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Once again, Republicans are out of touch with 'we the people'. Wonder why.....
So far, more than 35,000 voters in Broward and Miami-Dade counties have asked for absentee ballots for the primary with a month left before the election.
The requests for absentee ballots in Miami-Dade could outpace the number requested in the September 2002 primary election. But if more bad news about touch-screen machines surfaces, it won't be surprising if the number surges.
The house of cards is crumbling...
Nancy Reagan to Bush: 'We Don't Support Your Re-Election'
ed_fascist and zitidiot, you can skip this:
Don't Touch That Screen
When It Comes to Electronic Voting, He's a Paper Tiger
MARK EHRMAN
In these days of everything electronic, sometimes paper still triumphs. In April, California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley rocked the brave new world of touch-screen voting by banning machines that don't generate a paper confirmation of each vote, unless the 15 counties using them adopted a strict set of guidelines. Anti-touch-screen activists lauded the move, but Riverside, San Bernardino, Kern and Plumas counties and disability advocates filed suit, claiming the edict violated the Americans with Disabilities Act because the machines made it easier for the visually and manually impaired to vote. In July, the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles found Shelley's decision "a reasonable one." Savoring victory, the former Assembly majority leader sizes up the marriage of technology and democracy and tackles the question, "Can they all get along?"
A voter-verified paper trail sounds like a no-brainer. How did so many machines go online without them?
It goes back to Florida in 2000—those punch cards which created the chads. Also in California that same election, some 160,000 votes were invalidated because of punch cards. To solve that very legitimate problem, touch screens were rushed into use without all the software, all the hardware, worked out.
The manufacturers claim there are safeguards in place to ensure accurate vote tabulation.
Poppycock. It's not us saying it's ineffective; studies have proven it. It's breakdowns in Alameda, San Diego, Maryland, Georgia. These machines have failed, have been hacked into, have found their source code placed on the Web. Not a single study has said, "There ain't a problem." So I would hope vendors would say, "We want to be your partners in helping to restore faith in this process."
Are you concerned about the vote being rigged?
Absolutely.
Over 40% of California's voters in the March election used touch screens. Doesn't revamping the system at this late hour put us in a "damned if we do, damned if we don't" situation for November?
First of all, it's unfortunate that some counties sued. We could have saved two months had the counties simply followed our directives. I could've said that none of these machines could be used in California—period. What I said was, "Look, if you don't have a voter-verified paper trail, you can provide the voter with the option of voting on paper." In addition, we require access to the source code—what tells you whether there are any viruses, any bugs, any what's called "malicious code." You can determine if the machinery has been hacked into. Also, no Internet, no modem, no wireless hookup. And that a poll worker training plan is submitted to the Secretary of State with demonstrations that workers have been trained in this technology.
You did, however, completely decertify one system, the Diebold AccuVote-TSX, and asked for an investigation into the company's practices.
We did not get truthful representations by Diebold. They told us the equipment was going to be approved by the federal government. Instead, they went to the independent testing authority and asked them to certify a different piece of equipment. It significantly disadvantaged California in the last election when that very equipment failed. The law stipulates that before one installs software, a vendor must get approval from the state. Well, in all 17 counties in which they installed software, they illegally installed software that was never approved by the state.
These verified paper trails, it's a printer? Like the one you have in your house?
No, the voter will view it behind a secure plastic or glass viewing area. They will confirm that their vote is listed exactly on paper as they see it on the screen, but they will not walk away with that paper. You have that paper within the machinery for recount purposes and for overall tabulation.
Why even go to touch screens if they have such problems?
The optical scan—the old SAT fill-in-the-blank—has the lowest error rate. It is an accurate, successful form of voting. I do acknowledge touch-screen machines have advantages in terms of access, of being able to display other languages. They have a place, but only if these procedures are put in place.
There's criticism that you seized upon this issue as a way to elevate the low-profile secretary of state.
Yeah, I suppose I came up with recalling Gray Davis to up my profile, as well. These issues are thrust upon one. Nothing is more important in our democracy than protecting the right to vote. To not take an aggressive approach to ensuring that right would be irresponsible, and that's exactly what the judge said.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/politics/cal/la-tm-crshelley31aug01,1,7794493.story
KFC, he already is!!!!
Hey Zit, these people want to put Gilligan in charge of this country! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
So, Ron Reagan makes a compelling case and his mother refuses to speak at the GOP convention. Even a person wearing rose-colored glasses should be able to read the writing on the wall.
WHAT??? No right wing response to this post??? Figures...
Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a former visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He served as a special assistant to President Ronald Reagan.
Republicans have long claimed to be fiscal tightwads and railed against deficit spending. But this year big-spending George W. Bush and the GOP Congress turned a budget surplus into a $477 billion deficit. There are few programs at which they have not thrown money: massive farm subsidies, an expensive new Medicare drug benefit, thousands of pork-barrel projects, dubious homeland-security grants, expansion of Bill Clinton's AmeriCorps, even new foreign-aid programs. Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation reports that in 2003 "government spending exceeded $20,000 per household for the first time since World War II."
Complaints about Republican profligacy have led the White House to promise to mend its ways. But Bush's latest budget combines accounting flim-flam with unenforceable promises. So how do we put Uncle Sam on a sounder fiscal basis?
Vote Democratic.
looney??? You remind me of the looney cartoon character sawing off the limb he is standing on. Calling you of average intellect would be a compliment. No wonder Bush is your hero.
So you did read easy's post but chose to ignore it. Figures.
gee, this is coming from a looney toon such as yourself, who's last post lets us know that you're rooting for america to lose, and all for politics?........calling you disgusting would actually be a compliment
Easy, some good finds the past couple days!! Thanks!! I'm about 50 posts behind but noticed not one reply to this one. Surely, I thought, our resident zitocrite would have waxed eloquently on the virtues of Bush's economic policy, read tax cuts, tax cuts and more tax cuts, while thoroughly thrashing the author of this piece. But, in his defense, he is probably enjoying Saturday and just hasn't read it. Likely the same with ed_fascist. Oh well, Reagan proved deficits don't matter.
No, hypozit, the biggest scam perpetrated on the american people in presidential history is in the White House right now!!
I WAS THERE!!!!!
But, of course, you big hypozit, Bush's policies of compassion have made our cities safer. Not!!
A War Against the Cities
By BOB HERBERT
Published: July 30, 2004
Amid all the muscle-flexing in Boston this week ("my homeland security platform is bigger than yours"), it was impossible to hear more than the merest hint or offhand whisper about the demoralizing decline in the fortunes of America's cities over the past few years.
Paralyzed by a war in Iraq that we don't know how to end or win, we're in danger of forgetting completely about the struggling cities here at home.
Bill Clinton mentioned the 300,000 poor children being cut out of after-school programs and the increases in gang violence across the country. And he gave cheering delegates a devastating riff on the impending lapse of the ban on assault weapons and White House plans to scrap federal funds for tens of thousands of police officers:
"Our policy," he said, "was to put more police on the street and to take assault weapons off the street - and it gave you eight years of declining crime and eight years of declining violence. Their policy is the reverse. They're taking police off the streets while they put assault weapons back on the street."
But those brief comments were the exception. A clearer sense of the rot that's starting to reestablish itself in America's cities was offered in an article out of Cleveland by The Times's Fox Butterfield on Tuesday. "Many cities with budget shortfalls," he wrote, "are cutting their police forces and closing innovative law enforcement units that helped reduce crime in the 1990's, police chiefs and city officials say."
Cleveland has laid off 15 percent of its cops - 250 officers. Pittsburgh has lost a quarter of its officers, and Saginaw, Mich., a third. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has waved goodbye to 1,200 deputies, closed several jails and released some inmates early. In Houston, police officers are taking up the duties of 190 jail guards who were let go.
This is nuts. We know that low levels of crime and violence are essential if cities are to thrive. Tremendous progress - in some places, like New York, almost miraculous progress - has been made in reducing crime since the crack-crazed, gun-blazing days of the late 80's and early 90's. To even begin rewinding the clock to that time of madness would in itself be an act of madness.
Yet that's what we're doing.
Mayor Martin O'Malley of Baltimore, who co-chairs the Task Force on Homeland Security for the U.S. Conference of Mayors, told me in an interview that budgetary horror stories are coming in from police officials all over the country. There are many reasons, he said, including the recession and the weak recovery that followed, the antiterror obligations that have fallen to the police since Sept. 11, and "the cascading effect" of enormous federal tax cuts at a time when the nation is at war. Local taxes have gone up sharply, and services have had to be cut back even as federal taxes have decreased.
"This is all compounded," Mayor O'Malley said, "by the fact that there is just less money coming in from Washington" for traditional crime-fighting efforts.
Local police, fire and other agencies have also been affected by the call-up of thousands of military reservists and members of the National Guard. In addition to losing their services, most cities pay the difference between the municipal salaries of these men and women and the substantially lower pay they receive from the military.
In an address to the Democratic convention Wednesday night, Mayor O'Malley echoed many other municipal officials when he said police and fire departments are not even getting sufficient help from the federal government to maintain their antiterror efforts. The first responders, he said, cannot continue to finance their homeland security responsibilities "with increased property taxes and fire hall bingos."
The crime-fighting difficulties and underfunded homeland security responsibilities are part of a parade of very serious problems that have descended on cities in recent years. Tax cuts for the wealthy and the administration's hard-right ideology have removed much of the social safety net that we managed to weave over the past several decades, leaving us with a swelling population of vulnerable men, women and children. This has had a disproportionate impact on cities, and the outlook, both short- and long-term, is bleak at best.
These are important issues that could be wrestled with if cities were on anybody's agenda.
But they're not.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/30/opinion/30herbert2.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2d...
Yeah, Borealis, this economy is really humming. Guess all those manufacturing jobs at Mickey D's has got the pump primed. I hope KFC and hypozit follow ed_fascist and load up on metals....sure looks like the right play.
WASHINGTON, July 30 — The White House projected today that the budget deficit would reach $445 billion in this fiscal year, by far the largest shortfall ever but well below the amount forecast six months ago.
Thanks easy for posting that article.
no, hypozit, the depths of darkness you refer to are caused by the policies of this administration and to place the blame anywhere else is you are your trivial best.
Hmmm....test
can't seem to post...any long post
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/30/opinion/30krugman.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dE....
Good post, F6. Sad how much time chickenhawks spend trying to discredit Kerry's service while sitting on their azzes lauding Bush's supposed 'service'. Hypocrites.
Bush is a dangerous man because of those he has around him. Lacking in brain power and an intellectual curiousity to learn he relies on others to do his reading (excluding My Pet Goat), thinking, and they tell him what they know and what they would do (what he should do).
The perfect foil for Cheney which is why he would NEVER leave the ticket....and why Bush would never have him leave.
Then Bush should stay off his bike and go for a walk with Barney!!!!
“It’s a double-edged sword,” says one aide. “We can’t have him flying off the handle
I'll take that bet.
Once again, kfc, you miss the point. Afleck stated he got 1.5 million back. One person. If that sounds 'fair' to you as our deficits explode, you keep on believin' what you believe. Bush thanks your myopic loyalty.
And as a rooster would say: HAHAHAHAHAHA
Just can't look forward, can you?? What are you afraid of, a fair election that can be documented???
kfc....try thinking for a change.
Why let the Goverment get their hands on it?
The real question is, if you must cut taxes while running record deficits as Republicans love to do, why not let middle america get their hands on it??? Problem with that?????
ed_fascist: skip this post!!
From jaykayjones on the main board:
When it comes to voting, it's like Stalin said, "What's important is not who votes, it's who's counting 'em.".
And I would suggest to you this inequitable tax legislation that is so tilted in favor of the rich and corporations is overhauled.
Your continued ability to miss the point is amazing. Keep up the good work!!
Live from ... yawn ... Boston
By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate
BOSTON - OK, here's my brilliant Insider Insight du jour: The D's aren't going to get much of a bounce out of this convention because this race is already so tight there just ain't enough swing votes to bounce anywhere.
The popular selection of John Edwards for veep didn't provide much of a bounce, and neither will the Beantown Bash. Aside from that, everyone is having a wonderful time.
Marty Nolan, a scholar of Boston, quotes T.S. Eliot on "Boston doubt," defined as a readiness to yield "to all suggestions which dampen enthusiasm or dispel conviction." That could account for a lot about John Kerry.
President Bush's slightly alarming claim to the Amish on July 9 that God speaks through him -- that's what he said -- raises some troubling prospects. I think God has a better grasp of subject-verb agreement than George W. Bush do. When Bush changes his mind, as he frequently does, do we think God has had to rethink things after the polls have come out?
Nice to see President W. employing the tactic Texans got so familiar with under Governor W.: the "Gee, I'm really for it, but I can't be bothered to expend one iota of political energy trying to help it pass." (He uses the reverse ploy by announcing he opposes something he can't be bothered to spend an iota of energy on.)
This is the game Bush is playing on the assault weapons ban, which he officially favors renewing (soccer mom vote there), but -- surprise! -- since he won't do anything to get it renewed it will be allowed to lapse (NRA vote there). Just what we need in this country, more automatic assault rifles.
A more subtle play is the White House decision to oppose a two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts on the grounds that it's not a five-year extension. This ploy, from the right's point of view, sacrifices a tax cut in the hand for a political issue in the bush, as it were. I'm not sure they can run that one: "Those nasty Democrats would only vote for a two-year tax cut instead of a five-year tax cut," he pouted. "See, they just hate tax cuts."
Meantime, those faithful political junkies following the festivities here on C-SPAN may need some reading material to tide them over during the boring speeches, and I have two pips to recommend. Hendrik Hertzberg (his friends call him Rick) has put out a collection called simply, Politics: Observations and Arguments, 1966-2004, that is pure pleasure to read.
Hertzberg, a senior editor at The New Yorker and former editor of The New Republic has such a good mind, such a strong sense of ethics and honor. There is an almost physical pleasure, like having an itch scratched, in watching him come to grips with some of the thorniest, most divisive issues of the past 40 years, and slice them cleanly into comprehensible form. He writes like a dream.
A book that is both more dense and more important is David Cay Johnston's Perfectly Legal. The obligatory, explanatory subtitle is The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich -- and Cheat Everybody Else. This, too, is like having an itch scratched, in that one keeps saying, "Aha! So that's how they do it!" It is fascinating. And horrifying. The ease with which corporations evade taxes is well known, but finding out just how much money their cute little tricks are worth will curl your hair.
I suppose if one were as rich as Bill Gates, one would be tempted to save a billion or two in taxes, but it seems kind of pointless when one is sitting on that many billions. The super rich have been allowed to accumulate so much money that one finally has to ask what they think the point is. Those far more detestable are the congressmen who sneak special tax advantages and exemptions into the law in exchange for campaign contributions and then lecture the rest of us on patriotism.
Government is about who benefits and who pays. And there is no point at which that can be seen more clearly than in our tax system. Johnston, a superb reporter for The New York Times, has broken one story after another about how the system really works, and it's all here.
That so much of what passes for debate about our tax system is gross misinformation is not, unfortunately, the result of accident or ignorance. There are a lot of people blowing smoke in your ear who know much better. They get paid to lie. Happily, Johnston gets paid to find the truth, and he does so in this book with admirable tenacity. This is the real story of what is happening in America.
Too bad we're watching a political campaign in which reality is considered irrelevant.
zithead, this is the part you should have bolded: 'nuff said.
said Peck, who said he didn't like Kerry from the start.
But he can throw a strike!!!!
must be acct the drugs......President George W. Bush, for the second time in two months, took a tumble on his mountain bike while riding on his Texas ranch, a White House spokeswoman said. During an 18-mile, or 29-kilometer, ride, "the president took a minor spill and scraped his knee," said the spokeswoman, Claire Buchan. She said the president had not required medical attention. Bush had a similar mountain bike mishap at his ranch in late May, when he toppled over while riding downhill on soil loosened by rainfall. Last year, he fell off a high-tech Segway scooter at the Bush family estate in Kennebunkport, Maine.
Zithead, if you spent half as much time looking for lies from this administration you would be able to spend more time with your vision of the perfect woman....an Oprah fanatic.
This is the lyingest (I like that) group I have ever seen, at least since Nixon, and they are so good at it the only time they get in trouble is when they stumble and tell the truth. Then they quickly regroup, spin that piece of truth and are back on track telling lies.
I realize your need to dwell on first lady's, their kids, Kennedy's speech, etc., etc., etc., anything superficial but the horrible job this draft dodging chickenhawk president has done.
What a long-winded response to state he can't think on his feet. LOL, and 'new found understanding??? That's rich.
first he wasn't angry.............but most important is that gwb, God bless him, will not give the dems and the media a soundbite that will end up used against him in a political ad......whether it's an apology, admitting to mistakes, or kenny boy comments, it ain't gonna happen........smart strategy if you ask me.......and it's this newfound understanding of the liberal biased press, and how to play them at their own game, that the gop has never had a grasp of, that has gwb fans cheering
teepee....very contrasting body language to that we usually see: chest poked out, chin stuck out and arms swaying from side to side as though he is packing 20" guns.
Good luck on that one.
but we also need a President who is alert mentally.”
I was waiting for you to slam Teresa, after all, you think parading the twins in front of their athletic but mentally challenged father, solely based upon your perception of their good looks, 'is worth a million votes'. Of course, a pseudo-intellectual chickenhawk such as you would be threatened by a women of intelligence, and a strong woman at that.
Being the hypocrite you are, I'll bet you took umbrage with Teresa telling that reporter to 'shove it' as you Cheneyed yourself.
Unbearable Emptiness
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: July 28, 2004
SALEM, Ore. — Ever since a group of Iraqis told me last year about seeing a redheaded American soldier who was captured, held naked and then executed, I've been haunted by the question of his identity.
The first clues were in Nasiriya, Iraq, where in the aftermath of the war I interviewed the doctors and hospital staff who had cared for Pfc. Jessica Lynch. They said that the Pentagon had exaggerated the drama of her rescue, but what I could never put out of my mind was their tale of another American, whose name they never knew.
Abdul Hadi, an ambulance driver, tried to pick up a male American P.O.W. being held by Saddam Fedayeen. The American, he said, had been stripped naked and handcuffed, but he was allowed to smoke a cigarette while under guard. The prisoner, Mr. Hadi said, was about 19, with short red hair, lightly injured in the leg.
The hospital staff said the guards refused to give up the American and threatened the ambulance crew with guns and grenades. So the ambulance retreated - and several hours later, the same P.O.W. was brought to the hospital as a corpse, shot dead.
I mentioned this American in a sentence in my column at the time, but cautiously, because I couldn't match him with any known P.O.W., and I later wondered if the whole tale had been concocted.
Then I heard about Sgt. Donald Walters. He was a cook who vanished in the same firefight in which Jessica Lynch was captured, and his body was later recovered in Nasiriya. But some details didn't fit. He was 33, not 19. And his hair was said to be blond, not red.
So I visited Sergeant Walters's parents, Norman and Arlene Walters, at their home here in Salem, Ore. As they sat in their living room, heavy with memorials, photos and grief, Mr. and Mrs. Walters said that Don's hair had actually been reddish-blond, he had been injured in the leg, and he had smoked. Photos also show he looked young for his age.
What's more, the U.S. military recently informed Mr. and Mrs. Walters that Don had been captured before being shot.
It also seems that the heroism originally attributed to Private Lynch may actually have been Sergeant Walters's. Iraqi radio intercepts had described a blond U.S. soldier fighting tenaciously, and the Army this year awarded him a posthumous Silver Star in implicit acknowledgment that he was probably that soldier.
The citation reads: "His actions and selfless courage under fire resulted in saving lives of several other members of the convoy" - perhaps including Private Lynch. His cover fire allowed fellow soldiers to escape, while he remained alone in a hostile city; when he ran out of ammunition, he ran but was captured. So it looks as if the paramount hero of that day was not the one we thought, but rather a soldier who died anonymously.
Sergeant Walters left three children, then 9 months, 6 years and 8 years old. A veteran of the first gulf war, he had re-enlisted out of patriotism after 9/11.
Red, white and blue are everywhere in Mr. and Mrs. Walters's house, and Mr. Walters says that if he were president, he would threaten to nuke Baghdad unless the insurgency stopped, although in his next breath he backs off. I asked Mrs. Walters if she felt that her son had fallen for a noble purpose.
"That's hard," she said, pausing. "I have to feel that way, because so many soldiers have lost their lives."
One of the revelations in the 9/11 commission report was the casualness of the resort to war. On the afternoon of Sept. 11, Donald Rumsfeld spoke of attacking Saddam Hussein, and President Bush began asking about Iraq the next day. Older men blithely found a war for younger men and women to die in.
The result is the unbearable emptiness in homes like the Walters's all across America - and, even more often, in Iraq. The American victims are disproportionately from working-class families, not well represented either in White House meetings or in this newspaper's readership. It is those families of the dead and wounded who are bearing 99.9 percent of the burden of this war.
When hawks say that the Iraq war was worth the price, they should remember that that price is measured in the lives of people like Don Walters, forever young, forever heroes, forever gone.
But, of course, Bush, with his goofy look-daddy I can fly smile landing on that aircraft carrier in that souped up piper to announce Mission Accomplished was oh-so presidential. Hope we see that ad real soon!!
DESPERATION
Easy, I can tell you what none of them were: Republicans!
The crowds mobilized last week were not Luddites looking to thwart progress; most were civil rights advocates and technology professionals, including computer scientists from some of the country's most prestigious institutions.
LOL....you need to take another look in your ever present mirror...
with your typical stereotyping of everything
Easy there easy, Republicans don't lie...building a hamburger is truly manufacturing one.
First off, zit for brains (squeeze that zit OUT, not IN), that is a definition of fascism, so learn to read. And I always find it interesting how quickly those that defend the right wingnuts want those that disagree to move to another country, but hey dickdork (you so funny), this is america and we are all about democracy....as long as it conforms to 'your' definition of democracy, just like eddie_fascist and every other republican throwing up roadblocks and ridiculing those that want to ensure a democratic election. I guess that just doesn't conform to YOUR definition of democracy.
Regarding your athletic but mentally challenged president, he wishes he were a dictator and those in power behind him are doing everything possible to establish one party rule, but of course, you couldn't see it through those rose-colored coke bottle lenses of yours.
As for lies, the fact you can bring that up and somehow think (again, I use that word loosely with you) your party isn't dishing it out by the shovel full shows just how biased (or dumb)you are. And the assinine remark that polls split down the middle is proof that extreme nationalism doesn't exist shows how thick or biased (or both) you are. Just put your glasses on, try to think (give it a try) for a moment and listen to the rhetoric spewing forth every day from you ilk.
Zithead, love your biased the media doing what they do best. Great original thoughts. My Bold's below
Oh, the things they'll say
By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate
We cannot let pass without salute Martha Stewart's remarks after being sentenced to five months in prison. In the long history of amazing things said by people in peculiar circumstances, you must admit, this ranks right up there. "There are many, many good people who have gone to prison," she observed. "Look at Nelson Mandela."
We live in a great nation.
Unfortunately, we are all likely to be driven batty if this presidential campaign gets any worse, which it is likely to do.
Last week, I was on a book tour doing one chat show after another, and so I got to experience firsthand the Republicans' orchestration of their talking points. And an impressive display it is. Truly, they speak with one voice, repeating the same thing over and over, never off-message. Just remarkable. (Zit, I know you resemble that remark.)
For the first two days I was on this media marathon, the story du jour was the Senate Intelligence Committee report that concluded the CIA was just flat wrong on its pre-war calls on Iraq. Wrong about the weapons of mass destruction, wrong about connections to al Qaeda, wrong about Saddam Hussein having a nuclear program, and so on. All of which we already knew the government had been wrong about, but this was the Official Report.
So here's the Republican reaction: "See, the CIA was wrong, so you people owe President Bush an apology." I'm sitting there, brilliantly riposting, "Huh?"
Here's the chain of logic: The CIA was wrong, therefore those on the left who say Bush lied to us are wrong because he wasn't lying -- he just believed the CIA. And you people are being rude and hateful and ugly and just mean about Bush, and we want an apology.
What I'm worried about here is the amnesia factor. Am I the only person around who distinctly remembers an entire 18 months ago?
This is what happened: The CIA was wrong, but it wasn't wrong enough for the White House, which kept pushing the spies to be much wronger. The CIA's lack of sufficient wrongness was so troubling to the anxious Iraq hawks that they kept touting their own reliable sources, such as Ahmad Chalabi and his merry crew of fabulists. The neocons even set up their very own little intelligence shop in the Pentagon to push us into this folly in Iraq.
Which brings us to the second talking point last week: Iraq never happened.
I swear to you that "this war and its disastrous aftermath never happened" is the new official line. Down the memory hole. Never happened. You dreamed the whole thing.
Iraq is now like Ken Lay and Chalabi. They never heard of it. Only met it once. Besides, Iraq contributed to their opponents.
According to The New York Times, "several Republicans," presumably speaking for the Bush campaign, noted that American casualties in Iraq are down from last month.
Actually, that is quite untrue. Forty-two Americans were killed in Iraq in June, presumed to be an unusually bloody month because it was leading up to the big handover of sovereignty. As of July 21, 43 more Americans have been killed in Iraq, with 10 days still to go in the month.
Total number of Americans killed so far is 901, but the new line is: What war? (We won the war, we are just winning the peace)
We turned it over to the Iraqis, see? Presto, it disappears, just like magic. It's their problem now. Doesn't have anything to do with us.
Bush is out campaigning by calling himself "the peace president." Honest. "He repeated the words 'peace' or 'peaceful' many times, as he had done increasingly in his recent appearances," reported The New York Times from Iowa this week. (The Great Uniter is now a man of peace.....until Nov. 3)
Watch the media compliantly take up this line. Truly fascinating. (Dang liberial biased media)
We're also getting a new round of "9-11 was all Clinton's fault anyway." I don't think this one will work for the R's. It's kind of pitiful, after four years, to still go around saying: "It's all Clinton's fault." {b](Repeat after me, zithead, "It's all Clinton's fault."){/b}
Their first week in office, the Bushies claimed that the Clintonites had taken the W's off White House computers, glued the drawers together and committed other vandalism -- all of which turned out to be a big fat lie.
Why that didn't tip the media off about what kind of people they were dealing with is unclear to me. (Dang liberal baised media)
I'll tell you what's not Clinton's fault: the shape this country is going to be in by the time we get rid of this administration. (You can't handle the truth, zithead)
In addition to the fiasco in Iraq, Bush's larger contributions to misgovernment include blindly indulging a fiscal irresponsibility that has put this country deep in debt for years to come. (Take ed fascist's advice and get into metals)
Zithead, use the cute soundbite "It's a fine mess you got us into, Ollie" as you read this.
Right Axis. Wrong Evil.
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: July 22, 2004
WASHINGTON — The capital has plunged into satire.
There's the bizarre investigation of Sandy Burglar, as the respected former national security adviser has now been dubbed, pulling a Fawn Hall and smuggling stuff out of the National Archives in his fine washables.
And just when you thought the Bush foreign policy couldn't sound more chuckleheaded, revelations in the 9/11 commission report being released today elevated the Bush doctrine to an Ali G skit.
The most astute prophet of the administration's Middle East muddle is Sacha Baron Cohen, the hilarious British comedian whose Ali G character is an uninformed gangsta rapper interviewing unwitting V.I.P.'s.
This Sunday, HBO will run Ali G's interview with Pat Buchanan, in which he presses the broadcaster about why no "B.L.T.'s" were found in Iraq. Mr. Buchanan plays along, but it's not clear if he actually thinks there were B.L.T.'s in Saddam's arsenal. (Mr. Cohen speculated in The Times later that Mr. Buchanan might have thought it was argot for "ballistic long-range-trajectory missiles.")
Last year, Ali G asked James Baker III, the Bush I secretary of state, if it was wise for Iraq and Iran to have such similar names. "Isn't there a real danger," the faux rapper wondered, "that someone give a message over the radio to one of them fighter pilots, saying 'Bomb Ira-' and the geezer doesn't heard it properly" and bombs the wrong one?
"No danger," Mr. Baker replied.
Well, as it turns out, the United States did bomb the wrong Ira-.
President Bush says he's now investigating Qaeda-Iran ties, and whether Iran helped the 9/11 hijackers.
Whoops. Right axis. Wrong evil.
It's like Emily Litella - "What's all this fuss I hear about making Puerto Rico a steak?" - except the U.S. can't simply shrug "Never mind" because 900 American troops are dead.
The Bush administration had no good intelligence, so it decided to invade the Ira- that was weaker.
The war was based on phony W.M.D. analyses and fallacious welcome scenarios drummed up by the neocon Chihuahua Ahmad Chalabi.
Mr. Bush should have worried about the Axis of Evil in the order of the threat posed: North Korea, which has nukes; Iran, which almost has nukes; Iraq, which wanted nukes.
Now American forces are so depleted that the Pentagon is pulling forces out of South Korea to go to Iraq. And, given the huge National Guard deployment in Iraq, states say they don't have enough manpower to guard prisoners, fight wildfires or police the streets.
Besides excoriating the C.I.A. and F.B.I. and chronicling as many as 10 missed opportunities to pick up on the 9/11 plot - in the Bush years and in the Clinton era - the 9/11 commission report has new evidence that Iran may have helped up to 10 of the hijackers with safe passage from Osama's Afghan training camps.
"Grimly, what the new 9/11 report makes clear is that nearly three years into the war on terror, America is still not close to understanding the enemy," Michael Isikoff and Michael Hersh report in Newsweek. "And Washington seems less able to force Tehran to change its ways, especially since Bush has removed one of the chief threats to the mullah regime, Saddam Hussein, and is now bogged down in Iraq. As one intel official said before the Iraq war: 'The Iranians are tickled by our focus on Iraq.' "
Just as the invasion of Iraq was "a Christmas gift" to Osama, as the C.I.A. official who wrote a book as "Anonymous" put it, in terms of recruiting in the Muslim world and diverting the U.S., so it may be a gift to Iran. U.S. military officials say Iranian agents have been helping Iraqi insurgents as a way to shape Iraq into a Shiite fundamentalist satellite.
Though the 9/11 panel found no "collaborative" relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, it found one between Iran and Al Qaeda - but no evidence that Iranian officials knew in advance about the 9/11 attacks.
The report concludes that "Al Qaeda's relationship with Iran and its client, the Hezbollah militant group, was far deeper and more longstanding than its links with Iraq," according to The Washington Post.
Mr. Bush vowed to deal harshly with any country that harbors terrorists or assisted the 9/11 plot. But our military is so overextended from invading Ira-, we'd be hard pressed to go after Ira-.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/opinion/22dowd.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2...
Accounting and Accountability
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 23, 2004
Accountability is important. The nation will be ill served if officials who didn't do all they could to prevent a terrorist attack, or led the nation into an unnecessary war, manage to shift the blame to someone else.
But those weren't the only big mistakes of the last few years. Will anyone be held accountable for the mishandling of postwar Iraq?
Last month we learned that the United States, while it has spent vast sums on the war in Iraq, has so far provided almost no aid. Of $18.4 billion in reconstruction funds approved by Congress, only $400 million has been disbursed.
Almost all of the money spent by the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq until late June, came from Iraqi sources, mainly oil revenues. This revelation helps explain one puzzle: the sluggish pace of reconstruction, which has yet to restore many essential services to prewar levels.
But it creates another puzzle: given that the authority was spending Iraq's money, why wasn't it more careful in its accounting?
When a foreign power takes control of an oil-rich nation's resources, it inevitably faces suspicion about its motives. Fairly or not, the locals are all too ready to believe that the invaders came to steal their oil.
The way to deal with such suspicion is to let in as much sunlight as possible by appointing financial officials with strong reputations for independence, keeping meticulous books, and welcoming and cooperating with international audits.
What actually happened was just the opposite. Every important official with responsibility for Iraqi finances was a Bush administration loyalist. The occupying authority dragged its feet on an international audit, which didn't even begin until April 2004.
When KPMG auditors hired by an international advisory board finally got to work, they found that no effort had been made to keep an accurate record of oil sales, and that accounting for the $20 billion Development Fund for Iraq consisted of "spreadsheets and pivot tables maintained by a single accountant."
The auditors also faced a lack of cooperation. They were denied access to Iraqi ministries, which were reputed to be the locus of epic corruption on the part of Iraqis with connections to the occupiers. They were also denied access to reports concerning what they delicately describe as "sole-source contracts."
Translation: they were stonewalled when they tried to find out what Halliburton did with $1.4 billion.
By obstructing international auditors, by the way, the U.S. wasn't just fueling suspicion about the misappropriation of Iraqi oil money - it was also breaking its word. After Saddam's fall, the U.N. gave the U.S. the right to disburse Iraqi oil-for-food revenues, but only on the condition that this be accompanied by international auditing and oversight.
A digression: yes, oil-for-food is the U.N.-administered program from which Saddam undoubtedly siphoned off billions. But we expect America to be held to a higher standard.
There are also allegations that Saddam's revenue diversion was aided by corrupt U.N. officials. I think we should wait and see what Paul Volcker, the genuinely independent head of the U.N. inquiry - the sort of person the U.S. occupation should have employed - has to say. Meanwhile, it's worth noting that these accusations are entirely based on documents that are purported to be in the possession of none other than Ahmad Chalabi, who has himself been accused of corruption.
And there are a few curious side stories. On the day the U.S. raided Mr. Chalabi's offices, a British associate of Mr. Chalabi who had been promising to come out with a devastating report told London's Daily Telegraph that a remarkably effective hacker attack had destroyed all his computer files, including the backup copies.
After the United States's falling-out with Mr. Chalabi, the oil-for-food investigation was taken out of the hands of Mr. Chalabi's allies. But the new head of the investigation was assassinated on July 1.
Meanwhile, the war, fed by the failure of reconstruction, goes on. The transfer doesn't seem to have made any difference: more American soldiers were killed in the first three weeks of July than in all of June, even though Knight-Ridder reports that the U.S. military has stopped patrolling in much of Anbar Province, the heart of the insurgency.
And while the U.S. has yet to disburse any significant amount of aid, the Government Accountability Office says that war costs for this fiscal year alone will run $12.3 billion above Pentagon projections.
Will anyone be held accountable?
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/23/opinion/23krug.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2...