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KERRY CAMPAIGN CALLS ON BUSH TO PULL DOCTORED AD
In response to the stunning revelation that the Bush-Cheney campaign's much touted closing ad has been exposed as doctored, the Kerry campaign is demanding that this fake ad be taken off the airwaves immediately.
Senior Adviser Joe Lockhart issued the following statement:
"Now we know why this ad is named. 'Whatever it Takes.' This administration has always had a problem telling the truth from Iraq to jobs to health care. The Bush campaign's advertising has been consistently dishonest in what they say. But today, it's been exposed for being dishonest about what we see.
"If they won't tell the truth in an ad, they won't tell the truth about anything else. This doctored commercial is fundamentally dishonest and insults the intelligence of the American people. The Bush campaign has no choice but to take this ad down immediately and issue an apology for its latest attempt to mislead the American people.
"Unless George Bush has changed its position on human cloning, it's got to pull this fundamentally dishonest ad immediately."
Here's a link that shows how the ad is doctored: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/27/22442/878
Bush: Consistently Wrong For America
George Bush has been consistently wrong for America - on the wrong side of security, the economy, health care, you name it. He has made one wrong choice after another and has failed to get the job done for America. We're five days away from getting someone in the White House who is going to make working America the priority and get our country back on track.
NO 9-11 COMMISSION, OK 9-11 COMMISSION BUT NO EXTENSION, OK EXTENSION BUT CONDI CAN'T TESTIFY IN PUBLIC, OK FINE SHE CAN TESTIFY…
In July 2002, Bush released a statement of policy saying he would "oppose an amendment that would create a new commission." But in September 2002, he relented under pressure from Democrats. Then in January, the White House opposed extending the deadline for completion of the Commission's work, but relented in early January. Then in March 2004, Dr. Rice refused to testify publicly under oath, but the White House its stand on that too. [SAP, 7/24/02; NYT, 9/21/02, 2/5/04, 3/30/04; WH Press Briefing, 1/27/04; Washington Post, 3/29/04]
BUSH OPPOSED THE HOMELAND SECURITY DEPT. … BEFORE HE SUPPORTED IT
In October 2001, Ari Fleischer said Bush opposed creating a DHS saying, "there does not need to be a Cabinet-level Office of Homeland Security." But after later reversing himself to support it, Bush took credit for its creation saying, "In just 12 months, under the leadership of your President…you faced the challenges standing up this new Department and you get a -- and a gold star for a job well done." [White House Press Briefing, 10/24/01; New York Times, 2/28/03; Bush Remarks at One-Year Anniversary of DHS, 3/2/04]
UPDATE: HOMESTRECH REDUX ON OUR ABILITY TO DEFEAT TERROR
In his October 23 radio address, Bush stated, "Our government is doing everything in its power to confront and defeat that threat. … And by staying focused and determined, we will prevail." But the very next day in an interview, he said, "Whether or not we can be ever fully safe is up - you know, up in the air." [Bush Radio Address, 10/23/04, Fox News Channel Interview, AP, 10/24/04]
OSAMA BIN LADIN: DEAD OR ALIVE, OR NOT A CONCERN?
Shortly after 9-11, Bush said of Bin Ladin, "I want justice… wanted, dead or alive." But less than six months later, he said "I truly am not concerned about him." [Bush remarks, 9/17/01, 3/13/02]
WINNING THE WAR ON TERROR, WE CAN'T DO IT OR WE ALREADY ARE?
In an interview before the Republican convention, Bush said of the War on Terror, "I don't think you can win it." Bu the very next day he said, "We are winning and we will win." [AP, 8/30/04, Bush Remarks 8/31/04]
WE INVADED IRAQ TO ELIMINATE WMD… TO LIBERATE THE NATION … TO FOSTER DEMOCRACY … TO …
Bush has offered continually shifting rationales for the War in Iraq. In March 2003 he said, "Our mission is very clear: disarmament." By June 2003 it was "to liberate an oppressed people." In May 2004 it was to "see that Iraq is free and self-governing and democratic." By this September our mission was to "help new leaders train their army so they can do the hard work." [Bush Remarks, 3/6/03, 6/5/03, 5/4/04, 9/4/04]
MORE MONEY FOR IRAQ: NOT NEEDED TO A $25 BILLION REQUEST IN 3 MONTHS
In February, Bush's budget director said "The Iraq reconstruction money … goes well beyond '04, through '05 at least, so we don't expect to need to come back to ask for any additional reconstruction money." But just three months later Bush requested an additional $25 billion with another request for $75 billion to follow shortly. [Josh Bolton Briefing, 2/2/04; Presidential Statement, 5/5/04; AP, 10/26/04]
IRAQI WMD: FROM WEAPONS TO "PROGRAM RELATED ACTIVATES"
Bush stated in his 2003 State of the Union, "The dictator of Iraq has got weapons of mass destruction." A year later it was "dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities." [Bush SOTU, 1/22/03, 1/21/04]
He is just trying to save his ass same as everyone in the administration.
Former Iraq administrator Paul Bremer has recently stated that the lack of sufficient troops in Iraq led to widespread looting, destruction of utility systems, hospitals and other public services, and helped create an environment of lawlessness that exists to this day.
The standard response of George W. Bush has been to say that military commanders never asked for more troops. After what happened to Gen. Eric Shinseki when he testified that "several" hundred thousand troops would be needed in Iraq, what military commander would be foolish enough to ask for more troops
Gen. Shinseki was a four-star general and Army Chief of Staff, but that was not enough to protect him from being humiliated. Because his testimony was not consistent with the policy of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to have a war "on the cheap," deploying as few troops as possible, Shinseki took early retirement in order to avoid further shabby treatment by Pentagon civilians. If this wasn't enough, Shinseki contradicted Dick Cheney's statement that American troops would be greeted "with flowers and sweets," which turned out to be a figment of Ahmad Chalabi's vivid imagination.
Generals in the United States Army are intelligent, well-trained professionals who are entirely familiar with how advancement in the military occurs. One way it never happens is to tick off the Secretary of Defense and his civilian staff. Accordingly, it is monumental hypocrisy to say more troops weren't sent to Iraq because military commanders didn't ask for them. What general would be willing to court professional suicide?
The Defense Department now says troop levels in Iraq weren't Bremer's business. What the DOD is really saying is that it was Bremer's responsibility to create a stable Iraq, but that they had the authority to determine what resources Bremer had at his disposal. This suggests Bremer was set up to fall. He would build a new electric power plant that would be destroyed by insurgents because there weren't enough troops to protect it, but it was Bremer's fault, not the military's. We should extend our sympathy to Paul Bremer for having been cynically used by the Bush administration
Why it's different in Basra
By Hugh Sykes
BBC, Baghdad and Basra
After spending time with the American First Cavalry in Baghdad and the British army in Basra, Hugh Sykes gives his views on how their different approaches have influenced the attitudes of local people towards the military.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/3944741.stm
Iraq death toll 'soared post-war'
Iraqi people are now 58 times more likely to die a violent death
Poor planning, air strikes by coalition forces and a "climate of violence" have led to more than 100,000 extra deaths in Iraq, scientists say.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3962969.stm
Kerry Uses Bush's Own Words to Call Him Unfit
Top Stories - Reuters
By Patricia Wilson
TOLEDO, Ohio (Reuters) - Democratic challenger John Kerry turned President Bush's own words into a weapon on Thursday and said it was the Republican incumbent who had jumped to conclusions in Iraq, disqualifying him from being commander in chief.
The Massachusetts senator, energized by his beloved Boston Red Sox's long-awaited win in baseball's World Series and a joint appearance with rocker Bruce Springsteen, launched a withering attack on Bush over 380 tons of missing explosives in Iraq and chided his rival for invoking the memory of President John Kennedy.
Kerry said the weapons were not "where they were supposed to be, you were warned to guard them, you didn't guard them. They're not secure, and, guess what, according to George Bush's own words, he shouldn't be our commander in chief and I couldn't agree more."
With Tuesday's election deadlocked, Kerry took aim at the president's perceived strength -- national security -- and hammered him for a fourth consecutive day on the missing explosives.
Bush on Wednesday accused Kerry of opportunism, saying: "A political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as commander in chief ... that is part of a pattern of a candidate who will say anything to get elected."
Kerry threw the words back at the president 24 hours later, announcing he was going "to apply the Bush standard" and declaring: "Mr. President, I agree with you."
"George Bush jumped to conclusions about 9/11 and Saddam Hussein," he said. "George Bush jumped to conclusions about weapons of mass destruction and he rushed to war without a plan for the peace. George Bush jumped to conclusions about how the Iraqi people would receive our troops. He not only jumped to conclusions, he ignored the facts he was given."
Almost drowned out by a thunderous wave of foot stomping from thousands of supporters packed into a University of Toledo arena, Kerry added: "I hope George Bush can hear that. That is the rumble of change coming at him."
Kerry recalled how President John Kennedy took the blame for the bungled Bay of Pigs operation in Cuba in 1961.
"Can you imagine President Kennedy ... standing up and telling the American people he couldn't think of a single mistake that he had made? When the Bay of Pigs went sour, John Kennedy had the courage to look America in the eye and say to America 'I take responsibility, it is my fault."'
Challenging Bush, Kerry said: "Mr. President, it is long since time for you to start taking responsibility for the mistakes that you've made."
Wearing a Red Sox cap and reveling in the team's World Series championship after an 86-year drought, Kerry saw a metaphor for his own White House bid.
"About a year ago, when things weren't going so well in my campaign, somebody called a radio talk show and they said, thinking they were just cutting me right to the quick, they said 'John Kerry won't be the president until the Red Sox win.' Well, we're on our way."
Kerry on Missing Explosives and Bush's Excuses
Toledo, OH - Senator John Kerry released the following statement today about the missing explosives in Iraq and George Bush's excuses for not securing those explosives:
This week's revelations about the missing explosives speaks to the president's continuing misjudgments in Iraq. According to the commanders on the ground, our forces were not ordered to secure a weapons dump in Iraq where 380 tons of explosives were stored. Now, the president's former chief weapons inspector says it's likely that these explosives are being used against our own troops. The president's shifting explanations and excuses demonstrate, once again, that this president believes the buck stops anywhere but his desk.
Lately, George Bush has been invoking the name of John Kennedy. But can you imagine President Kennedy, in the wake of the Bay of Pigs, standing up and telling the American people that he couldn't think of a single mistake he'd made? That he would do everything again exactly the same way? Mr. President, John Kennedy was a leader who knew how to take responsibility for his actions.
Mr. President, it's time for you to take responsibility for yours. Our troops in Iraq are doing a heroic job - the problem is our Commander-in-Chief isn't doing his.
Yesterday, George Bush said, ‘a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief when it comes to your security.'
I agree.
George Bush jumped to a conclusions about 9-11 and Saddam Hussein.
He jumped to conclusions about weapons of mass destruction and rushed to war.
He jumped to conclusions about how the Iraqi people would receive us.
He not only jumped to conclusions - he ignored the facts.
Here are the facts, the bottom line, about these weapons: they're not where they're supposed to be - they're not secure.
Well, guess what, according to George Bush's own words, he shouldn't be our commander in chief. I could not agree more."
White House of Horrors
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: October 28, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/28/opinion/28dowd.html?oref=login&hp
Excerpt :
Dick Cheney peaked too soon. We've still got a few days left until Halloween.
It was scary enough when we thought the vice president had created his own reality for spin purposes. But if he actually believes that Iraq is "a remarkable success story,'' it's downright spooky. He's already got his persona for Sunday: he's the mad scientist in the haunted mansion, fiddling with test tubes to force the world to conform to his twisted vision.
<More...>
US Gave Date of War to Britain in Advance
By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor, The Independent
27 October 2004
Secret plans for the war in Iraq were passed to British Army chiefs by US defence planners five months before the invasion was launched, a court martial heard yesterday.
The revelation strengthened suspicions that Tony Blair gave his agreement to President George Bush to go to war while the diplomatic efforts to force Saddam Hussein to comply with UN resolutions were continuing.
Alan Simpson, the leader of Labour Against the War, said the documents were "dynamite", if genuine, and showed that Clare Short was right to assert in her book, serialised in The Independent, that Mr Blair had "knowingly misled" Parliament.
The plans were revealed during the court martial of L/Cpl Ian Blaymire, 23, from Leeds, who is charged with the manslaughter of a comrade while serving in Iraq. Sgt John Nightingale, 32, a reservist from Guiseley, West Yorkshire, died after being shot in the chest on 23 September last year.
The court, at Catterick Garrison, North Yorkshire, heard that contingency plans were drawn up by Lt Col Christopher Warren, staff officer at Land Command, Salisbury, Wiltshire, who was responsible for operational training.
Lt Col Warren said US planners had passed on dates for which the invasion was planned. The hearing was told Army chiefs wanted the training for the Army to start at the beginning of December 2002. However, due to "sensitivities" the training was delayed.
The court heard the training for the TA began two months late and for the regular Army one month late. Lt Col Warren was asked what the sensitivities were. He replied: "Because in December there was a world interest. If the UK had mobilised while all this was going on that would have shown an intent before the political process had been allowed to run its course."
The hearing was adjourned.
Statement from General Wesley Clark in Response to President Bush's Remarks Today
General Wesley Clark released the following statement today:
"Today George W. Bush made a very compelling and thoughtful argument for why he should not be reelected. In his own words, he told the American people that "…a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your Commander in Chief."
"President Bush couldn't be more right. He jumped to conclusions about any connection between Saddam Hussein and 911. He jumped to conclusions about weapons of mass destruction. He jumped to conclusions about the mission being accomplished. He jumped to conclusions about how we had enough troops on the ground to win the peace. And because he jumped to conclusions, terrorists and insurgents in Iraq may very well have their hands on powerful explosives to attack our troops, we are stuck in Iraq without a plan to win the peace, and Americans are less safe both at home and abroad."
"By doing all these things, he broke faith with our men and women in uniform. He has let them down. George W. Bush is unfit to be our Commander in Chief."
Excerpt from Kerry Speech
George Bush has failed to learn this lesson. And he has failed in his fundamental obligation as Commander-in-Chief to make America as safe and secure as we should be.
This morning, we learned more disturbing news about the disappearance of 380 tons of powerful explosives in Iraq. We already know these weapons could produce bombs that can demolish entire buildings blow up airplanes… destroy tanks… and kill our troops. Terrorists used explosives like this to take down Pan Am 103 and al Qaeda used it to attack the USS Cole. The missing explosives could very likely be in the hands of terrorists and insurgents - who are attacking our forces nearly 90 times a day in Iraq.
But now we've learned even more. We're seeing this White House dodge and bob and weave in their usual effort to avoid responsibility -- just as they've done each step of the way in our involvement in Iraq.
Instead of coming clean with the American people, the administration blamed the bad news on the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.S. military -- and even the media. And all the while, took no responsibility for creating the situation where these weapons could go missing in the first place.
The Bush Administration first tried to convince the American people that this was not a big deal -- not a big deal that 380 tons of high grade explosives were now likely in the hands of terrorists and insurgents. Then, White House officials said guarding explosive dumps was not a high priority -- but guarding the Iraqi Oil Ministry apparently was. As more information was revealed in the press, the White House switched to their most comfortable position - the situation was bad but it was not their responsibility. Vice President Cheney, who is becoming the Chief Minister of Disinformation, echoed that it's not the administration's fault and even criticized those who raised the subject. This is a growing scandal and the American people deserve a full and honest explanation of how it happened and what this president is going to do about it.
As more facts have emerged, we've learned just how disingenuous the White House has become. Here are the facts. The IAEA warned the Bush Administration and the UN Security Council before the war that this weapons site was critical and needed urgent protection. The US Commander who reached the sight was never told to stop, inspect and protect it. He was never even told what it was.
Colonel Joseph Anderson, commander of the Army's 101st Airborne Division said: "I didn't know what the place was supposed to be. It was not our mission. It was not our focus. We were just stopping there on our way to Baghdad." The troops did their job. The commander in chief failed to do his. The troops did their job -- but the Bush Administration failed to tell them what they already knew and international agencies already knew: this site contained some of the largest quantities of the most dangerous explosives in Iraq. And the reason they failed is because they didn't plan and they rushed to war without a plan to win the peace.
And what do we now hear from this President on this important matter of national security? Silence…not a word…not a single explanation of how this could have happened and or what the U.S. government is doing to address it. That's not leadership. It's not how the commander in chief is supposed to lead. It's not what our troops on the ground deserve.
This President says he can't think of a single mistake he's made and he would do everything again in Iraq exactly the same all over again.
Three hundred and eighty tons of explosives that could be in the hands of terrorists and he would do everything exactly the same? On Iraq, the President doesn't see it, he doesn't get it, and he can't fix it. Exactly the same?
Borders porous with terrorists pouring in -- and he would do everything exactly the same? Sending our troops to war without body armor -- and he would do everything exactly the same? He says he's doing "whatever it takes." In fact, he consistently takes us in the wrong direction. And he's doomed to repeat the same mistakes all over again.
White House officials reasserted yesterday that 380 tons of powerful explosives may have disappeared from a vast Iraqi military complex while Saddam Hussein controlled Iraq, saying a brigade of American soldiers did not find the explosives when they visited the complex on April 10, 2003, the day after Baghdad fell.
But the unit's commander said in an interview yesterday that his troops had not searched the site and had merely stopped there overnight.
The commander, Col. Joseph Anderson, of the Second Brigade of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, said he did not learn until this week that the site, Al Qaqaa, was considered sensitive, or that international inspectors had visited it before the war began in 2003 to inspect explosives that they had tagged during a decade of monitoring.
Colonel Anderson, who is now the chief of staff for the division and who spoke by telephone from Fort Campbell, Ky., said his troops had been driving north toward Baghdad and had paused at Al Qaqaa to make plans for their next push.
"We happened to stumble on it,' he said. "I didn't know what the place was supposed to be. We did not get involved in any of the bunkers. It was not our mission. It was not our focus. We were just stopping there on our way to Baghdad. The plan was to leave that very same day. The plan was not to go in there and start searching. It looked like all the other ammunition supply points we had seen already."
What had been, for the colonel and his troops, an unremarkable moment during the sweep to Baghdad took on new significance this week, after The New York Times, working with the CBS News program "60 Minutes," reported that the explosives at Al Qaqaa, mainly HMX and RDX, had disappeared since the invasion.
Earlier this month, officials of the interim Iraqi government informed the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency that the explosives disappeared sometime after the fall of Mr. Hussein on April 9, 2003. Al Qaqaa, which has been unguarded since the American invasion, was looted in the spring of 2003, and looters were seen there as recently as Sunday.
President Bush's aides told reporters that because the soldiers had found no trace of the missing explosives on April 10, they could have been removed before the invasion. They based their assertions on a report broadcast by NBC News on Monday night that showed video images of the 101st arriving at Al Qaqaa.
By yesterday afternoon Mr. Bush's aides had moderated their view, saying it was a "mystery" when the explosives disappeared and that Mr. Bush did not want to comment on the matter until the facts were known.
On Sunday, administration officials said that the Iraq Survey Group, the C.I.A. taskforce that hunted for unconventional weapons, had been ordered to look into the disappearance of the explosives. On Tuesday night, CBS News reported that Charles A. Duelfer, the head of the taskforce, denied receiving such an order.
At the Pentagon, a senior official, who asked not to be identified, acknowledged that the timing of the disappearance remained uncertain. "The bottom line is that there is still a lot that is not known," the official said.
The official suggested that the material could have vanished while Mr. Hussein was still in power, sometime between mid-March, when the international inspectors left, and April 3, when members of the Army's Third Infantry Division fought with Iraqis inside Al Qaqaa. At the time, it was reported that those soldiers found a white powder that was tentatively identified as explosives. The site was left unguarded, the official said.
The 101st Airborne Division arrived April 10 and left the next day. The next recorded visit by Americans came on May 27, when Task Force 75 inspected Al Qaqaa, but did not find the large quantities of explosives that had been seen in mid-March by the international inspectors. By then, Al Qaqaa had plainly been looted.
Colonel Anderson said he did not see any obvious signs of damage when he arrived on April 10, but that his focus was strictly on finding a secure place to collect his troops, who were driving and flying north from Karbala.
"There was no sign of looting here," Colonel Anderson said. "Looting was going on in Baghdad, and we were rushing on to Baghdad. We were marshaling in."
A few days earlier, some soldiers from the division thought they had discovered a cache of chemical weapons that turned out to be pesticides. Several of them came down with rashes, and they had to go through a decontamination procedure. Colonel Anderson said he wanted to avoid a repeat of those problems, and because he had already seen stockpiles of weapons in two dozen places, did not care to poke through the stores at Al Qaqaa.
"I had given instructions, 'Don't mess around with those. It looks like they are bunkers; we're not messing around with those things. That's not what we're here for,' " he said. "I thought we would be there for a few hours and move on. We ended up staying overnight."
The timing of the disappearance is crucial. The stockpile was found to be intact in March 2003, when United Nations weapons inspectors checked it just days before the American-led invasion. On April 10, one day after Saddam Hussein was toppled, American troops visited the Al Qaqaa depot, not finding any big cache of explosives but apparently not looking very closely either.
The troops' commander has explained that his unit was on its way to Baghdad and had simply paused at Al Qaqaa to plan the next stage of their advance.
Hello! These were the explosives that were present in Iraq as verified by the inspectors. Do not forget that the reason given for the Saddam ouster was his possession of WMD which in fact is nowhere to be found. These kind of explosives exist in almost all the unstable countries worldwide and can be obtained as easily in the black market. Why not start invading each one of these countries one by one starting with Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Egypt... By your logic every such country is Dangerous and has "ties" to terrorist groups.
The point of the matter is the responsibility of "securing" these explosives, especially after recklessly taking over the country lay completely with the United States and our administration completely botched it up.
Lockhart Responds to Bush Comments on Missing Explosives
For Immediate Release
Washington, DC - Kerry-Edwards Senior Advisor Joe Lockhart released the following statement today:
"Instead of answering the serious questions raised by this situation in a serious way, George Bush opted to give a political response and launched yet another negative attack. For a Commander-in-Chief to sidestep these important questions and to somehow imply that John Kerry does anything less than fully support our troops is beneath contempt. The American people deserve better and next Tuesday they will get it."
BREAK THE SILENCE:
Key Questions President Bush Must Answer on the Missing Explosives in Iraq:
1. Why did the Administration assign such a low priority to securing explosives, munitions and weapons in Iraq?
2. The Bush Administration says that it ordered the Iraq Survey Group to look into what happened to the 380 tons of missing explosives (during October 25 briefing, Scott McClellan said it four times) but the head of the unit, Charles Duelfer, says he has not received any orders to do so. What are the facts?
3. What is the chronology of action taken by the Bush Administration after being informed that the explosives had gone missing? Who knew what when? When was the civilian leadership at the Pentagon told about the missing explosives? When did Secretary Rumsfeld learn that the explosives had gone missing? When was the President's National Security Council informed? When National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice briefed on this? When was the President told? And what action was taken?
4. Why did the Bush Administration deny the International Atomic Energy Agency's request to back into Iraq to verify the status of the stockpile?
5. What action did Paul Bremer take after reportedly being warned in May 2004 that the explosives had gone missing?
6. The 380 tons of missing explosives are the tip of the iceberg. Duelfer reportedly said he wasn't concerned about al Qaqaa because that Iraq is awash in hundreds of thousands of tons of explosives. Is there an estimate of the total amount of munitions, weapons and explosives that have gone missing in Iraq?
7. Since 2003, how many attacks on our troops in Iraq or terrorist bombings in Iraq, Egypt or elsewhere have been carried out using HMX, RDX or PETN - the same kind of explosive that went missing from al Qaqaa?
STUBBORN INDIGNATION IN THE BUSH WHITE HOUSE: A Four Year History of Avoiding Questions
Bush's White House has actively avoided the press and the American public, hoping to duck the tough questions. He has the fewest number of solo press conferences in modern history and has been completely inaccessible to reporters on the campaign trail.
"Bush continues to have little to say on the topic. He worked a rope line in Wisconsin yesterday and ignored a question from CNN's Matt Byrne, instead offering Byrne a repeated glance of indignation." [CNN Morning Grind, 10/27/04, emphasis added]
Bush Has Had Only 15 Solo Press Conferences, Lowest Number of Any President in 50 Years. Bush has held the fewest solo press conferences in 50 years, holding only 15 to date. At the same point in their presidencies, Bill Clinton had held 42, Bush's father 83, Ronald Reagan 26, Jimmy Carter 59, Gerald Ford 39, Nixon 29, Johnson 88, Kennedy 65 and Eisenhower 94. His last prime time news conference was April 13. [USA Today, 10/26/04; Washington Post, 10/8/04]
In 2002, New York Times Says Press Corps Could Not Remember Such an Inaccessible White House. The New York Timesreported that tensions had escalated between the White House and the White House press corps, who could not "remember a White House that was more grudging or less forthcoming in informing the press." [New York Times, 10/14/02]
White House Press Secretary Dismissive About Bush's Inaccessibility. As a recent press gaggle illustrates, White House Press Secretary McClellan is in denial about the president's availability:
Q: When is he going to take questions from us?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, he takes questions on a regular basis. He's got -- he's got press availabilities coming up, and so you all will be around to cover him.
Q: Today?
MR. McCLELLAN: No, I do not expect he'll be taking questions today. He's got speeches today. [White House Press Gaggle, 9/20/04]
Bush Not Even Answering Questions From the Public; "Ask the President" Events Staged By Campaign Are Tightly Scripted. "During a campaign forum in the Cleveland suburbs last month, President Bush was asked whether he likes broccoli, to disclose his ‘most important legacy to the American people' and to reveal what supporters can do ‘to make sure that you win Ohio and get reelected.' The ‘Ask President Bush' forums, which on television look like freewheeling sessions with the commander in chief, are tightly managed by the Bush-Cheney campaign, with the president calling mainly on people sitting in sections filled with his most loyal supporters." [Washington Post, 10/8/04]
In 2000, Bush Curtailed Press Conferences to Avoid Dealing With "News of the Day." In January 2000, Bush temporarily curtailed press conferences. The day after Bush was peppered with questions concerning his stance on abortion, spokeswoman Mindy Tucker announced that the campaign would limit press access. "It's not in our best interests," said Tucker. "We have a message of the day, and we're going to stick to it. We are not going to have one big fat news conference on our schedule where you can come and ask about what you think is the news of the day." [Boston Globe, 1/24/00]
IAEA Director Muhammad el-Baradei sent the Security Council a letter yesterday alerting it to a message from the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology.
The ministry reported the theft of more than 340 metric tons of highly explosive material -- known as HMX, RDX, and PETN. HMX is powerful enough to ignite the fissile material in an atomic bomb and set off a nuclear chain reaction. HMX and RDX are also key components in powerful plastic explosives such as C-4 and Semtex. The ministry's message to the IAEA said the material was lost after 9 April 2003, "due to lack of security."
The material was sealed and tagged by the IAEA at the Al-Qaqaa military facility prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told reporters that the whereabouts of the material is unknown.
F.B.I. Saw Inmates Treated Harshly at Abu Ghraib
By Neil A. Lewis / New York Times
WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 - F.B.I. agents witnessed harsh treatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003, but did not believe that what they saw was abusive or worth reporting, according to a newly released document.
The document, a May 19 report by the F.B.I.'s counterterrorism division, shows that after Abu Ghraib abuses became public in April, the bureau's leadership was concerned about what its employees had seen. The report was among documents released over the weekend by the Bush administration in response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups.
The report said bureau officials had interviewed 14 special agents and language specialists who had participated in interrogations.
"F.B.I. personnel did not report observing anything outside of our understanding of Defense Department guidelines,'' a bureau official said Monday night.
Using an abbreviation for Abu Ghraib prison, the report concluded that none of the 14 bureau employees had "reported observing misconduct or mistreatment of detainees at A.G.P. similar to that which has been reported in recent media accounts."
But the report then listed some of their observations. One agent reported seeing an inmate with a sack over his head who was covered with a shower curtain and handcuffed to a waist-high rail. The detainee was occasionally slapped on the back by a guard. The report said the agent had been told he was seeing a sleep-deprivation technique.
The report said an agent saw a naked or partly clothed inmate made to lie prone on a wet floor. One agent reported seeing inmates stripped naked and put in isolation cells. The report said this seemed similar to what the agent had seen in prison strip-searches in the United States.
The GOP's Shameful Vote Strategy
By Harold Meyerson / Washington Post
With Election Day almost upon us, it's not clear whether President Bush is running a campaign or plotting a coup d'etat. By all accounts, Republicans are spending these last precious days devoting nearly as much energy to suppressing the Democratic vote as they are to mobilizing their own.
Time was when Republicans were at least embarrassed by their efforts to keep African Americans from the polls. Republican consultant Ed Rollins was all but drummed out of the profession after his efforts to pay black ministers to keep their congregants from voting in a 1993 New Jersey election came to light.
For George W. Bush, Karl Rove and their legion of genteel thugs, however, universal suffrage is just one more musty liberal ideal that threatens conservative rule. Today's Republicans have elevated vote suppression from a dirty secret to a public norm.
In Ohio, Republicans have recruited 3,600 poll monitors and assigned them disproportionately to such heavily black areas as inner-city Cleveland, where Democratic "527" groups have registered many tens of thousands of new voters. "The organized left's efforts to, quote unquote, register voters -- I call them ringers -- have created these problems" of potential massive vote fraud, Cuyahoga County Republican Chairman James P. Trakas recently told the New York Times.
Let's pass over the implication that a registration drive waged by a liberal group is inherently fraud-ridden, and look instead at that word "ringers."
Registration in Ohio is nonpartisan, but independent analysts estimate that roughly 400,000 new Democrats have been added to the rolls this year. Who does Trakas think they are? Have tens of thousands of African Americans been sneaking over the state lines from Pittsburgh and Detroit to vote in Cleveland -- thus putting their own battleground states more at risk of a Republican victory? Is Shaker Heights suddenly filled with Parisians affecting American argot? Or are the Republicans simply terrified that a record number of minority voters will go to the polls next Tuesday? Have they decided to do anything to stop them -- up to and including threatening to criminalize Voting While Black in a Battleground State?
This is civic life in the age of George W. Bush, in which politics has become a continuation of civil war by other means. In Bush's America, there's a war on -- against a foreign enemy so evil that we can ignore the Geneva Conventions, against domestic liberals so insidious that we can ignore democratic norms. Only bleeding hearts with a pre-Sept. 11 mind-set still believe in voting rights.
For Bush and Rove, the domestic war predates the war on terrorism. From the first day of his presidency, Bush opted to govern from the right, to fan the flames of cultural resentment, to divide the American house against itself in the hope that cultural conservatism would create a stable Republican majority. The Sept. 11 attacks unified us, but Bush exploited those attacks to relentlessly partisan ends. As his foreign and domestic policies abjectly failed, Bush's reliance on identity politics only grew stronger. He anointed himself the standard-bearer for provincials and portrayed Kerry and his backers as arrogant cosmopolitans.
And so here we are, improbably enmeshed in a latter-day version of the election of 1928, when the Catholicism of Democratic presidential nominee Al Smith bitterly divided the nation along Protestant-Catholic and nativist-immigrant lines. To his credit, Smith's opponent (and eventual victor), Herbert Hoover, did not exploit this rift himself. Bush, by contrast, has not merely exploited the modernist-traditionalist tensions in America but helped create new ones and summoned old ones we could be forgiven for thinking were permanently interred. (Kerry will ban the Bible?)
Indeed, it's hard to think of another president more deliberately divisive than the current one. I can come up with only one other president who sought so assiduously to undermine the basic arrangements of American policy (as Bush has undermined the New Deal at home and the systems of post-World War II alliances abroad) with so little concern for the effect this would have on the comity and viability of the nation. And Jefferson Davis wasn't really a president of the United States.
After four years in the White House, George W. Bush's most significant contribution to American life is this pervasive bitterness, this division of the house into raging, feuding halves. We are two nations now, each with a culture that attacks the other. And politics, as the Republicans are openly playing it, need no longer concern itself with the most fundamental democratic norm: the universal right to vote.
As the campaign ends, Bush is playing to the right and Kerry to the center.
That foretells the course of the administrations that each would head. The essential difference between them is simply that, as a matter of strategy and temperament, Bush seeks to exploit our rifts and Kerry to narrow them. That, finally, is the choice before us next Tuesday: between one candidate who wants to pry this nation apart to his own advantage, and another who seeks to make it whole.
Howard Dean: Why I am Voting for John Kerry
By Howard Dean
t r u t h o u t / Perspective
Tuesday 26 October 2004
I decided long ago that John Kerry would be a better president than George Bush. We need a new president because we need to change the course of this country. We need a new president because we need our country to be fiscally healthy with more jobs that pay better. We need a new president to ensure that everyone in this country will have health insurance. And, we need a new president because George W. Bush has not been truthful with the American people.
America ought to join every other industrialized country in the world and have health care for all our people. As a physician, I am concerned that over the past three years, a larger number of Americans are finding it more and more expensive to buy less and less health care. I am concerned that 43 million Americans still do not have health insurance and since George W. Bush has been president, the cost of family health insurance has increased by more than $3,500. John Kerry has said that one of his first priorities would be to focus on the health care crisis. He has a realistic plan that will provide affordable health care for 95 percent of Americans, including every child. For example, he wants to cut prescription drug costs and allow drugs from Canada to be easily obtained. And, he wants Americans to be able to have a greater choice of health care plans, just like members of Congress. John Kerry's plan is not full of empty promises - it is practical and affordable.
America has to stop the "borrow and spend" philosophy that is so prevalent in Washington. Not one Republican President since 1968 has ever balanced a budget. John Kerry, like Bill Clinton before him, will give our children the fiscal discipline we deserve, which will lead to job growth. President Bush ran up the largest deficit in American history, therefore forcing our children to be financially responsible for his senselessness. John Kerry will balance the budget. He has an extensive plan to cut the deficit in half in four years. In order to accomplish this, one thing he will do is to reverse the special interest tax cuts President Bush implemented that only affected big corporations and families making more than $200,000 a year. John Kerry will ensure that future generations do not have to pay for George Bush's mistakes.
America can restore its moral leadership at home and abroad with John Kerry as our president. At his core, John Kerry is a truthful person. He has told us what he thinks, sometimes to his detriment, but we know what he believes. George W. Bush has not been truthful with the American people. He has endangered America by creating a crisis in Iraq where there was not one before we invaded. He has misled us on the deficits, on jobs, on health care, on public education and on prescription drugs for the elderly. He appears to stand for little that is not dictated by polls.
America is the greatest nation on the face of the earth. We are a great people - Republicans as well as Democrats, conservatives as well as liberals. America deserves the kind of leadership that will give us back our position as a moral leader in the world. I believe that President Kerry will be that kind of leader.
MISSING EXPLOSIVES
Although White House officials, including Dick Cheney, continue to assert that the 380 tons of missing explosives at Al Qaqaa were not found by the U.S. troops passing through the facility, a new report out on Wednesday will contradict those assertions. The troops did not search the facility for explosives because they were not ordered to do so. Their sole mission was to get to Baghdad, not secure these explosives.
This new revelation adds to the already long list of questions that the White House is not answering. This memo spotlights several issues that have arisen about the Administration's failure to secure these explosives, adding to the mounting pressure on George Bush to personally address them:
DUELFER SAYS IRAQ IS AWASH IN EXPLOSIVES: The 380 tons of missing explosives are the tip of the iceberg. Duelfer reportedly said that Iraq is awash in hundreds of thousands of tons of explosives. Duelfer's picture of an Iraq flooded with explosives that are easily attainable by terrorists stands in stark contrast to the rosy scenarios presented by the Bush Campaign. Is this Dick Cheney's "remarkable success story?"
WAITING FOR THE WHITE HOUSE TO CALL: Although the White House says it told the Iraq Survey Group to look into what happened to the 380 tons of missing explosives, the head of the unit, Charles Duelfer, says he has not received any orders to do so. Keep in mind that McClellan said FOUR times during his October 25 gaggle that the Administration had already directed Duelfer to look into what happened to the explosives. What's the deal?
SITUATION REPORTS: On Tuesday, Dick Cheney claimed it was unclear whether there were explosives at the Al Qaqaa site when the military stopped there on its way to Baghdad. One way to clear up whether the site was thoroughly searched is to release the "situation reports," the logs that track what a military unit does when it is in combat. If the White House releases these reports, which are unclassified, we might be able to get a better sense of what was searched at the Al Qaqaa site.
SATELLITE SURVEILLANCE: Some in the Administration have asserted that the explosives were gone before U.S. Forces got to Al Qaqaa. Given the fact that the I.A.E.A. explicitly warned the White House about this site, was the U.S. using satellites to monitor Al Qaqaa? Wouldn't there be a record to confirm whether 380 tons of explosives were removed? If they were removed, why did the White House fail to ensure that they were tracked? If they weren't removed, why was no effort made to secure them? Why weren't more troops assigned to that effort? Why doesn't the White House have a solid answer on this question?
EXPLOSIVE CHARGES: David Kay says that traces of the same kinds of explosives that are missing were found after a bombing outside a mosque in Najaf. Are these explosives being used against U.S. troops? The 9/30/04 Chicago Tribune reported that insurgents are likely using weapons looted from the Al Qaqaa complex. The Tribune quoted an officer from the unit that initially patrolled the area as saying that the site was left unguarded and that there was no shortage of weapons at the site.
ZRAN down to 10.80 AH. You still have it?
So much for our "ally" Allawi..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3955673.stm
Allawi slams coalition 'neglect'
The gunmen had inside information, officials suggest
Iraqi's interim prime minister has accused US-led multinational forces of negligence over the massacre of 49 army recruits on a remote road on Saturday.
"There was great negligence on the part of some coalition forces," Iyad Allawi told Iraq's interim national assembly.
He condemned the massacre as a "heinous crime" against the National Guard and said a special inquiry was under way.
Gunmen killed the unarmed recruits along with three drivers after stopping their buses near the Iranian border.
The prime minister did not say specifically how foreign forces had failed to protect the recruits, who had been on their way home from a training camp.
"The killings represent the epitome of what could be done to hurt Iraq and the Iraqi people," he said.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of Islamist militant group Tawhid and Jihad, has claimed responsibility for the ambush.
Gunmen posing as police officers stopped the buses at a bogus checkpoint, killing many of the recruits with a bullet to the head.
The deputy governor of Diyala province has raised the possibility that there was collusion between the killers and members of the security forces.
"Otherwise, the gunmen would not have got the information about the soldiers' departure from their training camp and that they were unarmed," Aqil Hamid al-Adili told al-Arabiya television.
LATEST BUSH EXCUSE ON WEAPONS DUMP EVAPORATES
George Bush's continuing efforts to avoid responsibility for failing to secure 380 tons of highly dangerous explosives in Iraq just took another blow. The reporter who was actually traveling with the 101st Airborne in the report cited by the Bush campaign has clarified that the unit was not there to secure the massive weapons complex and it was merely a 'pit stop' on their way to Baghdad.
Try as it might, the Bush spin machine can not change the truth: the President is responsible for his catastrophic failures in Iraq and needs to personally address this issue.
MSNBC, 10/26/04 (Transcript):
Amy Robach: And it's still unclear exactly when those explosives disappeared. Here to help shed some light on that question is Lai Ling. She was part of an NBC news crew that traveled to that facility with the 101st Airborne Division back in April of 2003. Lai Ling, can you set the stage for us? What was the situation like when you went into the area?
Lai Ling Jew: When we went into the area, we were actually leaving Karbala and we were initially heading to Baghdad with the 101st Airborne, Second Brigade. The situation in Baghdad, the Third Infantry Division had taken over Baghdad and so they were trying to carve up the area that the 101st Airborne Division would be in charge of. As a result, they had trouble figuring out who was going to take up what piece of Baghdad. They sent us over to this area in Iskanderia. We didn't know it as the Qaqaa facility at that point but when they did bring us over there we stayed there for quite a while. We stayed overnight, almost 24 hours. And we walked around, we saw the bunkers that had been bombed, and that exposed all of the ordinances that just lied dormant on the desert.
AR: Was there a search at all underway or did a search ensue for explosives once you got there during that 24-hour period?
LLJ: No. There wasn't a search. The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad. That was more of a pit stop there for us. And, you know, the searching, I mean certainly some of the soldiers head off on their own, looked through the bunkers just to look at the vast amount of ordnance lying around. But as far as we could tell, there was no move to
secure the weapons, nothing to keep looters away. But there was - at that point the roads were shut off. So it would have been very difficult, I believe, for the looters to get there.
AR: And there was no talk of securing the area after you left. There was no discussion of that?
LLJ: Not for the 101st Airborne, Second Brigade. They were -- once they were in Baghdad, it was all about Baghdad, you know, and then they ended up moving north to Mosul. Once we left the area, that was the last that the brigade had anything to do with the area.
AR: Well, Lai Ling Jew, thank you so much for shedding some light into that situation. We appreciate it.
LLJ: Thank you.
GEORGE BUSH'S GO IT ALONE STICKER SHOCK
New Report Reveals True Cost of Iraq War
A new report today reveals that, less than two years after administration officials told us that Iraq could be liberated and security restored on the cheap, George W. Bush is planning to ask for $70 billion - maybe more - in taxpayer funding for Iraq next year alone.
NEW REVELATION: Bush Will Request $70 Billion More For Iraq Next Year
Bush to Request $70 Billion More for Iraq, Pushing Total Costs Close to $225 Billion. "The Bush administration intends to seek about $70 billion in emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan early next year," a total "considerably larger than lawmakers had anticipated." While the request had not yet been finalized, the Army was expected to request an additional $30 billion for combat operations in Iraq, including $6 billion to refurbish equipment worn out by "unexpectedly intense combat." Other Pentagon agencies, the State Department, and the CIA likely would also ask for funds. A $70 billion supplemental request would push "total war costs close to $225 billion since the invasion of Iraq early last year." [Washington Post, 10/26/04]
BUSH'S FANTASY: The War Could Be Fought And Won For Pennies
Daniels Estimated War Would Cost $50-60 Billion. "The administration's top budget official [Mitch Daniels] estimated today that the cost of a war with Iraq could be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion, a figure that is well below earlier estimates from White House officials..." [New York Times, 12/31/02]
Wolfowitz Said Reconstruction Will Pay for Itself Through Oil Revenues. "And the real number would not be what's going to get you to the rest of the fiscal year, but what is it going to be over two to three years. And on a rough recollection, the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the of the next two or three years… We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." [House Appropriations Committee, 3/27/03]
USAID Administrator Said Reconstruction Would Cost $1.7 Billion. Question: "All right, this is the first. I mean, when you talk about 1.7, you're not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is gonna be done for $1.7 billion?" Andrew Natsios, USAID Administrator: "Well, in terms of the American taxpayers contribution, I do, this is it for the US. … the American part of this will be $1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this." [ABC Nightline, 4/23/03]
REALITY: War Was Already On Track to Cost $200 Billion War in Iraq Estimated to Cost $200 Billion Through September 2005. There was $128 billion in supplemental funding for Iraq, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The FY05 defense authorization bill had approximately $21.8 billion in funding for Iraq. Additionally, the GAO has estimated that there is approximately $10.7 billion in cost overruns in FY04 for Iraq. A conservative estimate of the remaining costs for December 2004 - September 2005 is $43.2 billion, based on a burn rate of $4.8 billion per month. [Kosiak, Steven, "Funding for Defense, Military Operations, Homeland Security, and Related Activities Since 9-11," Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 1/21/04; Bloomberg News, 8/23/04; Testimony of Acting Under Secretary of Defense Lawrence Lanzillotta to Defense Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, 6/2/04; "Fiscal Year 2004 Costs for the Global War on Terrorism Will Exceed Supplemental, Requiring DOD to Shift Funds From Other Uses," GAO, July, 2004]
The Case That Kerry Cracked
By Lucy Komisar, AlterNet. Posted October 22, 2004.
As a senator, John Kerry was a tenacious investigator and exposed BCCI, an international criminal bank, and its murderous clients. The experience should serve him well in dealing with the international threats we face today.
More...
http://www.alternet.org/election04/20268/
BUSH STRETCHES THE TRUTH AGAIN
George Bush accused John Kerry of throwing out a "wild claim" about Bin Laden's whereabouts in the fall of 2001. Apparently, George Bush thinks Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Myers were also making wild claims when they said that bin Laden was at Tora Bora in the fall of 2001.
George Bush's latest attack is just another example of how far he will go to take something John Kerry said out of context. Bush claims that Kerry said current military tactics in Tora Bora were effective - but what Kerry really did was tell a caller on a TV show that he favored an effective military strategy over the napalm strategy that the caller was proposing.
1) BUSH CALLS DICK CHENEY, MYERS, AND WOLFOWITZ WILD
Cheney: "He Was Equipped to Go to Ground" at Tora Bora. "And on Nov 29, Vice President Dick Cheney told ABC's "Primetime Live" that, according to the reports that were coming in, bin Laden was in Tora Bora. ‘I think he was equipped to go to ground there,' Mr. Cheney said. ‘He's got what he believes to be a fairly secure facility. He's got caves underground; it's an area he's familiar with.'" [Christian Science Monitor, 3/4/02]
Myers: "We Think We Know In General Where He Is" "[General] Myers disputed reports that bin Laden has fled the country, saying that "to the best of our knowledge" he remains in Afghanistan. "We think we know in general where he is," Myers said. "Can't be sure. But we think we know." [Washington Post, 12/10/01]
Cheney: "Preponderance of the Reporting at This Point" Indicated bin Laden at Tora Bora. "Vice President Cheney, speaking on NBC's ‘Meet the Press,' said that ‘the preponderance of the reporting at this point' indicates that bin Laden is still in the Tora Bora region." [Washington Post, 12/10/01]
Bush Calls Wolfowitz Wild: Unidentified Reporter #1: What kind of progress do you see being made in the Tora Bora area and Jalalabad? And do you believe that Osama bin Laden is still in that area? Mr. WOLFOWITZ: Well, I guess there's a question what constitutes belief. If you have to go by the best indications we have of where he might be, tend to point, I would say almost entirely, but mostly to that area. I can't guarantee there isn't some crank caller right now saying that he's in another country, but we don't have any credible evidence of him being in other parts of Afghanistan, or outside of Afghanistan. But the kinds of reports that we're working on are very fragmentary, not very reliable. We're not talking about eyewitnesses who came in right afterwards and said, 'I saw him in such and such a place.' So--but the reports that we get, tend to leave him in that area. [ABC News, 12/11/01]
2) BUSH TAKES KERRY OUT OF CONTEXT - YET AGAIN. On Larry King, Kerry Said Current Operations Were Better Than Napalming Afghanistan. CALLER: Hello. Yes, I would like to ask the panel why they don't use napalm or flamethrowers on those tunnels and caves up there in Afghanistan? KING: Senator Kerry? CALLER: My golly, I think they could smoke him out. KING: Senator Kerry? KERRY: Well, I think it depends on where you are tactically. They may well be doing that at some point in time. But for the moment, what we are doing, I think, is having its impact and it is the best way to protect our troops and sort of minimalize the proximity, if you will. I think we have been doing this pretty effectively and we should continue to do it that way. [CNN's Larry King Live, 12/14/01, emphasis added]
3) KERRY CALLED FOR MORE BOOTS ON THE GROUND TO GO AFTER BIN LADEN. In an appearance on John McLaughlin's One on One on November 16, 2001, Kerry said that "we need to put some ground people in there in order to do the very things that I've just talked about, and ultimately, to do what we're doing now, which is ... chasing Osama bin Laden and moving the process forward. ... They have moved to the hills, moved to caves, to isolated areas. We have, I think, an extraordinary ability to isolate them there." MR. MCLAUGHLIN: "You're talking air attack." SEN. KERRY: "Not just air attack. No, no. I'm talking about people on the ground, the very people I talked about earlier, the level of engagement here with either rangers or Special Forces…" [John McLaughlin's One on One, 11/16/01]
BUSH-CHENEY AD FACT CHECK
Here's the fundamental choice before voters: hope versus fear, real plans versus empty promises, a fresh start versus more of the same. The American people want a new direction after four years of George Bush's failed policies, and that's exactly what John Kerry's going to give them.
AD TITLE: "The Choice"
DATE: 10/25/04
TYPE: 30sec TV
PAID FOR BY: Bush-Cheney '04
BUSH-CHENEY NEGATIVE ATTACK AD SCRIPT:
Voice Over: "President Bush and Congressional allies: strong leadership to protect America; tax relief; common sense healthcare; strengthen and protect Social Security."
Voice Over: "John Kerry and liberal allies: higher taxes; voting to tax Social Security benefits; government run healthcare; a record of slashing intelligence and reckless defense cuts."
Voice Over: "Alone in the booth....why take the risk?"
FALSE RHETORIC FROM DESPERATE BUSH CAMPAIGN
Voice Over: "President Bush and Congressional allies: strong leadership to protect America; tax relief; common sense healthcare; strengthen and protect Social Security."
THE FACTS - BUSH'S FAILED HEALTH CARE RECORD
Bush's Health Plan Would Not Even Make Up Half the Ground Lost Under Bush. According to an independent study by Kenneth Thorpe of Emory University, Bush's plan would cover just 2.4 million people by 2008; less than half the 5.2 million who have lost health insurance since 2000. Bush has provided no independent estimates to corroborate the large increases in coverage he has been promising. According to the Washington Post, "But when the Bush-Cheney team was asked to provide documentation, the hard data fell far short of the claims, a gap supported by several independent analyses." [Kenneth Thorpe, 5/5/04, sph.emory.edu; Washington Post, 8/22/04; National Journal, 8/4/04; White House Press Release, 9/2/04]
Bush's HSA Proposal Will Raise Health Care Costs And Increase The Uninsured. As healthier people join HSAs, the people remaining in comprehensive coverage will be sicker and more expensive to insure, driving their premiums higher. Some employers will use HSAs to drop health insurance for their employees or reduce their contribution. Independent estimates suggest that Bush's HSA proposal would leave more than 1.4 million workers currently insured without coverage. [Journal of the American Medical Association, 6/5/96; Urban Institute, April 1996; American Academy of Actuaries, 5/95; Consumers Union, 8/10/00; Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 5/10/04]
Bush's Plan Will Raise Premiums for 4 out of 5 Small Businesses. During his presidency, health care costs have increased 64 percent for families. The CBO estimated that AHPs could raise premiums for 4 out of 5 small businesses that keep traditional insurance. A study by Mercer found over 1 million Americans would lose health insurance coverage. [CBO, January 2000; Mercer Risk, Finance and Insurance] [National Journal, 1/24/04, 8/4/04; Consumer Federation of America, 7/17/02; Weiss Ratings, 6/3/03; Mercer Risk, June 2003; Kaiser Family Foundation]
Opponents of AHPs Include Range of Groups Including the National Governors Association, American Diabetes Association, National Council of La Raza, and 41 State Attorneys General. Over 470 local and national groups including the National Governors Association, 41 state attorneys general, American Diabetes Association and National Council of La Raza oppose the legislation from consumers groups to state officials to insurance groups to physicians to local chambers of commerce to labor groups. [http://www.sbhealthequity.org/uploads/master_list.pdf]
THE FACTS - BUSH'S "JANUARY SURPRISE" WILL PRIVATIZE SOCIAL SECURITY & RAISE THE RETIREMENT AGE
Bush Social Security Plan Would Push Retirement Age to 72. "FORTUNE has learned that a new reform idea is percolating within the Social Security Administration. … Monthly Social Security benefits would remain what they are today, but the age at which future retirees qualified for them would be delayed. Today you can qualify for early, reduced benefits at age 62; that age would gradually increase to 68. The retirement age for full benefits would be pushed back from 65 to 72." [Phillip Longman column, Fortune, 10/18/04]
Bush Plan Costs $2 Trillion - According to His Own Advisers. The Economic Report of the President 2004 says that "personal retirement accounts widen the deficit by design." Chart 6-4 shows the "change in the deficit" as a share of nominal GDP, these numbers correspond to $2 trillion in nominal dollars. The precise numbers are available in a Memorandum from the Social Security actuaries, they show that the current dollar cost is $2.004 trillion from 2005-14. [Council of Economic Advisers, Economic Report of the President 2004, pp. 143-144 and Social Security Administration, Office of the Actuary, "Estimates of Financial Effects for Three Models Developed by the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security," 1/31/02]
Bush's Plan Would Cut Benefits by Up to 45 Percent. According to CBO, the President's plan "would reduce expected retirement benefits relative to scheduled benefits for all later cohorts, even when the benefits paid from IAs under CSSS Plan 2 are included ... For example, benefits for the 1980s birth cohort would be … 30 percent lower for the middle and highest quintiles, and benefits for the 2000s cohort would be … 45 percent lower for the middle and highest quintiles." [CBO, "Long-term Analysis of Plan 2 of the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security," 7/21/2004, pp. 15]
FALSE NEGATIVE ATTACKS FROM DESPERATE BUSH CAMPAIGN
Voice Over: "John Kerry and liberal allies: higher taxes; voting to tax Social Security benefits; government run healthcare; a record of slashing intelligence and reckless defense cuts."
THE FACTS - BUSH'S GREAT DISTORTION OF KERRY'S PRO-GROWTH, PRO-MIDDLE CLASS TAX CUTS
"Gross Exaggeration," "Simply Isn't True," "Misleading," "Bogus Number"& "Procedural Trickery," "Not Quite Right, "Unfair", "Ridiculous", "Phony," "False," "Padded," "Misleading," "So Off Base," "Bogus" "Magic Number," "Exists Only In Minds Of Spinners" "Checkered" "Inaccurate," "Incredulous" Fails "Straight Face Test:" These are some of the reactions of a wide range of newspapers and independent experts. [ABC World News Tonight, 10/4/04; NBC Nightly News, 10/5/04; Washington Post, 5/31/04; Cincinnati Inquirer, 5/26/04; NBC Nightly News, 4/6/04; Factcheck.org; Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 5/19/04; Kinsley, Washington Post, 3/24/04; Political Finance, The Newsletter, May 2004; Charleston Gazette, 4/12/04;Charleston Gazette, 4/11/04; AP, 4/9/04; 4/8/04; USA Today, 4/6/04; LA Times, 3/30/04; New York Times, 5/25/04; factcheck.org]
The Truth About Kerry's Record: The truth? Kerry has gone on the legislative record over 640 times for lower taxes. [Congressional Quarterly Votes; CQ's Congress And The Nation; CQ Almanacs; Senate Republican Policy Committee Vote Analysis; Congressional Research Service Bill Summaries (via thomas.loc.gov), bill texts (via thomas.loc.gov)]
John Kerry Supports Twice As Much In New Middle-Class Tax Cuts as George Bush. John Kerry supports twice as much in new middle class tax cuts as George Bush. In total, he is proposing $419 billion in new pro-family, pro-jobs tax cuts - more than twice as much as the new tax cuts George Bush is proposing. And all of Kerry's tax cuts are fully paid for by rolling back the Bush tax cuts on families making over $200,000 and closing corporate loopholes. These tax cuts include: College Opportunity Tax Credit of up to $4,000 on college tuition costs, a childcare tax credit of up to $1,000 to help families pay for childcare expenses, $177 billion in tax credits to make health care more affordable, and a new jobs tax credit for any new jobs created in manufacturing, other businesses affected by outsourcing, and small businesses. [www.johnkerry.com]
THE FACTS - ONLY JOHN KERRY WILL PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY
John Kerry Had the Courage to Help Save Medicare by Asking Wealthiest Retirees to Pay Their Fair Share. John Kerry joined President Clinton in asking the wealthiest of retirees to pay their fair share of Social Security taxes as part of the landmark 1993 budget bill that helped create 22.9 million new jobs, cut the deficit by half a trillion dollars and extend the life of the Medicare system - a proposal the New York Times said "took courage." [Vote #57, 3/24/93; Vote #169, 6/24/93; White House Fact Sheet: The Clinton Presidency: Historic Economic Growth, 1/9/01; Washington Post, 4/7/93; New York Times editorial, 3/19/93]
George W. Bush has Never Proposed Repealing the Social Security Tax Increase - and When John Kerry Voted to Do So, Republicans Blocked the Effort. Despite his rhetoric, George W. Bush has never proposed repealing the increase. His failure to lead has shaved 10 years off the life expectancy of Medicare. Just last year, John Kerry voted for an amendment to repeal the 1993 income tax increase on Social Security benefits, cutting taxes by $1,500 for nearly 8 million seniors - but Republicans more interested in tax cuts for the wealthy killed the proposal 49-51. [Vote #149, 5/15/03; Grand Forks Herald, 5/15/03]
Dick Cheney Voted to Raise Social Security Taxes. In 1983, Cheney voted for the Social Security Amendments of 1983. The legislation taxed Social Security benefits, increased taxes for those who are self-employed and increased Social Security payroll taxes. [1983 CQ Almanac p. 219; vote #43, 18-H; HR 1900; tax descriptions from the 1983 Congressional Quarterly Almanac]
Cheney Repeatedly Voted Against Social Security Beneficiaries, Including Limiting Benefits, Raising the Retirement Age and Undermining the Social Security Trust Fund. Cheney voted in 1981 against restoring minimum monthly Social Security benefits. In 1983, he voted to raise the Social Security Retirement Age to 67 starting in 2000. In 1985, he voted against increasing Social Security Cost-of-Living adjustments. In that year he also cast three separate votes against protecting the Social Security Trust Fund. Cheney openly advocated for increasing Social Security taxes and pushing back the retirement age as chair of the House Republican Policy Committee. [1981 CQ Almanac, #178, 44-H; 1983 CQ Almanac, #20 and 22, 10-H; 1985 CQ Almanac, #113, 38-H; 1985 CQ Almanac, #351-353, 110-H; UPI, 11/16/82]
THE FACTS - MEDIA, EXPERTS REJECT BUSH'S FALSE CLAIM OF "GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTHCARE"
"Government Health Care" Charge Called "Fiction"…"Grossly Misleading"…"Outright Fabrications." Numerous independent media outlets have rejected the Bush charge that John Kerry's health plan would lead to government-run health care. The Washington Post called the attack "fiction" and "specious," and Howard Kurtz wrote that "[f]act sheets provided by the Bush campaign offered little evidence for these and other accusations beyond excerpts from such conservative forums as the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the Weekly Standard." Knight Ridder termed it "grossly misleading." "Outright fabrications," said the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The Detroit Free Press called Bush's attack "absurd accusations … flat-out false." And ABC News said the charge was "not true … far from it." [Washington Post editorial, 9/16/04; Washington Post, 10/9/04 and 10/13/04; Knight Ridder, 10/9/04; St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial, 9/27/04; Detroit Free Press editorial, 9/26/04; ABC News World News Tonight, 9/13/04]
Health Care Experts Called on Bush Campaign to End Misleading Attacks. 68 health care policy experts have released a petition calling on the Bush campaign to end its misleading attacks on Kerry's health plan: "Although Senator Kerry's proposals should be subject to a full analysis of their cost and impact, any claim that they amount to 'government-run health care' or a 'government takeover' of the health care system or of health care decision-making is simply inconsistent with the facts. We are not aware of any expert in health care or health care finance, whatever his or her political orientation, who believes otherwise." And "when read a [Bush] ad script over the telephone, Lewin Group vice president John Sheils said: ‘I don't see any truth in it anywhere. I don't think the statement is quite true.'" The Bush campaign relies on Lewin Group analyses for a number of its claims. [Jonathan Cohn, The New Republic, 10/13/04; Los Angeles Times, 10/13/04; www.georgewbush.com]
Study Bush Campaign Cites Shows 97% of Americans Keep Existing Health Plans. "Lewin's vice president John Sheils told FactCheck.org that his computer model projects that only 8.2 million (of the 243 million who currently have private or government health insurance) would change their insurance plans under Kerry's plan." [FactCheck.org, 10/4/04]
Kerry's Plan Relies on "Tax Breaks to Employers and Tax Credits to Individuals." "Instead of offering a big government health care plan, the Kerry plan "studiously avoids any similarity to the one proposed in 1993 by the Clintons," Knight Ridder reported. "It relies on existing agencies and on tax breaks to employers and tax credits to individuals to ensure access to the same health care program available to members of Congress and federal employees." The New York Times wrote that "the strength of the Kerry approach is that it relies primarily on well-tested health-insurance arrangements." [Knight Ridder, 9/14/04; New York Times editorial, 10/2/04]
THE FACTS - KERRY VS. BUSH-CHENEY ON INTELLIGENCE
Kerry Strongly Supports Increased Intelligence Funding - Including $250 Billion in the Previous 8 Years - A 50% Increase Since 1996 - John Kerry has strongly supported recent increases in Intelligence funding, and, in the wake of 9/11, has supported the bipartisan call for an even larger increase in intelligence funding. According to a report issued by the Center for Defense Information entitled "Intelligence Funding and the War on Terror" John Kerry has supported approximately $250 billion in Intelligence funding over the past eight years alone. The report concludes that Kerry has supported a 50% increase in intelligence funding since 1996. [Senate Intelligence Authorization Funding voice votes 9/25/02, 12/13/01, 12/6/00, 11/19/1999, 10/8/98 & 9/25/96; 1997, Senate Roll Call vote # 109; Jewish News Bulletin of Northern California, 4/5/02]
Washington Post: Republican Criticism on Kerry Intel Record is Wrong. "President Bush, in his first major assault on Sen. John F. Kerry's legislative record, said this week that his Democratic opponent proposed a $1.5 billion cut in the intelligence budget, a proposal that would ‘gut the intelligence services,' and one that had no co-sponsors because it was ‘deeply irresponsible'….In fact, the Republican-led Congress that year approved legislation that resulted in $3.8 billion being cut over five years from the budget of the National Reconnaissance Office -- the same program Kerry said he was targeting." [Washington Post, 3/12/04]
Porter Goss, Hand-Picked By Bush to Head CIA, Wanted to Cut Intel More Than Kerry, And Specifically Targeted "Human Intelligence." "The Bush reelection campaign has been blasting Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry as deeply irresponsible for proposing intelligence cuts at the same time. A Bush campaign ad released on Aug. 13 carried a headline: ‘John Kerry...proposed slashing Intelligence Budget 6 Billion Dollars.' But the cuts Goss supported are larger than those proposed by Kerry and specifically targeted the ‘human intelligence' that has recently been found lacking. The recent report by the commission probing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks called for more spending on human intelligence." [Washington Post, 8/24/04]
Goss Cuts Would Have Cut Intelligence Personnel By 20% or More. "But three months earlier, on June 22, Goss was one of six original co-sponsors of legislation titled H.R. 1923, called the Restructuring a Limited Government Act. Among other things, the legislation, written by then-Rules Committee Chairman Gerald B.H. Solomon (R-N.Y.), directed that "the president shall, for each of fiscal years 1996 through 2000, reduce the total number of military and civilian personnel employed by, or assigned or detailed to, elements of the Intelligence Community by not less than 4 percent of the baseline number" of employees on Sept. 30, 1995. There are believed to be about 20,000 employees of the CIA, and an unknown number of others in the military intelligence agencies. [Washington Post, 8/24/04]
Goss Himself Has Been Critical Of CIA For Lack Of "Human Intelligence" Despite Earlier Attempts To Cut The Size Of The Intelligence Community. Indeed, [Goss has] been critical of the agency's failures, especially the lack of substantial "human intelligence" - agents in the field. Earlier this year, his panel slammed the CIA for "ignoring its core missional activities" and for its "dysfunctional denial of any need for corrective action." [The New York Post, August 11, 2004]
9-11 Commission Report Recommended Greater Emphasis On Human Intelligence. The commission report recommends a greater emphasis on and funding for human intelligence, meaning information gathered by the CIA from spies inside adversary governments or terrorist groups. Human intelligence now consumes a small percentage of an estimated $40 billion annual intelligence budget, which is weighted heavily toward technical intelligence devices such as spy satellites. [USA TODAY, August 2, 2004]
THE FACTS - KERRY VS. BUSH-CHENEY ON DEFENSE SPENDING
Kerry Has Supported $4.4 Trillion in Defense Spending Including the Largest Increase Since the 1980's, and 16 of 19 Defense Authorization Bills. John Kerry is a strong supporter of the U.S. Armed Services and has consistently worked to ensure the military has the best equipment and training possible. In 2002, John Kerry voted for a large increase in the defense budget. This increase provided more than $355 billion for the Defense Department for 2003, an increase of $21 billion over 2002. This measure includes $71.5 billion for procurement programs such as $4 billion for the Air Force's F-22 fighter jets, $3.5 billion for the Joint Strike Fighter and $279.3 million for an E-8C Joint Stars (JSTARS) aircraft. Kerry's vote also funded a 4.1% pay increase for military personnel, $160 million for the B-1 Bomber Defense System Upgrade, $1.5 billion for a new attack submarine, more than $630 million for Army and Navy variants of the Blackhawk helicopter, $3.2 billion for additional C-17 transports, $900 million for R&D of the Comanche helicopter and more than $800 million for Trident Submarine conversion. [2002, Roll Call Vote # 239; Websites of Senators Daschle, Dodd accessed 7/25/03; Def. Auth 1985-2004; Defense Authorization Conference Reports, FY86-present; Congressional Quarterly Almanacs, 1986-2002; House Armed Service Committee Authorization Conference Report Summaries FY98- present; Vote #167, 7/30/1985, S.1160 Passed 94-5, Kerry-Y; Vote #167, 7/30/1985, S.1160 Passed 94-5, Kerry-Y; Vote #207, 8/9/86, bill passed 86-3, Kerry-Y, conference report passed by voice vote, 10/15/86; Vote #384, 11/19/87, HR 1748, passed 86-9, Kerry-Y; Vote #252, 7/14/1988, HR 4264 Passed 64-30 Kerry-Y; Vote #299, 11/15/1989, HR 2461 Passed 91-8, Kerry-Y; Vote #265, 11/22/1991, HR 2100 Passed 79-15, Kerry-Y; S 3114 passed by voice vote, 9/19/92, HR 5006 passed by unanimous consent, 10/5/92; Vote #380, 11/17/1993, HR 2401 Passed 77-22, Kerry-Y; Vote #297, 9/13/1994, S.2182 Passed 80-18, Kerry-Y; Vote #296, 11/6/97, Fiscal 1998 Defense Authorization (S. 936/H.R. 1119), conference report adopted 90-10, Kerry: Yes; Vote #293, 10/1/98, HR 3616, Passed 96-2, Kerry-Y; Vote #284, 9/22/99, S1059, Passed 93-5, Kerry-Y; Vote #275, 10/12/00, HR 4205, Passed 90-3, Kerry-Y; Vote #369, 12/13/01, S 1438, Passed 96-2, Kerry-Y; Vote #165, 6/27/02, S 2514, bill Passed 97-2, Kerry-Y; Senate agreed to conference report on HR 4546 by voice vote, 11/13/02; Vote 194, 5/22/03, S 1050 passed 98-1, Kerry ANNOUNCED For; Defense Authorization Conference Reports, FY86-present; Congressional Quarterly Almanacs, 1986-2002; House Armed Service Committee Authorization Conference Report Summaries FY98- present]
B-2 BOMBER: The Kerry Record
Kerry has supported over $16.7 billion in defense authorizations for the B-2 program, over $11 billion since the Cheney cuts.
· THE CHENEY RECORD: Cheney Proposed Cuts to B-2 Program. According to the Boston Globe, in 1990, "Defense Secretary Richard Cheney announced a cutback… of nearly 45 percent in the administration's B-2 Stealth bomber program, from 132 airplanes to 75…" [Boston Globe, 4/27/90]
PATRIOT MISSILE SYSTEM: The Kerry Record
Kerry supported at least $10 billion in defense authorizations for the Patriot program, including over $5 billion since Cheney declined to fund the program
THE CHENEY RECORD: Bush I-Cheney Budget Said Us Didn't Need More Patriots: "Ironically, the 1992 budget requests no new funds to buy additional Patriot missiles. In its projections last year, before the outbreak of the gulf war, the Army had planned to ask for an additional 440 of them in 1992." [Washington Post, 2/5/91] The president requested $603 million for the development of tactical antimissile weapons, but he sought no funds for new purchases of the Patriot system. The Patriot missile, manufactured by Raytheon Corp., was performing well in the Persian Gulf war [Facts on File, 2/7/91]
BRADLEY FIGHTING VEHICLES: The Kerry Record
Kerry has supported at least $8.5 billion in defense authorizations for the Bradley program, including almost $4 billion since Cheney tried to kill the program.
THE CHENEY RECORD: Bush-Cheney Budget Terminated The Bradley. "Major weapons killed include the Army's M-2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the Navy's Trident submarine and F-14 aircraft, and the Air Force's F-16 airplane. Cheney decided the military already has enough of these weapons." [Boston Globe, 2/5/91]
FALSE NEGATIVE ATTACKS FROM DESPERATE BUSH CAMPAIGN
Voice Over: "Alone in the booth....why take the risk?"
THE FACTS - BUSH IS A RISK TO THE MIDDLE CLASS
5.2 Million More Americans Have No Health Insurance on Bush's Watch. The number of uninsured has swelled under Bush by 5.2 million to a total of 45 million, one in seven people living in the United States. Since 2000, the percentage of Americans with health coverage through their job has dropped 3.2 percent to just 60.4 percent. [Census Bureau, Current Population Reports]
Families' Health Expenses Up 64 Percent On Bush's Watch. Despite promising in 2000 to make sure "people have got affordable health care," families' health bills are up 64 percent since Bush took office. Family health premiums are up by $3,512 and are rising at nearly five times the rate of wages. [Bush interview with ABC's This Week, 1/23/00; Kaiser Family Foundation, Employee Health Benefits Survey 2004]
America Has Lost 1.6 Million Private Sector Jobs Under Bush, Incomes and Wages Decline. Since George W. Bush took office, America has seen 1.6 million jobs lost. America has also lost 2.7 million manufacturing jobs. On average, jobs in growing industries pay $8,848 less than jobs in shrinking industries - that is 27 percent less. Under President Bush the typical family has seen its inflation-adjusted income decline by $1,535, based on the most recent data showing the change from 2000 to 2003. Under President Clinton the typical family saw its inflation-adjusted income rise by $5,489. [Analysis of BLS data from January 2001 through August 2004; Bureau of Labor Statistics; Census Bureau]
Americans Are Facing Increasing Costs for Child Care, and Energy, and Education. In 2004, a family with 2 children under age 5 in full-time daycare was spending $2,050 more for childcare than in 2000. Households with teenagers are paying $759 more per year for gasoline since George Bush took office. They now pay on average $2,880 per year. Since Bush has taken office, tuition in the United States has increased by $1,207 at four-year public universities - a 35 percent increase. [Department of Energy, Household Vehicles Energy Consumption 1994, Table 5.2, August 1997; Census Bureau, Consumer Price Index, Analysis by Amelia Warren Tyagi; College Board]
The New Yorker Endorses Kerry.
For the first time in its 80 year history, the editors of The New Yorker have made a presidential endorsement, for John Kerry. There is a long and detailed critique of the Bush administration, concluding that "its record has been one of failure, arrogance, and--strikingly for a team that prided itself on crisp professionalism--incompetence."
Turning to John Kerry, the editors write that "In every crucial area of concern to Americans (the economy, health care, the environment, Social Security, the judiciary, national security, foreign policy, the war in Iraq, the fight against terrorism), Kerry offers a clear, corrective alternative to Bush's curious blend of smugness, radicalism, and demagoguery."
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?041101ta_talk_editors
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COMMENT
THE CHOICE
by The Editors
The New Yorker
Issue of 2004-11-01
This Presidential campaign has been as ugly and as bitter as any in American memory. The ugliness has flowed mostly in one direction, reaching its apotheosis in the effort, undertaken by a supposedly independent group financed by friends of the incumbent, to portray the challenger--who in his mid-twenties was an exemplary combatant in both the Vietnam War and the movement to end that war--as a coward and a traitor. The bitterness has been felt mostly by the challenger's adherents; yet there has been more than enough to go around. This is one campaign in which no one thinks of having the band strike up "Happy Days Are Here Again."
The heightened emotions of the race that (with any luck) will end on November 2, 2004, are rooted in the events of three previous Tuesdays. On Tuesday, November 7, 2000, more than a hundred and five million Americans went to the polls and, by a small but indisputable plurality, voted to make Al Gore President of the United States. Because of the way the votes were distributed, however, the outcome in the electoral college turned on the outcome in Florida. In that state, George W. Bush held a lead of some five hundred votes, one one-thousandth of Gore's national margin; irregularities, and there were many, all had the effect of taking votes away from Gore; and the state's electoral machinery was in the hands of Bush's brother, who was the governor, and one of Bush's state campaign co-chairs, who was the Florida secretary of state.
Bush sued to stop any recounting of the votes, and, on Tuesday, December 12th, the United States Supreme Court gave him what he wanted. Bush v. Gore was so shoddily reasoned and transparently partisan that the five justices who endorsed the decision declined to put their names on it, while the four dissenters did not bother to conceal their disgust. There are rules for settling electoral disputes of this kind, in federal and state law and in the Constitution itself. By ignoring them--by cutting off the process and installing Bush by fiat--the Court made a mockery not only of popular democracy but also of constitutional republicanism.
A result so inimical to both majority rule and individual civic equality was bound to inflict damage on the fabric of comity. But the damage would have been far less severe if the new President had made some effort to take account of the special circumstances of his election--in the composition of his Cabinet, in the way that he pursued his policy goals, perhaps even in the goals themselves. He made no such effort. According to Bob Woodward in "Plan of Attack," Vice-President Dick Cheney put it this way: "From the very day we walked in the building, a notion of sort of a restrained presidency because it was such a close election, that lasted maybe thirty seconds. It was not contemplated for any length of time. We had an agenda, we ran on that agenda, we won the election--full speed ahead."
The new President's main order of business was to push through Congress a program of tax reductions overwhelmingly skewed to favor the very rich. The policies he pursued through executive action, such as weakening environmental protection and cutting off funds for international family-planning efforts, were mostly unpopular outside what became known (in English, not Arabic) as "the base," which is to say the conservative movement and, especially, its evangelical component. The President's enthusiastic embrace of that movement was such that, four months into the Administration, the defection of a moderate senator from Vermont, Jim Jeffords, cost his party control of the Senate. And, four months after that, the President's political fortunes appeared to be coasting into a gentle but inexorable decline. Then came the blackest Tuesday of all.
September 11, 2001, brought with it one positive gift: a surge of solidarity, global and national--solidarity with and solidarity within the United States. This extraordinary outpouring provided Bush with a second opportunity to create something like a government of national unity. Again, he brushed the opportunity aside, choosing to use the political capital handed to him by Osama bin Laden to push through more elements of his unmandated domestic program. A year after 9/11, in the midterm elections, he increased his majority in the House and recaptured control of the Senate by portraying selected Democrats as friends of terrorism. Is it any wonder that the anger felt by many Democrats is even greater than can be explained by the profound differences in outlook between the two candidates and their parties?
The Bush Administration has had success in carrying out its policies and implementing its intentions, aided by majorities--political and, apparently, ideological--in both Houses of Congress. Substantively, however, its record has been one of failure, arrogance, and--strikingly for a team that prided itself on crisp professionalism--incompetence.
In January, 2001, just after Bush's inauguration, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office published its budget outlook for the coming decade. It showed a cumulative surplus of more than five trillion dollars. At the time, there was a lot of talk about what to do with the anticipated bounty, a discussion that now seems antique. Last year's federal deficit was three hundred and seventy-five billion dollars; this year's will top four hundred billion. According to the C.B.O., which came out with its latest projection in September, the period from 2005 to 2014 will see a cumulative shortfall of $2.3 trillion.
Even this seven-trillion-dollar turnaround underestimates the looming fiscal disaster. In doing its calculations, the C.B.O. assumed that most of the Bush tax cuts would expire in 2011, as specified in the legislation that enacted them. However, nobody in Washington expects them to go away on schedule; they were designated as temporary only to make their ultimate results look less scary. If Congress extends the expiration deadlines--a near-certainty if Bush wins and the Republicans retain control of Congress--then, according to the C.B.O., the cumulative deficit between 2005 and 2014 will nearly double, to $4.5 trillion.
What has the country received in return for mortgaging its future? The President says that his tax cuts lifted the economy before and after 9/11, thereby moderating the downturn that began with the Nasdaq's collapse in April, 2000. It's true that even badly designed tax cuts can give the economy a momentary jolt. But this doesn't make them wise policy. "Most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans," Bush said during his final debate with Senator John Kerry. This is false--a lie, actually--though at least it suggests some dim awareness that the reverse Robin Hood approach to tax cuts is politically and morally repugnant. But for tax cuts to stimulate economic activity quickly and efficiently they should go to people who will spend the extra money. Largely at the insistence of Democrats and moderate Republicans, the Bush cuts gave middle-class families some relief in the form of refunds, bigger child credits, and a smaller marriage penalty. Still, the rich do better, to put it mildly. Citizens for Tax Justice, a Washington research group whose findings have proved highly dependable, notes that, this year, a typical person in the lowest fifth of the income distribution will get a tax cut of ninety-one dollars, a typical person in the middle fifth will pocket eight hundred and sixty-three dollars, and a typical person in the top one per cent will collect a windfall of fifty-nine thousand two hundred and ninety-two dollars.
These disparities help explain the familiar charge that Bush will likely be the first chief executive since Hoover to preside over a net loss of American jobs. This Administration's most unshakable commitment has been to shifting the burden of taxation away from the sort of income that rewards wealth and onto the sort that rewards work. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, another Washington research group, estimates that the average federal tax rate on income generated from corporate dividends and capital gains is now about ten per cent. On wages and salaries it's about twenty-three per cent. The President promises, in a second term, to expand tax-free savings accounts, cut taxes further on dividends and capital gains, and permanently abolish the estate tax--all of which will widen the widening gap between the richest and the rest.
Bush signalled his approach toward the environment a few weeks into his term, when he reneged on a campaign pledge to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions, the primary cause of global warming. His record since then has been dictated, sometimes literally, by the industries affected. In 2002, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed rescinding a key provision of the Clean Air Act known as "new source review," which requires power-plant operators to install modern pollution controls when upgrading older facilities. The change, it turned out, had been recommended by some of the nation's largest polluters, in e-mails to the Energy Task Force, which was chaired by Vice-President Cheney. More recently, the Administration proposed new rules that would significantly weaken controls on mercury emissions from power plants. The E.P.A.'s regulation drafters had copied, in some instances verbatim, memos sent to it by a law firm representing the utility industry.
"I guess you'd say I'm a good steward of the land," Bush mused dreamily during debate No. 2. Or maybe you'd say nothing of the kind. The President has so far been unable to persuade the Senate to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but vast stretches of accessible wilderness have been opened up to development. By stripping away restrictions on the use of federal lands, often through little-advertised rule changes, the Administration has potentially opened up sixty million acres, an area larger than Indiana and Iowa combined, to logging, mining, and oil exploration.
During the fevered period immediately after September 11th, the Administration rushed what it was pleased to call the U.S.A. Patriot Act through a compliant Congress. Some of the reaction to that law has been excessive. Many of its provisions, such as allowing broader information-sharing among investigative agencies, are sensible. About others there are legitimate concerns. Section 215 of the law, for example, permits government investigators to obtain--without a subpoena or a search warrant based on probable cause--a court order entitling them to records from libraries, bookstores, doctors, universities, and Internet service providers, among other public and private entities. Officials of the Department of Justice say that they have used Section 215 with restraint, and that they have not, so far, sought information from libraries or bookstores. Their avowals of good faith would be more reassuring if their record were not otherwise so troubling.
Secrecy and arrogance have been the touchstones of the Justice Department under Bush and his attorney general, John Ashcroft. Seven weeks after the 9/11 attacks, the Administration announced that its investigation had resulted in nearly twelve hundred arrests. The arrests have continued, but eventually the Administration simply stopped saying how many people were and are being held. In any event, not one of the detainees has been convicted of anything resembling a terrorist act. At least as reprehensible is the way that foreign nationals living in the United States have been treated. Since September 11th, some five thousand have been rounded up and more than five hundred have been deported, all for immigration infractions, after hearings that, in line with a novel doctrine asserted by Ashcroft, were held in secret. Since it is official policy not to deport terrorism suspects, it is unclear what legitimate anti-terror purpose these secret hearings serve.
President Bush often complains about Democratic obstructionism, but the truth is that he has made considerable progress, if that's the right word, toward the goal of stocking the federal courts with conservative ideologues. The Senate has confirmed two hundred and one of his judicial nominees, more than the per-term averages for Presidents Clinton, Reagan, and Bush senior. Senate Republicans blocked more than sixty of Clinton's nominees; Senate Democrats have blocked only ten of Bush's. (Those ten, by the way, got exactly what they deserved. Some of them--such as Carolyn Kuhl, who devoted years of her career to trying to preserve tax breaks for colleges that practice racial discrimination, and Brett Kavanaugh, a thirty-eight-year-old with no judicial or courtroom experience who co-wrote the Starr Report--rank among the worst judicial appointments ever attempted.)
Even so, to the extent that Bush and Ashcroft have been thwarted it has been due largely to our still vigorous federal judiciary, especially the Supreme Court. Like some of the Court's worst decisions of the past four years (Bush v. Gore again comes to mind), most of its best--salvaging affirmative action, upholding civil liberties for terrorist suspects, striking down Texas's anti-sodomy law, banning executions of the mentally retarded--were reached by one- or two-vote majorities. (Roe v. Wade is two justices removed from reversal.) All but one of the sitting justices are senior citizens, ranging in age from sixty-five to eighty-four, and the gap since the last appointment--ten years--is the longest since 1821. Bush has said more than once that Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas are his favorite justices. In a second Bush term, the Court could be remade in their images.
The record is similarly dismal in other areas of domestic policy. An executive order giving former Presidents the power to keep their papers indefinitely sealed is one example among many of a mania for secrecy that long antedates 9/11. The President's hostility to science, exemplified by his decision to place crippling limits on federal support of stem-cell research and by a systematic willingness to distort or suppress scientific findings discomfiting to "the base," is such that scores of eminent scientists who are normally indifferent to politics have called for his defeat. The Administration's energy policies, especially its resistance to increasing fuel-efficiency requirements, are of a piece with its environmental irresponsibility. Even the highly touted No Child Left Behind education program, enacted with the support of the liberal lion Edward Kennedy, is being allowed to fail, on account of grossly inadequate funding. Some of the money that has been pumped into it has been leached from other education programs, dozens of which are slated for cuts next year.
Ordinarily, such a record would be what lawyers call dispositive. But this election is anything but ordinary. Jobs, health care, education, and the rest may not count for much when weighed against the prospect of large-scale terrorist attack. The most important Presidential responsibility of the next four years, as of the past three, is the "war on terror"--more precisely, the struggle against a brand of Islamist fundamentalist totalitarianism that uses particularly ruthless forms of terrorism as its main weapon.
Bush's immediate reaction to the events of September 11, 2001, was an almost palpable bewilderment and anxiety. Within a few days, to the universal relief of his fellow-citizens, he seemed to find his focus. His decision to use American military power to topple the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, who had turned their country into the principal base of operations for the perpetrators of the attacks, earned the near-unanimous support of the American people and of America's allies. Troops from Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Italy, Norway, and Spain are serving alongside Americans in Afghanistan to this day.
The determination of ordinary Afghans to vote in last month's Presidential election, for which the votes are still being counted, is clearly a positive sign. Yet the job in Afghanistan has been left undone, despite fervent promises at the outset that the chaos that was allowed to develop after the defeat of the Soviet occupation in the nineteen-eighties would not be repeated. The Taliban has regrouped in eastern and southern regions. Bin Laden's organization continues to enjoy sanctuary and support from Afghans as well as Pakistanis on both sides of their common border. Warlords control much of Afghanistan outside the capital of Kabul, which is the extent of the territorial writ of the decent but beleaguered President Hamid Karzai. Opium production has increased fortyfold.
The White House's real priorities were elsewhere from the start. According to the former counter-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke, in a Situation Room crisis meeting on September 12, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld suggested launching retaliatory strikes against Iraq. When Clarke and others pointed out to him that Al Qaeda--the presumed culprit--was based in Afghanistan, not Iraq, Rumsfeld is said to have remarked that there were better targets in Iraq. The bottom line, as Bush's former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has said, was that the Bush-Cheney team had been planning to carry out regime change in Baghdad well before September 11th--one way or another, come what may.
At all three debates, President Bush defended the Iraq war by saying that without it Saddam Hussein would still be in power. This is probably true, and Saddam's record of colossal cruelty--of murder, oppression, and regional aggression--was such that even those who doubted the war's wisdom acknowledged his fall as an occasion for satisfaction. But the removal of Saddam has not been the war's only consequence; and, as we now know, his power, however fearsome to the millions directly under its sway, was far less of a threat to the United States and the rest of the world than it pretended--and, more important, was made out--to be.
As a variety of memoirs and journalistic accounts have made plain, Bush seldom entertains contrary opinion. He boasts that he listens to no outside advisers, and inside advisers who dare to express unwelcome views are met with anger or disdain. He lives and works within a self-created bubble of faith-based affirmation. Nowhere has his solipsism been more damaging than in the case of Iraq. The arguments and warnings of analysts in the State Department, in the Central Intelligence Agency, in the uniformed military services, and in the chanceries of sympathetic foreign governments had no more effect than the chants of millions of marchers.
The decision to invade and occupy Iraq was made on the basis of four assumptions: first, that Saddam's regime was on the verge of acquiring nuclear explosives and had already amassed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons; second, that the regime had meaningful links with Al Qaeda and (as was repeatedly suggested by the Vice-President and others) might have had something to do with 9/11; third, that within Iraq the regime's fall would be followed by prolonged celebration and rapid and peaceful democratization; and, fourth, that a similar democratic transformation would be precipitated elsewhere in the region, accompanied by a new eagerness among Arab governments and publics to make peace between Israel and a presumptive Palestinian state. The first two of these assumptions have been shown to be entirely baseless. As for the second two, if the wishes behind them do someday come true, it may not be clear that the invasion of Iraq was a help rather than a hindrance.
In Bush's rhetoric, the Iraq war began on March 20, 2003, with precision bombings of government buildings in Baghdad, and ended exactly three weeks later, with the iconic statue pulldown. That military operation was indeed a success. But the cakewalk led over a cliff, to a succession of heedless and disastrous mistakes that leave one wondering, at the very least, how the Pentagon's civilian leadership remains intact and the President's sense of infallibility undisturbed. The failure, against the advice of such leaders as General Eric Shinseki, then the Army chief of staff, to deploy an adequate protective force led to unchallenged looting of government buildings, hospitals, museums, and--most inexcusable of all--arms depots. ("Stuff happens," Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld explained, though no stuff happened to the oil ministry.) The Pentagon all but ignored the State Department's postwar plans, compiled by its Future of Iraq project, which warned not only of looting but also of the potential for insurgencies and the folly of relying on exiles such as Ahmad Chalabi; the project's head, Thomas Warrick, was sidelined. The White House counsel's disparagement of the Geneva Conventions and of prohibitions on torture as "quaint" opened the way to systematic and spectacular abuses at Abu Ghraib and other American-run prisons--a moral and political catastrophe for which, in a pattern characteristic of the Administration's management style, no one in a policymaking position has been held accountable. And, no matter how Bush may cleave to his arguments about a grand coalition ("What's he say to Tony Blair?" "He forgot Poland!"), the coalition he assembled was anything but grand, and it has been steadily melting away in Iraq's cauldron of violence.
By the end of the current fiscal year, the financial cost of this war will be two hundred billion dollars (the figure projected by Lawrence Lindsey, who headed the President's Council of Economic Advisers until, like numerous other bearers of unpalatable news, he was cashiered) and rising. And there are other, more serious costs that were unforeseen by the dominant factions in the Administration (although there were plenty of people who did foresee them). The United States has become mired in a low-intensity guerrilla war that has taken more lives since the mission was declared to be accomplished than before. American military deaths have mounted to more than a thousand, a number that underplays the real level of suffering: among the eight thousand wounded are many who have been left seriously maimed. The toll of Iraqi dead and wounded is of an order of magnitude greater than the American. Al Qaeda, previously an insignificant presence in Iraq, is an important one now. Before this war, we had persuaded ourselves and the world that our military might was effectively infinite. Now it is overstretched, a reality obvious to all. And, if the exposure of American weakness encourages our enemies, surely the blame lies with those who created the reality, not with those who, like Senator Kerry, acknowledge it as a necessary step toward changing it.
When the Administration's geopolitical, national-interest, and anti-terrorism justifications for the Iraq war collapsed, it groped for an argument from altruism: postwar chaos, violence, unemployment, and brownouts notwithstanding, the war has purchased freedoms for the people of Iraq which they could not have had without Saddam's fall. That is true. But a sad and ironic consequence of this war is that its fumbling prosecution has undermined its only even arguably meritorious rationale--and, as a further consequence, the salience of idealism in American foreign policy has been likewise undermined. Foreign-policy idealism has taken many forms--Wilson's aborted world federalism, Carter's human-rights jawboning, and Reagan's flirtation with total nuclear disarmament, among others. The failed armed intervention in Somalia and the successful ones in the Balkans are other examples. The neoconservative version ascendant in the Bush Administration, post-9/11, draws partly on these strains. There is surely idealistic purpose in envisioning a Middle East finally relieved of its autocracies and dictatorships. Yet this Administration's adventure in Iraq is so gravely flawed and its credibility so badly damaged that in the future, faced with yet another moral dilemma abroad, it can be expected to retreat, a victim of its own Iraq Syndrome.
The damage visited upon America, and upon America's standing in the world, by the Bush Administration's reckless mishandling of the public trust will not easily be undone. And for many voters the desire to see the damage arrested is reason enough to vote for John Kerry. But the challenger has more to offer than the fact that he is not George W. Bush. In every crucial area of concern to Americans (the economy, health care, the environment, Social Security, the judiciary, national security, foreign policy, the war in Iraq, the fight against terrorism), Kerry offers a clear, corrective alternative to Bush's curious blend of smugness, radicalism, and demagoguery. Pollsters like to ask voters which candidate they'd most like to have a beer with, and on that metric Bush always wins. We prefer to ask which candidate is better suited to the governance of our nation.
Throughout his long career in public service, John Kerry has demonstrated steadiness and sturdiness of character. The physical courage he showed in combat in Vietnam was matched by moral courage when he raised his voice against the war, a choice that has carried political costs from his first run for Congress, lost in 1972 to a campaign of character assassination from a local newspaper that could not forgive his antiwar stand, right through this year's Swift Boat ads. As a senator, Kerry helped expose the mischief of the Bank of Commerce and Credit International, a money-laundering operation that favored terrorists and criminal cartels; when his investigation forced him to confront corruption among fellow-Democrats, he rejected the cronyism of colleagues and brought down power brokers of his own party with the same dedication that he showed in going after Oliver North in the Iran-Contra scandal. His leadership, with John McCain, of the bipartisan effort to put to rest the toxic debate over Vietnam-era P.O.W.s and M.I.A.s and to lay the diplomatic groundwork for Washington's normalization of relations with Hanoi, in the mid-nineties, was the signal accomplishment of his twenty years on Capitol Hill, and it is emblematic of his fairness of mind and independence of spirit. Kerry has made mistakes (most notably, in hindsight at least, his initial opposition to the Gulf War in 1990), but--in contrast to the President, who touts his imperviousness to changing realities as a virtue--he has learned from them.
Kerry's performance on the stump has been uneven, and his public groping for a firm explanation of his position on Iraq was discouraging to behold. He can be cautious to a fault, overeager to acknowledge every angle of an issue; and his reluctance to expose the Administration's appalling record bluntly and relentlessly until very late in the race was a missed opportunity. But when his foes sought to destroy him rather than to debate him they found no scandals and no evidence of bad faith in his past. In the face of infuriating and scurrilous calumnies, he kept the sort of cool that the thin-skinned and painfully insecure incumbent cannot even feign during the unprogrammed give-and-take of an electoral debate. Kerry's mettle has been tested under fire--the fire of real bullets and the political fire that will surely not abate but, rather, intensify if he is elected--and he has shown himself to be tough, resilient, and possessed of a properly Presidential dose of dignified authority. While Bush has pandered relentlessly to the narrowest urges of his base, Kerry has sought to appeal broadly to the American center. In a time of primitive partisanship, he has exhibited a fundamentally undogmatic temperament. In campaigning for America's mainstream restoration, Kerry has insisted that this election ought to be decided on the urgent issues of our moment, the issues that will define American life for the coming half century. That insistence is a measure of his character. He is plainly the better choice. As observers, reporters, and commentators we will hold him to the highest standards of honesty and performance. For now, as citizens, we hope for his victory.
More Mixed Messages from Bush
In War on Terror
BUSH CONTINUES TO SEND MIXED MESSAGES IN WAR ON TERROR
In Moment of Candor, Bush Echoes His Comments That He Can't Win the War on Terror
Bush: "Whether or not we can be ever fully safe is up -- you know, is up in the air."
Bush on Sean Hannity Says it's "Up in the Air" If We Will Ever Be Fully Safe.
HANNITY: "Do you or when you think of, for example, what happened in Spain prior to their last election there was an article recently that showed that you were presented with the possibility by your CIA director and others that -- I think September 15th they presented this to you - it was written up recently - that this is a potential threat here but we still have area vulnerabilities so we -- is that always going to be the case? Is that something we are always going to have to live with?
BUSH: Yes because we have to be right 100 percent of the time in disrupting any plot and they have to be right once. We're better. Much better. As a matter of fact the 9/11 commission reports that America is safer under the course of action we've taken but not yet safe. Whether or not we can be ever fully safe is up -- you know, is up in the air."
BUSH'S MIXED MESSAGES ON THE WAR ON TERROR
Bush Said He Can't Win the War on Terror
Asked "Can we win [the war on terror]?" Bush said, "I don't think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that the - those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world." ["The Today Show," 8/30/04]
Bush Said He Was Not Concerned About Bin Laden
Bush: "And [Osama Bin Laden is] just - he's a person who has now been marginalized. His network is -- his host government has been destroyed. He's the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match. So I don't know where he is. Nor -- you know, I just don't spend that much time on him really, to be honest with you. I truly am not that concerned about him." [Bush Remarks, 3/13/02]
Bush Said War on Terror Should Not Be Called a ‘War'
Bush: "We actually misnamed the war on terror; it ought to be the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies, who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world." [Bush Remarks, 8/6/04]
Bush: "Frankly, the war on terror is somewhat misnamed, though. It ought to be called the struggle of a totalitarian point of view that uses terror as a tool to intimidate the free." [Bush Interview, TIME Magazine, 9/6/04]
Rumsfeld Said US Did "Not Have a Coherent Approach" To Winning War on Terror
Donald Rumsfeld suggested that the U.S. is winning some battles in the war on terror but may be losing the larger battle against extremism that is terrorism's source. "It's quite clear to me that we do not have a coherent approach to this," Rumsfeld said at an international security conference. [Washington Post, 6/6/04]
BUSH'S FAILURE TO SECURE IRAQI EXPLOSIVES HAS MADE THE WORLD LESS SAFE
Today, the New York Times revealed that the Bush Administration failed to secure nearly 380 tons of high-grade explosives in Iraq shortly after the United States took control over the country, despite being informed of their exact location. The failure to secure the explosives has led to three major concerns:
1) The weapons could end up or have already ended up in the hands of a terrorist group;
2) The explosives might be used against our troops on the ground; and
3) The explosives could be used to carry out a deadly attack against America or our allies.
NEW REVELATION: Failure To Secure Iraqi Explosives May Mean that Powerful Explosives are in Hands of Terrorists
Bush Administration Remained Silent About the Disappearance of Explosives. "The White House said President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was informed within the past month that the explosives were missing. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed. American officials have never publicly announced the disappearance, but beginning last week they answered questions about it posed by The New York Times and the CBS News program ‘60 Minutes.'" [NYT, 10/25/04]
Explosives May Help Terrorists Create Chaos. "In May, an internal I.A.E.A. memorandum warned that terrorists might be helping ‘themselves to the greatest explosives bonanza in history.'" [NYT, 10/25/04]
Explosives Could Be Used For Nuclear Weapon. "The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material." [NYT, 10/25/04]
NEW REVELATION: Bush Administration Was Warned About Possible Looting of Explosives But Failed To Act
Bush Administration Ignored Warnings of Leaving Explosives Unsupervised. "A European diplomat reported that Jacques Baute, head of the I.A.E.A.'s Iraq nuclear inspection team, warned officials at the United States mission in Vienna about the danger of the nuclear sites and materials once under I.A.E.A. supervision, including Al Qaqaa. But apparently, little was done. A senior Bush administration official said that during the initial race to Baghdad, American forces ‘went through the bunkers, but saw no materials bearing the I.A.E.A. seal.' It is unclear whether they ever returned." [NYT, 10/25/04]
Kerry called on Bush to secure Iraq from looting"Yesterday, Kerry took issue with the Bush administration's post-war policies in Iraq. ‘I think they wasted a month,' Kerry said. ‘They lost a serious amount of time because they didn't have a plan. They have allowed looting to take place that has done more damage to the infrastructure than any bomb.'" [Providence Journal-Bulletin, 5/23/03]
Bush/Administration Played Down Looting at the Time:
Bush Was Unconcerned About Looting. When asked in April 2003 about concerns of looting, Bush said: "The statue comes down on Wednesday, and the headlines start to read, ‘Oh, there's disorder.' Well, no kidding… But just like the military campaign was second-guessed, I'm sure the plan is being -- but we will be successful." [Bush, 4/13/03]
Rumsfeld on Looting: "Stuff Happens". "‘Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things,' Rumsfeld said. … Looting, he added, was not uncommon for countries that experience significant social upheaval. ‘Stuff happens,' Rumsfeld said." [CNN, 4/12/03]
White House Said Looting Was Part of Liberation Process. In April 2003, asked about looting in Iraq, White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer said: "Clearly, anything that involves looting is not desirable. It is worth noting that what you are seeing is a reaction to oppression. … It's also a situation the world has seen before when oppressed people find freedom. For a short period of time, these actions have occurred in history. You saw it in Sierra Leone, you saw it in the Soviet Union with the collapse of the Soviet Union. And nobody likes to see it, but I think it has to be understood in the context of people who have been oppressed, who are reacting to the oppression…" [WH Press Briefing, 4/11/04]
White House Said Stories About Looting Were Overblown. Asked about the widespread looting in Iraq, Fleischer said: "This is almost starting to remind me of the stories that said our forces were bogged down, as people watched 24, 36 hours' worth of people reacting to the oppression from which they suffered. …but there's no question, in the President's judgment, that what's happening is people are finding liberation, are finding freedom." [WH Press Briefing, 4/11/04]
NEW REVELATION: Explosives May Be Used Against Our Troops
Immediate Concern Is Weapons Could Be Used Against Troops. "American weapons experts say their immediate concern is that the explosives could be used in major bombing attacks against American or Iraqi forces: the explosives, mainly HMX and RDX, could be used to produce bombs strong enough to shatter airplanes or tear apart buildings." [NYT, 10/25/04]
Same Type of Explosives Have Been Used By Terrorists Before. "The bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 used less than a pound of the material of the type stolen from Al Qaqaa, and somewhat larger amounts were apparently used in the bombing of a housing complex in November 2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the blasts in a Moscow apartment complex in September 1999 that killed nearly 300 people." [NYT, 10/25/04]
Bush Said He Would Do Everything To Keep U.S. Soldiers Safe.
Bush: "Look, we just need strong support for our troops. And I have a solemn duty to say to you as squarely as I can, we will do the very best we possibly can to make your loved one safe. That's what we owe the family members, and that's what we owe the troops." [Bush, 5/4/04]
STATUS REPORT ON PROBE OF ELECTION PRACTICES
IN FLORIDA DURING THE 2000 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/vote2000/florida.htm
The Commission has undertaken a formal investigation into allegations by Floridians of voting irregularities arising out of the November 7, 2000 Presidential election. The Commission has held two fact-finding hearings in Florida to examine whether eligible voters faced avoidable barriers that undermined their ability to cast ballots and have their ballots counted in this closely contested election. The probe is intended to uncover, for example, who made the critical decisions regarding resource allocations for Election Day activities, why were these decisions made and what specific impact these decisions had on distinct communities.
Voter disenfranchisement appears to be at the heart of the issue. It is not a question of a recount or even an accurate count, but more pointedly the issue is those whose exclusion from the right to vote amounted to a "No Count."
We emphasize that voting technology reforms and assurances that uniform and accurate standards for counting and recounting ballots shall be implemented are encouraging and significant. These measures standing alone, however, are insufficient to address the significant and distressing issues and barriers that prevented qualified voters from participating in the Presidential election. It is our hope that Florida officials, as well as officials in other jurisdictions, will promptly resolve these major problems, which they allowed to occur, instead of hoping with the passage of time the public will forget.
In total, over 100 witnesses testified under oath before the Commission, including approximately 65 scheduled witnesses who were selected for the two hearings due to their knowledge of and/or experience with the issues under investigation. The Commission heard testimony from top elected and appointed state officials, including the Governor, the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, the Director of the Florida Division of Elections and other Florida state and county officials. A representative of Database Technologies, Inc. [Choicepoint], a firm involved in the controversial, state-sponsored removal of felons from the voter registration rolls also testified.
We also heard the sworn testimony of registered voters and experts on election reform issues, election laws and procedures and voting rights. Also, the Chair and Executive Director of the Select Task Force on Election Reforms established by Governor Jeb Bush testified before the Commission. Testimony was also received from the supervisors of elections for several counties, county commission officials, law enforcement personnel, and a states attorney. In addition to the scheduled witnesses, the Commission extended an opportunity for concerned persons, including Members of Congress and members of the Florida State Legislature, to submit testimony under oath that was germane to the issues under investigation. Significantly, the Commission subpoenaed scores of relevant documents to assist with this investigation.
The evidence points to an array of problems, including those in the following categories:
· Key officials anticipated before Election Day, that there would be an increase in levels of voter turnout based upon new voter registration figures, but did not ensure that the precincts in all communities received adequate resources to meet their needs;
· At least one unauthorized law enforcement checkpoint was set up on Election Day resulting in complaints that were investigated by the Florida Highway Patrol and the Florida Attorney General;
· Non-felons were removed from voter registration rolls based upon unreliable information collected in connection with sweeping, state sponsored felony purge policies;
· Many African Americans did not cast ballots because they were assigned to polling sites that did not have adequate resources to confirm voting eligibility status;
· College students and others submitted voter registration applications on a timely basis to persons and agencies responsible for transmitting the applications to the proper officials, but in many instances these applications were not processed in a timely or proper manner under the National Voter Registration Act ("motor-voter law");
· Many Jewish and elderly voters received defective and complicated ballots that may have produced "overvotes" and "undervotes;"
· Some polling places were closed early and some polling places were moved without notice;
· Old and defective election equipment was found in poor precincts;
· Many Haitian Americans and Puerto Rican voters were not provided language assistance when required and requested;
· Persons with disabilities faced accessibility difficulties at certain polling sites;
· Too few poll workers were adequately trained and too few funds were committed to voter education activities;
The Commission's probe proceeds under the statutory duty and authority of the Commission to investigate allegations in writing under oath or affirmation relating to deprivations … of the right of citizens of the United States to vote or have votes counted" (PL 103-419). This investigation is also conducted pursuant to our statute which requires the Commission to investigate allegations that "citizens of the United States are being deprived of their right to vote and have that vote counted by reason of their color, race, religion, sex, age, handicap, or national origin…."
In our investigation, we use as our standard the requirements of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act for determining whether disparate impact or disparate treatment amounting to disenfranchisement has occurred. We understand clearly that violations of the Voting Rights Act do not require proof of deliberate or intentional discrimination against citizens, if differential results, disenfranchising those who the statute was designed to protect are the result. Practices can be illegal when they have the effect of restricting opportunities for people of color, language minorities, persons with disabilities, and the elderly to participate fully in the political process and to elect candidates of their choice.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended, was aimed at subtle, as well as obvious, state regulations and practices that had the effect of denying citizens their right to vote because of their race. Perhaps the most invidious barriers to the right to vote were the seemingly neutral restrictions developed by states that had debilitating and devastating results on black voter registration.
Congress has enacted additional measures to further protect the voting rights of persons of color, immigrants, the elderly, and those with disabilities from invidious discrimination. For example, an amendment to the Voting Rights Act in 1975 permanently restricted the use of tests and devices for voter registration nationwide. The 1975 amendments also include rights for language minorities, mandating bilingual ballots and oral assistance with voting. In 1983, the Voting Rights Act was amended to clarify that the proof of discriminatory intent is not required under Section 2 claims, thus making disparate impact claims valid. Congress also enacted the National Voter Registration Act after finding that "discriminatory and unfair registration laws and procedures can have a direct and damaging effect on voter participation in elections for Federal office and disproportionately harm voter participation by various groups, including racial minorities." Further, several laws have been enacted pertaining to the accessibility of the election process to persons with disabilities
[These laws are described in an appendix to this statement].
We are deeply troubled by our preliminary review which points to differences in resource allocations, including voting technology, and in voting procedures that may have operated so that protected groups may have had less of an opportunity to have their votes counted. We will conduct complete disparate impact and treatment analyses before the report is completed, and our final conclusions will take into account the results of these analyses.
However, it appears at this phase of the investigation that the evidence may ultimately support findings of prohibited discrimination. Two particular sources of fruitful inquiry are the questionable uses of Choicepoint data and resource allocation issues. We are attempting to document whether and, if so, how long state, county and local officials knew that certain differences in resources and procedures might impact more harshly African Americans and members of other protected groups.
The staff is continuing their analysis of the voluminous testimonial and documentary evidence compiled during this investigation. Ultimately, the Commission will pinpoint whether each of the problems identified resulted from deliberate, or harmful, yet not deliberate, discrimination, or were caused by neither.
We emphasize that the implementation of voting technology reforms and uniform and accurate standards for counting and recounting ballots would be encouraging and significant. These measures standing alone, however, will not address the significant and distressing issues and barriers that prevented qualified voters from participating in the Presidential election.
In the final analysis, new recounts of old ballots are an academic exercise. Voting is the language of our democracy and regrettably, when it mattered most, real people lost real opportunities to speak truth to power in the ballot box. This must never occur again. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once stated: Social justice shall not roll in on wheels of inevitability.
It is our hope that Florida officials, as well as officials in other jurisdictions- where barriers existed, will promptly resolve these major problems that occurred on their watch.
UN not to assist US in Saddam trial
WASHINGTON: In a blow to the US, the United Nations has turned down its request to assist Iraqi judges and prosecutors trying ousted President Saddam Hussein.
The UN said that the Special Tribunal was empowered to impose death penalty opposed by it and the court's rules also "fail to meet the minimum standards of justice".
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that Secretary General Kofi Annan maintained that "UN officials should not be directly involved in extending assistance to any court or tribunal that is empowered to impose the death penalty."
"The Tribunal's rules fail to meet the minimum standards of justice," Dujarric was quoted as saying by the Washington Post .
The Bush Administration appealed to UN war crimes tribunal to send some judges and prosecutors to a training conference in London for members of the Iraqi tribunal. But UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's office sent the court's chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, a letter barring her staff from attending the week-long conference, which ended on Monday," Dujarric said.
He told a news conference at the UN headquarters on Friday that "serious doubts exist regarding the capability of the Iraqi special tribunal to meet relevant international standards."
The UN, Dujarric said, was constrained in its ability to cooperate with the court without a "specific mandate" from "a competent political organ" such as the UN Security Council or the General Assembly.
"The decision", said The Post , "was a blow to the US and Iraq's interim government, which had hoped that a UN imprimatur on the court's activities would lead to greater international credibility"
Several serving and retired American military and intelligence officials have scathingly criticised President George W. Bush's handling of the war on terror.
Interviewed by The Washington Post , these officials said that Bush's "Decapitation Strategy" has been "exagerated" in terms of its success, and added that previously unreported tactical blunders had helped Osama bin Laden to escape after the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001.
They also accused General Tommy Franks, the former chief of US Central Command, of refusing advice to position a "blocking force" of US military in southern Afghanistan, to cut off the Taliban and the Al Qaeda fleeing Kabul. According to one unnamed senior military officer, that advice came from General Richard Myers, the present chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
They said that had Myers advice for positioning a brigade in Uzbekistan and two US marine expeditionary forces been heeded, the scenario would most certainly been much different than what it is today. Franks, according to the paper, was worried about alienating powerful Pathan leaders in southern Afghanistan.
According to classified data leaked to The Washington Post , only 14 of the roughly 30 "high-value targets" have been killed or captured so far, and if former White House Homeland Security Advisor John Gordon is to be believed, the initiatives taken may have been quite strong in their impact, but they were not planned or panned out properly.
yeah right.Wish I was making 200K. Well,At least I will have a job, a better paying one and that too here in America (not India or China). So what if the taxes goes up by a little bit. Think of that as an investment towards your children's future which btw looks bleak considering America's balooning debt and fiscally irresponsible administration's reckless handling of finances.
Maybe it's your time to convert. Some of you republicans have..
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=4338588
$8 Million Worth Of Distortions
Two Bush ads full of misleading and false statements ran more than 9,000 times in 45 cities last week.
http://www.factcheck.org/article286.html