Return of the Living Dead Revisited

Back in 1985, one movie that provided me with a lot of entertainment was a cheesy little zombie movie called "The Return of the Living Dead." Dan O'Bannon, one of the original writers for George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead," the classic zombie film of 1968, decided to have some fun with the concept, so he created this movie that took some funny liberties with the horror genre. Unlike the original, ultra-serious black and white shocker, this update was an outrageous full-color comedy that utilized a rock and roll soundtrack, and naked girl zombie with an punk rock attitude. When a couple of bumbling idiots at medical supply warehouse accidentally unleashed a highly-experimental gas into the atmosphere, corpses were transformed into animated zombies, looking for their favorite meal- human brains. Massive chaos took place as the zombies overwhelmed the living, killing people for food. As police were sent to subdue these vicious zombies, the officers were rapidly killed and consumed by the living dead.

Discovering an easy way to have their food delivered, the zombies entered the patrol cars of the dead policemen, and made a simple request- "Send more cops."

I can't help but think about the parallels of this movie and the current situation in Iraq. Here's part of a message I received on Tuesday from the folks at ActForChange.com that inspired my recollection of the zombie movie:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Heavy fighting has begun again in Fallujah and the Shiite holy city of Najaf. The fighting is likely to be so brutal that we will destroy the cities in order to save them. And it seems certain that hundreds of American soldiers will die and thousands of Iraqis - both insurgents and civilian bystanders - will die uncounted.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. Special Envoy to Iraq, is hard at work attempting to piece together a coalition government that can take sovereignty from the United States. He has argued that this is not possible if American troops go on the offensive again. There must be a political solution, and the negotiations now under way must be given sufficient time to succeed.

The attacks on Najaf and Fallujah will serve no one except the most extreme elements, cost lives unnecessarily, and work against the Bush Administration's stated goal of transferring power to an interim government on June 30th.

http://act.actforchange.com/cgi-bin7/DM/y/mYo70Geq7g0Kt50mN20B6

http://www.actforchange.com

Blame Bush for What Came After 9/11

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Hear no evil, read no evil, speak drivel

Bush's press conference shows just how ill-informed he is about Iraq
Sidney Blumenthal
April 15, The Guardian

"On April 21 1961, President Kennedy held a press conference to answer questions on the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban exiles that he had approved. "There's an old saying," he said, "that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan ... I am the responsible officer of the government and that is quite obvious."

"On Wednesday, President Bush held only his third press conference and was asked three times whether he accepted responsibility for failing to act on warning before September 11. "I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn't [sic] yet," he said. "I just haven't - you just put me under the spot here and maybe I'm not quick - as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one."

"Bush's press conference was the culmination of his recent efforts to staunch the political wounds of his bleeding polls since the 9/11 commission began public hearings and violence spiralled in Iraq. Bush had tried to divert blame by declaring that the August 6 memo he was forced to declassify at the commission's insistence contained no "actionable intelligence", even though it specifically mentioned the World Trade Centre and Washington as targets.

"Bush, in fact, does not read his President's Daily Briefs, but has them orally summarised every morning by the CIA director, George Tenet. President Clinton, by contrast, read them closely and alone, preventing any aides from interpreting what he wanted to know first-hand. He extensively marked up his PDBs, demanding action on this or that, which is almost certainly the likely reason the Bush administration withheld his memoranda from the 9/11 commission.

"'I know he doesn't read,' one former Bush national security council staffer told me. Several other former NSC staffers corroborated this. It seems highly unlikely that he read the national intelligence estimate on WMD before the Iraq war that consigned contrary evidence and caveats that undermined the case to footnotes and fine print. Nor is there any evidence that he read the state department's 17-volume report, The Future of Iraq, warning of nearly all the postwar pitfalls, that was shelved by the neocons in the Pentagon and Vice-President Cheney's office.

"Nor was Bush aware of similar warnings urgently being sounded by the military's top strategic analysts ..."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1192218,00.html

[Emphasis mine - N]

· Sidney Blumenthal is former senior adviser to President Clinton and Washington bureau chief of Salon.com

Sidney_Blumenthal@yahoo.com

From Nora at A-Changin' Times (ACT) http://achangintimes.com

How Bush Handled original BinLaden report

With a tip of the hat to Daily Kos, recycled info from Atrios:

For those who are a little fuzzy on their recent history, the timeline goes something like this:

August 6, 2001: Bush gets briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside US."

August 7, 2001: Bush begins month long vacation in Crawford, TX.

SOURCES:
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004_04_04_atrios_archive.html#108144035548015792

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/04/08/stem_cells/index_np.html

http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/08/06/bush.crawford/

13 Scandals of Bush

With a tip of the hat to Taegan Goddard's Political Wire, Dan Conley summarizes the key scandals of the Bush adminstration, as noted in in John Dean's book, "Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush."

The reason why I'm not interested in discussing the Veepstakes is that there's only one issue worth discussing from here on out in 2004 -- the defeat of George W. Bush. This man who insists on being called Mr. President even though he refuses to take responsibility like one must go down to defeat by the widest margin possible to avoid any opportunity for the GOP electoral thugs to steal another election.

To accomplish this, the anti-Bush forces need to focus on the public/private scandals bubbling under this White House. In his new book "Worse that Watergate", former Nixon White House counsel John Dean lists 11 scandals that could wreck the Bush Presidency. I'll throw in two more to make it an even Baker's Dozen. And here they are ...

1) Bush character issues. We've already had a whiff of these in election 2004 with the focus on Bush's national guard record. And the press (finally) reported on his DWI arrest the week before the 2000 election. But what about Bush drinking and drug use? Bush claims that he learned from the mistakes of his youth ... so why then doesn't a reporter have the guts to ask the obvious question: what did George W. Bush learn from using cocaine?

2) Bush business conduct. Martha Stewart was convicted on a far lesser abuse of our nation's securities laws than George W. Bush may have been guilty of in the late 80s when he sold $800,000 worth of Harken Oil stock only a week before bad economic numbers dropped the value of Harken stock by 40 percent. George Soros served on the board of Harken Oil back then and he's committed to dropping as much of his personal fortune necessary to independent groups to defeat Bush. Somehow I don't think we've heard the last of this story.

3) Dick Cheney's health records. Cheney has stonewalled for nearly four years now on his personal medical information ... and the little that has leaked out indicates that this is a man with serious, chronic heart problems that could manifest at any moment. Cheney's health itself is a problem, but the lengths that the White House has gone to cover up his medical history is the real scandal.

4) Cheney's past business dealings. If Bush's security law violations topped Martha Stewart, Cheney's may top Ken Lay's. Cheney cashed out of Halliburton just in time to avoid a crash in the Halliburton stock from $52 to the high teens. Why did this happen? Because Halliburton hid the costs of a merger with Dresser, which had more than a 100,000 asbestos claims against it when Halliburton purchased it -- something Cheney clearly knew about at the time. The SEC is currently investigating Halliburton and by extension Cheney. And oh by the way, the French government is also investigating whether Halliburton bribed foreign officials to gain new business.

5) Civil rights violations against anti-Bush protestors. The ACLU has sued the White House over heavy-handed tactics used against groups protesting Bush and Cheney appearances, including the use of the Secret Service to keep protestors away from the President. And Dean doesn't even mention the gestapo tactics used in Miami this winter to squelch anti-globalization rallies.

6) Bush's illegal executive order dismantling the Presidential Records Act. This one is a doozy -- Bush ordered a completely turnaround of the PRA that shielded Reagan, Bush I and Bush II records from the public eye. Oh, and what about Clinton records? The Bush administration had no qualms about selectively leaking information about Clinton's pardons in the early weeks of their Presidency.

7) The National Energy Policy records. Dean says the scandal isn't just the secret meetings, but it also extends to the campaign contributors who benefittted directly from this administration's executive orders not just in the Energy Bill, but also in securities, environmental, health and safety regulation. Paul Krugman mentioned one facet of this today in his column about mercury ground water deregulations.

8) The 9-11 commission. Did the White House have adequate information to stop an attack and if so, why didn't they do more? Alternatively, why didn't the White House respond to the U.S.S. Cole attack from 2000?

9) Continuation of Government. Did the White House hand pick hundreds of bedrock conservatives and form a secret government-in-waiting post 9-11 to rule the nation in case of a catastrophic attack? Crazy as it sounds, it appears that's exactly what the White House did ... and if they overly politicized COG and some of the government employees holed up for weeks post 9-11 ever talks, there could be a scandal there.

10) The Iraq War resolution. Dean insists that the White House violated the Iraq War resolution by never sending up a determination that Iraq both had weapons of mass destruction and a hand in the 9-11 attacks while also demonstrating that no diplomatic effort could bring about disarmament and regime change. If it can be proven that the White House knew very well that they had no proof of Iraqi WMDs, this would constitute perhaps the greatest violation of the U.S. Constitution and Presidential war powers in our history.

11) The Valerie Plame Affair. Dean says the exposure of Plame was more vicious and criminal than anything done in the Nixon White House. The question now is when did the White House start the leak cover up and how far did it go.

These are the Dean 11 scandals, I'll add two more:

12) Medigate. The Medicare actuary knew the cost of the Medicare "reform" bill would be hundreds of billions of dollars more than the Bush White House reported to Congress. When he wanted to come forward with this information, he claims his job was threatened. If true, how high does this threat go? The Bush White House's actions here show a contempt for Congress matched only by their war justification.

13) Electoral Theft. No, I'm not talking here about 2000, I'm talking about 2004 and the new touch-screen voting machines with no paper trail. We won't know if this is a real scandal until the election is over and normally I'd say that no White House would be crazy enough to try to steal a U.S. election. But these are not normal times and these aren't normal occupants of the White House.

So, these are the 13 issues for us to hammer on in the months ahead. Let the Kerry campaign stick to the issues and the high road, it's up to the rank and file to push these 13 questions and demand that reporters investigate them throughly. Will more questions emerge in the year ahead? Probably. Will some disappear, possibly.

But the truth must win out. Have heart -- even George HW Bush is now on record as opposing the Iraq War. By November, we might even discover that he voted for Al Gore.

UPDATE: And here's number 14 ... Bush using federal civil servants for political purposes.

SOURCES:
http://www.danconley.com/archives/000305.htm

http://www.politicalwire.com/

Bush on Being President

"I do not need to explain why I say things. — That's the interesting thing about being the President. — Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."

George W. Bush
(courtesy of Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, documented on CBS' 60 Minutes)

SOURCE:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/11/17/60minutes/main529657.shtml

Bush's Change of Heart

*Ø* Blogmanac April 1, 2004 | George W Bush's change of heart: plans Peace 'Imaginatorium'

A Blogmanac exclusive: full text of speech that rocked the world

US President stuns world: "We must find alternatives to war"

2004 The plenary session of the Fiji Summit was attended by 4,700 delegates who enjoyed the brilliant fireworks display put on for the occasion by the people of Jordan. After a moving rendition of Peace on Earth by several hundred international stars from the music world, to which the thousands of delegates sang along, President Bush's inspired television address to the world [excerpts below] was watched by the delegates and an estimated world audience of four billion people.

At the invitation of US President George W Bush, representatives of 190 countries had met in the South Pacific nation of Fiji for the inaugural Global Peace Imagination Summit. All the nations present pledged just 10 per cent of their defence budgets to fund Bush's new brainchild, the Global Peace Imaginatorium. Although the pledges are a mere fraction of national war chests, the resulting peace foundation is already bigger than any one institutional, business or national entity in the world. Pundits said that its very size will help protect it from pressures from the enormous world armaments industry.

Washington sources say that the purpose of the multi-trillion dollar institute will be to solicit from citizens of the world ideas for alternatives to war in cases in which conflicts arise. Suggestions, whether from professional conflict resolution practitioners, diplomats, academics, or ordinary citizens, are to be rewarded with cash disbursements. Every suggestion will be rewarded, and is then eligible for entry to higher levels of reward according to the judgment of panels of democratically elected representatives from all nations.

President Bush stunned the world with his televised address to the world, for which his government had set aside 25 billion dollars of armaments purchase money to promote, so scarcely a man, woman or child in the world did not know about the Summit nor Mr. Bush's speech. His opening remarks brought gales of laughter from the floor of the Summit. "I know a lot of people in the media think I'm nuts. Maybe you think I'm nuts," he said with a grin.

"Some members of my White House inner circle think I'm a bit nuts, too. Especially now.

"But ladies and gentleman, I don't think I've ever been so sane in my life! [Applause] The human race has chosen war as a means of settling disputes for thousands of years, and its time is over. It not only hasn't solved anything, but its consequences have gotten far worse. It's over. Finis. Kaput!

"A hundred years ago," he told the now silent crowd, "when armies collided in battle, about 10 per cent of the casualties were civilian and 90 per cent were combatants. Today, it's the other way round. The whole nature of warfare has changed, and no longer can we believe that the people who die or get burned and maimed in battle might in some way have to accept responsibility for their own actions. Today, the innocent are the main victims. Not only that, but our generals now sit in comfortable air-conditioned offices, nowhere near the field of battle, and make decisions on the deployment of weapons whose unspeakably tragic consequences they will never see, and that our grandparents could never have conceived of – weapons that can level vast areas of civilisation in one moment. We know in our hearts the difference between right and wrong, and this is wrong gentlemen, this is wrong.

"My friends," President Bush continued, "for a long time I myself mistakenly believed that war is all right. That it's OK. That it's 'patriotic'. I suppose it is because I had never been in one, who knows. Maybe it was just the culture I was brought up in, the movies and TV shows I watched and the books I read as a kid. Whatever the reason, like so many people, I had never really thought 'outside the square'. I saw some nation do something I didn't like, and I automatically thought of war as a solution.

"Then something big happened, ladies and gentlemen, and even now it makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. One night about ten days ago, I woke up at about 3 o'clock in the morning in a cold sweat, with some realizations running through my head – and I don't even quite know how to explain it, but somehow I knew that if we just tried to do things differently, we could actually do it. Suddenly I trusted people again. I trusted that people could solve the problems of people – and do it fast. All that what was needed was the will, a bit of money, and the encouragement of leaders. I thought, how can I even call myself a leader if I do not lead people into something new and better?

"I said to the First Lady, 'You know, I've been wrong. Almost all of us have been wrong. For thousands of years, we've all beeen wrong. And as President of the USA, I'm gonna come right out and say I was wrong. That we all have to do things differently, totally differently, from now on. No one else has as much of a chance to turn things around as me today, and I'm not going to squander this chance.' Laura looked at me a bit funny [audience laughs] but I think she knew deep down that something profound had happened to my thinking, and that maybe I was right. Maybe together, human beings could do it.

"Men and women of the world, I'm here tonight to tell you I was wrong: War is not the solution!"

"Men and women of the world, I'm here tonight to tell you I was wrong: War is not the solution!" President Bush paused at this point for 90 seconds of thunderous clapping. Following several minutes more of his speech, his concluding remark, met again with sustained applause that ended in a standing ovation, were these words, heard by two-thirds of the world's population:

"Men and women of Planet Earth: We can do this. We can put people on the moon, we can build the Internet, we can spend trillions and trillions of dollars on frivolous and evil things. Many nations represented tonight in this auditorium, including my own, can build – have built – weapons of mass destruction that can destroy the world many times over. Yet millions of people are starving and have no access to clean water. We have to stop this now; we can't say 'it's how things should be because they always were'. Enough is enough! We have the technology to do almost anything we can imagine.

"From this night onwards, we also have the technology of this wonderful Global Peace Imaginatorium to begin to help us clear the fog from our minds. Because, ladies and gentlemen, it is only our lack of imagination, and the fog in our minds, that has kept humankind in this tragic cycle of suffering since time began. Now we will make it an honor for a human being to come up with solutions, just as we will make it a disgrace to use the old methods and to be stuck in old thinking, like I was.

"The Imaginatorium will not stop war and create a new world, but it will foment ideas on how to do this – ideas that have been lacking. Ideas that no leader has ever before thought of asking you to think up. (I don't take the credit for this. Laura says it was the pizza I ate before going to bed.) [Laughter]

"My friends of all nations, all creeds and all races: now, having realized my own past errors of thought, I ask you to join with me to eradicate what is obsolete from our minds. Because it all comes from our minds. I know that now. As John Lennon and Yoko Ono put it so well way back when, "War is over. If you want it."

[Standing ovation]