Reasonable Bush Bashing

CBS News | Reasonable Bush Bashing | July 28, 2004 12:56:03: " The political press simply can't let go of the idea that puffing up your guy is somehow better for democracy than tearing down the other guy. I don't think that's correct in general. The relevant gauge is truth. I think accurate negative claims are better than inaccurate positive claims.

Moreover, if there's one time when negativity would do some real good for the body politic, it's now. For most of the last three years, Democrats have been a minority in both the House and Senate, and thus lacked a megaphone to critique Bush. And Bush has enjoyed an extraordinary series of honeymoons: first the wave of enforced unity after the Florida fiasco; then the genuinely felt unity after 9/11; then a smaller version of the same phenomenon before and during the first stages of the Iraq war. As a result, he has been unusually insulated from criticism. There are major lines of attack against Bush -- that he has inadequately funded homeland security, that he has been unusually profligate in spending tax dollars to bribe swing constituencies -- that are largely unfamiliar to most Americans.
"

Whose lies hurt more?

The Australian: Bob Brown: Whose lies hurt more? [July 29, 2004]: "Fahrenheit 9/11 has a signal scene in which Bush regales wealthy Republican donors with a toast to 'the haves and have-mores'. This, in a nation with 30million people too poor to access hospital care. It is an unforgettable scene where Bush exhibits his unfitness as president of a great nation, let alone as world leader.

One is left wondering how else the US might be. What if the President, instead of spending $60 billion extra per annum on armaments for Iraq, had set up a new Marshall Plan to feed, clothe and ensure schools for the world's 1 billion citizens living in abject poverty?
"

The Oft-Asked Question: Why Do They Hate Us?

The Oft-Asked Question: Why Do They Hate Us?: "Arabs and Muslims admire America, like Americans and respect the Western culture. They enjoy American cuisine, American films, American music and American songs. They understand and appreciate American humor. They dislike the attitude of America toward Arabs and Muslims. They hate American policy in the Middle East. They are angry at what they consider an unjust attack on Islam, a lack of respect for the Qur’an and an assault on their deeply cherished values.

Arabs and Muslims want a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction. They are angry that America threatens and punishes Arab and Muslim countries, which it suspects of developing nuclear weapons, while it turns a blind eye on the weapons of mass destruction and the large nuclear arsenal in non-Arab and non-Muslims countries in the region.

Arabs and Muslims appreciate that America is psychologically and emotionally tied to Israel and they understand that it is difficult for America to be totally objective in making judgments regarding the complicated and complex Palestinian-Israeli problem. Nevertheless, they are disappointed that America has not used its influence to stop the carnage in the Middle East.

Arabs and Muslims are shocked at the torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners. They are enraged at the policies of assassination of Palestinian leaders, the killing, arrest, humiliation and suffering of Palestinian men, women and children, the demolition of Palestinian homes, the destruction of Palestinian livelihood and annexation of Palestinian lands. They believe that America should not allow a wall of hatred to rise between Palestinian and Israelis. Instead, it should build a strong bridge of justice, respect and understanding, where innocent bloodshed is being daily spilled."

The goal is perminant bases in the middle east

ZNet |Iraq | Iraq: What Went Wrong? : "The occupation authority, called the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) despite the fact that the US rulers even ignore the opinions of their British 'Coalition partners,' says its only purpose is to create a free Iraq and return sovereignty. They deny plans for any permanent occupation, though US generals keep on upping the length of time US troops will 'have to stay' in Iraq. Meanwhile, 4, or is it 14, permanent military bases are being constructed.53, 54 Very few articles have occurred in the mainstream US press on the construction of these permanent bases. To replace a prewar army of perhaps 400,000, which fought a many years war with neighboring Iran, the US proposes to create, over a number of years, a new Iraqi army of 35,000. This new army will have no tanks, no heavy artillery55, no air force to defend a country that is surrounded by countries -– Iraq, Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia -– with whom there has either been recent conflict or who have territorial or other conflicts with Iraq. Iraqis wonder how a lightly armed army of 35,000 is supposed to defend their country, were the Americans ever to leave. The first US ruler of Iraq, Jay Garner, compares the US presence in Iraq to the century-long US presence in the Philippines:


 


'Noting how establishing U.S. naval bases in the Philippines in the early 1900s allowed the United States to maintain a 'great presence in the Pacific.' Garner said. 'To me that's what Iraq is for the next few decades. We ought to have something there ... that gives us great presence in the Middle East. I think that's going to be necessary.'' - A. S. Klamper. "Former Iraq administrator sees decades-long U.S. military presence." CongressDaily. Feb. 6, 2004.

ZNet |Iraq | Iraq: What Went Wrong?

ZNet |Iraq | Iraq: What Went Wrong? : " Imagine yourself an Iraqi. You've suffered terribly under a ruthless dictator. The Americans invade your country under false pretenses. They promise democracy but don't organize elections. They appoint exiles to rule you, exiles who spend most of their time out of the country and the rest in a few highly protected areas. The occupiers break into your homes in the middle of the night and arrest your men, who then disappear, with no accountability. They shoot Iraqis at roadblocks and from convoys. They declare war on the second most popular man in the country, announcing his death in advance. They open the economy to US corporations and give them sweetheart contracts, ignoring local business. Then they write hundreds of laws and establish commissions limiting any future government. They build permanent military bases on your soil. Then they turn your country over to a former associate of Saddam Hussein, also a former CIA agent, known for his ruthless brutality. Imagine that was your country.  What would you do?"

Jimmy Carter at the DNC.

WinterBear's Discontent

Carter had a very interesting interview with PBS after his speach tonight...
Carter: "We concentrated to almost an obsession, to a commitment that appears to have been made long before Bush came into office, to attack Iraq. So we abandoned the terrorist concentration to concentrate on Iraq. In the process we lost the alliance... the almost unanimous support around the world for our battle against terrorism and now we have allienated our allies, created consternation among them.



McNeil: "Thats a very serious charge your making Mr President. Your saying they went into office determined to make war with Iraq no matter what happened.



Carter: (Smiling knowingly) " Yes, well, if you look at some of the statments they made in advance, before 9-11, read Wolfawitz, Rumsfield, Richard Pearl and others.. What I say will be confirmed by the facts.



Later

Carter: "We have aroused a lot of unnecessary threats to our country by ailianting those avid supporters and allies of ours against terrorism by acting in such a irresponsible manner."



McNeil: "And you hold George Bush responsible for this?"



Carter: "I don't hold him uniquely repsonsible... I don't know really to what degree George Bush is the leader among that inner circle when they congregate in the oval office to make decisions about what to do. It may be that Vice President Channey is the dominant voice or maybe Rumsfield in military affairs, anyway it is a coalition of leaders who collectively have not maintained the inegrity of our government or a commitment to human rights. For instance the public statements made by Mr Channey as it lead up to the tortures at Abu Gareb for instance. His saying that the geniva accords on the treatment of prisoners is no longer applicable or when he said that the prisoners in guantanimo bay, before they were put on trial, which they have not been yet, but if some day they are put on trial and then found innocent, they may not be released. Those are the kinds of statements that send chills around the world.



In the last year we have had represive regimes, quite often supported by the US government, are now branding human rights workers as terrorists."

Democratic National Convention 2004 Weblogs: News Aggregator

Check out Dave Winers site which brings together all the blogs at the convention.

DNC 2004 Weblogs: News Aggregator

This will be remembered as the year that the blogs became a part of the political discourse.

This reminds me of when I worked with Dave at the 1997 Internet World in LA and we put out one of the first live sites... We built a glass cage around Dave and the web servers while using an early version of what became xml (we called it RDF at the time) to provide live coverage of the show.

The New York Times > Books > Dialogue: Kill the Empire! (Or Not)

The New York Times > Books > Dialogue: Kill the Empire! (Or Not): " Dogs spend a lot of time thinking about and chasing cars. But they don't know what to do with a car when they actually catch one. It seems to me this, in a nutshell, is what has happened to the Bush administration in Iraq."

Iraq and al-Qaeda had no real connections

The Washington Monthly: "We'll never conclude that there were absolutely no contacts between Saddam and al-Qaeda, of course. This is the Middle East: everyone has connections of some kind with al-Qaeda. But Iraq seems to have had fewer contacts than virtually every other regime in the area.


Bottom line: the CIA, The Senate Intelligence Committee report, the Butler Report, and now the 9/11 report all conclude the same thing: there was no serious relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Time to move on."

Margaret Cho has been uninvited from a DNC-related event

Norwegianity

First they came for the Dixie Chicks, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a musician and I don’t like country music.

Then they came for Whoopi Goldberg, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t an African-American with a Jewish surname.

Then they came for Linda Ronstadt, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a chubby hispanic with a closet full of gold records.

Then they they were given Margaret Cho, and I approved because they would have come for her next anyway, so why not speed up the process and just get it over with…"

Who would bin Laden vote for?

Who would bin Laden vote for? (Aaron Swartz: The Weblog): "al-Qaeda loves Bush.


al-Qaeda Says So: As Reuters reported an letter from an al-Qaeda group said “it supported U.S. President George W. Bush in his reelection campaign, and would prefer him to win in November rather than the Democratic candidate John Kerry, as it was not possible to find a leader ‘more foolish than you (Bush), who deals with matters by force rather than with wisdom. … Kerry will kill our nation while it sleeps because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embellish blasphemy and present it to the Arab and Muslim nation as civilisation. … Because of this we desire you (Bush) to be elected.’ It seems pretty clear this isn’t reverse psychology.


Experts Say So: Anonymous, a top CIA expert on al-Qaeda, has concluded that al-Qaeda loves President Bush, and might go so far as to plan an election attack to rally the country around Bush. “I’m very sure they can’t have a better administration for them than the one they have now. … One way to keep the Republicans in power is to mount an attack that would rally the country around the president.” This isn’t partisanship, because Anonymous is even more hawkish than Bush is.


Facts Say So: Even administration officials concede “al-Qaeda has morphed into a loose and expanding association of regional terror cells [and] the Iraq war has fueled rather than doused the fires of jihad.” Furthermore, Bush let bin Laden escape while he’s left the US dangerously insecure.


So if you were planning to vote for Bush because al-Qaeda wasn’t, it might be time to change your vote."

Iraq Coalition Casualties

Iraq Coalition Casualties: "Military Fatalities: By Month

Interesting site which tracks the casualties in Iraq.

We lost 38 more young people so far this month... but ONLY 42 last month.... in April we lost 140. So far (July 19, 2004) the total is 896. This leaves out 112 contractors that have been killed also.

Of course this also completely leaves out the tens of thousands of Iraq casualties. But we dont care about that, right?

NeoCon documents provide the justification for war... 2000 - 1997

The Project for the New American Century is a think tank that produced a number of documents that provided the intelectual underpinnings of the Bush administrations rush to invade and dominate the Mid east.

Check out these documents written in the late 90's for a blueprint of our current plans.

Iraq/Middle East 2000 - 1997: "How to Attack Iraq Weekly Standard Editorial, November 16, 1998


A Way to Oust Saddam, Robert Kagan, Weekly Standard, September 28, 1998


Wolfowitz Statement on U.S. Policy Toward Iraq, Project Memorandum, Gary Schmitt, September 18, 1998


Statement before the House National Security Committee, Paul Wolfowitz"

From a discussion on the US attacking Iran

The lesson of Iraq is that populations can't be "given" freedom. They have to take it for themselves. Iranian mullahs are facing a demographic shift they can barely stifle now. We've aided the retrograde government by becoming the bogeyman on their doorstep. Worse we've trashed our good name and reputation in the prisons of Abu Ghraib. We tarnished the appeal of our own ideals by abandoning them to expediency.

The neocons have a grander scheme than wiping out "terrorists" or bringing "democracy" to the middle east. If they cared about al Qaeda, they would have hunted Osama until they had his head on a pike. (140,000 troops in Iraq, 1/10 as many in Afghanistan and none in Pakistan underlines their priorities.) They wouldn't have left Karzai with limited resources and at the mercy of warlords. They wouldn't have allowed the great poppy-fueled engine of narco-terrorist money to hum at record breaking pace. They wouldn't coddle the Saudis and Musharif. If they cared about democracy they wouldn't have installed a compliant strongman in Iraq and wouldn't tolerate similar strongmen in Egypt, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan. How can a group so contemptuous of checks and balances of democracy and republican government at home and so callous to the civil rights of its own constituents bring democracy to the middle east? They have brought nothing but division and chaos abroad and polarization at home. If Americans elect this bunch to 4 more years, heaven help us all.

Describing the problem...

Benedict@Large: "They've brought America to its knees. They're a ruthless band of fundamentalist religious fanatics that respect no international laws and seem destined to cause only death, misery, and destruction. They strike without warning using stealth, torture, lies, and deception to rain down violence without regard to innocent lives lost. They cynically exploit the World's media. They constantly invoke the name of their God, to justify every cruel act for their holy cause. They'll use and sacrifice innocent believing kids as warriors. Most of the world already hates and fears them, and no country on Earth is safe from their rage or terror.

They are the new evil in the World.

So much for the Bush folks. Those al-Qaida guys are no picnic either."

The War against YOU is just beginning....

Benedict@Large: "Note carefully the change in rhetoric -- the change in target -- from 'terrorism' to 'insurgency.' An 'insurgent' is someone who rises up to resist or overthrow a ruling power. George Washington was an insurgent; so was Pol Pot. But a perceived 'global insurgency' can only be aimed at a global power. What Rumsfeld is clearly saying is that anyone anywhere who resists the world-spanning will of the American Empire will be subject to 'the path of action.' That's the blood-and-iron terminology that Bush himself used to describe his policies in the official 'National Security Strategy' he issued -- just months before killing more than 10,000 civilians in Iraq.

No doubt the definition of 'global insurgent' will prove to be every bit as elastic as 'terrorist,' in a world where Iraqi prisoners -- 70 percent to 90 percent of them completely innocent, according to the Red Cross -- were 'Gitmo-ized,' treated just like the alleged terrorists in America's lawless Guantanamo concentration camp; a world where even U.S. citizens simply disappear into the maw of military custody, held without charges, indefinitely, on the president's express order. If America controls your country and you don't like it, you're an insurgent. If you're an American who doesn't like to control other countries, you too are an insurgent. And the war against you is 'just beginning.'"

Brian Cloughley: What Does the Bush Regime Object To?

Brian Cloughley: What Does the Bush Regime Object To?: "So what the hell is happening to American justice? You have to remember that most of us foreigners used to think that if somebody went in front of a US court they would get, by and large, a pretty fair deal. Lots of foreigners, especially in countries like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, China, Russia, most of South America, Malaysia, Indonesia, Iran, and the entire African continent used to think that the American legal system was as fault-free as could be expected in this imperfect world. In their own countries the chances of a fair trial are uncertain, and in some places non-existent, and they regarded American legal procedures as being decidedly better than their own.


No more. Because Bush has destroyed international trust in America."

Meet the new boss... Same as the old boss.

Allawi shot prisoners in cold blood: witnesses - After Saddam - www.smh.com.au: "Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.


They say the prisoners - handcuffed and blindfolded - were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre, in the city's south-western suburbs.


They say Dr Allawi told onlookers the victims had each killed as many as 50 Iraqis and they 'deserved worse than death'."

RatcliffeBlog -- Mitch's Open Notebook: The Sanctimony Factor

RatcliffeBlog -- Mitch's Open Notebook: The Sanctimony Factor: "The point Moore makes, very broadly, is that America is no longer a shining city that can provide light to the world. The move toward empire as the foundation of American policy, following a very questionable election, obliterated the fine points of public debate and, Moore, acknowledging that, engages in a blunt force attack on the blunt arguments of an administration bent on war."

what we learn from F911

good comment from smirking chimp:

"Seeing the agonies of Iraq, both in that country and this one, made me feel that Americans have no idea what they have bitten off over there, and there is no way on earth we can chew it. So many people hate us now who never really thought about us before - for what ? So Republican businessmen can make deals ? So military men can throw their weight around and listen to rock music while they break into peoples' houses and terrorize women and children ? Are Iraqis supposed to like us after we do that ?"

Indeed

Its not too late for republicans to run someone else...

Scripting News: 7/11/2004: "Okay, the report from the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday told us something that everyone with basic common sense already knew. 1. There were no WMDs in Iraq. 2. The President knew that. 3. So did all the other members of the administration: Cheney, Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, etc. 4. They all lied, many of them still are lying. 5. Bush gave a speech yesterday about how Kerry flip-flops, what a lot of nerve he has, on the same day a committee chaired by a Republican, with a Republican majority, confirmed that his pretense for war was a lie. A war in which hundreds of Americans have died. Now, at the same time, we're asked to believe that the announcement of a terrorist threat by this administration during the rollout of the Democratic ticket is just the normal course of business. Now, really, what's the probability that's true? 1 percent? 5 percent maybe? If you're a Republican, now that you know what you know about how the war started, do you believe in their integrity when it comes to terrorist threats? I think it's high time for the Republicans to clean this mess up. We're a deep troubled situation, and we need a regime with some integrity running the country. Even the staunchest Republican must see that by now? I don't get it. It's not too late for the Republicans to run someone else."

HoustonChronicle.com - I write badly, therefore I am a would-be terrorist

HoustonChronicle.com - I write badly, therefore I am a would-be terroristBy CHARLES C. GREEN"

Amazing article about a guy that gets detained by the police and put on the homeland security watch list for a cross word puzzle answer....

Stories like this bring home the dangers of rampant secuirty. They are not stopping terrorism... they are allowing deluded people to make life harder on the rest of us.