Bush Scandals

ROTFL! Busheviks Warn of Democratic Scandals

Bob Fertik — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 14:23:08 -0400

The Pentagon Post gave Bush's former speechwriter David Frum prime op-ed real estate to warn against the possibility of Democratic crony capitalism:

"The government now owns a big stake in the nation's banking system. Trillions of dollars are now under direct government control. It's not wise to put that money under one-party control. It's just too tempting. You need a second set of eyes on that cash. You need oversight and accountability. Otherwise, you're going to wake up two years from now and find out that a Democratic president, a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House have been funneling a ton of that money to their friends and allies. It'll be a big scandal -- but it will be too late. The money will be gone.”

Scarecrow nails it:

the Republican Administration has been shoveling trillions out the door to their favored financial institutions in a desperate attempt not to hold their senior executives accountable for a world financial collapse.

I only wish it had occurred to us before how dangerous it was to have a single party with a rapacious ideology hold the entire federal government in a death grip. If only we had been more vigilant about leaving “oversight and accountability” to those who saw nothing wrong with wasting the environment, starting unnecessary wars, ruining the economy, screwing the middle class, increasing poverty, putting millions at risk of losing their homes, jobs, retirements and health coverage while further enriching the already rich.

It would be such a comfort knowing that the Republican Party that did this to the country was now assigned the task of shielding us from further damage.

Memo to Frum: Take your failed Party and get lost. 40 years would be about right.

Beyond Boondoggles

dlindorff — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:23:21 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Critics of government get all worked up when Washington spends money
stupidly, or does something manifestly stupid. There was a even senator
from Wisconsin, William Proxmire, who used to hand out "Golden Fleece"
awards for such things.

The Pentagon's notorious $600 payments for toilet seats that were
$12 in local discount stores, or $434 paments for hammers that were $10
in the local hardware store were good examples of this.

But nobody seems to be screaming about the incredibly wasteful
rescue of AIG, on which the government has spent first $85 billion and
now another $37.5 billion.

Bad enough that the Treasury Department is pumping an astonishing
$123.5 billion into a private company to prop it up, but what no one
has mentioned is that at the time of the initial announcement of an
$85-billion bailout, the insurance giant's stock had crashed so far
that it could have been bought outright by the government for a scant
$7 billion! That's small change by today's standards.

For $123.5 billion, the taxpayers have gotten warrants that could,
if exercised, end up giving "us" 80 percent of the company, but if the
government had just gone ahead and bought 100 percent of AIG right
away, it would have only cost about five percent of that amount.

Talk about a "Golden Fleece" award!

The money is now flying so thick and fast--$700 billion here, $37.5
billion there, $25 billion to the auto industry, $900 billion to buy up
short term corporate debt, hundreds of billions of dollars more to buy
stakes in failing banks--that we've simply lost sight of what we the
taxpayers are getting for our money, or whether the government is even
bargaiining for good deals.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson reportedly came up with the initial
$700 billiion figure for the Wall Street bailout off the top of his
head, with the only consideration being that the number be large enough
to "shock" investors into feeling confident.

Before another dollar of borrowed cash is spent on this binge,
Congress should call urgent hearings to look into what's being paid and
what the taxpayers are getting for their money. Any deals--like the AIG
boondoggle--that were clearly bad should be halted and reconsidered.

My suspicion is that with AIG, ideology intruded. The Bush
administration doesn't want to be seen as simply nationalizing banks
and insurance companies--the kind of thing they condemn Venezuela's
Hugo Chavez or Cuba's Castro for doing. But they are doing that anyhow,
and on a much bigger scale than Chavez or Castro ever dreamed of--just
not overtly. And to avoid overt takeovers, they are spending many
multiples of hundreds of billions of dollars just taking over the
liabilities of companies that they could have taken over lock, stock
and barrel for a fraction of the cost.

Left out of consideration is the incredible carnage this is certain
to cause down the road. Every penny that is being spent on this rolling
bailout is borrowed money. As an NPR reporter quite accurately noted in
a report yesterday on Britain's colossal $900-billion bailout of UK
banks, that borrowed money will have to be repaid by taxpayers over
time, and will come at the expense of other things that the public
wants, like Britain's vaunted National Health Plan, education, etc.

We don't hear much about that on the reporting, even on NPR, about
the US bailout, but it is equally true here. The bailout is doing to
the nation's public funding in a few short weeks what Ronald Reagan and
his budget director David Stockman tried to do over the course of two
presidential terms off office: bankrupt the government to kill off
social spending.

As of this point, if all these allocated funds being thrown at
financial institutiions are spent, there will be no money left for
health care, education, infrastructure, environmental protection,
national parks, Social Security, welfare assistance, or critical things
like consumer protection and worker safety. Truth to tell, there won't
be any money left for the military either--probably the only good thing
you can say about this mess.

It's enough to make one think that this is all some final disastrous
plot by the Bush/Cheney administration to bring on a collapse of what
remnants were left of the old New Deal and Great Society programs
before leaving Washington. And that's not such a wild notion. The whole
eight years of Republican rule in Washington has been a giant wrecking
game.

If some KGB mastermind, back in the late 1960s (perhaps young Vlad
Putin?), had dreamed up a scheme to capture the child of a leading
American political family, and re-program him to become a kind of
"Manchurian Candidate" who would return and work his way into the
presidency, from which high office he would destroy the country, he
could not have accomplished more than President Bush has done.

The financial fiasco and the subsequent bailout boondoggle is the final blow--one from which the nation may well never recover.
____________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist.
His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006
and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

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Bush Exits with a Bang: Toxic Bailout and Two More Wars?

Heather Wokusch — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 16:53:09 -0400

The Bush administration is heading us towards more disaster with its 'toxic debt' bailout and destabilization of Pakistan and Iran. We can't afford to go down this road again. In this short video, Heather Wokusch provides background, context and ideas for taking action.

Links for sources cited in this video:

Bailout:

Crisis talks over $700B 'toxic debt' rescue plan

Bush: "The American people have got to know that I made this decision along with a lot of experts because it was necessary to protect them."

Pakistan:

Washington is Risking War with Pakistan

The American War Moves to Pakistan

Iran:

Preparing The Battlefield July 07, 2008

Dutch intel: US to strike Iran in coming weeks September 1, 08

Israel asks U.S. for arms, air corridor to attack Iran September 11, 08

U.S. to sell IAF smart bombs for heavily fortified targets September 14, 08

Bush could still attack Iran Sept 17 08

Did McCain Get An Alzheimer's Test?

Bob Fertik — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:30:51 -0400

Speaking about Russia's invasion of Georgia, John McCain actually said:

In the 21st century, nations don't invade other nations.

Umm John, have you forgotten 2003? That's not a rhetorical question - the earliest symptom of Alzheimer's is the loss of recent memories.

Has early Alzheimer's caused McCain to forget 2003? Add this "lost memory" to McCain's other "senior moments" like the 1993 division of Czechoslovakia and numerous campaign statements he can't remember and we're getting close to a clinical diagnosis.

There's also persistent talk of McCain taking a one-term pledge to avoid starting a second term at age 76. So here's a serious question: did McCain get an Alzheimer's test? At age 71, shouldn't he get one before he ends up like Ronald Reagan?

Bush/Cheney and special contracts with Big Oil in Iraq - ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!

seandiego — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:32:23 -0400

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE APPEARED IN THE SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE TODAY (7/2/08). THE AMERICAN PEOPLE MUST UNITE TO SHOW THE WORLD WE DID NOT SUPPORT OR APPROVE OF THE INJUSTICES OF THIS ADMINISTRATION AND THE CRIMES IT COMMITTED AGAINST IRAQ, THE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD. TO REGAIN OUR STATURE IN THE WORLD, WE MUST CHARGE BUSH AND CHENEY WITH WAR CRIMES BEFORE THE REST OF THE WORLD DOES IT FOR US. CONTACT YOUR CONGRESSPERSONS TODAY!

Opening Iraq's oil fields to Big Oil

By Bob Herbert
THE NEW YORK TIMES

July 2, 2008

It's getting harder and harder to remain deluded. With each day comes new facts to drag our heads out of the sand.

Two weeks ago, The New York Times reported that four Western oil giants were on the verge of signing no-bid contracts that would return them to Iraq, the third-most bountiful petroleum playground on the planet. It was the kind of news that big oil lives for.

Giddy executives singing “Oh Happy Day” could be heard in the corporate offices of Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP, which had been shut out of Iraq for three and a half decades.

We also learned this week that a group of American advisers, led by a team from the State Department, played a key role in drawing up the contracts between the companies and the Iraqi government. Chevron and several smaller oil companies also got contracts.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney, both former oil company executives, have long tried to tell us this war was about terrorism, about weapons of mass destruction, about bringing freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people, about anything but oil.

Said Bush: “We cannot wait for the final proof: the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

He didn't wait. It didn't matter that Saddam Hussein posed no imminent threat to the United States. Or that Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The troops were sent into battle in early 2003 and there is still, after more than five years and more than 4,000 American deaths, no end to the war in sight.

One of the starkest examples of U.S. priorities came during the eruption of looting that followed the fall of Baghdad. With violence and chaos all about, U.S. troops were ordered to protect one particularly treasured target – the Iraqi Oil Ministry. As David Rieff wrote in The New York Times Magazine in November 2003:

“This decision to protect only the Oil Ministry – not the National Museum, not the National Library, not the Health Ministry – probably did more than anything else to convince Iraqis uneasy with the occupation that the United States was in Iraq only for the oil.”

How convenient that the peculiar perspective of the oil-obsessed Bush administration can now be put to use advising the Iraqi government on its unusual no-bid contracts with big oil.

The contracts themselves are not huge. They are like the keys on a coveted ring that will begin opening the doors to Iraq's vast oil reserves. As the Times reported Monday, “At a time of spiraling oil prices, the no-bid contracts, in a country with some of the world's largest untapped fields and potential for vast profits, are a rare prize to the industry.”

A prize, yes. But at what cost?

In addition to the terrible toll of Americans and Iraqis killed and wounded, the war in Iraq has diverted attention and resources from critical problems here in the United States, where the housing market has been crippled, the stock market has tanked, gasoline has soared past $4 per gallon, unemployment is increasing and an extraordinary number of debt-ridden working families are staring into a financial abyss.

Even as oil companies are enjoying staggering profits, many Americans – in July! – are already worried sick about the potentially ruinous cost of heating their homes next winter.

And then there's the so-called war on terror.

The latest news is that al-Qaeda, the terror network that actually did attack the United States, has successfully regrouped in the tribal areas of Pakistan and has reconstituted its ability to institute terror attacks from the region.

For an administration joined at the hip to the oil industry, the lure of Iraq's enormous reserves was stronger even than the impulse to conquer an enemy that murdered more than 2,700 civilians on Sept. 11, a toll greater than the number of Americans killed by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.

Referring to al-Qaeda members who regrouped in Pakistan, the Times reported on Monday:

“Current and former military and intelligence officials said that the war in Iraq consistently diverted resources and high-level attention from the tribal areas. When American military and intelligence officials requested additional Predator drones to survey the tribal areas, they were told no drones were available because they had been sent to Iraq.”

Who knows how long it will be before the United States disengages in any significant way from Iraq. What you can take to the bank is that this country will not make any major advances in energy policy, in health coverage, in rebuilding its infrastructure, in improving its public schools or in curtailing runaway public and private debt until our open-ended commitment to this catastrophic multitrillion-dollar war comes to an end.

How long will it take before that finally sinks in?

The Bush Family's Bad Latin Real Estate Investment

dlindorff — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:43:41 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Back in late 2006, it was widely reported in the Latin American media that President Bush, or perhaps his old man, had bought a 100,000-acre farm in a remote area of Paraguay.

What struck people at the time was the choice of country. Paraguay, of course, has gained a certain Club Med status among the world's villains and criminal elements as the place to go when the law's on your tail. The country, ruled for six decades by the dictatorial and fascist Colorado Party of Gen. Alfredo Stroesser, an almost cartoon charicature of a Latin American dictator, has no extradition treaty with any nation.

That's why it has long harbored aging Nazis, bank robbers, and a string of ousted or retired Latin American dictators and their assistants over the years.

Given that President Bush, once he leaves office on January 20, 2009, will no longer have the diplomatic immunity conferred upon heads of state, or the Constitutional protection against indictment by domestic prosecutors, it makes sense that he would be looking for a safe haven from the long arm of the law.

After all, they guy is guilty of a huge laundry list of international crimes, from the Crime Against Peace and Conspiracy against Peace in the UN Charter, to Geneva Convention violations like approval of torture of prisoners, collective punishment of civilians, the killing of children and child soldiers, the failure to protect occupied citizens, the use of banned weapons, etc., etc., and also of domestic crimes, ranging from political use of government employees, conspiracy, treason, lying to federal officials, defrauding Congress, etc.

No wonder he wants to do what Klaus Barbie, Josef Mengele and Adolf Eichmann did, and hole up in Paraguay.

Only trouble is, Paraguay may not be such a safe haven for long.

Last month, a former Roman Catholic Bishop with leftist, populist tendencies, Fernando Lugo, surprised almost everyone in Paraguay, and no doubt President Bush, by winning the national presidential election, ousting the Colorado Party for the first time in 61 years. There is talk that among other things, Lugo is thinking of returning Paraguay to the community of nations, by signing some of those extradition agreements.

If he does that Bush may be stuck having to hide behind his rump squad of Secret Service agents down at the Crawford Ranch, hoping they can keep the process servers from Brattleboro and Marlboro, VT, with their war crimes arrest warrants, at bay.
__________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

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Bush Tied to Child Prostitution - Resignation or Impeachment Expected!

Bob Fertik — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 06:11:39 -0400

George Bush has been tied to a prostitution ring involving as many as 50,000 women and girls and is expected to resign or be impeached, according to Congressional sources.

The prostitutes, some as young as 13, are among the 1.2 million desperate Iraqis who fled to Syria after Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to the U.K. Independent.

Bush's invasion destroyed the Iraqi government and unleashed a wave of political and sectarian violence that has killed over 1 million Iraqis and forced 4 million to become refugees, according to the UN.

Facing starvation, as many as 50,000 women and girls have been forced into prostitution in Syria alone, according to Hana Ibrahim of the Women's Will Association.

"70 percent to 80 percent of the girls working this business in Damascus today are Iraqis," 23-year-old Abeer told the New York Times. "The rents here in Syria are too expensive for their families. If they go back to Iraq they'll be slaughtered, and this is the only work available."

According to the Times, "inexpensive Iraqi prostitutes have helped to make Syria a popular destination for sex tourists from wealthier countries in the Middle East. In the club's parking lot, nearly half of the cars had Saudi license plates."

Driving women and girls into prostitution violates numerous human rights agreements, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. George Bush himself denounced sex trafficking at the United Nations in 2003.

Bush's invasion of a country that posed no threat to the U.S. was illegal under both U.S. and international law, according to legal experts. Bush has been convicted of war crimes by citizen tribunals around the world, including New York, Paris, Tokyo, and Istanbul. Just las week, the towns of Brattleboro and Marlboro Vermont voted to indict and arrest Bush and Cheney.

In 2002 and 2003, Bush led a propaganda campaign to defraud Congress, the American people, and key allies into believing Iraq was a threat. Bush claimed Iraq had stockpiles of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons to use against the U.S., and was sharing them with Al Qaeda.

Speaking near Rochester NY, Bush later admitted, "See in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."

According to a recent study by the Center for Public Integrity, top Bush Administration officials told at least 935 lies about Iraq on 532 separate occasions. These included 259 lies by Bush, 254 lies by Secretary of State Colin Powell, 109 lies by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, 109 lies by Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, 56 lies by National Security Advisor Condi Rice, and 48 lies by Vice President Cheney.

The lies about Iraqi WMD's were manufactured by the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), which included the most senior White House staff: White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, Condi Rice, Stephen Hadley, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, Jim Wilkinson, Nick Calio, Michael Gerson, and Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby.

In July 2003, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson exposed Bush's lie that Iraq sought uranium from Niger in a New York Times op ed. Libby secretly sought retribution against Wilson by revealing the name of his wife, covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, to several reporters. The scandal led to the appointment of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who won conviction of Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice. Libby was sentenced to to 30 months in prison and fined $250,000, but his jail sentence was commuted by President Bush at the urging of Vice President Cheney to prevent Libby from telling Fitzgerald the truth.

According to George Mason, the "father of the Bill of Rights," it was unquestionably an impeachable offense for a President (or Vice President) to "pardon crimes which were advised by himself."

WHIG was chaired by Bush's propaganda mastermind Karl Rove, who admitted under harsh questioning at the University of Iowa on Monday, "I fully expect to be indicted by the end of the year."

After the invasion, 1,400 experts in the Iraq Survey Group scoured Iraq for WMD's but found none. Charles Duelfer wrote the ISG's final report in September 2004 and concluded Iraq ended its WMD program in 1991.

This publicly confirmed what the CIA had privately known since 1995, when Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Gen. Hussein Kamel, defected to Jordan and told the CIA he had personally overseen the complete destruction of Iraq's WMD after 1991 Gulf War.

In May 2005, the Times of London published the "Downing Street Memo" which revealed Bush's pre-war intelligence was a deliberate fraud, according to Sir Richard Dearlove, head of Britain's MI6 spy agency, who met with George Tenet in July 2002. "The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of invading Iraq, Dearlove told a secret meeting of Tony Blair's war cabinet on July 23, 2002, eight months before Bush invaded Iraq.

This publication of the "Downing Street Memo" led to widespread calls for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. John Conyers and other Democrats held preliminary impeachment hearings in the basement of the Capitol on June 16, 2005. In 2006, Conyers published his explosive findings in "George W. Bush Versus the U.S. Constitution: The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, Coverups in the Iraq War and Illegal Domestic Spying."

After Democrats won Congress in 2006, Conyers became Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and has met repeatedly with impeachment advocates. Despite widespread reports that Speaker Pelosi is blocking Conyers from starting impeachment, Conyers recently declared, "I don't know who's ever stopped me before, I don't know why Pelosi's going to stop me now."

In 2007, Rep. Dennis Kucinich introduced three Articles of Impeachment against Dick Cheney for his role in the Iraq War lies. Kucinich's bill, H.Res. 333, has 26 co-sponsors.

The bill was debated on the House floor last November the House voted 251-162 to refer it to the Judiciary Committee for further action, rather than kill the bill. (The bill was renamed to H.Res. 799.)

Last December, Rep. Robert Wexler and two other members of the House Judiciary Committee urged Conyers to begin hearings on the impeachment of Vice President Cheney. Wexler posted an online petition and collected over 230,000 signatures.

Rep. Kucinich ran for President in 2007 and his calls for impeachment were enthusiastically received by voters. Last week, Kucinich fended off a primary challenge in his Congressional district and is expected to introduce the first Articles of Impeachment against George Bush.

But some in Congress believe Bush and Cheney will resign before they are impeached. "When the American people finally learn the truth about Bush's crimes, Bush and Cheney will have to resign, just like Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew," said a key Congressional Democrat. "The pressure on Eliot Spitzer is nothing compared to what we'll see for Bush and Cheney," he added.

The latest polls by Newsweek and AP-Ipsos put Bush's approval rating at 30%, a record low. His disapproval rating is over 60%, a record high, and suggests more Americans now favor Bush's impeachment than in earlier polls which showed strong support for impeachment.

Hey Iowa, Only One Candidate Links Education with War Spending...

Heather Wokusch — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 02:42:08 -0500

“If we cut the Pentagon budget 15%, $75 billion will go into a universal pre-kindergarten program so our children ages 3, 4 and 5 will have access to full-time day care and more money would go into elementary and secondary education. Our college-age students need to know that with a Kucinich administration they're guaranteed a two- or four-year college, tuition free, and it'll be paid for by the government investing in our young people. That's the kind of approach I'll take to education.” - Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Oct 30, 2007, Democratic debate at Drexel University

In a Gallup poll released on December 10 2007, Education scored a respectable #12 for the issues determining Americans’ choice of president in 2008. Education even scored above Terrorism, Environmental Issues, Employment Issues and World Peace.

So it’s no wonder that Democratic presidential candidates have aggressively criticized No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the Bush administration’s disastrous excuse for an education policy.

Obama said the law was “demoralizing our teachers” and Clinton promised to “do everything I can as senator, but if we don’t get it done, then as president, to end the unfunded mandate known as No Child Left Behind.” Of the law’s emphasis on standardized testing, Edwards told Iowans, "You don’t make a hog fatter by weighing it.” But only one presidential candidate has connected the dots from Baghdad to our nation’s classrooms: Dennis Kucinich. In calling for 15% of the Pentagon’s budget to fund education instead, Kucinich stands alone in promising books, not Army boots, to the nation’s youth.

Doing the math on Bush’s education disaster is easy. Opinions may differ about the merits of NCLB, but on one point there is little disagreement - it hasn’t been funded properly.

Soon after signing NCLB into law in early January 2002, Bush released his 2003 education budget which not only cut 40 educational programs but also came up short on funding his own program.

As of 2004, Bush had allocated NCLB $27 billion less than Congress authorized, with programs for disadvantaged students underfunded by a full $7.2 billion. Things just got worse from there.

For FY 2005, Bush’s budget underfunded NCLB by $9.4 billion, and other crucial partner programs were cut altogether. Among those on the 2005 chopping block: Even Start (reading program for poor families), Javits Gifted and Talented Program (for gifted students who are minorities, disabled or who speak limited English), Dropout Prevention, Foreign Language Assistance, and Arts in Education. All in all, the Bush administration’s 2005 budget proposed cutting $1.4 billion from the education budget and axing 38 federal education programs.

Bush’s proposed FY 2006 budget was even more extreme, underfunding NCLB by a full $12 billion, or roughly 33% of its authorized amount. Also slashed were programs for disadvantaged students and those with special needs.

The FY 2007 proposed budget similarly underfunded NCLB by over $15 billion and eliminated numerous critical educational programs.

Factoring in the $14.8 billion underfunding slated for 2008 in Bush’s budget request, NCLB is left with a cumulative funding gap of $70.9 billion.

How can schools be held accountable for failing to reach NCLB goals if the federal government isn’t held accountable for meeting its funding promises?

Meanwhile, the states have faced a one-two budgetary punch as the weak economy has driven down tax revenues yet simultaneously increased demand for social services. All of this has led to across-the-board cuts in education, combined with increased pressure to shell out money on standardized tests.

Doesn’t help that the costs for war have simultaneously skyrocketed. Just last week, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) estimated that the US presence in Iraq was costing almost $15 billion per month. 15 billion dollars per month.

Connecting the dots here is simple, but most Democratic candidates are avoiding the elephant in the classroom. They criticize NCLB and promise more educational funding but don’t say where that money will come from.

Voters know better. In the December 2007 Gallup poll, respondents listed the War in Iraq as the most important issue determining Americans’ choice of president in 2008. It’s worth noting that Kucinich is the only Democratic Presidential candidate who voted against the Iraq war authorization in 2002 and every war-funding measure since then.

He also is the only Democratic Presidential candidate directly linking war spending to education funding.

The Des Moines Register (which used a ridiculous technicality to exclude Kucinich from their presidential debates) is predicting that first-time voters could determine the winner of Thursday’s Iowa Democratic caucus.

Obama is aiming for younger caucus-goers.

Clinton is targeting women.

Both demographic groups should take another look at Kucinich, and his plan to put the nation’s youth in college, not in Baghdad.

Heather Wokusch is the author of The Progressives' Handbook: Get the Facts and Make a Difference Now, which went to #1 on Amazon's political activism charts in December 2007 (www.progressiveshandbook.com.)

Just Gimme Some Truth!

dlindorff — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 16:16:16 -0500

The New York Times called Mitt Romney a liar today, but not CIA Director Michael Hayden.

What was Romney’s big one? He ran an ad in New Hampshire this week saying Sen. John McCain had called for allowing illegal workers in the US to collect Social Security, and the the paper of record said he was lying. That’s not what McCain had said. But When Gen. Hayden told a much bigger whopper, saying that the CIA had destroyed videotapes of the “interrogations” of two suspected Al Qaeda leaders because of concerns that the tapes might disclose the identities of CIA agents, thus exposing them and their families to danger, the Times, in the same issue of the paper, let it pass.

Near the end of the lengthy half-page, one-jump article, the paper did quote Tom Malinowski, director of the Washington office of Human Righst Watch, as saying that Hayden’s explanation “wasn’t credible,” which indeed it wasn’t. But you’d have to read a lot of verbiage to get to that gentle challenge.

The truth is that the CIA is full of documents that if leaked would disclose agents’ identities, and the CIA doesn’t destroy those records.

The truth is also that if the CIA wanted to keep the tapes, and even make them available if asked to, it has the means to easily wipe away the identities of any agency assets or agents who appear in the film, and even to mask their voices. News programs do that all the time. So the excuse doesn’t wash.

The reason the Agency destroyed those tapes is not because of concerns about agent safety, but because those tapes are the CIA’s Abu Ghraib moment. They are incontrovertible documentary evidence of the CIA’s blatant use of torture, which it was authorized and instructed to use against terror suspects by President Bush after 9-11, in what is clearly an impeachable act. And in Hayden’s view, and the view of the agency heads before him, it was better to break the law and destroy the evidence than to turn it over to Congressional investigators, defense attorneys for terrorism suspects on trial, and the 9-11 Commission, all of which groups had asked about the existence of such tapes, and about those tapes in particular. And all of which were lied to by the Agency.

So let’s at least call a lie a lie.

Chisled into the marble entranceway to the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency is the phrase: “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”

Right.

Obviously that line is meant ironically. The CIA is not about truth. It is about shadows, secrecy and deceit.

The question is why someone like Hayden is accorded any credibility at all by the news media.

I’m past expecting Congress to do anything about this torture scandal, or about Hayden’s lies, since it hasn’t done anything about any of the other scandals of this administration. But it would be nice if the media, including the New York Times, would at least call a lie a lie.

We can only hope that some person of character at the CIA , or someone with a grudge or a problem who needs some insurance or payback potential, has kept a copy of those tapes, and that at some point they will see the light of day. (If you’re out there, please mail it to me at PO Box 846, Ambler, PA 19002. Confidentiality guaranteed.)

Maybe many Americans think torturing our enemies is a good thing. But they’re wrong. Torture not only is a poor and perhaps even a useless tool for learning anything of value (since the victim clearly will say anything, true or false, to get the torture to stop, and thus can send people on endless wild goose chases, wasting resources and time), but it is inevitable that some of the people who get tortured wil be innocent. Besides, once it is known that torture is the fate of those who are captured by American forces, people will go to much greater lengths to avoid capture, which means more fights to the death, and inevitably more casualties on our side. Better to let our enemies know that if they give up, they’ll be treated fairly, with respect and in accordance with the law.

Besides, if we torture, how are we any better than the terrorists and the rogue nations?

For that matter, if we have an agency that is founded and built on lies, what does that have to do with a democracy?

And if we have a media that lets those lies pass, and that treats the liars with respect, what kind of a media do we have?

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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and columnist. His latest book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

The Winning Message for Democrats: How Republicans Are Robbing America Blind

Bob Fertik — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 14:02:32 -0500

Writing in Newsweek, Kos urges Democrats to run against Bush's record of dismal failure:

Bush can boast of an unwinnable quagmire in Iraq, a decimated housing market, economic instability and a collapsing dollar, a dysfunctional health-care system, a still-devastated Gulf Coast, a wealth gap of a scope unseen since the Great Depression and a pervasive and disturbing image of America as a hapless, blundering giant, rather than a beacon of freedom and morality in the world.

But Kos wrongly blames Republican anti-government philosophy for these problems:

In his first Inaugural Address, Ronald Reagan remarked that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." While the quip has provided Republicans with a cheap slogan for two decades, the philosophy behind it is beginning to box them in. If they govern effectively, they invalidate their own antigovernment ideology. And when you elect people who believe that government won't work, you shouldn't be surprised when government stops working.

The monumental failures of the Bush era are not the result of Republican hatred of government-- they are the result of the systematic Republican plan to Rob America Blind.

When Bush stole the White House, he inherited a budget surplus that was projected to reach $5 trillion if he did nothing. Given the long-term problems facing Social Security and Medicare, Bush could have followed Al Gore's fiscally conservative plan to lock away that surplus. Instead he demanded - and Republicans passed, with the obscene and unforgivable blessing of Alan Greenspan - nearly $2 trillion in tax cuts for America's corporate and financial elite.

And that was just the start of the Bush-Republican plan to Rob America Blind.

For most Americans, the attack of 9/11 came as a psychological shock. But for Bush and Cheney, the attack created a previously unimaginable opportunity to enrich America's defense industries - first in Afghanistan and shortly afterwards in Iraq. (In fact Tony Blair had to struggle to keep Bush focused on Afghanistan immediately after 9/11 because Bush was so eager for a much bigger war against Iraq.)

Like Bush's tax cuts, Bush's wars have transferred massive amounts of tax dollars - $.5 trillion and counting - from wage-earning Americans (and their children and grandchilren) to the military-industrial complex, led by Cheney's cronies at Halliburton. And that's just the direct cost of the war; the indirect cost of Bush's Middle East catastrophe has been the massive increase in the global price of oil, which has massively enriched Bush and Cheney's cronies in the oil and gas industry.

And so it goes for virtually every item on Kos's list. Today's "decimated housing market" is the result of unregulated fraudulent mortagage practices that drove housing prices into the stratosphere and saddled unsophisticated home buyers with impossible debts. Banks, mortage brokers, and financial speculators got rich while wage-earning families got robbed. (The appalling 2005 bankruptcy bill was crucial to making it impossible for borrowers to re-negotiate their debts.)

The Gulf Coast is still devastated because insurance companies fraudulently refuse to compensate homeowners, and the Bush administration refuses to make them. So insurance companies are getting rich while wage-earning families are getting robbed.

The health care system is dysfunctional because insurance companies and for-profit hospitals and nursing homes are robbing both patients and providers at the same time, while the federal government does nothing to stop them. So once again insurance companies are getting rich while wage-earning families are getting robbed.

Thus what Kos calls the "wealth gap of a scope unseen since the Great Depression" is no accident or mere happenstance - it is the direct result of Republican policies that have deliberately transferred massive amounts of wealth from working families to the corporate and financial elite.

And these Republican policies won't leave Washington when Bush and Cheney go back to Texas. Every Republican candidate is running on a platform to continue the Bush-Cheney policies of permanent economic (and military) war on working families and permanent tax cuts for the financial elite.

So why aren't any of the Democratic presidential candidates - or even the blogs - hammering home the message that Republicans are Robbing America Blind?

Obama's failure to develop this message is particularly conspicuous, since African-Americans have been robbed the worst - whether they live on the devastated Gulf Coast or pay higher proportional taxes or suffer with unaffordable health care or send their children to die for Big Oil in Iraq. But Obama's silence can be simply explained by his fierce advocacy of non-confrontational politics.

If any candidate could - and should - adopt this message, it's John Edwards, whose core message has been denouncing both poverty and corruption. These two enormous problems are not separate and distinct - they are two of the three legs of the Republican triangle, the third of which is stolen wealth. Unfortunately Edwards has been trying to pin the corruption rap on Hillary Clinton for refusing to challenge Washington's K Street elite - rather than on George Bush and the Republicans, who gave the K Street elite absolute power over the entire federal government.

In their hearts, working Americans know Bush and the Republicans have been robbing them blind to enrich the corporate and financial elite - but they don't know this in their heads because no Democrat is making this clear.

If a Democratic Presidential candidate helps working Americans connect the dots, that candidate will win in a landslide.

Democrats, are you listening?

Update 1: Jane Hamsher highlights Bush's crony capitalism in her book chat with Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine:

In 2003, Klein reports that the Bush administration doled out $327 billion in private contracts, “nearly 40 cents of every discretionary dollar.” Given the fact that so many of these contracts have been awarded in non-competitive situations with incentives built in to spend as much as possible with virtually no penalties or oversight, those who want to chide Klein for not raising her pom-poms higher and acknowledging the benefits of free market capitalism would do better to note that none of the inherent checks and balances of a truly “free market” are in place here. Rigging the system to give as much money away to your buddies as possible — to the exclusion of those who could possibly do better for cheaper — would more accurately be described as “organized crime.”

While I find Klein's "Shock Theory" intriguing, she - like Kos - is emphasizing the role of ideology. While Kos cites Reagan's contempt for government, Klein cites Milton Friedman and the Chicago School's desire to exploit economic shocks. Exploiting shocks is one way to Rob America Blind, but it's hardly the only weapon in the Republican arsenal - as the $2 trillion tax giveaway in 2001 made abundantly clear.

Update 2: Robert Borosage is right to urge Democrats to propose bold economic policies:

Rather than reducing deficits, Democrats would be better advised to argue for a bold investment agenda — on conservation and alternative energy, and on rebuilding our decrepit infrastructure, from schools to bridges — that would create jobs here in America and kick-start the economy. Voters are looking for someone who will lead. It is bizarre that the presidential candidates essentially ducked, while Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger pushed to get big mortgage brokers to delay interest rate resets on mortgages that threaten another million homeowners with foreclosure.

But the problem is the Corporate Media (and many voters) tune out predictable party rhetoric on economic policy, whether it is Republicans proposing tax cuts or Democrats proposing infrastructure investments. If Democrats want to get attention for their economic policies, they need to use heavy political artillery and attack Republicans for Robbing America Blind.