Too Many Reasons

Global Warming Still a Priority . . . Except to U.S. Prez

League of Liberals Showcase Nominee Reminds us that Without
Our Mother Earth, Nothing Else Matters

Damage -- Highlighting On-Going Problems Faced in the World Today

Category: Humanitarian / Endangered Species / Environmental
Year: 2003
Title: Global Warming Catastrophe - New Evidence
Full Story: Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment

Global warming over the next hundred years could trigger a catastrophe which rivals the worst mass extinction in the planet's entire history, according to new evidence unearthed by scientists at Bristol University.

The researchers have discovered that a mere six degrees of global warming was enough to wipe out up to 95% of the species which were alive on Earth at the end of the Permian period, 251 million years ago. Up to six degrees of warming is now predicted for the next century by UN scientists from the intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, if nothing is done about emissions of the greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide, which cause global warming.

Related Article: Guardian Unlimited: Shadow of Extinction: Only six degrees separate our world from the cataclysmic end of an ancient era.

Be Thankful You're Not Dubya

By Mark Morford
San Francisco Chronicle, Wednesday 26 November 2003

Craving more juicy reasons to offer up profound gratitude this T-day? Try a few of these

This Thanksgiving, as you sip the wine and hug the family and toast the friends and hoard the stuffing and curse the airport security, remember to give thanks you are not G.W. Bush. Hey, it's important.

Be thankful that you do not have to suffer Dubya's massive crushing karmic burden, as wrought by inflicting heaps of environmental disaster and vicious unnecessary war and a stunning string of lies lies lies like a firehose of giblet gravy splattered all over the planet.

For it really is all too plain: G.W. Bush is one of the most reviled and openly disrespected major world leaders in modern history. America has never been so embarrassed and reluctant to send a president abroad. We cringe when the man takes the stage. We offer humiliated apologies to our former allies, and to the 200,000 Bush/war protesters in London, just last week.

In Bush's defense, it cannot be easy to be so undeservedly powerful, yet so bumbling and inarticulate and globally loathed for your abhorrent policies and hollow corporate agenda and baffled doofus manner. This Thanksgiving, be grateful you are not him.

Thanks, you might want to give, that you are not Iraqi. Be grateful you did not go from brutal scowling despot who at least kept the damn lights on to brutish occupying army no one asked for that is right now laying waste to whatever remains of your once semi-proud oil-rich nation.

Give thanks, furthermore, that you are not one of the estimated 10,000 Iraqi civilians killed to date by U.S. forces, not to mention one of the untold tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers who were hammered by our million pounds of billion-dollar ordnance in the first few days of the massacre. Be grateful you are not dead in the name of American political and petrochemical profiteering.

Give thanks you are not a member of the much-abused U.S. military. Sad but true. Be grateful you are not right now suffering that sickening sinking feeling that you are not, in fact, protecting America from any sort of marauding terrorists, or defending our honor, or our way of life, or guarding innocents from swarthy evildoers and nonexistent WMDs.

But that you are, instead, a wholly disposable henchman for the BushCo corporate regime, with the odds increasing every minute that you will soon join the more than 9,000 U.S. wounded or more than 430 "necessary" dead U.S. soldiers Rumsfeld mentions when he shrugs off the latest round of guerrilla bombings that killed another batch of your friends. Support our troops. Bring them home right now.

Be grateful BushCo's ratings are slipping lower than an SUV's mpg rating, and there is only one year left until he joins his father as one of those embarrassing historical footnotes, a jagged scar on the heart of a wary America that other countries point to in years to come and say wow that's a nasty scar where'd you get that, and we reply, George W. Bush, and they go, oh my God, that's right. So sorry.

Be grateful you are not right now in any way related to, or serve as a spokesperson for, or are employed as one of the apparently very deranged or heavily drugged plastic surgeons who worked on Michael Jackson. This is a gimme.

While you're at it, give thanks you're not Paris Hilton, Anna Nicole Smith, Bennifer, Britney, Liza Minnelli, Joan Rivers, Howard Stern, Ann Coulter, Ashton Kutcher, Bill O'Reilly, Anna Kournikova, Madonna or Mary Hart. These are lives you probably do not want to lead. Give thanks your soul is not all withery and Botoxed and that it still manages to radiate cool colors like one of those funky cheesy fiber-optic lamps from the '70s.

Be thankful they have yet to figure out a way to blot out the sun. Or, for that matter, the moon.

Offer immense gratitude that despite a massive ongoing Herculean effort on the part of numerous world governments to rape and pillage and pretty much slap down most all tender offerings of the planet, Earth still manages to produce for us an astonishing array of flora and fauna and oxygen and edible delicacies and awe-inspiring trees and relentless merciless beauty.

Be thankful the planet rather effortlessly continues to baffle scientists and confound astronomers and completely entrance biologists and philosophers and poets. We still, for example, have no idea why whales sing, or how long they live, or where blue whales, the largest and most magnificent creatures on the planet, go to mate. Be grateful for the Mystery.

Kneel down, right now, for free speech. Oh yes. We must. Because it is under severe duress. To exercise it now, to speak out against BushCo and war and global corporate profiteering, is a true sign that you are a traitor and an al Qaeda operative and a personal friend of Barbra Streisand. This is what they sneer at you.

Give it up, instead, for free unfettered alt-news sources like truthout.org. And commondreams.org. And alternet.org and counterpunch.com and buzzflash.com and smirkingchimp.com and even Slate and the BBC and The Onion. Cheney scowls, Rove oozes, Ashcroft would love nothing more than to shut down the entire impious godforsaken Internet. Be grateful they can only quiver and hiss and rattle their chains. So far.

Molly Ivins. Gore Vidal. Michiko Kakutani. David Foster Wallace. Don DeLillo. Maureen Dowd. Caroline Myss. W.G. Sebald. Tom Robbins. Starhawk. William Rivers Pitt. Rob Brezny. David Attenborough. Dave Eggers. Joseph Campbell. Lewis Lapham. Haruki Murakami. Katha Pollitt. Et al. Thank you.

For baskets of locally grown organic small-farm produce delivered to your door. For handmade whiskey-filled chocolate truffles smeared over a lover's tailbone. For Bernese mountain dogs. For the return of Opus. For Rufus Wainwright and Beth Orton and the Mini Cooper. L'Occitane honey incense and the Apple iPod and "Six Feet Under." For Cate Blanchett, The Sun magazine, The New Yorker, Peet's coffee and "Spirited Away."

Here is the big cliché. Here is the final praise. It cannot be overstated: Despite an impressive assault on civil liberties, despite savage BushCo attacks on everything from national forests to air quality to rivers and oceans and water quality and health care, despite attempts to numb the national consciousness overall, we must give enormous, unfettered thanks for this incredible and kaleidoscopic America.

Ours remains the most breathtakingly beautiful, diverse, epic, multifaceted, multiorgasmic landscape on the planet today. It's true.

We tend to forget. We take for granted. We presume it must be like this everywhere. But one quick trip abroad will only serve to remind you and reinforce your devout appreciation for what this country can offer, the free expression and the religious autonomy and the clean water and the good dentistry and the fresh produce and the space to explore.

We are deeply flawed. We are massively arrogant. We are bratty and insolent and abusive and sloppy and violent. But we balance it with astounding acts of love and beauty and art, nature preserves and activism and organic awareness and sex positivism and community awareness and quiet personal spiritual questing and lots and lots of great bookstores.

Here is where you make you own list. Here is where you set aside the cynicism and the sighing and the bitterness, just for a moment, and get quiet, look around, look inside, check the karmic inventory and offer up heaping pies of gratefulness for what you find.

Sure it seems clichéd. Of course you don't need some holiday to be deeply thankful for the radiance in your life. But, hey, an opportunity is an opportunity. Just remember, big meaty drumsticks of general gratitude are absolutely fine. But the divine, personal gravy is where the real flavor is.

©2003 SF Gate

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2003/11/26/notes112603.DTL
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2003/11/26/notes112603.DTL

http://truthout.org/docs_03/112703B.shtml

Forest Service vs Bush

Arianna Huffington is currently writing a new book entitled "Fanatics, Fools and Alpha Males", which will be published in March by Miramax Books. As a subscriber to her columns, I received this message today:

"In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I'm sending you a succulent slice from the book (you'll have to provide your own stuffing).  It's a collection of resignation letters written by disaffected members of the Bush administration who so disagreed with administration policies that they preferred the uncertainty of the unemployment line to toeing the party line. 

I've also taken the liberty of including excerpts from what I imagine the first drafts of these letters might have looked like."

* * * * * * * *

Mike Dombeck, Forest Service Chief resigned on March 27th 2001 after 4 years on the job.

What he wrote in his resignation letter: “It was made clear in no uncertain terms that the administration wants to take the Forest Service in another direction…”

What Mike Dombeck wrote in the first draft of his resignation letter: “It was made clear in no uncertain terms that the administration needs to kiss a little logging industry ass, having gotten nearly $300,000 in donations during the 2000 election (10 times more than Al Gore).  Mr. President, after all that bark-bussing and timber-tonguing, it’s a wonder you didn’t get splinters in your lip or a very painful STD (Sequoia Transmitted Disease).

Fact: Before the US Forest Service approves a timber sale on federal land, loggers are currently required to study the impact on endangered animals and salmon runs.  The Bush White House is pushing to overturn both of these requirements.

* * * * * * * *
For more on Arianna Huffington, go to:
http://www.ariannaonline.com

Queen's fury as Bush goons wreck garden

By Terry O'Hanlon, Nov 23 2003, Sunday Mirror, UK

THE Queen is furious with President George W. Bush after his state visit caused thousands of pounds of damage to her gardens at Buckingham Palace.

Royal officials are now in touch with the Queen's insurers and Prime Minister Tony Blair to find out who will pick up the massive repair bill. Palace staff said they had never seen the Queen so angry as when she saw how her perfectly-mantained lawns had been churned up after being turned into helipads with three giant H landing markings for the Bush visit.

The rotors of the President's Marine Force One helicopter and two support Black Hawks damaged trees and shrubs that had survived since Queen Victoria's reign.

And Bush's army of clod-hopping security service men trampled more precious and exotic plants.

The Queen's own flock of flamingoes, which security staff insisted should be moved in case they flew into the helicopter rotors, are thought to be so traumatised after being taken to a "place of safety" that they might never return home.

The historic fabric of the Palace was also damaged as high-tech links were fitted for the US leader and his entourage during his three-day stay with the Queen.

The Palace's head gardener, Mark Lane, was reported to be in tears when he saw the scale of the damage.

"The Queen has every right to feel insulted at the way she has been treated by Bush," said a Palace insider.

"The repairs will cost tens of thousands of pounds but the damage to historic and rare plants will be immense. They are still taking an inventory.

"The lawns are used for royal garden parties and are beautifully kept. But 30,000 visitors did not do as much damage as the Americans did in three days.

"Their security people and support staff tramped all over the place and left an absolute mess. It is particularly sad because the Queen Mother loved to wander in the garden just as the Queen and Prince Charles do now.

"Some of the roses, flowers and shrubs damaged are thought to be rare varieties named after members of the Royal Family and planted by the Queen Mother and Queen.

"Other Royals had their own favourite parts of the garden as children and some of those areas have been damaged."

The Queen's insurers have told her she is covered for statues, garden furniture and plants she personally owns, but the bill for repairing damage to the lawns and the structure of the Palace will probably have to be picked up by the Government.

The Americans made alterations to accommodate specialised equipment. The mass of gadgetry meant the Royals couldn't get a decent TV picture during the visit.

http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/content_objectid=13652625_method=full_siteid=106694_headline=-GROUND-FARCE-1-name_page.html

A Post to Vote

League of Liberals New Weblog Showcase Nominee

Iraq = Death

It's becoming more and more clear that America's neo-conservative regime was so blinded by its dual lust for oil and expanded empire that, not only did they fabricate lies to justify the invasion of Iraq but they also didn't bother to plan for the occupation. Now, just like Afghanistan they have what they want, energy resources and a pliant puppet regime. The rest of the country descending into chaos? That's just fine. Soon enough the war will be "won", that is, when the American people stop paying attention and we've moved on to invade Iran or Syria.

Anarchy Xero explains it all

What would Abe Lincoln say?

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."

President Abraham Lincoln
(Letter to Col. William F. Elkins, November 21, 1864)

READ AN EXCELLENT ARTICLE AT:
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17213

Question: How stupid can an American president be?'

By Stan Moore, Media Monitors Network

Answer: As stupid as the American people will tolerate! The next election will define the answer.

Evidence:

George W. Bush says Iraqis want "freedom", but he is too stupid to understand that Iraqis want freedom from American hegemony, occupation, and control of their fiscal and economic affairs. Bush' behavior actually makes some Iraqis nostalgic for Saddam Hussein.

George W. Bush says Iraqi's want "democracy", but his version of democracy is an appointed council, similar to the non-democratic process that installed Bush rather than electing him.

George W. Bush says Iraqis need a new constitution, and he insists that the new "interim" constitution reflect "American values". How stupid is it to install a value system of an upstart power (whose primary "wisdom" is "might makes right") over one of the world's oldest civilizations?

George W. Bush decries "foreign fighters" in Iraq, although American/Britain have placed about 150,000 foreign fighters in Iraq and are trying to recruit more! Apparently, Bush thinks Iraq is a colony of America!

George W. Bush thinks the more American soldiers are killed by Iraqis, the better the situation is for American interests, because it means the Iraqi freedom fighters are "desperate". In contrast, the American military thinks the situation means Iraqis are increasingly organized and acting in a rational insurgency against a foreign occupier.

George W. Bush thinks American fatalities are "bad". He does not express any opinion at all on Iraqi fatalities, even of innocent victims of American misconduct. This is a stupid way of looking at Iraqi suffering.

George W. Bush does not attend funerals of American servicemen, does not concern himself with quality of treatment of wounded American servicemen, and does not want the American people to see visual images of American wounded or dead as they are buried or brought home to America. This is a stupid way of dealing with American suffering.

George W. Bush thinks military attacks by Iraqis on America's occupying military are "terrorism". This is a stupid way of looking at insurgency or guerilla warfare.

George W Bush thinks that attacking Iraqis in Iraq will make the resistance to American occupation go away. It is questionable whether this is evidence of stupidity or delusion.

Bush placed a viceroy in Iraq who does not speak Arabic, does not meet with the Iraqi citizens, and who walls himself off in a secure fortress to keep his ass from getting blown up with rocket-propelled grenades each and every day. Yet, Bush is stupid enough to think his system meets the needs of Iraqis.

If the situation were reversed, and Saddam Hussein was in power in the U.S. and offering $25 Million for the head of George W. Bush, how long would it take for some American citizen to deliver up "W." and claim the prize? You don't have to be stupid to figure that one out!

© 2003 Stan Moore

Reprinted from Media Monitors Network:
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/2253/

With a tip of the hat to The Smirking Chimp
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=13862..

Criminal violence skyrockets in Baghdad

WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 (UPI) -- The number of violent deaths in Baghdad increased exponentially -- from 40 to 55 times -- after the fall of Saddam Hussein's repressive regime, data show.

Prior to the war there was an average of 16 violent deaths a month. In August 2003 however there were 872 violent deaths, with 498 of them from firearms. In September that number dropped to 667 violent deaths, but again more than half -- 372 -- were attributed to firearms, according to Army Capt. Brian Song, a military lawyer with the Army Corps of Engineers.

Every household in Iraq is allowed to keep one weapon, usually an AK-47, for personal protection under Coalition Provisional Authority rules.

The Iraqi police force numbers around 55,000 people and is expected to grow to 75,000.

Copyright 2003 by United Press International.

http://interestalert.com/brand/siteia.shtml?Story=st/sn/11190000aaa03e3a.upi&Sys=rmmiller&Fid=NATIONAL&Type=News&Filter=National%20News

George Bush, The Anti-American

By George Monbiot, Outlook India

Something unprecedented will happen in Britain this week. An American president will arrive here and be greeted not by cheering crowds but by howls of execration. The protests in London against George Bush are likely to be the biggest Britain has seen since the anti-war marches in February. The people of the United States will be deeply shocked to see how the image of their government has changed.

Those of us who oppose George Bush's policies are often accused of being "anti-American". It's an odd charge. No one suggests that people who don't like Tony Blair are "anti-British". It seems to be an attempt to discredit us by suggesting that we are motivated not by reasonable political objections, but by an old and visceral contempt for an "upstart nation".

But perhaps the gravest of the charges we can lay against George Bush is that he is himself an anti-American. His style of government stands at odds with everything we were led to believe the United States of America represents. There is first the question of his election. The evidence that the electoral roll in Florida was rigged in order to exclude black voters appears to be compelling. The conduct of his party both during and after that election appears to be a grotesque insult to the nation which invented modern, Jacksonian democracy.

Then there is his assault upon civil liberties. The Patriot Act he pushed through Congress erodes many of the freedoms the American constitution appears to guarantee. In the offshore prison camp of Guantanamo Bay, Bush appears to have built his own Bastille, in which people are jailed indefinitely without charge or trial. George Washington and Thomas Paine must be turning in their graves.

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE AT:
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20031118&fname=monbiot&sid=1
OR VIA THE RECYCLED SMIRKING CHIMP LINK:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=13835&mode=nested&order=0

Molly Ivins - Call Me a Bush-Hater

A few excerpts from Molly Ivins' latest article, recycled by Alternet:

His entire first eight months was tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts for the rich, and he lied and said the tax cuts would help average Americans. Again and again, the "average" tax cut would be $1,000. That means you get $100, and the millionaire gets $92,000, and that's how they "averaged" it out. Then came 9/11, and we all rallied. Ready to give blood, get out of our cars and ride bicycles, whatever. Shop, said the President. And more tax cuts for the rich.

By now, we're starting to notice Bush's bait-and-switch. Make a deal with Ted Kennedy to improve education and then fail to put money into it. Promise $15 billion in new money to combat AIDS in Africa (wow!) but it turns out to be a cheap con, almost no new money. Bush comes to praise a job training effort, and then cuts the money. Bush says AmeriCorps is great, then cuts the money. Gee, what could we possibly have against this guy? We go along with the war in Afghanistan, and we still don't have bin Laden.

Then suddenly, in the greatest bait-and-switch of all time, Osama bin doesn't matter at all, and we have to go after Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with 9/11. But he does have horrible weapons of mass destruction, and our president "without doubt," without question, knows all about them, even unto the amounts – tons of sarin, pounds of anthrax. So we take out Saddam Hussein, and there are no weapons of mass destruction. Furthermore, the Iraqis are not overjoyed to see us.

By now, quite a few people who aren't even liberal are starting to say, "Wha the hey?" We got no Osama, we got no Saddam, we got no weapons of mass destruction, the road map to peace in the Middle East is blown to hell, we're stuck in this country for $87 billion just for one year and no one knows how long we'll be there. And still poor Mr. Krauthammer is hard-put to conceive how anyone could conclude that George W. Bush is a poor excuse for a President.

Chuck, honey, it ain't just the 2.6 million jobs we've lost: People are losing their pensions, their health insurance, the cost of health insurance is doubling, tripling in price, the Administration wants to cut off their overtime, and Bush was so too little, too late with extending unemployment compensation that one million Americans were left high and dry. And you wonder why we think he's a lousy president?

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17190.

It boggles the mind

I know my mind boggles--and I'm getting TMJ from all the jaw-dropping I do every time, after I think it can't get any worse, that it does. Like Dubya's remarks in tribute to the Reservists and National Guardsmen before a huge audience of old, out-of-shape retired striped and ribboned guys who just ate it all up. He went on about how appreciated they are for making this sacrifice and the swell job these guys are gonna do over in Iraq and how they'd signed up for exactly this kind of occurrence (yeah, right), but the kicker was when he actually had the nerve to say he recalled with pride his OWN "career" in the Texas Air National Guard! Is there really anyone who doesn't remember that he deserted the Guard during wartime and disappeared for a full year? Or was it two years? Well, no one in the room seemed to remember that because they applauded like Elvis had entered the building.

Doreen Miller has written a great article that presents a laundry list of reasons why Ann Coulter is wrong. It's a terrific hand-out to pass along to friends and relatives who still listen only to Fox and CNN. It's up to us to try to get a little light into those dark, cobwebby attics of non-thought before it's too late. At the same time that we try to encourage the Bush (dare I say it?) "fans" from disengaging from their "hero" ("But he did SUCH a good job after 9-11!" they always say. Then they can't answer when asked, "Yeah? Like what?") it's important to have a replacement to fill in the empty space so they're not left with a vacuum. Be ready to enthusiastically impart a little information about your favorite Dem candidate. For me, that's Kucinich, but everyone should vote his own heart--not just play the "who's most electable" game.

"Foxes in the henhouse"
By Doreen Miller
YellowTimes.org Columnist (United States)

(YellowTimes.org) – There have been many questions raised over the past few
years concerning George Bush's level of competence, or lack thereof. People
joke about his numerous linguistic faux pas, with some even pointing to his
bastardization of the English language as evidence of his being an ordinary
Joe, just like the rest of us. He may appear to be harmless, but the truth is, he is as dumb as a fox, and he and his gang of marauders have taken over and are destroying this country for their own personal ego-trips and profit.

In three short years, the U.S. government has gone from having a budgetary
surplus to having the largest deficit in U.S. history that promises to overburden our nation for many generations to come, from being a beacon of hope for the world to being seen as the world's largest rogue nation that perpetrates its own form of willful international terrorism via military violence, from being a free and just nation to becoming more and more akin to a fascist state with fewer and fewer freedoms, greater government spying on its citizens and threats of endless incarceration based upon guilt by association to whatever arbitrarily labeled "terrorist" groups or organizations may be seen as a threat to those in power.

These wolves in sheep's clothing may talk about such nebulous, feel-good
concepts as compassionate conservatism, but the only compassion they have
shown thus far is towards the wealthy who lavishly support them and their
bottom lines. They think nothing of flagrantly flaunting corporate cronyism by awarding political paybacks, most recently in the form of lucrative no-bid contracts in Iraq to the very corporations from which they hail and to which they themselves are financially bound. Such a practice under the watchful eye of a truly independent press would be exposed for the conflict of interests it is.

This administration is in the process of turning back decades of hard-won
environmental progress either by failing to allocate the funds necessary to sue polluters, or by weakening or eliminating pollution rules altogether so that their campaign contributors can turn a hefty profit at the expense of the health and safety of the American people.

If it were up to Bush and Co., there would be no public programs of any sort -- everything would be privatized so that the wealthy few could then legally rob the public trust.

Read on, if you can stand it

U.S. war dead in Iraq now exceeds early Vietnam years

PHILADELPHIA - The American death toll in Iraq has surpassed the number of American soldiers killed during the first three years of the Vietnam War, the brutal Cold War conflict that cast a shadow over United States affairs for more than a generation.

A Reuters analysis of US Defence Department statistics showed on Thursday that the Vietnam War, which the Army says officially began on December 11, 1961, produced a combined 392 fatal casualties from 1962 through 1964, when American troop levels in Indochina stood at just over 17,000.

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE AT:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3534214&thesection=news&thesubsection=world
with a tip of the hat to
The Smirking Chimp.com

Gore Vidal on presidency

"Ours is a totally corrupt society. The presidency is for sale. Whoever raises the most money to buy TV time will probably be the next president. This is corruption on a major scale. Enron was an eye-opener to naive lovers of modern capitalism. Our accounting brotherhood, in its entirety, turned out to be corrupt, on the take. With the government absolutely colluding with them and not giving a damn. Bush's friend, old Kenny Lay, is still at large and could just as well start some new company tomorrow. If he hasn't already. No one is punished for squandering the people's money and their pension funds and for wrecking the economy. So the corruption predicted by Franklin bears its terrible fruit. No one wants to do anything about it. It's not even a campaign issue. Once you have a business community that is so corrupt in a society whose business is business, then what you have is, indeed, despotism."

- Gore Vidal

FROM RECENT INTERVIEW AT:  
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1113-07.htm

With a tip of the hat to:
http://www.rhinosblog.info

George W. Bush is a Liar

No President has lied so baldly and so often and so demonstrably

By Andrew Gumbel

09 November 2003

Three explosions in Saudi 'suicide attack'

Al-Qa'ida militants 'still pose global threat'

Red Cross pulls out as more US soldiers fall to guerrillas

Families of Iraq war dead condemn Bush visit to UK

Case for war confected, say top US officials

Iraqi doctors dismiss claims that Jessica Lynch was raped

Growing list of casualties dents Bush's public image

'No President has lied so baldly and so often'

Mossad chief: invasion has created a holy war

Leading article: A day to reflect on the human cost of conflict

"The intelligence process is a bit like virginity," says Ray McGovern, who worked as a CIA analyst for 27 years. "Once you prostitute it, it's never the same. Your credibility never recovers.

"Watching what has happened with Iraq over the past several months has been like watching your daughter being raped."

Such is an indication of the extraordinary depth of feeling within the US intelligence community as the Bush administration's basis for the war in Iraq - the weapons of mass destruction, the dark hint of links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'ida - has been shown to have been built on air.

Mr McGovern worked near the very top of his profession, giving direct advice to Henry Kissinger during the Nixon era and preparing the President's daily security brief for Ronald Reagan. Now he is co-founder of a group of former CIA employees called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, or Vips for short.

What the Bush White House has done, he believes, is far worse than the false premise that dragged the United States into the Vietnam War - a reported second attack on a US destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin which later turned out not to have taken place. "The Gulf of Tonkin was a spur-of-the-moment thing, and Lyndon Johnson seized on that. That's very different from the very calculated, 18-month, orchestrated, incredibly cynical campaign of lies that we've seen to justify a war. This is an order of magnitude different. It's so blatant."

Mr McGovern accuses Mr Bush of an extraordinary act of chutzpah - taking advantage of his authority as President of the United States to make people believe there must be something to his insistent allegations that Iraq possessed potentially devastating weaponry.

"Many of us felt there had to be something there ... If this had been another country, one would have written a convincing analysis that this guy is lying through his teeth, that there are no weapons in Iraq. But people thought, the President can't say he knows something if he doesn't. That was persuasive, in a way.

"Now we know that no other President of the United States has ever lied so baldly and so often and so demonstrably ... The presumption now has to be that he's lying any time that he's saying anything."

It will, Mr McGovern believes, take a change of president and a change of CIA director to even begin to repair the damage done by what he sees as an overt politicisation of the intelligence business. But even that may not be enough.

"Unless what has happened in the past year and a half is recognised as a scandal, in which the CIA has been badly abused, then there's no hope," he said. "I pin my hopes mostly on the press these days. Turns out, surprise surprise, that even the US press doesn't like to be lied to."

© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=461946

Bush blocks money for U.S. soldiers jailed and tortured in Iraqi prisons

By Philip Shenon, New York Times

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 — The Bush administration is seeking to block a group of American troops who were tortured in Iraqi prisons during the Persian Gulf war in 1991 from collecting any of the hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen Iraqi assets they won last summer in a federal court ruling against the government of Saddam Hussein.

In a court challenge that the administration is winning so far but is not eager to publicize, administration lawyers have argued that Iraqi assets frozen in bank accounts in the United States are needed for Iraqi reconstruction and that the judgment won by the 17 former American prisoners should be overturned.

If the administration succeeds, the former prisoners would be deprived of the money they won and, they say, of the validation of a judge's ruling that documented their accounts of torture by the Iraqis — including beatings, burnings, starvation, mock executions and repeated threats of castration and dismemberment.

READ THE REST AT
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/10/international/middleeast/10POWS.html

Support the troops- Get Rid of Bush

Today is Veteran's day. I hope all American citizens take the time to remember those that made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

Paul Krugman has a great article today in the New York Times entitled "Support the Troops." Here's a portion of it:

One of George W. Bush's major campaign themes in 2000 was his promise to improve the lives of America's soldiers — and military votes were crucial to his success. But these days some of the harshest criticisms of the Bush administration come from publications aimed at a military audience.

For example, last week the magazine Army Times ran a story with the headline "An Act of `Betrayal,' " and the subtitle "In the midst of war, key family benefits face cuts." The article went on to assert that there has been "a string of actions by the Bush administration to cut or hold down growth in pay and benefits, including basic pay, combat pay, health-care benefits and the death gratuity paid to survivors of troops who die on active duty."

At one level, this pattern of cuts is standard operating procedure. Just about every apparent promise of financial generosity this administration has made (other than those involving tax cuts for top brackets and corporate contracts) has turned out to be nonoperational. No Child Left Behind got left behind — or at least left without funds. AmeriCorps got praised in the State of the Union address, then left high and dry in the budget that followed. New York's firefighters and policemen got a photo-op with the president, but very little money. For that matter, it's clear that New York will never see the full $20 billion it was promised for rebuilding. Why shouldn't soldiers find themselves subject to the same kind of bait and switch?

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE AT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/11/opinion/11KRUG.html.
or
http://www.wws.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/
http://www.wws.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/
or even
http://www.pkarchive.org/

For more on this subject, check out these links on MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, which were just added to the side menu of TooManyreasons.com:

Bring Them Home Now
Military Families Speak Out
Soldiers for the Truth
Veterans Against the Iraq War
Veterans for Common Sense
Veterans For Peace
Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation

Al Gore speaks out on Freedom, Security, and the Dangers of a Bush Presidency

Yesterday, on Sunday, June 9th, former vice-president Al Gore spoke out on the issues of Freedom and Security at Constitution Hall in Washington, DC. The event was sponsored by MoveOn.org. What he said about President Bush administration underscored some of the most important reasons why the current administration has been considered the most deceptive administration this country has ever seen.

Here's the text of his speech, as prepared for delivery:

COURTESY OF:
http://www.moveon.org/gore/speech.html

FREEDOM AND SECURITY

Thank you, Lisa, for that warm and generous introduction. Thank you Zack, and thank you all for coming here today

I want to thank the American Constitution Society for co-sponsoring today’s event, and for their hard work and dedication in defending our most basic public values.

And I am especially grateful to Moveon.org, not only for co-sponsoring this event, but also for using 21 st Century techniques to breathe new life into our democracy.

For my part, I’m just a “recovering politician” – but I truly believe that some of the issues most important to America ’s future are ones that all of us should be dealing with.

And perhaps the most important of these issues is the one I want to talk about today: the true relationship between Freedom and Security.

So it seems to me that the logical place to start the discussion is with an accounting of exactly what has happened to civil liberties and security since the vicious attacks against America of September 11, 2001 – and it’s important to note at the outset that the Administration and the Congress have brought about many beneficial and needed improvements to make law enforcement and intelligence community efforts more effective against potential terrorists.

But a lot of other changes have taken place that a lot of people don’t know about and that come as unwelcome surprises. For example, for the first time in our history, American citizens have been seized by the executive branch of government and put in prison without being charged with a crime, without having the right to a trial, without being able to see a lawyer, and without even being able to contact their families.

President Bush is claiming the unilateral right to do that to any American citizen he believes is an “enemy combatant.” Those are the magic words. If the President alone decides that those two words accurately describe someone, then that person can be immediately locked up and held incommunicado for as long as the President wants, with no court having the right to determine whether the facts actually justify his imprisonment.

Now if the President makes a mistake, or is given faulty information by somebody working for him, and locks up the wrong person, then it’s almost impossible for that person to prove his innocence – because he can’t talk to a lawyer or his family or anyone else and he doesn’t even have the right to know what specific crime he is accused of committing. So a constitutional right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness that we used to think of in an old-fashioned way as “inalienable” can now be instantly stripped from any American by the President with no meaningful review by any other branch of government.

How do we feel about that? Is that OK?

Here’s another recent change in our civil liberties: Now, if it wants to, the federal government has the right to monitor every website you go to on the internet, keep a list of everyone you send email to or receive email from and everyone who you call on the telephone or who calls you – and they don’t even have to show probable cause that you’ve done anything wrong. Nor do they ever have to report to any court on what they’re doing with the information. Moreover, there are precious few safeguards to keep them from reading the content of all your email.

Everybody fine with that?

If so, what about this next change?

For America’s first 212 years, it used to be that if the police wanted to search your house, they had to be able to convince an independent judge to give them a search warrant and then (with rare exceptions) they had to go bang on your door and yell, “Open up!” Then, if you didn’t quickly open up, they could knock the door down. Also, if they seized anything, they had to leave a list explaining what they had taken. That way, if it was all a terrible mistake (as it sometimes is) you could go and get your stuff back.

But that’s all changed now. Starting two years ago, federal agents were given broad new statutory authority by the Patriot Act to “sneak and peak” in non-terrorism cases. They can secretly enter your home with no warning – whether you are there or not – and they can wait for months before telling you they were there. And it doesn’t have to have any relationship to terrorism whatsoever. It applies to any garden-variety crime. And the new law makes it very easy to get around the need for a traditional warrant -- simply by saying that searching your house might have some connection (even a remote one) to the investigation of some agent of a foreign power. Then they can go to another court, a secret court, that more or less has to give them a warrant whenever they ask.

Three weeks ago, in a speech at FBI Headquarters, President Bush went even further and formally proposed that the Attorney General be allowed to authorize subpoenas by administrative order, without the need for a warrant from any court.

What about the right to consult a lawyer if you’re arrested? Is that important?

Attorney General Ashcroft has issued regulations authorizing the secret monitoring of attorney-client conversations on his say-so alone; bypassing procedures for obtaining prior judicial review for such monitoring in the rare instances when it was permitted in the past. Now, whoever is in custody has to assume that the government is always listening to consultations between them and their lawyers.

Does it matter if the government listens in on everything you say to your lawyer? Is that Ok?

Or, to take another change -- and thanks to the librarians, more people know about this one -- the FBI now has the right to go into any library and ask for the records of everybody who has used the library and get a list of who is reading what. Similarly, the FBI can demand all the records of banks, colleges, hotels, hospitals, credit-card companies, and many more kinds of companies. And these changes are only the beginning. Just last week, Attorney General Ashcroft issued brand new guidelines permitting FBI agents to run credit checks and background checks and gather other information about anyone who is “of investigatory interest,” - meaning anyone the agent thinks is suspicious - without any evidence of criminal behavior.

So, is that fine with everyone?

Listen to the way Israel ’s highest court dealt with a similar question when, in 1999, it was asked to balance due process rights against dire threats to the security of its people:

“This is the destiny of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it, and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it. Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand. Preserving the Rule of Law and recognition of an individual’s liberty constitutes an important component in its understanding of security. At the end of the day they (add to) its strength.”

I want to challenge the Bush Administration’s implicit assumption that we have to give up many of our traditional freedoms in order to be safe from terrorists.

Because it is simply not true.

In fact, in my opinion, it makes no more sense to launch an assault on our civil liberties as the best way to get at terrorists than it did to launch an invasion of Iraq as the best way to get at Osama Bin Laden.

In both cases, the Administration has attacked the wrong target.

In both cases they have recklessly put our country in grave and unnecessary danger, while avoiding and neglecting obvious and much more important challenges that would actually help to protect the country.

In both cases, the administration has fostered false impressions and misled the nation with superficial, emotional and manipulative presentations that are not worthy of American Democracy.

In both cases they have exploited public fears for partisan political gain and postured themselves as bold defenders of our country while actually weakening not strengthening America .

In both cases, they have used unprecedented secrecy and deception in order to avoid accountability to the Congress, the Courts, the press and the people.

Indeed, this Administration has turned the fundamental presumption of our democracy on its head. A government of and for the people is supposed to be generally open to public scrutiny by the people -- while the private information of the people themselves should be routinely protected from government intrusion.

But instead, this Administration is seeking to conduct its work in secret even as it demands broad unfettered access to personal information about American citizens. Under the rubric of protecting national security, they have obtained new powers to gather information from citizens and to keep it secret. Yet at the same time they themselves refuse to disclose information that is highly relevant to the war against terrorism.

They are even arrogantly refusing to provide information about 9/11 that is in their possession to the 9/11 Commission – the lawful investigative body charged with examining not only the performance of the Bush Administration, but also the actions of the prior Administration in which I served. The whole point is to learn all we can about preventing future terrorist attacks,

Two days ago, the Commission was forced to issue a subpoena to the Pentagon, which has – disgracefully – put Secretary Rumsfeld’s desire to avoid embarrassment ahead of the nation’s need to learn how we can best avoid future terrorist attacks. The Commission also served notice that it will issue a subpoena to the White House if the President continues to withhold information essential to the investigation.

And the White House is also refusing to respond to repeated bipartisan Congressional requests for information about 9/11 – even though the Congress is simply exercising its Constitutional oversight authority. In the words of Senator McCain, “Excessive administration secrecy on issues related to the September 11 attacks feeds conspiracy theories and reduces the public’s confidence in government.”

In a revealing move, just three days ago, the White House asked the Republican leadership of the Senate to shut down the Intelligence Committee’s investigation of 9/11 based on a trivial political dispute. Apparently the President is anxious to keep the Congress from seeing what are said to have been clear, strong and explicit warnings directly to him a few weeks before 9/11 that terrorists were planning to hijack commercial airliners and use them to attack us.

Astonishingly, the Republican Senate leadership quickly complied with the President’s request. Such obedience and complicity in what looks like a cover-up from the majority party in a separate and supposedly co-equal branch of government makes it seem like a very long time ago when a Republican Attorney General and his deputy resigned rather than comply with an order to fire the special prosecutor investigating Richard Nixon.

In an even more brazen move, more than two years after they rounded up over 1,200 individuals of Arab descent, they still refuse to release the names of the individuals they detained, even though virtually every one of those arrested has been "cleared" by the FBI of any connection to terrorism and there is absolutely no national security justification for keeping the names secret. Yet at the same time, White House officials themselves leaked the name of a CIA operative serving the country, in clear violation of the law, in an effort to get at her husband, who had angered them by disclosing that the President had relied on forged evidence in his state of the union address as part of his effort to convince the country that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of building nuclear weapons.

And even as they claim the right to see the private bank records of every American, they are adopting a new policy on the Freedom of Information Act that actively encourages federal agencies to fully consider all potential reasons for non-disclosure regardless of whether the disclosure would be harmful. In other words, the federal government will now actively resist complying with ANY request for information.

Moreover, they have established a new exemption that enables them to refuse the release to the press and the public of important health, safety and environmental information submitted to the government by businesses – merely by calling it “critical infrastructure.”

By closely guarding information about their own behavior, they are dismantling a fundamental element of our system of checks and balances. Because so long as the government’s actions are secret, they cannot be held accountable. A government for the people and by the people must be transparent to the people.

The administration is justifying the collection of all this information by saying in effect that it will make us safer to have it. But it is not the kind of information that would have been of much help in preventing 9/11. However, there was in fact a great deal of specific information that WAS available prior to 9/11 that probably could have been used to prevent the tragedy. A recent analysis by the Merkle foundation, (working with data from a software company that received venture capital from a CIA-sponsored firm) demonstrates this point in a startling way:

“In late August 2001, Nawaq Alhamzi and Khalid Al-Midhar bought tickets to fly on American Airlines Flight 77 (which was flown into the Pentagon). They bought the tickets using their real names. Both names were then on a State Department/INS watch list called TIPOFF. Both men were sought by the FBI and CIA as suspected terrorists, in part because they had been observed at a terrorist meeting in Malaysia .

These two passenger names would have been exact matches when checked against the TIPOFF list. But that would only have been the first step. Further data checks could then have begun.

Checking for common addresses (address information is widely available, including on the internet), analysts would have discovered that Salem Al-Hazmi (who also bought a seat on American 77) used the same address as Nawaq Alhazmi. More importantly, they could have discovered that Mohamed Atta (American 11, North Tower of the World Trade Center ) and Marwan Al-Shehhi (United 175, South Tower of the World Trade Center ) used the same address as Khalid Al-Midhar.

Checking for identical frequent flier numbers, analysts would have discovered that Majed Moqed (American 77) used the same number as Al-Midhar.

With Mohamed Atta now also identified as a possible associate of the wanted terrorist, Al-Midhar, analysts could have added Atta’s phone numbers (also publicly available information) to their checklist. By doing so they would have identified five other hijackers (Fayez Ahmed, Mohand Alshehri, Wail Alsheri, and Abdulaziz Alomari).

Closer to September 11, a further check of passenger lists against a more innocuous INS watch list (for expired visas) would have identified Ahmed Alghandi. Through him, the same sort of relatively simple correlations could have led to identifying the remaining hijackers, who boarded United 93 (which crashed in Pennsylvania ).”

In addition, Al-Midhar and Nawaf Alhamzi, the two who were on the terrorist watch list, rented an apartment in San Diego under their own names and were listed, again under their own names, in the San Diego phone book while the FBI was searching for them.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but what is needed is better and more timely analysis. Simply piling up more raw data that is almost entirely irrelevant is not only not going to help. It may actually hurt the cause. As one FBI agent said privately of Ashcroft: “We’re looking for a needle in a haystack here and he (Ashcroft) is just piling on more hay.”

In other words, the mass collecting of personal data on hundreds of millions of people actually makes it more difficult to protect the nation against terrorists, so they ought to cut most of it out.

And meanwhile, the real story is that while the administration manages to convey the impression that it is doing everything possible to protect America , in reality it has seriously neglected most of the measures that it could have taken to really make our country safer.

For example, there is still no serious strategy for domestic security that protects critical infrastructure such as electric power lines, gas pipelines, nuclear facilities, ports, chemical plants and the like.

They’re still not checking incoming cargo carriers for radiation. They’re still skimping on protection of certain nuclear weapons storage facilities. They’re still not hardening critical facilities that must never be soft targets for terrorists. They’re still not investing in the translators and analysts we need to counter the growing terror threat.

The administration is still not investing in local government training and infrastructures where they could make the biggest difference. The first responder community is still being shortchanged. In many cases, fire and police still don’t have the communications equipment to talk to each other. The CDC and local hospitals are still nowhere close to being ready for a biological weapons attack.

The administration has still failed to address the fundamental disorganization and rivalries of our law enforcement, intelligence and investigative agencies. In particular, the critical FBI-CIA coordination, while finally improved at the top, still remains dysfunctional in the trenches.

The constant violations of civil liberties promote the false impression that these violations are necessary in order to take every precaution against another terrorist attack. But the simple truth is that the vast majority of the violations have not benefited our security at all; to the contrary, they hurt our security.

And the treatment of immigrants was probably the worst example. This mass mistreatment actually hurt our security in a number of important ways.

But first, let’s be clear about what happened: this was little more than a cheap and cruel political stunt by John Ashcroft. More than 99% of the mostly Arab-background men who were rounded up had merely overstayed their visas or committed some other minor offense as they tried to pursue the American dream just like most immigrants. But they were used as extras in the Administration’s effort to give the impression that they had caught a large number of bad guys. And many of them were treated horribly and abusively.

Consider this example reported in depth by Anthony Lewis:

“Anser Mehmood, a Pakistani who had overstayed his visa, was arrested in New York on October 3, 2001 . The next day he was briefly questioned by FBI agents, who said they had no further interest in him. Then he was shackled in handcuffs, leg irons, and a belly chain and taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn . Guards there put two more sets of handcuffs on him and another set of leg irons. One threw Mehmood against a wall. The guards forced him to run down a long ramp, the irons cutting into his wrists and ankles. The physical abuse was mixed with verbal taunts.

“After two weeks Mehmood was allowed to make a telephone call to his wife. She was not at home and Mehmood was told that he would have to wait six weeks to try again. He first saw her, on a visit, three months after his arrest. All that time he was kept in a windowless cell, in solitary confinement, with two overhead fluorescent lights on all the time. In the end he was charged with using an invalid Social Security card. He was deported in May 2002, nearly eight months after his arrest.

The faith tradition I share with Ashcroft includes this teaching from Jesus: “whatsoever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.”

And make no mistake: the disgraceful treatment suffered by many of these vulnerable immigrants at the hands of the administration has created deep resentments and hurt the cooperation desperately needed from immigrant communities in the U.S. and from the Security Services of other countries.

Second, these gross violations of their rights have seriously damaged U.S. moral authority and goodwill around the world, and delegitimized U.S. efforts to continue promoting Human Rights around the world. As one analyst put it, “We used to set the standard; now we have lowered the bar.” And our moral authority is, after all, our greatest source of enduring strength in the world.

And the handling of prisoners at Guantanomo has been particularly harmful to America ’s image. Even England and Australia have criticized our departure from international law and the Geneva Convention. Sec. Rumsfeld’s handling of the captives there has been about as thoughtful as his “postwar” plan for Iraq .

So the mass violations of civil liberties have hurt rather than helped. But there is yet another reason for urgency in stopping what this administration is doing. Where Civil Liberties are concerned, they have taken us much farther down the road toward an intrusive, “Big Brother”-style government -- toward the dangers prophesized by George Orwell in his book “1984” -- than anyone ever thought would be possible in the United States of America.

And they have done it primarily by heightening and exploiting public anxieties and apprehensions. Rather than leading with a call to courage, this Administration has chosen to lead us by inciting fear.

Almost eighty years ago, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote “Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. . . . They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty.” Those who won our independence, Brandeis asserted, understood that “courage [is] the secret of liberty” and "fear [only] breeds repression."

Rather than defending our freedoms, this Administration has sought to abandon them. Rather than accepting our traditions of openness and accountability, this Administration has opted to rule by secrecy and unquestioned authority. Instead, its assaults on our core democratic principles have only left us less free and less secure.

Throughout American history, what we now call Civil Liberties have often been abused and limited during times of war and perceived threats to security. The best known instances include the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798-1800, the brief suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, the extreme abuses during World War I and the notorious Red Scare and Palmer Raids immediately after the war, the shameful internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and the excesses of the FBI and CIA during the Vietnam War and social turmoil of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

But in each of these cases, the nation has recovered its equilibrium when the war ended and absorbed the lessons learned in a recurring cycle of excess and regret.

There are reasons for concern this time around that what we are experiencing may no longer be the first half of a recurring cycle but rather, the beginning of something new. For one thing, 2this war is predicted by the administration to “last for the rest of our lives.” Others have expressed the view that over time it will begin to resemble the “war” against drugs – that is, that it will become a more or less permanent struggle that occupies a significant part of our law enforcement and security agenda from now on. If that is the case, then when – if ever -- does this encroachment on our freedoms die a natural death?

It is important to remember that throughout history, the loss of civil liberties by individuals and the aggregation of too much unchecked power in the executive go hand in hand. They are two sides of the same coin.

A second reason to worry that what we are witnessing is a discontinuity and not another turn of the recurring cycle is that the new technologies of surveillance – long anticipated by novelists like Orwell and other prophets of the “Police State” -- are now more widespread than they have ever been.
And they do have the potential for shifting the balance of power between the apparatus of the state and the freedom of the individual in ways both subtle and profound.

Moreover, these technologies are being widely used not only by the government but also by corporations and other private entities. And that is relevant to an assessment of the new requirements in the Patriot Act for so many corporations – especially in the finance industries – to prepare millions of reports annually for the government on suspicious activities by their customers. It is also relevant to the new flexibility corporations have been given to share information with one another about their customers.

The third reason for concern is that the threat of more terror strikes is all too real. And the potential use of weapons of mass destruction by terrorist groups does create a new practical imperative for the speedy exercise of discretionary power by the executive branch – just as the emergence of nuclear weapons and ICBMs created a new practical imperative in the Cold War that altered the balance of war-making responsibility between Congress and the President.

But President Bush has stretched this new practical imperative beyond what is healthy for our democracy. Indeed, one of the ways he has tried to maximize his power within the American system has been by constantly emphasizing his role as Commander-in-Chief, far more than any previous President -- assuming it as often and as visibly as he can, and bringing it into the domestic arena and conflating it with his other roles: as head of government and head of state – and especially with his political role as head of the Republican Party.

Indeed, the most worrisome new factor, in my view, is the aggressive ideological approach of the current administration, which seems determined to use fear as a political tool to consolidate its power and to escape any accountability for its use. Just as unilateralism and dominance are the guiding principles of their disastrous approach to international relations, they are also the guiding impulses of the administration’s approach to domestic politics. They are impatient with any constraints on the exercise of power overseas -- whether from our allies, the UN, or international law. And in the same way, they are impatient with any obstacles to their use of power at home – whether from Congress, the Courts, the press, or the rule of law.

Ashcroft has also authorized FBI agents to attend church meetings, rallies, political meetings and any other citizen activity open to the public simply on the agents’ own initiative, reversing a decades old policy that required justification to supervisors that such infiltrations has a provable connection to a legitimate investigation;

They have even taken steps that seem to be clearly aimed at stifling dissent. The Bush Justice Department has recently begun a highly disturbing criminal prosecution of the environmental group Greenpeace because of a non-violent direct action protest against what Greenpeace claimed was the illegal importation of endangered mahogany from the Amazon. Independent legal experts and historians have said that the prosecution -- under an obscure and bizarre 1872 law against “sailor-mongering” -- appears to be aimed at inhibiting Greenpeace’s First Amendment activities.

And at the same time they are breaking new ground by prosecuting Greenpeace, the Bush Administration announced just a few days ago that it is dropping the investigations of 50 power plants for violating the Clean Air Act – a move that Sen. Chuck Schumer said, “basically announced to the power industry that it can now pollute with impunity.”

The politicization of law enforcement in this administration is part of their larger agenda to roll back the changes in government policy brought about by the New Deal and the Progressive Movement. Toward that end, they are cutting back on Civil Rights enforcement, Women’s Rights, progressive taxation, the estate tax, access to the courts, Medicare, and much more. And they approach every issue as a partisan fight to the finish, even in the areas of national security and terror.

Instead of trying to make the “War on Terrorism” a bipartisan cause, the Bush White House has consistently tried to exploit it for partisan advantage. The President goes to war verbally against terrorists in virtually every campaign speech and fundraising dinner for his political party. It is his main political theme. Democratic candidates like Max Cleland in Georgia were labeled unpatriotic for voting differently from the White House on obscure amendments to the Homeland Security Bill.

When the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, Tom DeLay, was embroiled in an effort to pick up more congressional seats in Texas by forcing a highly unusual redistricting vote in the state senate, he was able to track down Democratic legislators who fled the state to prevent a quorum (and thus prevent the vote) by enlisting the help of President Bush’s new Department of Homeland Security, as many as 13 employees of the Federal Aviation Administration who conducted an eight-hour search, and at least one FBI agent (though several other agents who were asked to help refused to do so.)

By locating the Democrats quickly with the technology put in place for tracking terrorists, the Republicans were able to succeed in focusing public pressure on the weakest of the Senators and forced passage of their new political redistricting plan. Now, thanks in part to the efforts of three different federal agencies, Bush and DeLay are celebrating the gain of up to seven new Republican congressional seats in the next Congress.

The White House timing for its big push for a vote in Congress on going to war with Iraq also happened to coincide exactly with the start of the fall election campaign in September a year ago. The President’s chief of staff said the timing was chosen because “from a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”

White House political advisor Karl Rove advised Republican candidates that their best political strategy was to “run on the war”. And as soon as the troops began to mobilize, the Republican National Committee distributed yard signs throughout America saying, “I support President Bush and the troops” -- as if they were one and the same.

This persistent effort to politicize the war in Iraq and the war against terrorism for partisan advantage is obviously harmful to the prospects for bipartisan support of the nation’s security policies. By sharp contrast, consider the different approach that was taken by Prime Minister Winston Churchill during the terrible days of October 1943 when in the midst of World War II, he faced a controversy with the potential to divide his bipartisan coalition. He said, “What holds us together is the prosecution of the war. No…man has been asked to give up his convictions. That would be indecent and improper. We are held together by something outside, which rivets our attention. The principle that we work on is, ‘Everything for the war, whether controversial or not, and nothing controversial that is not bona fide for the war.’ That is our position. We must also be careful that a pretext is not made of war needs to introduce far-reaching social or political changes by a side wind.”

Yet that is exactly what the Bush Administration is attempting to do – to use the war against terrorism for partisan advantage and to introduce far reaching controversial changes in social policy by a “side wind,” in an effort to consolidate its political power.

It is an approach that is deeply antithetical to the American spirit. Respect for our President is important. But so is respect for our people. Our founders knew – and our history has proven – that freedom is best guaranteed by a separation of powers into co-equal branches of government within a system of checks and balances -- to prevent the unhealthy concentration of too much power in the hands of any one person or group.

Our framers were also keenly aware that the history of the world proves that Republics are fragile. The very hour of America ’s birth in Philadelphia , when Benjamin Franklin was asked, “What have we got? A Republic or a Monarchy?” he cautiously replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

And even in the midst of our greatest testing, Lincoln knew that our fate was tied to the larger question of whether ANY nation so conceived could long endure.

This Administration simply does not seem to agree that the challenge of preserving democratic freedom cannot be met by surrendering core American values. Incredibly, this Administration has attempted to compromise the most precious rights that America has stood for all over the world for more than 200 years: due process, equal treatment under the law, the dignity of the individual, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, freedom from promiscuous government surveillance. And in the name of security, this Administration has attempted to relegate the Congress and the Courts to the sidelines and replace our democratic system of checks and balances with an unaccountable Executive. And all the while, it has constantly angled for new ways to exploit the sense of crisis for partisan gain and political dominance. How dare they!

Years ago, during World War II, one of our most eloquent Supreme Court Justices, Robert Jackson, wrote that the President should be given the “widest latitude” in wartime, but he warned against the “loose and irresponsible invocation of war as an excuse for discharging the Executive Branch from the rules of law that govern our Republic in times of peace. No penance would ever expiate the sin against free government,” Jackson said, “of holding that a President can escape control of executive powers by law through assuming his military role. Our government has ample authority under the Constitution to take those steps which are genuinely necessary for our security. At the same time, our system demands that government act only on the basis of measures that have been the subject of open and thoughtful debate in Congress and among the American people, and that invasions of the liberty or equal dignity of any individual are subject to review by courts which are open to those affected and independent of the government which is curtailing their freedom.”

So what should be done? Well, to begin with, our country ought to find a way to immediately stop its policy of indefinitely detaining American citizens without charges and without a judicial determination that their detention is proper.

Such a course of conduct is incompatible with American traditions and values, with sacred principles of due process of law and separation of powers.

It is no accident that our Constitution requires in criminal prosecutions a “speedy and public trial.” The principles of liberty and the accountability of government, at the heart of what makes America unique, require no less. The Bush Administration’s treatment of American citizens it calls “enemy combatants” is nothing short of un-American.

Second, foreign citizens held in Guantanamo should be given hearings to determine their status provided for under Article V of the Geneva Convention, a hearing that the United States has given those captured in every war until this one, including Vietnam and the Gulf War.

If we don’t provide this, how can we expect American soldiers captured overseas to be treated with equal respect? We owe this to our sons and daughters who fight to defend freedom in Iraq , in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world.

Third, the President should seek congressional authorization for the military commissions he says he intends to use instead of civilian courts to try some of those who are charged with violating the laws of war. Military commissions are exceptional in American law and they present unique dangers. The prosecutor and the judge both work for the same man, the President of the United States . Such commissions may be appropriate in time of war, but they must be authorized by Congress, as they were in World War II, and Congress must delineate the scope of their authority. Review of their decisions must be available in a civilian court, at least the Supreme Court, as it was in World War II.

Next, our nation’s greatness is measured by how we treat those who are the most vulnerable. Noncitizens who the government seeks to detain should be entitled to some basic rights. The administration must stop abusing the material witness statute. That statute was designed to hold witnesses briefly before they are called to testify before a grand jury. It has been misused by this administration as a pretext for indefinite detention without charge. That is simply not right.

Finally, I have studied the Patriot Act and have found that along with its many excesses, it contains a few needed changes in the law. And it is certainly true that many of the worst abuses of due process and civil liberties that are now occurring are taking place under the color of laws and executive orders other than the Patriot Act.

Nevertheless, I believe the Patriot Act has turned out to be, on balance, a terrible mistake, and that it became a kind of Tonkin Gulf Resolution conferring Congress’ blessing for this President’s assault on civil liberties. Therefore, I believe strongly that the few good features of this law should be passed again in a new, smaller law – but that the Patriot Act must be repealed.

As John Adams wrote in 1780, ours is a government of laws and not of men. What is at stake today is that defining principle of our nation, and thus the very nature of America . As the Supreme Court has written, “Our Constitution is a covenant running from the first generation of Americans to us and then to future generations.” The Constitution includes no wartime exception, though its Framers knew well the reality of war. And, as Justice Holmes reminded us shortly after World War I, the Constitution’s principles only have value if we apply them in the difficult times as well as those where it matters less.

The question before us could be of no greater moment: will we continue to live as a people under the rule of law as embodied in our Constitution? Or will we fail future generations, by leaving them a Constitution far diminished from the charter of liberty we have inherited from our forebears? Our choice is clear.

Bush Policies Angers Hunters, Hikers, and Fishermen

Washington Post
Tuesday, November 4, 2003; Page A01

CHOTEAU, Mont. -- The Great Plains smack into the Rockies just west of here. The collision of flatness and verticality results in the Rocky Mountain Front, the only place in the West where large numbers of grizzlies, elk and bighorn sheep still wander down out of the mountains and take their leisure on the grassy plain.

Seven years ago, the U.S. Forest Service ruled that the Front deserved "special attention" and halted new oil and gas leasing. Hunters, hikers and assorted lovers of this 100-mile-long stretch of wildernessbreathed a collective sigh of relief.

A long fight between energy extraction and wildlife protection seemed over. The bears and the elk had apparently won, with the help of national conservation and hunting groups, as well as a majority of Montanans, who told pollsters this place should be left alone.

But now, with natural gas prices up sharply and with President Bush making domestic energy production a national security priority, the fight over the Front is back on. Although the Forest Service's ban on new leases remains in effect, the Bureau of Land Management is reviewing plans by three companies with existing leases to extract gas from eight wells. If they find significant amounts of gas, there will almost certainly be many more new wells, plus roads, pipelines and processing plants.

Rumbles of renewed resource extraction along the Front are echoing across the country -- with prime hunting and fishing habitat coming under threat in the federal forests, plains and wetlands of Alaska, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, South Dakota, New Mexico and elsewhere. The gathering din has begun to worry -- and, in some cases, infuriate -- America's fishermen and hunters, many of whom are Republicans who voted for Bush. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates about 47 million Americans fish or hunt.

"This is a community that is slow to anger, but once they get lit it is a real hot burn," said Chris Woods, conservation director for Trout Unlimited, which has 130,000 members, 64 percent of whom say they are Republicans. "You are seeing this now on the Rocky Mountain Front. This is one of the Holy Grail places."

When it comes to politics, a long-standing lament among American sportsmen is that Democrats want your guns and Republicans want your land.

Leaders of the country's major fishing and hunting organizations agree that concern about gun-control laws was a key factor in their members' support for Bush in the last election. Yet, with the exception of the National Rifle Association, these leaders say they are hearing from members upset about what the Bush administration is doing to federal land.

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE AT:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59945-2003Nov3.html

Bush's Stem Cell Policy

Here's an article that's a few weeks old, but still deserves your attention in case you hadn't seen it before.

Taking Bush Personally
By Michael Kinsley
Posted Thursday, October 23, 2003

DIRECT LINK:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2090244/

Conservatives wonder why so many liberals don't just disagree with President Bush's policies but seem to dislike him personally. The story of stem-cell research may help to explain. Two years ago, Bush announced an unexpectedly restrictive policy on the use of stem cells from human embryos in federally funded medical research. Because federal funding plays such a large role, the government more or less sets the rules for major medical research in this country.

Bush's policy was that research could continue on stem-cell "lines" that existed at the moment of his speech, in August 2001, but that otherwise, embryo research was banned. Even surplus embryos already in the freezer at fertility clinics-where embryos are routinely created and destroyed by the thousands every year-could not be used for medical research and would have to be thrown out instead.

Bush's professed moral concern was bolstered by two factual assumptions. One was that there were more than 60 stem-cell lines available for research. Stem cells are "wild card" cells. They multiply and evolve into cells for specific purposes in the human body. A "line" is the result of a particular cell that has been "tweaked" and is multiplying in the laboratory. The hope is to develop lines of cells that can be put back into human beings and be counted on to evolve into replacements for missing or defective parts. The likeliest example is dopamine-producing brain cells for people with Parkinson's disease. The dream is replacements for whole organs or even limbs. But each line is a crapshoot. So the more lines, the better. And it turns out that the number of useful lines is more like 10 than 60.

Bush also touted the possibility of harmlessly harvesting stem cells from adults. He said, "Therapies developed from adult stem cells are already helping suffering people." This apparently referred to decades-old techniques such as removing some of a leukemia patient's bone marrow and then reinjecting it after the patient has undergone radiation.

As for finding adult stem cells that could turn into unrelated body parts, that was just a dream two years ago, and now it is not even that. A new study, reported last week in Nature , concluded that when earlier studies thought they saw new specialized cells derived from adult stem cells, they were really seeing those adult cells bonding with pre-existing specialized cells. There's hope in this bonding process, too-but not the hope researchers had for adult stem cells, and nothing like the hope they still have for embryonic stem cells. Since Bush's speech, scientists have used embryonic stem cells to reverse the course of Parkinson's in rats.

Put it all together, and the stem cells that can squeeze through Bush's loopholes are far less promising than they seemed two years ago while the general promise of embryonic stem cells burns brighter than ever. If you claim to have made an anguished moral decision, and the factual basis for that decision turns out to be faulty, you ought to reconsider, or your claim to moral anguish looks phony. But Bush's moral anguish was suspect from the beginning because the policy it produced makes no sense.

The week-old embryos used for stem-cell research are microscopic clumps of cells, unthinking and unknowing, with fewer physical human qualities than a mosquito. Fetal-tissue research has used brain cells from aborted fetuses, but this is not that. Week-old, lab-created embryos have no brain cells.

Furthermore, not a single embryo dies because of stem-cell research, which simply uses a tiny fraction of the embryos that live and die as a routine part of procedures at fertility clinics. And actual stem-cell therapy for real patients, if it is allowed to develop, will not even need these surplus embryos. Once a usable line is developed from an embryo, the cells for treatment can be developed in a laboratory.

None of this matters if you believe that a microscopic embryo is a human being with the same human rights as you and me. George W. Bush claims to believe that, and you have to believe something like that to justify your opposition to stem-cell research. But Bush cannot possibly believe that embryos are full human beings, or he would surely oppose modern fertility procedures that create and destroy many embryos for each baby they bring into the world. Bush does not oppose modern fertility treatments. He even praised them in his anti-stem-cell speech.

It's not a complicated point. If stem-cell research is morally questionable, the procedures used in fertility clinics are worse. You cannot logically outlaw the one and praise the other. And surely logical coherence is a measure of moral sincerity.

If he's got both his facts and his logic wrong-and he has-Bush's alleged moral anguish on this subject is unimpressive. In fact, it is insulting to the people (including me) whose lives could be saved or redeemed by the medical breakthroughs Bush's stem-cell policy is preventing.

This is not a policy disagreement. Or rather, it is not only a policy disagreement. If the president is not a complete moron-and he probably is not-he is a hardened cynic, staging moral anguish he does not feel, pandering to people he cannot possibly agree with, and sacrificing the future of many American citizens for short-term political advantage.

Is that a good enough reason to dislike him personally?

Carlos Santana on Bush

"We are the other side of America. We do not go along with George Bush. We are here to accentuate peace and compassion on the planet. God bless humanity."

Carlos Santana, November 1, 2003

http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/news/celebrity/sns-ap-people-sting,0,157832.story?coll=mmx-celebrity_heds

The Incredible Lying BushCo

This just in: More irrefutable proof that Dubya's is the slimiest administration in 100 years
By Mark Morford, San Francisco Chronicle / SF Gate Columnist
Friday, October 31, 2003

Like you even needed more proof.

Like you even need to read about the incredible and ever-increasing list of lies and misinfo and deeply, colon-clenchingly humiliating wrongness shot forth from the mouth of the GOP machine, a truly jaw-dropping assortment of falsehoods and fabrications about war, and war, and war. Oh, and the economy. And the environment. And war.

Look. There is no doubt left. Zero. None. Even many high-ranking Republicans are deeply worried over the increasingly embittered national timbre regarding BushCo's lies, as reflected in his ever-slipping ratings and declining reelectability quotient and his smug little smirky emptiness.

Do you need to be reminded? Do you need to see it again?

Very good, then. Let us recap: No WMDs. Biggest joke on the American public in the past 50 years. Saddam doesn't have 'em, and probably never did. Over 1,400 of BushCo's own investigators and specialists and scientists -- affectionately known as the Iraq Survey Group -- canvassing postwar Iraq for six months, not to mention the teams of original U.N. investigators, and finding not a trace of anything resembling huge stockpiles of massive scary weaponry.

Which is to say, no nukes. No biotoxins. No big cannons full of scary Korans and rusty bullets and old gum. Nothing at all resembling what Condi Rice and Cheney and Rummy and Wolfowitz, et al., said were absolutely positively no question going to be found any day now because after all that's why we went to war. Except that it wasn't. And they knew it.

To paraphrase The Washington Post: Among the judgments of the above-mentioned Iraq Survey Group, as overseen by David Kay, who reports directly to CIA Director George Tenet, are these: Iraq's nuclear-weapons scientists did no significant arms-related work after 1991. Also, all those facilities with suspicious new construction (remember Colin "Emasculated" Powell's bogus satellite photos?) proved benign, and of no military use whatsoever .

This is not speculation. This is not liberal wishful thinking. These are facts. And BushCo knew them. And more.

Translation: Bush's urgent call back in March to bomb the living crap out of pissant Iraq because Saddam had irrefutably cranked up his nuke arsenal and might possibly bomb weak depressed New York at any minute and wipe out all the Starbucks and ruin Monday Night Football was not only completely bogus and impossible, it was shockingly dangerous, and unprecedented, and even borderline treasonous.

Remember how Saddam ostensibly loved al Qaeda? Remember how Uncle Dick helped drill that terrorism connection into the cultural consciousness, repeatedly, across all media for months on end just before the war, thus inducing upward of 50 percent of the disturbingly gullible U.S. population to believe that Saddam actually had a hand in 9/11? When he didn't? When there was no connection whatsoever? Remember that?

Ah, yes. It turns out that all intelligence and every piece of evidence points exactly the opposite way. As BushCo was well informed, Saddam might only make contact with al Qaeda -- his sworn enemies -- if his back was against the wall, and probably not even then.

More? Sure. How about Afghanistan? Remember that? Osama at large. Never captured. Taliban resurfacing. No aid for the country and no rebuilding (except for a shiny new oil pipeline) and complete devastation and neglect.

And even Rummy, in his private and damning memo, said as much, just last week, writing that there is absolutely no way to tell whether we are making any progress in the war on terror, and that "victory" would be "a long, hard slog," and that it was impossible to say whether we are killing known terrorists any faster than the increasingly furious and inspired madrassa s, or Islamic fundamentalist schools, can manufacture them.

"This is a man that we know has had connections with al Qaeda. This is a man who, in my judgment, would like to use al Qaeda as a forward army." -- President Bush, Oct. 14, 2002

"Yes, there is a linkage between al Qaeda and Iraq." -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Sept. 26, 2002

"There have been contacts between senior Iraqi officials and members of al Qaeda going back for actually quite a long time." -- National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, Sept. 25, 2002

Isn't that cute? Not a single one of those statements was true. And not a single one of those people is being accused of treason or malfeasance or of being a soulless anti-American warmongering drone, despite how their words were dripping with lies when they exited their mouths.

Look. Bush told Americans we were going to enter into this savage and bloody war no one really wanted because Iraq posed an immediate and imminent threat to the security of the U.S. and its citizens. He gutted the economy for it. He destroyed long-standing relationships with countless international allies for it. He made America into this rogue superpower brat, disrespected and untrustable and appalling, for it. And it was never true.

How about this? More soldiers have died since BushCo declared the war essentially over six months ago than during the war itself. And guerrilla attacks on U.S. forces have more than doubled over recent months to more than 25 per day, with fresh American causalities coming in nonstop.

No matter, says the GOP. All part of the clumsy "rebuilding" process, they say. By the way, that $87 billion BushCo just begged for to keep the Iraq war machine clunking along? That's more than the fiscal debt of all the gutted U.S. states combined. Iraq is, by every account, a devastating U.S. money pit .

Might it be worth mentioning here that comprehensive new nonpartisan investigation that reveals how at least 15,000 Iraqis, including a minimum of 4,000 civilians, were slaughtered by U.S. forces in the first days of the invasion? Or that some estimates of total Iraqi civilian deaths go as high as nearly 10,000 ? Do those people matter? All those women and children and poor families? Nah. Screw 'em.

And you know why they don't matter, according to the GOP? Because we got rid of a pesky evil pip-squeak tyrant, that's why. One who was zero threat to the U.S., and not much of a threat to neighboring countries, and had no 9/11 connection, but who we know killed lots of his own people 20 years ago, with America's full and complicit assistance, including the biotoxins we sold to him.

And how he's gone. Yay! Mission accomplished! Except, of course, he's not. Still alive, apparently. But he's hiding somewhere! And he's probably really furious that he had to shave his mustache, too! Ha! That oughta show him! That's $300 billion and hundreds of dead U.S. soldiers well spent, baby! God bless America.

This needs to be said. This needs to be repeated, over and over again, because apparently it is still not clear and apparently Republican apologists love to trot it out as some sort of justification, some sort of hollow and childish accusation, signifying nothing.

Yes, Bill Clinton lied, too. He lied about stupid adulterous sex. And the GOP savaged him like rabid feral swine attacking a rutabaga. Had him impeached over it. Loathe him still, and his wife, too, with unprecedented level of hatred and bile and vicious litigious action never before seen in this nation.

No such fate for BushCo. Shockingly, the GOP isn't the slightest bit upset about this pro-corporate, oil-drunk administration's deadly string of lies. Shall we wonder why? Or is it just too poisonous and sad to consider for very long, lest the intellect curdle and the soul recoil?

OK, I'll spell it out: George W. Bush and his entire senior administration lied, and continue to lie, flagrantly, openly, knowingly, with full intent, about the need to drive this nation into a brutal and unwinnable and fiscally debilitating war, one that protects no one and inhibits no terrorism and defends nothing but BushCo's own petrochemical cronies and political stratagems.

This much is obvious. This much is painfully, crushingly sad. And this much we must purge like so much clotted gunk from the collective social artery one year from now. Otherwise, we should just turn in our stained and bloody Superpower badge, and resign ourselves to our fate.

* * * * *

Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does. He also writes the Morning Fix, a deeply skewed thrice-weekly e-mail column and newsletter. Subscribe at sfgate.com/newsletters.

©2003 SF Gate

DIRECT LINK AT:
URL: sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2003/10/31/notes103103.DTL

Bush Logic 101

A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY
by David Monroe M.D.

In response to the rising American death toll in Iraq, the Bush White House has announced that the attacks by the Iraqis are a sign that "the situation in Iraq is improving." In fact, the White House launched a full scale PR campaign to promote the progress in Iraq and convince the American public not to focus on the increasing numbers of dead and wounded soldiers. But rather, Bush insists that all of this carnage "indicates that our strategy is working" and is "a sign of progress in Iraq."

Now for those of you not used to the Bush "logic," you might think that more U.S. soldiers getting killed was, well . . . bad. But no, in the down-is-up world of the Bush administration, more U.S. soldiers getting killed means that the Iraqis are "desperate" and soon the war will be over (for the second time, but who's counting). Using this same Bush "logic" the fact that the Iraqis are attacking our soldiers more frequently and with more deadly weapons is also a sign that the Iraqi resistance is wearing down. Again, many of you non-military types might think that these could be signs that the Iraqi resistance was getting stronger.

Oh, no, no. The pentagon assures us that the attackers are indeed "desperate" and "they know that the end is near." How does the pentagon come to this conclusion? Well, if you guessed, "because the attacks are more coordinated and sophisticated," you are catching on. That's right, those are the words the Bush Pentagon used to describe the attackers. Until now you probably had not associated the words "sophisticated" and "coordinated" with people who were on their last legs. That is because you don't know the Iraqis like the Bush Pentagon does.

In fact the Bush Pentagon is so knowledgeable about the Iraqis that they have even been able to instantaneously determine an attacker's motive. For example, shortly after Iraqis attacked a group of helicopters near Wolfowitz's helicopter group, the Bush Pentagon declared that the Iraqis were not trying to attack Wolfowitz. Hmmm . . . you might think that if the Pentagon had intelligence that good, it would have prevented the attack in the first place.

Well, no matter, because a few hours later, the hotel Wolfowitz was sleeping in, was hit by over a dozen rocket attacks. Again, the Bush Pentagon knew exactly what these Iraqis were up to. The Iraqi's were not trying to kill Wolfowitz. Nope. According to the Bush Pentagon, the Iraqi attackers were mad that the US forces had opened a new bridge in Baghdad. You see, according to the Bush Pentagon, the Iraqi's needed to attack the heavily guarded hotel where Wolfowitz was, instead of attacking the more lightly guarded bridge, in