the Union speech that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa in its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.
Graham's comments came as reporters followed up on his remarks earlier this week that any deception by Bush over Iraq might rise to the standard of an impeachable offense -- as defined by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives when it voted to impeach Clinton.
Clinton was ultimately cleared by the U.S. Senate after being impeached by the House.
After his appearance in New Hampshire, Graham issued a statement saying he was not calling for Bush's impeachment and saw the issue as a largely academic one, adding that if Bush had misled the American public he would pay the price for it in the 2004 presidential election.
In Washington on Thursday, Bush told a news conference that the speech reference was based on "sound intelligence" and he was certain that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was trying to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program.
"We won't be proven wrong," he said with British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) at his side.
The flap over Iraq upstaged Graham's economic proposals. He said his plan would balance the federal budget within five years while providing middle-class tax relief and creating 3 million new jobs.
His plan would repeal most of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. It would reinstate a 38.6 percent tax bracket for wealthy individuals and create a new "millionaires tax bracket" at 40 percent. Graham also proposed cracking down on individuals and companies who transfer assets offshore or renounce U.S. citizenship to escape taxation.
posted on July 17, 2003 09:03:04 PM new
George W. Bush's Intelligence Quiz
While visiting England, George W. Bush is invited to tea with the Queen. He asks her what her leadership philosophy is. She says that it is to surround herself with intelligent people. He asks how she knows if they're intelligent.
"I do so by asking them the right questions," says the Queen. "Allow me to demonstrate."
She phones Tony Blair and says, "Mr. Prime Minister. Please answer this question: Your mother has a child, and your father has a child, and this child is not your brother or sister. Who is it?"
Tony Blair responds, "It's me, ma'am."
"Correct. Thank you and good-bye, sir," says the Queen. She hangs up and says, "Did you get that, Mr. Bush?"
"Yes ma'am. Thanks a lot. I'll definitely be using that!"
Upon returning to Washington, he decides he'd better put the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to the test. He summons Jesse Helms to the White House and says, "Senator Helms, I wonder if you can answer a question for me."
"Why, of course, sir. What's on your mind?"
"Uh, your mother has a child, and your father has a child, and this child is not your brother or your sister. Who is it?"
Helms hems and haws and finally asks, "Can I think about it and get back to you?" Bush agrees, and Helms leaves. He immediately calls a meeting of other senior senators, and they puzzle over the question for several hours, but nobody can come up with an answer. Finally, in desperation, Helms calls Colin Powell at the State Department and explains his problem.
"Now look here Colin Powell, your mother has a child, and your father has a child, and this child is not your brother, or your sister. Who is it?" Powell answers immediately, "It's me, of course, you dumb ass."
Much relieved, Helms rushes back to the White House and exclaims, "I know the answer, sir! I know who it is! It's Colin Powell!" And Bush replies in disgust, "Wrong, you dumb ass, It's Tony Blair!"
posted on July 17, 2003 09:13:46 PM new
Famous Last Words
Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and George W. Bush were set to face a firing squad in a small Central American country. Bill Clinton was the first one placed against the wall and just before the order was given he yelled out, "Earthquake!" The firing squad fell into a panic and Bill jumped over the wall and escaped in the confusion.
Al Gore was the second one placed against the wall. The squad was reassembled and Al pondered what he had just witnessed. Again before the order was given Al yelled out, "Tornado!" Again the squad fell apart and Al slipped over the wall.
The last person, George W. Bush, was placed against the wall. He was thinking, "I see the pattern here, just scream out something about a disaster and hop over the wall." He confidently refused the blindfold as the firing squad was reassembled. As the rifles were raised in his direction he grinned from ear to ear and yelled, "Fire!"
posted on July 17, 2003 09:20:30 PM newAfter his appearance in New Hampshire, Graham issued a statement saying he was not calling for Bush's impeachment and saw the issue as a largely academic one, adding that if Bush had misled the American public he would pay the price for it in the 2004 presidential election.
It's too bad he had to backpedal on his statement.
___________________________________
What luck for the leaders that men do not think. - Adolph Hitler
Earlier this week, Dr Kelly denied being the BBC's main source for a story claiming
Downing Street had "sexed up" a dossier about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
posted on July 18, 2003 08:26:26 AM new
Talking to my friend in the UK, Blair is indeed in hot water and stands to be ousted before Bush's run for re-election. What will Bush do then? He won't have his boy Blair to try and bail him out. His speech to Congress was utterly ridiculous. Like we are going to believe someone who lies on the same level as Bush. History will forgive them? Think again, Blair. This is not something that is swept under the rug and forgotten about. The effects of your lies will last a long, long time. It's laughable that Bush could even think what Blair has to say would make any difference at all. He {Blair} is just as guilty as Bush.
posted on July 18, 2003 09:23:55 AM new
Mr. Bush, You Are A Liar
Mr. Blair, You Are A Liar too.
"Members of Congress, I feel a most urgent sense of mission about today's world."
It was a beautiful piece of writing. The opening paragraph, however, in the light of later information, strikes me now as ominous. He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at, 'must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of supernatural beings -- we approach them with the might as of a deity,' and so on, and so on. 'By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded,' etc., etc. From that point he soared and took me with him. The peroration was magnificent, though difficult to remember, you know. It gave me the notion of an exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevolence. It made me tingle with enthusiasm. This was the unbounded power of eloquence -- of words -- of burning noble words. There were no practical hints to interrupt the magic current of phrases, unless a kind of note at the foot of the last page, scrawled evidently much later, in an unsteady hand, may be regarded as the exposition of a method. It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky: 'Exterminate all the brutes!'
Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness
Kurtz, the crazed colonial administrator.
Before becoming Counsel to the President of the United States in July 1970 at age thirty-one, John Dean was Chief Minority Counsel to the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives, the Associate Director of a law reform commission, and Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States. He served as Richard Nixon's White House lawyer for a thousand days.
posted on July 18, 2003 08:19:47 PM new Spooked by the White House
A CIA veteran says a growing faction of the U.S. intelligence community is furious over the way the administration corrupted the system -- and that the nation's security is at grave risk
July 18, 2003 | Late last week the White House sought to close the books on the Iraq-Niger-uranium debacle, with President Bush officially pronouncing CIA director George Tenet responsible for the intelligence blunder. At the same time, the president reaffirmed his "absolute confidence" in Tenet and the rest of the agency.
But according to a former CIA officer, the politicization of U.S. intelligence has devastated many in the field -- and dangerously weakened our country's security.
"We're hearing from dozens of [intelligence] people. A lot of them are very demoralized," says Ray McGovern, a 27-year CIA veteran who worked as an agency analyst under seven presidents, from Kennedy to the first President Bush. "The cardinal sin in this business is to cook intelligence to the recipe of high policy," he says.
McGovern is a member of the "steering group" of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of retired spooks, some highly decorated, which has been speaking out for several months about a dangerous fundamental breakdown in the U.S. intelligence system -- a system, McGovern asserts, that must remain free of White House meddling if it is to play its vital role in protecting the nation's security. VIPS has published a series of articles and open letters to the White House; its latest letter to President Bush on Monday denounced the administration's "campaign of deceit" in driving the nation to war, and demanded Vice President Dick Cheney's immediate resignation in light of his central role -- particularly Cheney's allegedly deliberate use of the fraudulent Niger-uranium report to sell Congress on the war. The letter also called on Bush to appoint an independent committee to investigate the intelligence breakdown, and to allow U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq posthaste, for the sake of U.S. credibility.
posted on July 19, 2003 04:14:27 AM new
My friend in the UK and I often exchange opinions about Iraq, Bush and Blair. Here is the latest in the opinion of a citizen of the UK:
I would be surprised if Blair is still Prime Minister at the end of the year. Six years ago, he was Labour's greatest asset; but now he is Labour's greatest liability. He has always been motivated by his place in history and lapped up those standing ovations in America. But he is now mortally wounded.
Even die-hard Labour stalwarts now acknowledge that he has betrayed the cause of democratic socialism which the party has always espoused.
Blair is more right-wing than Thatcher ever was. It will be interesting how history judges him. He is leader of a traditionally leftist party, but even staunch conservatives like myself are dismayed by his right-wing antics.
One further thing, which may not be immediately apparent to a US citizen. The UK Prime Minister has nothing like the executive powers entrusted to a US President. But Blair continues to behave as if he does. That alone is grossly offensive in the eyes of the UK electorate.
We have our own system of government, which, while it may not suit other countries, has generally served us well. Broadly, we have the same hopes and aspirations as America, but that should not mean unequivocable support. We are a proud nation, with much to be proud of. It does not befit the office of UK Prime Minister for its holder to crawl up the American President's jacksy! And not just because it lands him in deep #*!@!
posted on July 29, 2003 07:48:19 AM new
July29, 2003
Rice awarded 'Whopper of the Week' for one of her many 'amazing stories.' Plus: 'Bush loyalists stay on job despite Iraq intelligence flap.' Whopper of the Week: Condoleezza Rice
Her subtle distinction didn't exist.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2086038/
Poindexter intends to resign his Pentagon post in coming weeks after a fresh run-in with Congress over a now-canceled terrorism futures market, a bet-on-threats plan some critics called so bizarre that they first thought it was a hoax.
In the latest controversy, Poindexter's office had bankrolled a stock-market-like Web site designed to help policy-makers predict future terrorist activities. According to the Web site - now removed - investors could win money by accurately predicting global upheaval, assassinations of foreign leaders, coups and other acts of terror. It had been set to begin operating today.
Rumsfeld said he stopped the program Tuesday, an hour after hearing about it after two Democratic senators aired details of the plan and some called for Poindexter's resignation. By Tuesday, even Republican senators were calling it an "egregious error in judgment" and a "terrorism betting pool."
