Too Many Reasons

Pro-Bush Group Now Pro-Kerry

October 27, 2004
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact
Website: http://www.yesbushcan.com

Act: http://www.yesbushcan.com/act.shtml

BUSH CAMPAIGN GROUP ENDORSES KERRY
"Yes, Bush Can" now says "no, Bush can't!"

Yes, Bush Can, an independent group dedicated to communicating Bush policies directly to the public, has abandoned its campaign and is officially endorsing John Kerry for President.

Before changing sides, the Yes, Bush Can team drove around the country supporting the President in a campaign bus they had equipped with sound and light systems, confetti cannons, and various props and costumes. They gave dozens of stump speeches, distributed campaign videos and "USA Patriot Pledges," and performed patriotic songs to audiences across the country.

Last week, the group officially split with Bush. "In the course of our travels, we ended up learning more about Bush's policies than he wanted us to know," said Harmon Spellmeyer, one of the Yes, Bush Can team. "We came to see that this administration is a catastrophe for most people."

Before breaking with Bush, the Yes, Bush Can team worked earnestly to support him. They went to the Pacific Northwest to promote Bush's Healthy Forests Initiative--and discovered it was enabling the logging industry to cut down our last old-growth forests. They visited a nuclear power plant in Ohio to promote Bush's domestic security policies--and found no one in the guard booth to meet them. In western Pennsylvania, while promoting the President's energy policy, they learned that it allows coal emissions which kill 23,000 people a year. Finally, while defending Bush's war on terrorism, they found out that even Donald Rumsfeld feels the Iraq War has made the world a more dangerous place.

After many similar discoveries and much internal turmoil, the Yes, Bush Can group arrived at the difficult conclusion that they could not continue their work. At a press conference Tuesday, in order to demonstrate how profoundly they are rejecting their former boss's ideas and policies, they defaced and abandoned the campaign bus they had purchased and outfitted.

Until the election, the former Bush campaigners will be doing all they can to make sure that Bush is prevented from winning the presidency. They will be joining many thousands of others in going door-to-door to "get out the vote" in cities throughout Florida--beginning with Jacksonville, a mostly Black city where 11,000 votes were never counted in 2000. (Statewide, 179,000 votes weren't counted, more than half of them Black. 90% of Blacks voted for Gore.)

http://www.yesbushcan.com

100,000 Dead Iraqi Civilians

Sarah Boseley, health editor
Friday October 29, 2004
The Guardian

About 100,000 Iraqi civilians - half of them women and children - have died in Iraq since the invasion, mostly as a result of airstrikes by coalition forces, according to the first reliable study of the death toll from Iraqi and US public health experts.

The study, which was carried out in 33 randomly-chosen neighbourhoods of Iraq representative of the entire population, shows that violence is now the leading cause of death in Iraq. Before the invasion, most people died of heart attacks, stroke and chronic illness. The risk of a violent death is now 58 times higher than it was before the invasion.

READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE AT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1338749,00.html...

Republicans celebrate their incompetence

Borrowed words from DailyKos...

No surprise, but the Bush people are giddy as can be that they've failed to capture or kill Osama.

"We want people to think 'terrorism' for the last four days," said a Bush-Cheney campaign official. "And anything that raises the issue in people's minds is good for us."

He called it "a little gift," saying it helps the President but doesn't guarantee his reelection.

What Bush Sr Really Thought of Junior's Iraq Invasion

BUSH GHOST WRITER SHOWS TRUTH ABOUT FATHER AND SON

Mickey Herskowitz - a ghost writer for both George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush - has revealed startling information about both men, which he learned from extensive candid conversations with the 41st and the 43rd presidents. Herskowitz revealed the information in a series of interviews with investigative reporter Russ Baker, which Baker tape recorded.[1]

Baker's article reveals that "in 2003, Bush's father indicated to [Herskowitz] that he disagreed with his son's invasion of Iraq."[2]

George W. Bush was reluctant to talk to Herskowitz about his National Guard service. But Bush did tell him "that after transferring from his Texas Guard unit two-thirds through his six-year military obligation to work on an Alabama political campaign, he did not attend any Alabama National Guard drills at all, because he was 'excused.'"[3] Bush's comments to Herskowitz "directly contradicts his public statements that he participated in obligatory training with the Alabama National Guard."[4]

According to Herskowitz, "two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about attacking Iraq."[5] In 1999, Bush said to Herskowitz, "My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade.... if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."[6]

Sources:

1. "Bush Wanted To Invade Iraq If Elected in 2000," Russ Baker, 10/27/04, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1192992&l=65896.
2. Ibid., http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1192992&l=65896.
3. Ibid., http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1192992&l=65896.
4. Ibid., http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1192992&l=65896.
5. Ibid., http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1192992&l=65896.
6. Ibid., http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1192992&l=65896.

Visit Misleader.org for more about Bush administration distortion.

George W. Bush speaks for himself

"A political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your Commander in Chief."
- George W. Bush, Wednesday Oct 27th, 2004

Thanks to the Texans for Truth / VideoVote.org, you can now a watch a video of George W. Bush giving a one-fingered salute to the American people.

This is probably the most honest statement he's ever made.

100 Facts and 1 Opinion

The Nation magazine has assembled an excellent downloadable document entited "100 Facts and 1 Opinion: The Non-Arguable Case Against The Bush Administration."

I'd encourage you download this, and make many copies. Put them in public libraries, coffee shops, airports, laundromats, and other areas where people converge.

http://www.thenation.com/special/pdf/100facts.pdf

Des Moines endorsement of Kerry

Yes, Kerry is liberal. But what's to fear from a liberal president? That he would run big deficits? That he would increase federal spending? That he would expand the power of the federal government over individuals' lives? Nothing Kerry could do could top what President Bush has already done in those realms.

Kerry is not the stereotypical liberal in any case. According to the "Almanac of American Politics," Kerry is "more respectful of economic free markets" and more inclined to an expansionist foreign policy than other liberal Democrats. He has been a champion of small business. He was an early supporter of the conservative Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit-reduction act.

An overview of Kerry's 20 years in the Senate shows a conscientious lawmaker, popular with the home-state voters. Kerry's legislative interests have run to investigating government wrongdoing, strengthening law enforcement, securing health care for children and preventing nuclear proliferation. He has a strong record on the environment.

READ THE WHOLE EDITORIAL AT:
http://www.dmregister.com

Ten Reasons America Needs a Change

Published on Thursday, October 21, 2004 by Ted Rall

The Case Against Bush
Ten Reasons America Needs a Change
by Ted Rall

George W. Bush has been a busy boy these past four years. Because his Administration's policies are so radical and his attempts to change our country so far-reaching, it is sometimes difficult to remember them all. Here's a summary of why Bush and his gang of bloodthirsty corporate goons must go; voters may take them along to the polls to help them cast their ballots.

1. He stole the 2000 election. Voting to "reelect" an illegitimate commander-in-chief who seized power by judicial coup d'état is a tacit endorsement of how he got into the White House in the first place. How the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Bush v. Gore is irrelevant. As a federal court, the five runaway Supreme Court justices had no right to agree to hear the case. Under our system of government, elections--and election disputes--fall under state jurisdiction. Their decision to take the case, the way they fixed the outcome in Bush's favor, and Bush's willingness to assume the presidency extraconstitutionally are outrages that no patriotic American, even if they agree with his policies, can forgive.

2. He politicized 9/11. During the early days after the attacks on New York and Washington, a stunned nation came together to mourn, and to assess the motivations of the 19 men who despised us so much they were willing to commit suicide as mass murderers to drive home the point. Rather than channel our newfound solidarity into positive initiatives, however, Bush used 9/11 to push for the USA Patriot Act, fast-track signing authority on free trade, tax cuts for the wealthy, lax regulations for polluters and a multitude of items from the partisan Republican Party wish list. He portrayed Democrats and others who disagreed with him as un-American traitors.

3. He let the terrorists get away while giving them a payraise. The 9/11 hijackers were Egyptians and Saudis recruited by an Egyptian group, Islamic Jihad, with funding from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, some of whom received training at camps which were mostly in Pakistan, all of which were funded by Pakistani secret intelligence. Osama bin Laden, who may have funded all or part of the operation via Al Qaeda, was in Pakistan on 9/11. So who does Bush go after? Afghanistan, at best a back lot of Pakistani-backed Islamists and Iraq--which had nothing to do with 9/11. And what does he do about our real enemies in Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia? He sells them more weapons. Egypt becomes the second largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid after Israel, collecting over $2 billion annually. Pakistan, ruled by a pro-Taliban general who jailed and tortured his democratically elected predecessor, is encouraged to develop its nascent nuclear capabilities. The 3,000 victims of 9/11 remain unavenged--and the stage is set for future attacks.

4. He murdered nearly 100,000 people. The war in Afghanistan killed at least 10,000 civilians and 20,000 Afghan soldiers (of which 10,000 were POWs allegedly massacred by Northern Alliance soldiers as U.S. Special Forces troops supervised the slaughter.) As of three weeks after the fall of Baghdad, General Tommy Franks estimated Iraqi dead at 30,000 civilians and 30,000 Iraqi soldiers, men who were fighting to defend their country from a hostile invasion army. At least 10,000 more civilians and 5,000 Iraqi resistance soldiers have died since then. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq have anything to do with the war on terrorism, which has yet to start. Both wars were waged to expand American military and economic hegemony and Dick Cheney's policy of "total energy dominance" over oil and natural gas resources. The world would be safer if Charles Manson, a mere amateur killer by comparison, were released and Bush was sitting in prison.

5. He bankrupted the treasury. When Bush took the oath of office in January 2001, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office projected a surplus of $5 trillion over the next ten years. Now, after two expensive wars of aggression and two series of extravagant tax cuts for the ultrarich--including the elimination of inheritance taxes on multimillionaires' estates--the federal budget is facing a $5 trillion shortfall. That's a $10 trillion net deficit--ten times more than the Reagan deficit that took Clinton his entire tenure to pay off--for giveaways to Bush-connected defense contractors like Halliburton and a fraction of one percent of wealthy individuals. Most Americans will get nothing out of this but the bill which, if history serves a guide, won't be repaid until our children are dead. Goodbye national healthcare, sayonara help with college tuition. Bush has stolen our future.

6. He threw thousands of innocent people into concentration camps. Drawing from another of fascism's greatest hits, Bush used his fictional war on terrorism as a lame pretext to throw thousands of Muslims and Arabs into a new gulag archipelago spanning the globe from secret CIA-run prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq--including the infamous Abu Ghraib--to INS detention centers in Brooklyn to the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Detainees caught in battle were denied their Geneva Convention rights as POWs, tortured and even murdered. Illegal immigrants who should have been deported were jailed indefinitely without access to attorneys, or visits from family. In the ultimate Orwellian twist, they were turned into "unpersons"; even their names were withheld from the media. Any president who endorses such atrocities, as Bush has repeatedly done in speeches, is against everything that America purports to stands for. Bush has even signed a secret directive authorizing himself with the right to assassinate anyone, anywhere--including American citizens--as "enemy combatants."

7. We are more feared than Al Qaeda. Bush's radical new policy of "preemption"--a self-ascribed right to invade other countries based on a presumed hunch--has terrorized then international community. Even though they have never threatened us, nations like Iran and Syria wonder whether or not Bush will invade them next--and are racing to develop nuclear weapons to protect themselves from the U.S. threat. Our traditional allies, who still want to engage themselves with the rest of the world, have been forced to distance themselves from our bull-in-a-china-shop foreign policy. We, not Islamist terrorists, are the world's most feared power. We are feared, which is why we are hated. Because we are hated, we are in greater danger.

8. Bush has done nothing to improve the economy. At one of the presidential debates, Bush was asked what he would tell someone who had lost their job to outsourcing overseas. He answered that the unemployed had received their $300 tax cuts, and that within five years his education policies would start to help children. The truth is, Bush did nothing to jumpstart the weak post-dot-com economy he inherited in 2000. Like most Republicans, he favors high unemployment as a way to keep labor week and salaries cheap. A Bush victory would ensure more of the same--fewer jobs, lower salaries, reduced unemployment benefits. A president can do a lot to stimulate the economy: jobs programs funded by the government, tax cuts for the working class. But Bush won't act because it would run counter to his ideological beliefs.

9. Bush will appoint the next Supreme Court justice. Whether they're values issues like abortion or gay marriage, or the next election dispute, the Supreme Court is balanced on the razor's edge between reason and right-wing fascism. Sandra Day O'Connor and William Rehnquist, who originally intended to step down during the last four years but evidently decided not to do so because of Bush's lunacy, are over 80 years old. They may not last another four years. We can't let Bush have the chance to appoint their successors.

10. We deserve a president who can speak English and doesn't look like a chimpanzee. John Kerry is a far from ideal prospect but he's a huge leap forward from an evolutionary standpoint.

Ted Rall is the author of two new books, "Wake Up, You're Liberal!: How We Can Take America Back From the Right" and "Generalissimo El Busho: Essays and Cartoons on the Bush Years."

© 2004 Ted Rall

Bush's Test Score

Bush nixes Muslim peacekeepers for Iraq

President George W. Bush rebuffed a plan last month for a Muslim peacekeeping force that would have helped the United Nations organize elections in Iraq, according to Saudi and Iraqi officials.

As a result, the UN continues to have a skeletal presence in Iraq, with only four staff members working full time on preparing for elections set for the end of January. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has refused to establish a new UN headquarters in Baghdad unless countries commit troops for a special force to protect it.

Saudi leaders, including Crown Prince Abdullah, personally lobbied Bush in July to sign off on the plan to establish a contingent of several hundred troops from Arab and Muslim nations. Abdullah discussed the plan in a 10-minute phone conversation with Bush on July 28 after meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell, according to Saudi officials familiar with the negotiations.

Diplomats said Annan accepted the plan. But the Bush administration objected because the special force would have been controlled by the UN instead of by U.S. military officers who run the Multi-National Force in Iraq. Muslim and Arab countries refused to work under U.S. command, and the initiative died in early September.

READ THE REST AT:
newsday.com

A tip of the hat goes out to Daily Kos.

Lies Bush Told During Wednesday's Debate

Democrats.com, 10/14/04
BUSH LIE - 'As a result of ...ridding the Taliban out of
Afghanistan, the Afghan people had elections...'
FACT - The US has NOT rid Afghanistan of the Taliban. They
are very much still in Afghanistan, and have posed a major threat both
to the Afghanistan government and to the recent elections:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1512&ncid=731&e=2&u=/afp/20040916/wl_afp/afghanistan_vote_attacks

BUSH LIE - 'Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not
worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those
exaggerations.'
FACT - Transcript of Bush press conference, March 13,
2003: Q: Mr. President, in your speeches now, you rarely talk or
mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that? [...] BUSH: ... I don't know
where he is. Nor -- you know, I just don't spend that much time on him
really... I truly am not that concerned about him. "

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/10/con04436.html

BUSH LIE - 'Most of the tax cuts went to low- and
middle-income '
FACT - Tables of US tax data compiled by the Tax Policy
Center shows that the smallest proportion or the tax cuts, in terms of
after tax change in income, went to Americans making less than $75,000
per year, while the lions share went to those making over $500,000 per
year.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/TaxModel/tmdb/TMTemplate.cfm?DocID=458&topic2ID=40&topic3ID=57

BUSH LIE - ''You've got more money in your pocket as a result
of the tax relief we passed. A family of four making $40,000 received
about $1,700 in tax relief.'
FACT - Since 2001, because infation has risen faster than
salaries, the average "spending power" income for American
workers fell by 1.7%. So take off $680 per year for your family of 4's
$40,000.

http://www.johnkerry.com/pdf/pr_2004_0614.pdf

BUSH LIE -  'Vaccine manufacturers are worried about
getting sued, and therefore they have backed off from providing this
kind of vaccine.'
FACT - Vaccine makers are protected from all vaccine
lawsuits except those in which fraud and intentional wrongdoing are
shown. ."Vaccine manufacturers and others are sheltered from
product liability lawsuits by a special 1986 act of Congress. (See the
US Code 42 USC 300aa for details.)

http://assembler.law.cornell.edu/uscode/search/display.html?terms=vaccine%20liability%20&url=/uscode/html/uscode42/usc_sec_42_00000300--aa023-.html

BUSH LIE - 'Three-quarters of Al Qaida leaders have been
brought to justice.'
FACT - The absence of any explanation [for this estimate]
as well as the timing, prompted some counterterrorism experts to
deride the figure as "meaningless" and predict the revision
could fuel allegations that the administration is massaging terrorism
data for political purposes.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5945061/site/newsweek

BUSH LIE - 'Veterans are getting very good health care under
my administration.'
FACT - In an hour-long "Primetime Thursday"
investigation, Diane Sawyer uncovers disturbing new information about
quality of care and questionable management practices at some of
America's veterans' hospitals.

http://www.vvaindiana.org/News/hidden04-07-04.html

150 Renowned Business School Professors Criticize Bush

Profs Criticize Bush in Letter
By DANIEL J. HEMEL, Harvard Crimson Staff Writer

More than 50 tenured and emeritus professors from Harvard Business School told President Bush to roll back his administration’s massive tax cuts and stem the growth of the federal budget deficit in a harshly worded letter released late Monday night.

“[Y]our policy of slashing taxes—primarily for those at the upper reaches of the income distribution—has not worked,” the professors wrote to Bush.

Earlier on Monday, President Bush signed the fourth major tax cut bill since he took office. Combined, the four packages are estimated to reduce federal revenues by nearly $1.9 trillion over the next decade.

The 824-word letter, posted online at www.openlettertothepresident.org, marked a ringing condemnation of presidential policies from the faculty of Bush’s alma mater. Bush received a master’s of business administration from Harvard in 1975.

After organizers of the letter appealed to colleagues from other schools to join the open letter effort Friday evening, nearly 100 non-Harvard professors signed on in less than 72 hours.

The list of signatories includes two Nobel laureates—Harvard’s McArthur University Professor Robert C. Merton and Stanford emeritus professor William F. Sharpe—as well as two Pulitzer prize winners.

Louis T. Wells, who holds the Johnson chair in International Management at Harvard, said the organizers of letter hope that signatories’ stature will influence powerful decision-makers in politics and business.

“These are very well-known management gurus,” Wells said. “They had thousands of students who are now in very important positions. The goal is to get their attention.”

David A. Moss, who holds the McLean chair in business administration at Harvard, said the letter is “a critique of economic policy as it now stands and an expression of concern about where it seems to be going”—not an implicit endorsement of the Democratic platform.

But the professors warned that the prospect of Bush’s reelection in November could deepen the nation’s fiscal woes.

“[T]he economic proposals you have suggested for a potential second term—from diverting Social Security contributions into private accounts to making the recent tax cuts permanent—only promise to exacerbate the crisis by further narrowing the federal revenue base,” the professors wrote.

The professors warned that deficits were “politically addictive” but economically disastrous. They said that federal debt could ratchet up interest rates and set off a new round of inflation.

“If your economic advisers are telling you that these deficits can be defeated through further reductions in tax rates, then you need new advisers,” the professors said.

The letter also raises concerns over the widening income gap between rich and poor households. “[W]hen inequality becomes extreme, it can be socially corrosive and economically dysfunctional,” the professors wrote. “We don’t know where the breakpoint is for the U.S., but we would rather not find out.”

Professors who signed the letter said they hoped their effort would spur voters to focus on economic issues as well.

“The newspapers have not covered economic policy as much as maybe the should have,” Moss said.

Wells said the outpouring of support for the letter from his colleagues would help to erase the Business School’s reputation as a politically right-of-center institution.

He said the “traditional view” of the school is that it’s a conservative breeding ground, but that perception is “just not true.”

“It is the West Point of capitalism, but people aren’t as conservative as the image is,” Wells said.

Organizers of the letter decided they would only allow tenured and emeritus professors to sign. Moss said the move was designed to avoid situations in which tenured professors would encourage junior faculty to join the open letter effort. “Requests from senior professors can seem like they have some sort of pressure attached,” Moss said.

Wells said that no business school resources were used in the open letter effort, and that professors who signed represent only themselves—not their institutions.

Wells said that organizers are still accepting further signatures from senior faculty.

The White House and the Bush-Cheney campaign did not respond to repeated calls from The Crimson requesting comment yesterday.

READ THE LETTER AT:
www.openlettertothepresident.org ?

Top Ten Cheney Lies

TOP TEN CHENEY LIES OF THE VICE-PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE 
Democratic National Committee, 10/6/04

LIE # 1: I Have Never Met Edwards Before

LIE # 2: Cheney Claimed He Had Never Linked Iraq and 9/11

LIE # 3: The Khan Smuggling Network has been Shutdown

READ ALL 10 LIES AT:

http://www.democrats.org/news/200410060007.html

While you're at it, be sure to check Dick Cheney's recommendation of checking out FactCheck.com for accurate information about Halliburton dealings... or was that FactCheck.org ?

How the White House Embraced Disputed Arms Intelligence

By DAVID BARSTOW, WILLIAM J. BROAD and JEFF GERTH
Published: October 3, 2004

In 2002, at a crucial juncture on the path to war, senior members of the Bush administration gave a series of speeches and interviews in which they asserted that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program. Speaking to a group of Wyoming Republicans in September, Vice President Dick Cheney said the United States now had "irrefutable evidence" - thousands of tubes made of high-strength aluminum, tubes that the Bush administration said were destined for clandestine Iraqi uranium centrifuges, before some were seized at the behest of the United States.

Those tubes became a critical exhibit in the administration's brief against Iraq. As the only physical evidence the United States could brandish of Mr. Hussein's revived nuclear ambitions, they gave credibility to the apocalyptic imagery invoked byPresident Bush and his advisers. The tubes were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs," Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, explained on CNN on Sept. 8, 2002. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

But almost a year before, Ms. Rice's staff had been told that the government's foremost nuclear experts seriously doubted that the tubes were for nuclear weapons, according to four officials at the Central Intelligence Agency and two senior administration officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity. The experts, at the Energy Department, believed the tubes were likely intended for small artillery rockets.

The White House, though, embraced the disputed theory that the tubes were for nuclear centrifuges, an idea first championed in April 2001 by a junior analyst at the C.I.A. Senior nuclear scientists considered that notion implausible, yet in the months after 9/11, as the administration built a case for confronting Iraq, the centrifuge theory gained currency as it rose to the top of the government.

Senior administration officials repeatedly failed to fully disclose the contrary views of America's leading nuclear scientists, an examination by The New York Times has found. They sometimes overstated even the most dire intelligence assessments of the tubes, yet minimized or rejected the strong doubts of nuclear experts. They worried privately that the nuclear case was weak, but expressed sober certitude in public.

One result was a largely one-sided presentation to the public that did not convey the depth of evidence and argument against the administration's most tangible proof of a revived nuclear weapons program in Iraq.

Today, 18 months after the invasion of Iraq, investigators there have found no evidence of hidden centrifuges or a revived nuclear weapons program. The absence of unconventional weapons in Iraq is now widely seen as evidence of a profound intelligence failure, of an intelligence community blinded by "group think," false assumptions and unreliable human sources.

READ THE WHOLE STORY AT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/international/middleeast/03tube.html?oref=login&pagewanted=1&oref=regil

Dick Cheney in 1992

"I would guess if we had gone into Iraq I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home.

And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq."

Then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney delivered this speech to Seattle’s Discovery Institute in August 1992, 18 months after Operation Desert Storm. A tip of the hat goes out to Joel Connelly of Seattle Post-Intelligencer for remembering this speech, and The American Prospect for recycling it.

GO TO THE SOURCE AT:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/192828_joel29.html
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/

State of the Bush

Iraqi civilian fatalities: Uncertain, but at least 12,976

Iraqi military fatalities: Uncertain, several thousand

Coalition fatalities: 1198

U.S. fatalities: 1060

U.S. fatalities in September: 80 (tied for 3rd highest month and highest since May)

U.S. wounded (according to Dept. of Defense): 7032

Number of Weapons of Mass Destruction found: Zero

A tip of the hat to Dally Kos .

Bush Ain't No Cowboy

by Erik Baard, The Village Voice, 9/28/04

George W. Bush is a fake cowboy. From media accounts, you'd reckon that the president was a buckaroo to the bones. He plays up the image, big-time, with $300 designer cowboy boots, a $1,000 cowboy hat, and his 1,600-acre Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, Texas. He guns his rhetoric with frontier lingo, saying that he'll "ride herd" over ornery Middle Eastern governments and "smoke out" enemies in wild mountain passes. He branded Saddam Hussein's Iraq "an outlaw regime" and took the vanquished dictator's pistol as a trophy. As for Osama bin Laden, Bush declared, "I want justice. And there's an old poster out West, I recall, that says, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.' " Britain's liberal newspaper The Guardian noted that "such language feeds the image overseas of Mr. Bush as a hopelessly inarticulate, trigger-happy cowboy."

But liberals from both coasts and Europeans who derisively call Bush a "cowboy" foolishly insult not Bush, but one of America's prime ennobling myths. Instead of ridiculing the myth exploited by George W. Bush, they may want to measure him against it.

This is about more than having a big ranch. Like the knight, the cowboy is an ideal to which people aspire, Wheeler says, regardless of its mundane historical origins. And Autry's code still carries resonance in red states. Voters there, including the Wild West swing states of Colorado and Nevada, might want to think twice about returning a soft-handed wannabe to the White House. Here's how Bush stacks up against the Cowboy Code:

1 The Cowboy must never shoot first, hit a smaller man, or take unfair advantage.
2 He must never go back on his word, or a trust confided in him.
3 He must always tell the truth.
4 He must be gentle with children, the elderly, and animals.
5 He must not advocate or possess racially or religiously intolerant ideas.
6 He must help people in distress.
7 He must be a good worker.
8 He must keep himself clean in thought, speech, action, and personal habits.
9 He must respect women, parents, and his nation's laws.
10 The Cowboy is a patriot.

READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE AT:
http://www.villagevoice.com/print/issues/0439/baard.php