Old News But True News

Distortions of truth have been commonplace within our government for many, many years. From covert action to sex scandels, our government is based on half truths and deception. While the real issues that face us seem to go by the wayside. Why does our government seem to feel the need to be deceptive in its actions? I'd like to hear what you all think.

Bush Misled America about the Threat from Iraq
See also this analysis of the fraud by retired federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega.
Why did we invade Iraq? Was it because, as the White House claimed, Saddam Hussein was an immediate and serious threat to America. Or did Bush mislead the public, the Congress and the UN by consistently overstating this threat.
Bush claims he was forced to to invade Iraq as a last resort. But Bush wanted to invade Iraq from the very beginning of his presidency. Many of his team came from the PNAC, a thinktank which urged the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and pointed out the need for a "new Pearl Harbor". “From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,” says Ron Suskind. “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”
This is not a situation where Bush said ten things and one of them was wrong. Basically everything Bush said about the threat from Iraq was false. He had no solid evidence of any threat but still led us into this deadly and costly war. Here are the main lies about the threat from Iraq given by Bush and Cheney:

Lie #1 - Uranium from Niger - Bush said "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." in his State of the Union Address. The documents supporting that statement were forged.

Lie #2 - Iraq and 9/11 - Bush led people to believe that Iraq was involved with 9/11 by repeatedly linking them in his speeches. This was so effective that at one point 70% of Americans actually believed Saddam was behind 9/11. Bush has since admitted that this was not true.

Lie #3 - Congress Knew - Bush has stated that Congress had access to all the same information that the White House had. Thus he should not be blamed for making the mistake of going to war. But Bush was briefed many times about the falsehood of various stories and this information never reached Congress. [ZNet]

Lie #4 - Aluminum Tubes - Bush, Cheney, Rice and Powell said that some aluminum tubes Iraq attempted to buy were intended for use in a uranium centrifuge to create nuclear weapons. These were the only physical evidence he had against Iraq. But it turns out this evidence had been rejected by the Department of Energy and other intelligence agencies long before Bush used them in his speeches. [NYTimes] [MotherJones] [CNN]

Lie #5 - Iraq and Al Qaeda - Bush still insists that there was a "relationship" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. But the 9/11 Commission released a report saying, among other things, that there was no "collaborative relationship" between Al Qaeda and Iraq. The nature of the relationship seems to be that Al Qaeda asked for help and Iraq refused. Al Qaeda was opposed to Saddam Hussein because Saddam led a secular government instead of an Islamic government. [ZNet] [CNN] On 9/8/06 a Senate panel reported there was no relationship. [ABC]

Lie #6 - Weapons of Mass Destruction - Bush insisted that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction but his "evidence" consisted mostly of forged documents, plagiarized student papers, and vague satellite photos. The United Nations was on the ground in Iraq and could find nothing. After extensive searches Bush was finally forced to admit that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.

Lie #7 - Mobile Weapons Labs - Bush and his team repeatedly claimed that Iraq possessed mobile weapons labs capable of producing anthrax. Colin Powell showed diagrams of them at his speech before the UN to justify invading Iraq. These claims originated from Curveball, a discredited Iraqi informer who fed Bush many of the stories related to WMD. On May 29, 2003, two small trailers matching the description were found in Iraq. A team of bio-weapons experts examined the trailers and concluded they were simply designed to produce hydrogen for weather balloons. But, for over a year, Bush claimed these were part of Iraq's bio-weapons program. The expert's report was suppressed and only recently made public. [WashPost] [ABC]
Bush wanted so much to convince people of the need to invade Iraq that the White House set up a secret team in the Pentagon to create evidence. The Office of Special Plans routinely rewrote the CIA's intelligence estimates on Iraq's weapons programs, removing caveats such as "likely," "probably" and "may" as a way of depicting the country as an imminent threat. They also used unreliable sources to create reports that ultimately proved to be false. [Mother Jones] [New Yorker] [Wikipedia]
By lying to Congress, Bush violated US Laws related to Fraud and False Statements, Title 18, Chapter 47, Section 1001 and Conspiracy to Defraud the United States, Title 18, Chapter 19, Section 371.

I Just Don't Get It

Here we have a person who is attempting to make peace within this wartorn and divided region, and the idiot President wants nothing to do with it.

Bush wants no part of peace - Warmonger, Isolationist, Fearmonger, War for Profit

I am so sick of this! This is absolute bullshit!


On last stop of tour, Pelosi visits Saudi advisers' chamber
By Donna Abu-nasr, Associated Press
Last update: April 05, 2007 – 10:04 PM

RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA - U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Saudi Arabia's unelected advisory council on Thursday, the closest thing in the kingdom to a legislature, where she tried out her counterpart's chair -- a privilege no Saudi woman can have because women cannot become legislators.
"It's a nice view from here," Pelosi said as she sat in the chair, facing the ornate chamber with its deep blue and yellow chairs and gilded ironwork.
On the last stop of her Mideast tour, Pelosi, the first woman in her position, said she raised the issue of Saudi Arabia's prohibition of female politicians with Saudi government officials, but she refrained from criticizing the kingdom over it.
One day after Pelosi's sharply criticized meeting with Syrian President Bashir Assad, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., paid a similar visit. He said President Bush had not promoted the dialogue that is necessary to resolve disagreements between the United States and Syria.
"That's an important message to realize: We have tensions, but we have two functioning embassies," Issa told reporters after separate meetings with Assad and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem.
White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the administration had a clear line on members of Congress -- Democrat or Republican -- going to Syria. "We do not think it is useful," he said, adding that such a visit "only makes [the Syrians] feel validated."
Washington accuses Syria of backing Hamas and Hezbollah, groups it deems terrorist organizations.
In Riyadh on Thursday, Pelosi sidestepped a question about the absence of female Saudi council members, saying: "The issue has been brought up in our discussions with the Saudis on this trip."
The Majlis al-Shura, or Consultative Council, was expanded and given more powers in 1992 as a gesture toward forming a legislature. Its 150 members are chosen by the king and advise him, and the body has the power to propose new laws for the government's approval. The kingdom, ruled by the strict Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, held its first elections in 2005, choosing local councils. Women were forbidden from voting or running.
Pelosi arrived in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, meeting with King Abdullah at his farm outside Riyadh, where they discussed at length the Arab peace initiative proposed by Saudi Arabia in 2002 and relaunched at a summit in Riyadh last week.
The initiative offers Israel peace with all Arab states if it withdraws from lands seized in 1967 and allows the creation of a Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem. Israel has said it would only accept the proposal if some changes were made, but Arab nations have said Israel should accept it as a basis for negotiations.
Pelosi leaves for Washington early today

Bring Them Home Now!!!

Please check out this site, and do whatever you can to support these troops in coming home to their loved ones. And to put and end to the lunacy that is going on in Iraq.

Time to Bring the Troops Home
Chalmers Johnson

The United States is today virtually the only nation on earth that maintains large contingents of its armed forces in other people's countries. After World War II and during the cold war, the United States built a chain of military bases stretching from Japan and South Korea through Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand and Australia to Diego Garcia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, England and Iceland--in effect ringing the Soviet Union and China with thousands of overseas military installations. In Japan alone, following the Korean War, there were 600 US installations and approximately 200,000 troops. There are still today, ten years after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, some 800 Defense Department facilities outside the United States, ranging from radio relay stations to major air bases. To those unlucky enough to live near them (sometimes dependent on them for work or customers), these military outposts often appear less like "peacekeepers" than occupiers.
In East Asia, the United States maintains massive and expensive military forces poised to engage in everything from nuclear war to sabotage of governments that Washington finds inconvenient (for example, the government of former President Suharto in Indonesia, which in May 1998 the US government helped to bring down via troops its Special Forces had trained). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the United States still deploys some 100,000 military personnel and close to an equal number of civilian workers and dependents in Japan and South Korea. These forces include the Third Marine Expeditionary Force in Okinawa and Japan; the Second Infantry Division in South Korea; numerous Air Force squadrons in both countries (Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa is the largest US military installation outside the United States); the Seventh Fleet, with its headquarters in Yokosuka, Japan, patrolling the China coast and anywhere else that it wants to go; and innumerable submarine pens (for example, White Beach, Okinawa), support facilities, clandestine eavesdropping and intelligence-collecting units, Special Forces and staff and headquarters installations all over the Pacific.
From approximately 1950 to 1990, the US government invoked the cold war to justify these so-called forward deployments--actually, in less euphemistic language, imperialist outposts. During the late 1940s, when it became apparent that the Chinese Communist Party was going to win the Chinese civil war, the United States reversed its policy of attempting to democratize occupied Japan and devoted itself to making Japan Washington's leading satellite in East Asia. The United States entered into an informal economic bargain with Japan: In return for Japan's willingness to tolerate the indefinite deployment of US weapons and troops on its soil, the United States would give it preferential access to the American market and would tolerate its protectionism and mercantilism. These were advantages the United States did not extend to its European allies or Latin American neighbors in the cold war.

My Next Read - This Is the Man

Obama’s Foursquare Politics, With a Dab of Dijon
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By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: October 17, 2006
Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois and the Democratic Party’s new rock star, is that rare politician who can actually write — and write movingly and genuinely about himself.



Deborah Feingold
Barack Obama

THE AUDACITY OF HOPE
Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
By Barack Obama

375 pages. Crown Publishers. $25.

Readers’ Opinions
Forum: Book News and Reviews
His 1995 memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” written before Mr. Obama entered politics, provided a revealing, introspective account of his efforts to trace his family’s tangled roots and his attempts to come to terms with his absent father, who left home when he was still a toddler. That book did an evocative job of conjuring the author’s multicultural childhood: his father was from Kenya, his mother was from Kansas, and the young Mr. Obama grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia.

And it was equally candid about his youthful struggles: pot, booze and “maybe a little blow,” he wrote, could “push questions of who I was out of my mind,” flatten “out the landscape of my heart, blur the edges of my memory.” Most memorably, the book gave the reader a heartfelt sense of what it was like to grow up in the 1960’s and 70’s, straddling America’s color lines: the sense of knowing two worlds and belonging to neither, the sense of having to forge an identity of his own.

Mr. Obama’s new book, “The Audacity of Hope” — the phrase comes from his 2004 Democratic Convention keynote address, which made him the party’s rising young hope — is much more of a political document. Portions of the volume read like outtakes from a stump speech, and the bulk of it is devoted to laying out Mr. Obama’s policy positions on a host of issues, from education to health care to the war in Iraq.

But while Mr. Obama occasionally slips into the flabby platitudes favored by politicians, enough of the narrative voice in this volume is recognizably similar to the one in “Dreams From My Father,” an elastic, personable voice that is capable of accommodating everything from dense discussions of foreign policy to streetwise reminiscences, incisive comments on constitutional law to New-Agey personal asides. The reader comes away with a feeling that Mr. Obama has not reinvented himself as he has moved from job to job (community organizer in Chicago, editor of The Harvard Law Review, professor of constitutional law, civil rights lawyer, state senator) but has instead internalized all those roles, embracing rather than shrugging off whatever contradictions they might have produced.

Reporters and politicians continually use the word authenticity to describe Mr. Obama, pointing to his ability to come across to voters as a regular person, not a prepackaged pol. And in these pages he often speaks to the reader as if he were an old friend from back in the day, salting policy recommendations with colorful asides about the absurdities of political life.

He recalls a meet-and-greet encounter at the White House with George W. Bush, who warmly shook his hand, then “turned to an aide nearby, who squirted a big dollop of hand sanitizer in the president’s hand.” (“Good stuff,” he quotes the president as saying, as he offered his guest some. “Keeps you from getting colds.”) And he recounts a trip he took through Illinois with an aide, who scolded him for asking for Dijon mustard at a T.G.I. Friday’s, worried the senator would come across as an elitist; the confused waitress, he adds, simply said: “We got Dijon if you want it.”

In his 2004 keynote address Mr. Obama spoke of the common ground Americans share: “There is not a Black America and White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.” And the same message — rooted in his own youthful efforts to grapple with racial stereotypes, racial loyalty and class resentments — threads its way through the pages of this book. Despite the red state-blue state divide, despite racial, religious and economic divisions, Mr. Obama writes, “we are becoming more, not less, alike” beneath the surface: “Most Republican strongholds are 40 percent Democrat, and vice versa. The political labels of liberal and conservative rarely track people’s personal attributes.”

Mr. Obama eschews the Manichean language that has come to inform political discourse, and he rejects what he sees as the either-or formulations of his elders who came of age in the 60’s: “In the back-and-forth between Clinton and Gingrich, and in the elections of 2000 and 2004,” he writes, “I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the Baby Boom generation — a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago — played out on the national stage. The victories that the 60’s generation brought about — the admission of minorities and women into full citizenship, the strengthening of individual liberties and the healthy willingness to question authority — have made America a far better place for all its citizens. But what has been lost in the process, and has yet to be replaced, are those shared assumptions — that quality of trust and fellow feeling — that bring us together as Americans.”

His thoughts on domestic and foreign policy try to hew to this consensus-building line. Some of his recommendations devolve into little more than fuzzy statements of the obvious: i.e., that America’s “addiction to oil” is affecting the economy and undermining national security, or that the education system needs to be revamped and improved. Others echo Bill Clinton’s “third way,” methodically triangulating between traditionally conservative and traditionally liberal ideas.

Mr. Obama writes that “conservatives — and Bill Clinton — were right about welfare as it was previously structured: By detaching income from work and by making no demands on welfare recipients other than a tolerance for intrusive bureaucracy and an assurance that no man lived in the same house as the mother of his children, the old A.F.D.C. program sapped people of their initiative and eroded their self respect.”

He uses the Bush administration’s tough language to talk about national security in the age of terrorism (“if we have to go it alone, the American people stand ready to pay any price and bear any burden to protect our country”) but adds, crucially, that “once we get beyond matters of self-defense,” he is “convinced that it will almost always be in our strategic interest to act multilaterally rather than unilaterally when we use force around the world.”

He assails President Bush for waging an unnecessary and misguided war in Iraq and for promoting an “Ownership Society” that “magnifies the uneven risks and rewards of today’s winner-take-all economy.” Yet he also takes the Democrats to task for becoming “the party of reaction”: “In reaction to a war that is ill-conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action. In reaction to those who proclaim the market can cure all ills, we resist efforts to use market principles to tackle pressing problems. In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance with secularism and forfeit the moral language that would help infuse our policies with a larger meaning. We lose elections and hope for the courts to foil Republican plans. We lose the courts and wait for a White House scandal.”

This volume does not possess the searching candor of the author’s first book. But Mr. Obama strives in these pages to ground his policy thinking in simple common sense — be it “growing the size of our armed forces to maintain reasonable rotation schedules” or reining in spending and rethinking tax policy to bring down the nation’s huge deficit — while articulating these ideas in level-headed, nonpartisan prose. That, in itself, is something unusual, not only in these venomous pre-election days, but also in these increasingly polarized and polarizing times.

Vote Different

I saw this over at THE OCD GEN X LIBERAL site. She couldn't post this because of blog issues. This is a very powerful ad, so I thought I would pass it along to everyone for her. Thanks Lizzy.

His War? It's Personal Now

This man seems to be driven by some sort of personal issue. I think it's pride. And pride is the devils work!!! He really thinks what he's doing is the right thing. Micromanage? They can't even manage what they got themselves into. What a buffoon.



Bush threatens to veto any Iraq bill with 'strings'

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Accusing Congress of trying to "micromanage" his administration's war in Iraq, President George W. Bush used his weekly radio address to threaten a veto of an emergency spending bill unless it is passed "without strings and without delay."
The purpose of the legislation, he said, "should be to give our troops on the front lines the resources, funds, and equipment they need to fight our enemies," but "some in Congress are using this bill as an opportunity to micromanage our military commanders, force a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, and spend billions on domestic projects that have nothing to do with the war on terror."
Long used to getting his way with a compliant Republican Congress, Bush's signature issue has run into trouble in the new Democratically-controlled chambers, elected last fall largely due to widening public opposition to the war, which has killed more than 3,000 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis.
Still, Bush said that the "troops urgently need Congress to approve emergency war funds" and that he has "has begun pursuing a new strategy in Iraq."
The new approach has produced "hopeful signs," he claimed and will "help the Iraqi government stabilize the country, rebuild the economy, and advance the work of political reconciliation."
On Saturday, three suicide bombers driving trucks full of chlorine hit in Anbar province, killing two policemen and forcing about 350 Iraqi civilians and six U.S. troops to seek treatment for exposure to the gas, the Associated Press reported.
He added that the bill would place "impose arbitrary and restrictive conditions on the use of war funds and require the withdrawal of forces by the end of this year if these conditions are not met." That would "handcuff our generals in the field by denying them the flexibility they need to adjust their operations to the changing situation on the ground."
Further, "these restrictions would substitute the mandates of Congress for the considered judgment of our military commanders."
Under Article I of the U.S. Constitution, the legislative branch has the sole power to appropriate funds; no money can be spent by the government without an act of Congress.
"Congress needs to approve emergency funding for our troops, without strings and without delay" he concluded. "If they send me a bill that does otherwise, I will veto it."

Why?

What the hell do we have to do to get these kids back home? This debacle has to end now. I am so sick of this sorry excuse for a war. Geez, they won't even increase spending to protect them. People, we have got to stop feeding into this crap!!



The Senate on Thursday rejected a Democratic resolution to withdraw most American combat troops from Iraq in 2008, but a similar measure advanced in the House, and Democratic leaders vowed to keep challenging President Bush to change course in Iraq.

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The Reach of War
Go to Complete Coverage » The vote in the Senate was 50 against and 48 in favor, 12 short of what was needed to pass, with just a few defections in each party. It came just hours after the House Appropriations Committee, in another vote largely on party lines, approved an emergency spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan that includes a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq. The House will vote on that legislation next Thursday, setting the stage for another confrontation.

The action in both houses threw into sharp relief the Democratic strategy of ratcheting up the pressure, vote by vote, to try to force the White House to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq. But it also highlighted Republican unity in opposition; in the Senate, only one Republican, Gordon H. Smith of Oregon, voted with the Democrats.

Republican leaders said they counted the day as a victory. “It is clear now that the majority of the Senate opposes a deadline for the withdrawal of troops,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, countered, “The Republicans are rubber-stamping the president’s failed policy. That’s the message here.”

President Bush, speaking at a Republican fund-raising dinner, applauded the senators who voted against a timetable. “Many of those members know what I know: that if American forces were to step back from Baghdad now, before the capital city is more secure, the scale and scope of attacks would increase and intensify,” he said.

The Democratic resolution in the Senate would have redefined the United States mission in Iraq and set a goal of withdrawing American combat troops by March 31, 2008, except for a “limited number” focused on counterterrorism, training and equipping Iraqi forces, and protecting American and allied personnel. The House measure set a withdrawal deadline of Sept. 1, 2008.

The prospects for either the House or Senate measure winning final passage were always considered slim, given that the Senate legislation needed a so-called supermajority of 60 to advance. Even so, the White House issued forceful veto threats, sending a clear signal to Republicans where the president stood. The White House also worked behind the scenes this week to keep Republicans on board.

Both parties consider these measures an important political statement, a measure of how far the debate over Iraq has moved in recent months, and a sign of Americans’ discontent with the war.

But Senator Norm Coleman, a moderate Republican from Minnesota who voted against the Democratic measure, argued that the final vote could still be misleading. “There is frustration and deep concern about the war,” said Mr. Coleman, who is facing a tough re-election fight next year.

As they left the Senate floor, several other moderate Republicans who are facing difficult re-election campaigns next year were quick to register their opposition to the president’s overall Iraq strategy. But they said they were leery of legislating a troop pullout to begin within four months.

“That is such a short time frame for withdrawal,” said Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, who opposed the president’s plan to send more troops to Iraq.

In the end, the Senate resolution did not attract the contingent of seven Republican moderates who joined Democrats in opposing Mr. Bush’s troop buildup plan last month. The only Republican defection was Mr. Smith of Oregon, who said in a statement, “Setting specific dates for withdrawal is unwise, but what is worse is remaining mired in the quicksand of the Sunni-Shia civil war.”

Two Democratic Senators, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, crossed party lines to oppose the withdrawal plan. Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, an independent and staunch supporter of Mr. Bush’s Iraq policy, voted as expected with the Republicans. Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican running for president, was campaigning in Iowa at the time of the vote.

Democrats asserted that the only alternative to their plan was endorsing, once again, the status quo in Iraq. In a debate steeped in anger and dismay, Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia declared, “We were wrong to invade, we were wrong to think victory would be quick or easy, and we are wrong to stay on in occupation that earns us only hatred — with no end, no end, no end in sight.”

Republicans declared that the resolution would be devastating to the American war effort, “like sending a memo to our enemy,” or “giving notice to the other side of when we’re going to depart,” in the words of Mr. McConnell.

The Senate also voted overwhelmingly on Thursday in favor of a pair of nonbinding resolutions, one Democratic and one Republican, expressing support for the troops in Iraq and pledging to provide them with all necessary funds. Republicans have asserted that Democratic policies to end the war will eventually lead to a financing cut that will harm the troops. Democrats furiously deny that charge and have seized on the scandal over poor conditions at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center as evidence that Republicans are not true champions of the troops.

Despite the flurry of votes, the Iraq debate in the Senate is far from over. Senate Democrats said they would try to influence the president’s Iraq policy when they begin taking up the administration’s military spending request next week.

Across the Capitol, the House Appropriations Committee advanced its version of that legislation by a vote of 36 to 28. It was considered a major test vote, with Representative Barbara Lee of California the lone Democrat voting against it. “The American people sent a mandate to us to bring home our men and women before the end of the year,” Ms. Lee said. “I don’t think the president deserves another chance.”

As she spoke, two protesters sat in the back of the hearing room, holding a sign handwritten with black ink on pink paper that said: “Wake up. Stop Buying Bush’s War.” Other antiwar activists milled about outside the committee room, occasionally confronting lawmakers as they came and went.

Largely because of the strength of antiwar sentiment in the House Democratic caucus, and complaints that the legislation’s timetable is not fast enough, party leaders still face a fragile majority when they bring this legislation to the full House next week. While the House proposal calls for most American combat troops to be removed from Iraq no later than Aug. 31, 2008, it would require the drawdown to start up to a year earlier if the Iraqi government cannot show progress.

The plan also places conditions on the war financing, including a requirement that troops receive proper training, equipment and a period of rest between deployments. As a gesture to conservatives, the legislation would allow the president to waive those requirements on national security grounds.

“In World War II, troops were in action 30, 40, 50 days and then got relief,” said Representative John P. Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat. “Now, we don’t have the troops to relieve them.”

But Representative Harold Rogers, a Kentucky Republican, accused Democrats of loading up the legislation — which now has a price tag of $124 billion — with an array of sweeteners, simply to draw support for a controversial plan to bring closure to the Iraq war.

“Welcome Kmart shoppers,” Mr. Rogers said. “This is the shopping mart for those who are nervous about supporting the precipitous withdrawal of troops. This is an effort to buy votes.”