Sigh…. politics is an ugly thing in its best forms - Bush&Co. are taking to new extremes. If you haven’t seen this yet - you should.
Prediction: Rice is gonna take the fall for this - Bush will stay relatively clean (at least in his own mind).
Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to strike America, to attack us, I would have used every resource, every asset, every power of this government to protect the American people. – George W. Bush 03/26/04
DUH!
I doubt anyone would accuse our President of deliberately ignoring an attack of which he had full and prior knowledge. Nice defense there George.
Who’d have ever thought that someone could be considered brave simply for publishing an opinion in The United States of America?
The U.N. (those wussies) wanted to condemn Isreal for assassination. It’s a good thing we vetoed that reolution, otherwise how could we assassinate Osama bin Laden without fear of world condemnation? After all, we have a God given right to defend ourselves - if murdering our enemy is deemed to be self-defense, then we should be able to do so without those pesky U.N. wimps giving us grief over it. Damn straight!
If we’d gotten Saddam with those bunker busters, would the U.N. have condemned that? If we do get bin Laden with a bomb or in a fire fight, will the world condemn that? Or are we given a pass simply because he’s the top bad guy du jour?
It’s embarrassing that our leadership so openly discusses their plans for assassination while our press just laps it up - encourages it.
With all of our technology, money and man power we should be able to render these people moot - without resorting to their own mad methods. It’d be a lot more effective, in the long run, if we would stop wielding a big stick and start trying to figure out how to improve the lives of those that the terrorists purport to represent. By resorting to the same methods, we’re providing fodder to the other side.
It won’t matter a handful o’ dreams if we get bin Laden. It won’t help Isreal now that they’ve (supposedly) decapitated Hamas. As with any good organization, there’s always someone ready to step up and take the reins. All Isreal’s accomplished is to harden the resolve of their sworn enemies. And to possibly create more enemies.
Snuffing bin Laden or publicly humiliating Huessein will have the same effect for us. It won’t intimidate the enemy - it won’t whip them into submission. These acts serve only to embolden them - make them more resolved to hurt us. They’ll have more people, more money and we’ll have less cooperation from our friends (or the enemies of our enemy).
The leadership in Washington and Isreal is out of touch and (I hate to put it this way) downright stupid. Once again, what we learned in kindergarten applies to the big picture: If you’re a bully, no one will sit with you at lunch or ask you play 4-square.
I never liked the bullies - never wanted to be one. And I don’t like now being one. I wanna each lunch with the other kids.
The education I received in public school is clearly lacking. Although I was alive in 1964, I was never familiarized with the Gulf of Tonkin fiasco. This would have been a topic worth discussing in Mr. Moon’s American Government class. Was he afraid to disillusion those young minds which had grown up watching the Vietnam war on TV? Watching American students gunned down at Kent State? Was the school administration against teaching the ugly side of America? The real side of life?
Now that my own children are in public schools I’m realizing that there are certain topics that is my responsibilty to teach them. If they’re to be effective citizens of this country, they need to know its history, both good and bad. They’ll need to understand that the government is comprised of people - and therefore fallible and capable of great evil. Conversely I need them to understand that people are also essentially good and that only vigilance can keep us on the moral path.
For the second time that I’m aware of, American soldiers are placed in harm’s way to further some dubious political agenda which is nefariously sold to us (we’re such easy marks). For at least the second time, we’re paying the price of believing, blindly, our leaders. Paying in blood.
Why is it that only when history repeats do we learn that it’s repeating at all? We must break this cycle and all become engaged historians as that’s the only way we’ll recognize a mistake before we foolishly do it again.
What did we learn from Vietnam? We learned that the only way to win is to give it everything we’ve got. Smash ‘em right off the bat rather than trying to coerce the enemy through limited engagement and ‘peace talks’. Our military actions in both Kuwait and Iraw show that this lesson was learned.
What we should have learned is that our leaders WILL lie to us. That going to war for any reason other than self preservation is a mistake and that if we’re willing to make that mistake we’d damn well better have a plan for the end game. Did Johnson have a plan in place just in case the North Vietnamese gave up? I seriously doubt it. Did Bush have a plan? He claims to have had one, although it was so obviously flawed that it’s been abandoned.
Both Presidents Johnson and Bush have led us into bloody quagmires from which there is no obvious way to extricate ourselves. If nothing else these incidents should teach us to punish leadership that lies to us and through threat of punitive action (hopefully) prevent future leaders from revisiting the same mistakes on us once again.
Schanberg blamed not only the press but also “the apparent amnesia of the wider American public.”
And he added: “We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth.”
For the last two and a half years, the Bush administration has been frantically, desperately trying to stop any meaningful investigation into the intelligence failures that led to September 11. Critics (a group that most certainly does not include any of the supposed watchdogs in the mainstream news media) have been asking, just what are they trying to hide?
Your government failed you … and I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn’t matter because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask … for your understanding and for your forgiveness.
Richard Clarke
If Mr. Clarke is right (and I have no reason to disbelieve him, but then his story agress with what I see) then this administration has a lot to answer for.
Read this:
Fatal in Difference - Bush’s catastrophic allergy to Clinton. By William Saletan
Then consider this:
It’d be easy to say that Richard Clarke has opened a can of shit that this country shouldn’t have to deal with. The morale issues with our soldiers - the lost opportunities with allies and foes alike - the utter destruction of our credibilty - the political dvisions within American that will only widen. He should have kept his mouth shut - we’ll just deal with what we’ve got.
That’d be far too easy though. We deserve the truth and should demand it from our leaders. If even half of what Mr. Clarke says is true, then ultimately we’ll be better off for suffering the short term pain.
Mr. Bush needs to answer these allegations - needs to answer for these allegations.
I’m obviously no politician, and I do not understand international relations in anyway. But to expect the people of the middle east to respect us, we’ve gotta stop this kinda stuff.
Suddenly everyone on Capitol Hill is demanding Syria withdraws its troops from Lebanon so, they say, the tiny Middle East nation can regain its sovereignty.
Sovereignty? Kinda lofty talk coming from us.
Executive Order Now there’s an interesting topic. Here’s a discussion on the topic.
Executive Orders (EOs) are legally binding orders given by the President, acting as the head of the Executive Branch, to Federal Administrative Agencies. Executive Orders are generally used to direct federal agencies and officials in their execution of congressionally established laws or policies.
Legally binding, eh. I had vague recollections of Carter signing an Executive Order banning assassinations - and sure enough, here it is (section 5(g) is the relevant part). But that’s all legalese, here’s the lay summary of the situation right now.
Following the September 11. 2001, attacks, the White House said the presidential directive banning assassinations would not prevent the United States from acting in self-defense.
According to an October 21, 2001, Washington Post article, President Bush in September of last year signed an intelligence “finding” instructing the CIA to engage in “lethal covert operations” to destroy Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization.
“Lethal Covert Operations”. Hmmmm. If we’re going to be assassins and murderers, how can we expect the rest of the world to live to a ‘higher standard’? We’ve gotten down in the mud with the worst of ‘em. And we know it. Don’t you?
It feels so good to wallow in our baser instincts - to let the lizard brain rule. As a nation, we’re certainly reveling right now: deciept, murder, general lawlessness. These are the things which this country was founded to rise above, not join in.
As individuals we all have the choice to be human or lizard. As a nation, the only choice was to rise above the lizards and be human. Unfortunately that era has passed and we’re now lead by lizards, hell we’re surrounded by ‘em.
We (the people of this nation) are actually engaging in discussions about assassinating Osama bin Laden. Does no one remember that assassination is generally a bad thing? Retribution is not ours to mete out? We should be showing the world that we can rise above the murderers. Lock ‘em up real tight, yes, but to use murder as a preemptive tool against a murderous foe is to become a murderous foe.
What’s next? Terrorizing children? Oh wait! We already do that! Kidnapping? No dammit, we already do that too!
Crap - so much for holding ourselves to a higher ideal.
Mr. President: Uphold your oath of office to obey and enforce the law. Murder for any reason is wrong. Calling it something else does not change what it is. It’s base and vile. Rise above and be a man.
In a previous post I ranted about OBJECTIVE:Christian Ministries. This site and the things it espoused became a weekend obsession - I just couldn’t believe anyone actually believed this stuff, nor could I be certain that the site was a spoof.
Well I finally decided that it is indeed a parody, although there’s no direct evidence of it being one. Oh there are lots of clues that it’s parody - the whole ‘tri-clavinist’ thing is just a little too much. But it’s just the kind of thing that some whacko would do just to have their own crusade. The biggest clue that it’s a spoof is the one that’s not there. No where to be found on the site is the one thing that all other fundamentalist christian sites have: a “Donate Money” button. That’s the clincher for me - that’s the proof of parody.
During my obsession with this, I visited a great number of fundamentalist christian sites - they’re almost as scary as the Objective:Christian Ministries purport to be, which I s’pose is the reason for the whole parody.
Look at this first: G O P.com :: A White House on Message
- The Democrats have been attempting to find a speech pattern which will resonate with their supporters. For example they’ve recently trotted out House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) trying out: “It’s a fairness question,” but they keep running right into a brick wall of the REAL West Wing as the President counters that with:
“Oh, you’ll hear the talk about how this plan only helps the rich people. That’s just typical Washington, D.C., political rhetoric, is what that is. That’s just empty rhetoric.”
- The Democrats tried, briefly, to bring back their old class-warfare arguments. You know the old saying that Generals are always fighting the last war? The Liberal wing of the Democratic Party is always fighting the last Depression.
- There is no question that the Democrats want to transfer higher amounts of your income to spend on more government programs. The President wants YOU to spend more of your money to generate economic growth.
- The White House is winning this message war.
I want some substance.
(For future reference: Know Thy Enemy.)
There was a time when I truly believed that the media was biased to the left, you know, Democrats one and all. But the facts just don’t support that idea any more. It’s fairly obvious that they’d like to appear liberal, but the underlying bias is towards the Republican way of life.
Another possibility is that American journalism has become unprincipled, lazy and above all, greedy: anything for ratings.
Check this out.
(For future reference: Stay Informed.)
Let’s see, our Vice President is under investigation for ‘outing’ a CIA agent and this is what we’re concerned with.
Hmmmmm…….
Microsoft is blowing it again. For years they’ve relied on the technical mysteries of comupters in general to baffle and cunfuse the legal system - and they could continue doing so for a number of years yet. Except for their own greed - once again they’ve proven their public statements wrong by their own actions:Cropped Windows already exists - ZDNet. Media Player is “an integral part of the OS”. Indeed.
Faced with a program by the government of Thailand to provide citizens with low-cost PCs running open-source source software, Microsoft responded with a special $40 package with scaled-back versions of Windows XP and Office.
It seems to me that Microsoft should spend a little of their investor’s money and setup an Office of ‘Let’s get our story straight’.
A very sad commentary on the state of our political process.
The current flap surrounding Richard Clarke is a glaring example of these attack dogs at work and shows that they are indeed centrally controlled. The day after Clarke’s appearance on 60 minutes the attacks and rebuttals were all over the map, ranging from “he’s just wrong” all the way to “he knows nothing - he’s an idiot”. The second day the attacks/rebuttals were almost unanimous in saying that Clarke was “out of the loop”.
Three days later they’re coordinated and focused on the fact that Clinton blew it - not Bush - George was just continuing Clinton’s policies for ‘continuity’.
I stumbled across this while looking for (of all things) “file permissions” documentation [isn’t the web wonderfully wild?].
These guys are just plain scary (here he’s talking about the PBS show, Evolution):
The episode also included “real life examples” of Evolutionism to try and convince us that it is a real science. One of these was – and I am not making this up – a primatologist who taught some chimpanzees to “count”. Supposedly this proves that we are a monkey’s uncle. Another example used was AIDS. They argued that AIDS is constantly evolving and if it weren’t for Darwin we wouldn’t understand why and thus would be helpless in treating the disease (they conveniently neglect to point out that Darwinistic propaganda equating us with animals might have helped to spread the disease in the first place). This is a common false argument made by Evolutionists; the random variations of AIDS is not the same as the transmutation of species that Darwin wrote about and that is the basis of Secular Humanism. All those little changes aside, AIDS is still AIDS. Show us AIDS evolving into a cat – which is essentially the Evolutionistic position of common ancestry for all lifeforms – and then you’ll have something worth noting.
The unbridled bigorty of some supposedly tolerant Christians is beyond belief.
I guess I’ve just completely blown it as a parent by allowing my son to get involved with PokeMon - you know those paragons of evil:
Some of the most popular vehicles for this subliminal propaganda are children’s television shows, books, and toys. By getting their ideas into the minds of the young, they hope to be able to do the most damage to traditional values and belief. Shows like Pokemon, which features animals “evolving” into new forms, and popular movies like Jurassic Park and X-Men provide a continuous cultural fog of Evolutionism that is impossible for innocent children to escape from.
This was obviously written using an IBM running Windoze. Otherwise how could this guy call himself a good American:
However, these propagandists aren’t just targeting the young. Take for example Apple Computers, makers of the popular Macintosh line of computers. The real operating system hiding under the newest version of the Macintosh operating system (MacOS X) is called… Darwin! That’s right, new Macs are based on Darwinism! While they currently don’t advertise this fact to consumers, it is well known among the computer elite, who are mostly Atheists and Pagans. Furthermore, the Darwin OS is released under an “Open Source” license, which is just another name for Communism. They try to hide all of this under a facade of shiny, “lickable” buttons, but the truth has finally come out: Apple Computers promote Godless Darwinism and Communism.
I’ve never considered myself an Atheist, a Pagan or a Communist (elite? possibly) but if that’s the antithesis of this guy, then call me guilty. Reading on:
But is this really such a shock? Lets look for a moment at Apple Computers. Founded by long haired hippies, this company has consistently supported 60’s counter-cultural “values”. But there are even darker undertones to this company than most are aware of. Consider the name of the company and its logo: an apple with a bite taken out of it. This is clearly a reference to the Fall, when Adam and Eve were tempted with an apple by the serpent. It is now Apple Computers offering us temptation, thereby aligning themselves with the forces of darkness.
Free speech is so cool. Anyone can place their lunacy on public display.
A thought: What if people like this were to get their hooks into the White House? Would that spell disaster for this country? Would it mean the end of free spech for Americans? Would it spell the end of the church/state separation? Would Americans become even more arrogant and close minded than we already are?
Oh, wait - it’s already happened.
President Bush’s chief political adviser, Karl Rove, told the FBI in an interview last October that he circulated and discussed damaging information regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame with others in the White House, outside political consultants, and journalists, according to a government official and an attorney familiar with the ongoing special counsel’s investigation of the matter.
Oooooooo - this could get interesting. It continues:
But Rove also adamantly insisted to the FBI that he was not the administration official who leaked the information that Plame was a covert CIA operative to conservative columnist Robert Novak last July. Rather, Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about Plame after it had appeared in Novak’s column. He also told the FBI, the same sources said, that circulating the information was a legitimate means to counter what he claimed was politically motivated criticism of the Bush administration by Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Of course he can adamantly insist he’s done no wrong. I seriously doubt he ever does/says anything for which responsibilty can be tracked back to him.
From an October 2003 press conference:
Q Scott, you have said that you, personally, went to Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and Elliot Abrams to ask them if they were the leakers. Is that what happened? Why did you do that, and can you describe the conversations you had with them? What was the question you asked?
MR. McCLELLAN: Unfortunately, in Washington, D.C., at a time like this, there are a lot of rumors and innuendo. There are unsubstantiated accusations that are made. And that’s exactly what happened in the case of these three individuals. They’re good individuals, they’re important members of our White House team, and that’s why I spoke with them, so that I could come back to you and say that they were not involved. I had no doubt of that in the beginning, but I like to check my information to make sure it’s accurate before I report back to you, and that’s exactly what I did.
Q So you’re saying – you’re saying categorically those three individuals were not the leakers or did not authorize the leaks; is that what you’re saying?
MR. McCLELLAN: That’s correct. I’ve spoken with them.
Wow - a straight answer. That makes me think he’s lying.
From Websters:
un·prec·e·dent·ed
adj.Having no previous example: unprecedented economic growth.
Yup. I have to agree:
Being the Unprecedented President, Mr. Bush certainly has the right to use the word, and perhaps he sould use it frequently. But in the context of cooperation?
I think not.
Here’s a link to a transcript of a news conference this morning. I find it facinating that politicians would expect us to accept this type of nonspeak.
Mr. McClellan is trying his best to not answer the questions, which are quite simple:
Q: Does the President want to really get to the bottom of the cause of 9/11? If he does, why would he limit his interview with the commission to one hour and for other officials, and, stonewall on documents?
McCLELLAN: I’m glad you brought this up. This administration has provided unprecedented cooperation to a legislative body in the 9/11 Commission. We have worked closely with the commission in a spirit of cooperation. And you only have to go back – and I would appreciate it if you would report some of the facts of the type of access we have provided to the commission. We have provided the commission access to every bit of information that they have requested, including our most sensitive national security documents. And the commission chairman has stated such –
Unprecedented cooperation?
Q: We would never suggest you do anything else, Scott. But my point is, don’t you think that there might be some kind of PR problem for the President when his chief challenger can say, you’ve got time to got to a rodeo, and you don’t have time for the 9/11 Commission?
McCLELLAN: That’s why it’s important for everybody to report all the facts and the type of cooperation we have provided to the commission, and the type of access we have provided to the commission. It is unprecedented. But in terms of those remarks, it appears that he does not want to let the facts get in the way of his campaign. The facts are very clear. This administration has provided unprecedented cooperation to the 9/11 Commission, and provided access to every single bit of information that they have requested.
Q: Not unprecedented, I’m sorry. From Watergate on –
McCLELLAN: Go look at the chairman’s recent comments, Helen. I mean, I’ll be glad to go back through those.
Q: The only reason I won’t accept the word “unprecedented” is because, as I pointed out to you once before, President Ford actually testified in open session before the House Judiciary Committee –
McCLELLAN: Provided access to our nation’s most sensitive national security documents?
Q: Well, it depends on what aspect of –
This is sooooo typical. I’m left with the impression that Mr. McLellan was getting testy because the reporters were not accepting his non-answer as an answer. Well I get the same impression as they did: Mr. Bush will answer all the questions that can be asked in 1 hour.
The Kerry camp should use this to show the unprecedented cooperation this administration is showing.
Another thought - why the hell is providing information to any Congressonal body considered a virtuous thing? It seems to me that virtually all data the government holds should be open to inspection. Why do thses bastards make it seem like they’re doing some huge favor by providing information?
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