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Thanks for the article, puts O in a good light really.

Posted By: Reader on 2009-01-24
In Reply to: Once again....another broken promise by the big O. - Chele

Told me how he is trying to rein in the lobbyists and get spending under better control and not things as usual in DC. I am Obama girl, thanks for posting!


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Well...if it puts Obama in a good light, it is probably owned by George Soros. nm
nm
good article

Why No Tea and Sympathy?








Published: August 10, 2005


WASHINGTON


W. can't get no satisfaction on Iraq.


There's an angry mother of a dead soldier camping outside his Crawford ranch, demanding to see a president who prefers his sympathy to be carefully choreographed.



Skip to next paragraph
 
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Forum: Maureen Dowd's Columns



A new CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll shows that a majority of Americans now think that going to war was a mistake and that the war has made the U.S. more vulnerable to terrorism. So fighting them there means it's more likely we'll have to fight them here?


Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged yesterday that sophisticated bombs were streaming over the border from Iran to Iraq.


And the Rolling Stones have taken a rare break from sex odes to record an antiwar song called "Sweet Neo Con," chiding Condi Rice and Mr. Bush. "You call yourself a Christian; I call you a hypocrite," Mick Jagger sings.


The N.F.L. put out a press release on Monday announcing that it's teaming up with the Stones and ABC to promote "Monday Night Football." The flag-waving N.F.L. could still back out if there's pressure, but the mood seems to have shifted since Madonna chickened out of showing an antiwar music video in 2003. The White House used to be able to tamp down criticism by saying it hurt our troops, but more people are asking the White House to explain how it plans to stop our troops from getting hurt.


Cindy Sheehan, a 48-year-old Californian with a knack for P.R., says she will camp out in the dusty heat near the ranch until she gets to tell Mr. Bush face to face that he must pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq. Her son, Casey, a 24-year-old Army specialist, was killed in a Sadr City ambush last year.


The president met with her family two months after Casey's death. Capturing W.'s awkwardness in traversing the line between somber and joking, and his love of generic labels, Ms. Sheehan said that W. had referred to her as "Mom" throughout the meeting, and given her the sense that he did not know who her son was.


The Bush team tried to discredit "Mom" by pointing reporters to an old article in which she sounded kinder to W. If only her husband were an undercover C.I.A. operative, the Bushies could out him. But even if they send out a squad of Swift Boat Moms for Truth, there will be a countering Falluja Moms for Truth.


It's amazing that the White House does not have the elementary shrewdness to have Mr. Bush simply walk down the driveway and hear the woman out, or invite her in for a cup of tea. But W., who has spent nearly 20 percent of his presidency at his ranch, is burrowed into his five-week vacation and two-hour daily workouts. He may be in great shape, but Iraq sure isn't.


It's hard to think of another president who lived in such meta-insulation. His rigidly controlled environment allows no chance encounters with anyone who disagrees. He never has to defend himself to anyone, and that is cognitively injurious. He's a populist who never meets people - an ordinary guy who clears brush, and brush is the only thing he talks to. Mr. Bush hails Texas as a place where he can return to his roots. But is he mixing it up there with anyone besides Vulcans, Pioneers and Rangers?


W.'s idea of consolation was to dispatch Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, to talk to Ms. Sheehan, underscoring the inhumane humanitarianism of his foreign policy. Mr. Hadley is just a suit, one of the hard-line Unsweet Neo Cons who helped hype America into this war.


It's getting harder for the president to hide from the human consequences of his actions and to control human sentiment about the war by pulling a curtain over the 1,835 troops killed in Iraq; the more than 13,000 wounded, many shorn of limbs; and the number of slain Iraqi civilians - perhaps 25,000, or perhaps double or triple that. More people with impeccable credentials are coming forward to serve as a countervailing moral authority to challenge Mr. Bush.


Paul Hackett, a Marine major who served in Iraq and criticized the president on his conduct of the war, narrowly lost last week when he ran for Congress as a Democrat in a Republican stronghold in Cincinnati. Newt Gingrich warned that the race should "serve as a wake-up call to Republicans" about 2006.


Selectively humane, Mr. Bush justified his Iraq war by stressing the 9/11 losses. He emphasized the humanity of the Iraqis who desire freedom when his W.M.D. rationale vaporized.


But his humanitarianism will remain inhumane as long as he fails to understand that the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute


Good article..nm
nm
me again, good article

Hate to be *slamming* guys..Im working this weekend and on break time, Im here *smile*.


Editorials, Including Those at Conservative Papers, Rip Bush's Hurricane Response

By E&P Staff

Published: September 02, 2005 12:30 PM ET


NEW YORK Editorials from around the country on Friday -- including at the Bush-friendly Dallas Morning News and The Washington Times -- have, by and large, offered harsh criticism of the official and military response to the disaster in the Gulf Coast. Here's a sampling.

Dallas Morning News

As a federal official in a neatly pressed suit talked to reporters in Washington about little bumps along the road in emergency efforts, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin issued an urgent SOS. The situation near the convention center was chaotic; not enough buses were available to evacuate thousands of survivors, and the streets were littered with the dead.

Moments later, President Bush took center stage and talked at length about the intricacies of energy policy and plans to keep prices stable. Meanwhile, doctors at hospitals called the Associated Press asking to get their urgent message out: We need to be evacuated, we're taking sniper fire, and nobody is in charge.

Who is in charge?

Losing New Orleans to a natural disaster is one thing, but losing her to hopeless gunmen and a shameful lack of response is unfathomable. How is it that the U.S. military can conquer a foreign country in a matter of days, but can't stop terrorists controlling the streets of America or even drop a case of water to desperate and dying Americans?

President Bush, please see what's happening. The American people want to believe the government is doing everything it can do -- not to rebuild or to stabilize gas prices -- just to restore the most basic order. So far, they are hearing about Herculean efforts, but they aren't seeing them.

***

The Washington Times

Troops are finally moving into New Orleans in realistic numbers, and it's past time. What took the government so long? The thin veneer separating civilization and chaos, which we earlier worried might collapse in the absence of swift action, has collapsed.

We expected to see, many hours ago, the president we saw standing atop the ruin of the World Trade Center, rallying a dazed country to action. We're pleased he finally caught a ride home from his vacation, but he risks losing the one trait his critics have never dented: His ability to lead, and be seen leading.

He returns to the scene of the horror today, and that's all to the good. His presence will rally broken spirits. But he must crack heads, if bureaucratic heads need cracking, to get the food, water and medicine to the people crying for help in New Orleans and on the Mississippi coast. The list of things he has promised is a good list, but there is no time to dally, whether by land, sea or air. We should have delivered them yesterday. Americans are dying.

***

Philadelphia Inquirer (and other Knight Ridder papers)

I hope people don't point -- play politics during this period. That was President Bush's response yesterday to criticism of the U.S. government's inexplicably inadequate relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina.

Sorry, Mr. President, legitimate questions are being asked about the lack of rescue personnel, equipment, food, supplies, transportation, you name it, four days after the storm. It's not playing politics to ask why.
It's not playing politics to ask questions about what Americans watched in horror on TV yesterday: elderly people literally dying on the street outside the New Orleans convention center because they were sick and no one came to their aid.

The rest of America can't fathom why a country with our resources can't be at least as effective in this emergency as it was when past disasters struck Third World nations. Someone needs to explain why well-known emergency aid lessons aren't being applied here.

This hurricane is no one's fault; the devastation would be hard to handle no matter who was in charge. But human deeds can mitigate a disaster, or make it worse.

For example: Did federal priorities in an era of huge tax cuts shortchange New Orleans' storm protection and leave it more vulnerable? This flooding is no surprise to experts. They've been warning for more than 20 years that the levees keeping Lake Pontchartrain from emptying into the under-sea-level city would likely break under the strain of a Category 3 hurricane. Katrina was a Category 4.

So the Crescent City sits under water, much of its population in a state of desperate, dangerous transience, not knowing when they will return home. They're the lucky ones, though. Worse off are those left among the dying in a dying town.

The questions aren't about politics. They are about justice.

***

Minneapolis Star Tribune

But whatever the final toll, the wrenching misery and trauma confronting the people of New Orleans is much greater than it should be -- as it is, in fact, for tens of thousands of people along the strip of Mississippi that was most brutally assaulted by the storm. The immediate goal must be to ease that suffering. The second goal must be to understand how we came to this sorry situation.

How do you justify cutting $250 million in scheduled spending for crucial pump and levee work in the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA), authorized by Congress in 1995?

How do you explain the almost total lack of coordination among federal, state and local officials both in Louisiana and Mississippi? No one appeared in charge.

***

Des Moines Register

The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was the first practical test of the new homeland-security arrangements and the second test of President Bush in the face of a national crisis.

The performance of both has been less than stellar so far.

Katrina was a disaster that came with at least two days of warning, and it has been more than four days since the storm struck. Yet on Thursday, refugees still huddled unrescued in the unspeakable misery of the New Orleans Superdome. Patients in hospitals without power and water clung to life in third-world conditions. Untold tragedies lie yet to be discovered in the rural lowlands of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.


Very good article, thanks. nm
nm
Good article.
















Published on Monday, December 26, 2005 by the Miami Herald

Fear Destroys What bin Laden Could Not

by Robert Steinback
 

One wonders if Osama bin Laden didn't win after all. He ruined the America that existed on 9/11. But he had help.

If, back in 2001, anyone had told me that four years after bin Laden's attack our president would admit that he broke U.S. law against domestic spying and ignored the Constitution -- and then expect the American people to congratulate him for it -- I would have presumed the girders of our very Republic had crumbled.

Had anyone said our president would invade a country and kill 30,000 of its people claiming a threat that never, in fact, existed, then admit he would have invaded even if he had known there was no threat -- and expect America to be pleased by this -- I would have thought our nation's sensibilities and honor had been eviscerated.

If I had been informed that our nation's leaders would embrace torture as a legitimate tool of warfare, hold prisoners for years without charges and operate secret prisons overseas -- and call such procedures necessary for the nation's security -- I would have laughed at the folly of protecting human rights by destroying them.

If someone had predicted the president's staff would out a CIA agent as revenge against a critic, defy a law against domestic propaganda by bankrolling supposedly independent journalists and commentators, and ridicule a 37-year Marie Corps veteran for questioning U.S. military policy -- and that the populace would be more interested in whether Angelina is about to make Brad a daddy -- I would have called the prediction an absurd fantasy.

That's no America I know, I would have argued. We're too strong, and we've been through too much, to be led down such a twisted path.

What is there to say now?

All of these things have happened. And yet a large portion of this country appears more concerned that saying ''Happy Holidays'' could be a disguised attack on Christianity.

I evidently have a lot poorer insight regarding America's character than I once believed, because I would have expected such actions to provoke -- speaking metaphorically now -- mobs with pitchforks and torches at the White House gate. I would have expected proud defiance of anyone who would suggest that a mere terrorist threat could send this country into spasms of despair and fright so profound that we'd follow a leader who considers the law a nuisance and perfidy a privilege.

Never would I have expected this nation -- which emerged stronger from a civil war and a civil rights movement, won two world wars, endured the Depression, recovered from a disastrous campaign in Southeast Asia and still managed to lead the world in the principles of liberty -- would cower behind anyone just for promising to ``protect us.''

President Bush recently confirmed that he has authorized wiretaps against U.S. citizens on at least 30 occasions and said he'll continue doing it. His justification? He, as president -- or is that king? -- has a right to disregard any law, constitutional tenet or congressional mandate to protect the American people.

Is that America's highest goal -- preventing another terrorist attack? Are there no principles of law and liberty more important than this? Who would have remembered Patrick Henry had he written, ``What's wrong with giving up a little liberty if it protects me from death?''

Bush would have us excuse his administration's excesses in deference to the ''war on terror'' -- a war, it should be pointed out, that can never end. Terrorism is a tactic, an eventuality, not an opposition army or rogue nation. If we caught every person guilty of a terrorist act, we still wouldn't know where tomorrow's first-time terrorist will strike. Fighting terrorism is a bit like fighting infection -- even when it's beaten, you must continue the fight or it will strike again.

Are we agreeing, then, to give the king unfettered privilege to defy the law forever? It's time for every member of Congress to weigh in: Do they believe the president is above the law, or bound by it?

Bush stokes our fears, implying that the only alternative to doing things his extralegal way is to sit by fitfully waiting for terrorists to harm us. We are neither weak nor helpless. A proud, confident republic can hunt down its enemies without trampling legitimate human and constitutional rights.

Ultimately, our best defense against attack -- any attack, of any sort -- is holding fast and fearlessly to the ideals upon which this nation was built. Bush clearly doesn't understand or respect that. Do we?

Email Robert Steinback at: rsteinback@MiamiHerald.com.


FYI good article........sm
http://www.newsweek.com/id/113672
That is a good article.
Thanks for sharing.
Another Good Article...

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/senator_obamas_


four_tax_increa.html


I confess.  Senator Obama's two tax promises: to limit tax increases to only those making over $250,000 a year, and to not raise taxes on 95% of "working Americans," intrigued me.  As a hard-working small business owner, over the past ten years I've earned from $50,000 to $100,000 per year.  If Senator Obama is shooting straight with us, under his presidency I could look forward to paying no additional Federal taxes -- I might even get a break -- and as I struggle to support a family and pay for two boys in college, a reliable tax freeze is nearly as welcome as further tax cuts.


However, Senator Obama's dual claims seemed implausible, especially when it came to my Federal income taxes.  Those implausible promises made me look at what I'd been paying before President Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, as well as what I paid after those tax cuts became law.  I chose the 2000 tax tables as my baseline -- they reflect the tax rates that Senator Obama will restore by letting the "Bush Tax Cuts" lapse.  I wanted to see what that meant from my tax bill.


I've worked as the state level media and strategy director on three Presidential election campaigns -- I know how "promises" work -- so I analyzed Senator Obama's promises by looking for loopholes. 


The first loophole was easy to find:  Senator Obama doesn't "count" allowing the Bush tax cuts to lapse as a tax increase.  Unless the cuts are re-enacted, rates will automatically return to the 2000 level. Senator Obama claims that letting a tax cut lapse -- allowing the rates to return to a higher levels -- is not actually a "tax increase."  It's just the lapsing of a tax cut.


Good article - Thanks
DH told me tonight the guy who wrote this was a big Obama supporter. This shows what other countries think of us. Not too good it looks like.
Very good article
He is spot on about Obama in every way.
A very good article.......... sm

I found particularly interesting the link within the article to a writing by Edwin Vieira, Jr.  If his suppositions hold true, then we could be in for even more trouble that we had imagined.  He presented a very interesting scenario towards the end of his article.


Unfortunately, those who support Obama will negate this as "not a credible source" before even reading the first article, much less the second.  Vieira's credentials are outlined at the end of the article and are stellar. 


Very good article........ sm
as well as the one below. Thanks for posting them, sam. And it's good to see you around these parts again!
Good article in LA Times
I just read an article about Bush.  It states nothing he has done in his five years has benefitted the working person, only the corporations or extremely rich.  It went on to explain that the rich got $91,000+ in tax cuts, the working class were lucky to get $300.00, heck I didnt get anything.  Yet we now have a major deficit because of the tax cuts.  It also stated the passing of tort reform, keeping law suits for people who are hurt by hospitals, drug companies, major corporations, left maimed and crippled for life, they now have a cap on how much they can receive in a law suit.  Then there is the bankruptcy law.  Corporations can still claim bankruptcy and start over, heck, Trump has done it twice, but in October the working class no longer will be able to.  They will have to go to credit counseling and set up a payment plan for the bills they owe.  The lobbyists are having a hey day in Washington D.C. and it was never this bad but when you have all of Washington controlled by one party, i.e., Republicans, they do what they want.  When they held the Downing Street Memo meeting in Congress the other day.  The democrats asked for a room to hold the meeting and were told by the ruling party, there were no rooms for them to hold a meeting.  So they held the meeting in a cubby hole basement room.  And what company is getting all the business in Iraq?  My my, the company Cheney used to run.  Coincidence?  I think not. Enron and other major companies did not pay taxes in the last few years.  Every year, I end up having to pay extra. Now he is pushing private accounts for SS.  Oh, geez, during the early 2000's I lost money with my 401K.  I would rather get a SS check but you see, its his plan to destroy anything that was created to catch a person before they fall through the cracks, those were created by Democrats.  He does not want govt to be responsible in the long run for a person who needs help.  I look at it this way.  I think a person should take responsibility for their life but if something happens and they need help, for pete sake, that is what govt is for.  I would rather my taxes help my brothers and sisters of America then wage war.
Good article from an athlete

who makes us on the left proud.



















 

The Speech Everyone Is Talking About: Etan Thomas
Etan Thomas Electrifies Anti-War Washington

by Dave Zirin
 

Every generation the wide world of corporate sports produces an athlete with the iron resolve and moral urgency to step off their pedestal and join the fight for social justice. A century ago, it was boxer Jack Johnson, flaunting, as WEB DuBois put it, his unforgivable blackness. In the 1930s, the Brown Bomber Joe Louis and track star Jesse Owens took turns spitting in Hitler's eyes, and Mildred Babe Didrikson continued to show that a woman could be the equal - if not superior – of any man. In the 1940s and 50s, Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, and the Brooklyn Dodgers advanced the cause of civil rights through the transgressive act of the multi-racial double play. In the 1960s, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Bill Russell, David Meggyesy, Tommie Smith, and John Carlos showed how mass struggle could ricochet into the world of sports with electric results. In the 1970s, Billie Jean King used a wicked forehand, and took to the streets, to demand equal rights for women, and Curt Flood showed the labor movement - and the bosses - how to go from crumbs to a bigger piece of the pie. In the 1980’s Martina Navratilova came out of the closet and onto center court, with her girlfriend on her sinewy arm in plain view of all.

Today we may just have a figure to join their ranks in the NBA’s Etan Thomas. Regular readers of this column will know that I have interviewed the Washington Wizards' Power Forward on numerous occasions and highlighted his views on everything from the death penalty to the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. He is also the author of a book of poems called More Than An Athlete.

But this past weekend, Etan made a play for pantheon status. Etan took it to that Ali level, by delivering a blistering poetical speech as part of the weekend’s antiwar demonstrations in Washington DC. His contribution, which was played in its entirety on Democracy Now!, is being hailed as “the best of the day” in various nooks and crannies of the blogosphere.

Here is the transcript. Read and pass it along – it has the power to topple tyrants.



“Giving all honor, thanks and praises to God for courage and wisdom, this is a very important rally. I'd like to thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts, feelings and concerns regarding a tremendous problem that we are currently facing. This problem is universal, transcending race, economic background, religion, and culture, and this problem is none other than the current administration which has set up shop in the White House.

In fact, I'd like to take some of these cats on a field trip. I want to get big yellow buses with no air conditioner and no seatbelts and round up Bill O'Reilly, Pat Buchanan, Trent Lott, Sean Hannity, Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Bush Jr. and Bush Sr., John Ashcroft, Giuliani, Ed Gillespie, Katherine Harris, that little bow-tied Tucker Carlson and any other right-wing conservative Republicans I can think of, and take them all on a trip to the ‘hood. Not to do no 30-minute documentary. I mean, I want to drop them off and leave them there, let them become one with the other side of the tracks, get them four mouths to feed and no welfare, have scare tactics run through them like a laxative, criticizing them for needing assistance.

I’d show them working families that make too much to receive welfare but not enough to make ends meet. I’d employ them with jobs with little security, let them know how it feels to be an employee at will, able to be fired at the drop of a hat. I’d take away their opportunities, then try their children as adults, sending their 13-year-old babies to life in prison. I’d sell them dreams of hopelessness while spoon-feeding their young with a daily dose of inferior education. I’d tell them no child shall be left behind, then take more money out of their schools, tell them to show and prove themselves on standardized exams testing their knowledge on things that they haven’t been taught, and then I’d call them inferior.

I’d soak into their interior notions of endless possibilities. I’d paint pictures of assisted productivity if they only agreed to be all they can be, dress them up with fatigues and boots with promises of pots of gold at the end of rainbows, free education to waste terrain on those who finish their bid. Then I’d close the lid on that barrel of fool’s gold by starting a war, sending their children into the midst of a hostile situation, and while they're worried about their babies being murdered and slain in foreign lands, I’d grace them with the pain of being sick and unable to get medicine.

Give them health benefits that barely cover the common cold. John Q. would become their reality as HMOs introduce them to the world of inferior care, filling their lungs with inadequate air, penny pinching at the expense of patients, doctors practicing medicine in an intricate web of rationing and regulations. Patients wander the maze of managed bureaucracy, costs rise and quality quickly deteriorates, but they say that managed care is cheaper. They’ll say that free choice in medicine will defeat the overall productivity, and as co-payments are steadily rising, I'll make their grandparents have to choose between buying their medicine and paying their rent.

Then I'd feed them hypocritical lines of being pro-life as the only Christian way to be. Then very contradictingly, I’d fight for the spread of the death penalty, as if thou shall not kill applies to babies but not to criminals.

Then I’d introduce them to those sworn to protect and serve, creating a curb in their trust in the law. I’d show them the nightsticks and plungers, the pepper spray and stun guns, the mace and magnums that they’d soon become acquainted with, the shakedowns and illegal search and seizures, the planted evidence, being stopped for no reason. Harassment ain’t even the half of it. Forty-one shots to two raised hands, cell phones and wallets that are confused with illegal contrabands. I’d introduce them to pigs who love making their guns click like wine glasses. Everlasting targets surrounded by bullets, making them a walking bull's eye, a living piñata, held at the mercy of police brutality, and then we’ll see if they finally weren’t aware of the truth, if their eyes weren’t finally open like a box of Pandora.

I’d show them how the other side of the tracks carries the weight of the world on our shoulders and how society seems to be holding us down with the force of a boulder. The bird of democracy flew the coop back in Florida. See, for some, and justice comes in packs like wolves in sheep's clothing. T.K.O.'d by the right hooks of life, many are left staggering under the weight of the day, leaning against the ropes of hope. When your dreams have fallen on barren ground, it becomes difficult to keep pushing yourself forward like a train, administering pain like a doctor with a needle, their sequels continue more lethal than injections.


They keep telling us all is equal. I’d tell them that instead of giving tax breaks to the rich, financing corporate mergers and leading us into unnecessary wars and under-table dealings with Enron and Halliburton, maybe they can work on making society more peaceful. Instead, they take more and more money out of inner city schools, give up on the idea of rehabilitation and build more prisons for poor people. With unemployment continuing to rise like a deficit, it's no wonder why so many think that crime pays.

Maybe this trip will make them see the error of their ways. Or maybe next time, we'll just all get out and vote. And as far as their stay in the White House, tell them that numbered are their days.”

Dave Zirin's new book 'What's My Name, Fool?': Sports and Resistance in the United States [Haymarket Books] is available now. Check out his writings at edgeofsports.com. Contact the author at dave@edgeofsports.com

###

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It is a good article. Thanks for posting !
nm
Good read, article. sm

My cousin, who lives in Alaska, told me about this web site.  It has some interesting articles.  I enjoyed this one - here is the link/url.


http://alaskadispatch.com/tundra-talk/1-talk-of-the-tundra/121-the-world-according-to-sarah.html


Good article - Obamamania

 


http://www.therant.us/staff/imani/2008/10282008.htm


Good article, Kaydie..........sm
and good to see you!
Good article, thanks for posting....sm
Heard Cheney on Rush the other day. Good man, probably the most intelligent VP we've ever had.

Wow....I agree with you. Good article,,,,sm
Can't believe I actually agree with you, but I do!! Very good explanation of all who are at fault which is actually....EVERYONE!!
Good article...thanks for sharing.
.
Good article by Molly Ivins

AUSTIN, Texas -- While it's still an open contest for Worst Legacy of the Bush Years, the destruction of goodwill for America around the world is definitely a contender.

In the days and weeks following Sept. 11, the United States enjoyed global sympathy and goodwill. All our old enemies sent regrets and offers of help. The most important newspaper in France headlined, We Are All Americans Now. The most touching gestures and offers rolled in, wave and after wave -- nations offered their teams of rescue dogs to search for bodies; special collections were taken up by D-Day survivors in Normandy; all over the world, American embassies were surrounded by long lines of people coming to offer sympathy, write notes, leave flowers.

You could make a pretty good case that one root of the Bush administration's abysmal diplomatic record is simply bad manners. We don't need any help was certainly a true response. But, Thank you would have been better.

You recall that George W. went on to make a series of unpleasant statements. You're either with us or with the terrorists may have sounded like a great macho moment, but no one likes to be verbally shoved against a wall and given no choice. There was the whole world asking, What can we do to help? and our response was, Our side or else. Why? Why coercion, rather than invitation?

Bush's State of the Union speech in January 2002 remains a monument to gracelessness. None of the language is worth remembering, but it contained a great deal of crowing about our defeat of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. As Barry Bearak of The New York Times observed before that war, if you wanted to bomb Afghanistan back to the Stone Age, you didn't have far to go.

The trouble with Bush's graceless provincialism on that occasion is that the invasion of Afghanistan was an international effort -- NATO, for the first time in its history, responded under its an attack on one is an attack on all clause. French, Germans and Canadians not only served in Afghanistan, but continue to do so. And, as we noticed increasingly is important, they shared the cost, as well.

You see, one beauty of building an international coalition is that you don't have to pay for the whole thing by yourself. Bush the Elder built a coalition for the Gulf War in 1990 that covered about 90 percent of the cost. By contrast, the financial burden of the Iraq War continues to be almost entirely ours -- with special thanks again to the British.

The colossal ineptitude of Bush's diplomacy, if it can be called that, leading up to the Iraq war was somewhere between ludicrous and nuts. Bullying, bribing, threatening -- and these were our allies. The insanity of our approach to Turkey, one of America's oldest democratic allies in the Middle East, is textbook -- to be studied in international relations schools for years. In the name of bringing democracy to Iraq (actually, at the time we never mentioned that as a reason), we threatened to end it in Turkey. Good grief.

The administration's open contempt for the United Nations did us incalculable damage. It wasn't just the ugly, clumsy pre-war diplomacy, but the petty, vindictive attempts at revenge afterward against those who were right all along. Trying to get Mohammad ElBaradei fired as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency -- how small and wrong. Making John Bolton ambassador to the United Nations -- oh, please.

So, a lot of cleanup is needed. Cards and letters (well, OK, e-mails) have rolled in from the Beloved Readers. We are getting gems daily. People are full of dandy ideas about how to fix this mess -- any and all parts of this mess -- but the foreign policy suggestions are especially interesting.

What the people seem to grasp that the Bush administration doesn't is the link between the Middle East, energy policy, defense policy, the environment and the economy. Again and again, readers point out that oil is at the root of the knot of problems and we can give ourselves much more flexibility to deal with the Middle East if we are not so dependent on it for oil. Ergo, we need an energy policy that emphasizes conservation and alternative energy sources.

The geopolitical problems that stem from our dependence on fossil fuel are the most difficult part of our relations with the rest of the world right now, and they look ever more ominous in the future. Reader Jim Schmitz observes that oil is a limited resource -- if you accept the idea that we've already hit peak production and have nowhere to go but down -- and we're addicted to it. If we kick the oil habit, we not only solve huge chunks of our biggest national security problem, we are also positioned to take part in the incredible boom in the alternate energy industry.

The beauty of thinking long-term is that when you look at a problem like illegal immigration, your first thought is not building a fence on the border, it's helping economic development in Central and South America. This not only makes us more friends, it's a much better solution to the problem. Lots of folks have dandy ideas on how to have more friends and fewer enemies -- for example, convert the money we spend in this hemisphere on the drug war to economic development. We should set up clean drinking water systems in all Third World countries -- that suggestion comes from a reader who thinks the total cost would be less than we spend in Iraq in a month.

More ideas on How to Fix This Mess coming soon.

To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2005 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Originally Published on Thursday November 3, 2005
Another good Molly Ivins article.
Posted on Thu, Dec. 29, 2005
Undermining our country to save it
By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate

AUSTIN - The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

Thirty-five years ago, Richard Milhous Nixon, who was crazy as a bullbat, and J. Edgar Hoover, who wore women's underwear, decided that some Americans had unacceptable political opinions. So they set our government to spying on its own citizens, basically those who were deemed insufficiently like Crazy Richard Milhous.

For those of you who have forgotten just what a stonewall paranoid Nixon was, the poor man used to stalk around the White House demanding that his political enemies be killed. Many still believe there was a certain Richard III grandeur to Nixon's collapse because he was also a man of notable talents.

There is neither grandeur nor tragedy in watching this president, the Testy Kid, violate his oath to uphold the laws and Constitution.

The Testy Kid wants to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it because he is the president, and he considers that sufficient justification for whatever he wants. He even finds lawyers like John Yoo who tell him that whatever he wants to do is legal.

The creepy part is the overlap. Damned if they aren't still here, after all these years, the old Nixon hands -- Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the whole gang whose yearning for authoritarian government rose like a stink over the Nixon years. Imperial executive. Bring back those special White House guard uniforms. Cheney, like some malignancy that cannot be cured, back at the same old stand, pushing the same old agenda.

Of course, they tell us we have to be spied on for our own safety, so they can catch the terrorists who threaten us all.

Thirty-five years ago, they nabbed a film star named Jean Seberg and a bunch of people running a free breakfast program for poor kids in Chicago. This time, they're onto the Quakers. We are not safer.

We would be safer, as the 9-11 Commission has so recently reminded us, if some obvious and necessary precautions were taken at both nuclear and chemical plants -- but that is not happening because those industries contribute to Republican candidates. Republicans do not ask their contributors to spend a lot of money on obvious and necessary steps to protect public safety. They wiretap instead.

You will be unsurprised to learn that, first, they lied. They didn't do it. Well, OK, they did it, but not very much at all. Well, OK, more than that. A lot more than that. OK, millions of private e-mail and telephone calls every hour, and all medical and financial records.

You may recall that in 2002 it was revealed that the Pentagon had started a giant data-mining program called Total Information Awareness (TIA), intended to search through vast databases to increase information coverage by an order of magnitude.

From credit cards to vet reports, Big Brother would be watching us. This dandy program was under the control of Adm. John Poindexter, convicted of five felonies during Iran-contra, all overturned on a technicality. This administration really knows where to go for good help -- it ought to bring back Brownie.

Everybody decided that TIA was a terrible idea, and the program was theoretically shut down. As often happens with this administration, it turned out that they just changed the name and made the program less visible. Data-mining was a popular buzzword at the time, and the administration was obviously hot to have it. Bush established a secret program under which the National Security Agency could bypass the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court and begin eavesdropping on Americans without warrants.

As many have patiently pointed out, the entire program was unnecessary because the FISA court is both prompt and accommodating. There is virtually no possible scenario that would make it difficult or impossible to get a FISA warrant -- it has granted 19,000 warrants and rejected only a handful.

I don't like to play scary games where we all stay awake late at night, telling each other scary stories -- but there's a reason we have never given our government this kind of power. As the late Sen. Frank Church said, That capability could at any time be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capacity to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide. And if a dictator took over, the NSA could enable it to impose total tyranny.

Then we always get that dreadful goody-two-shoes response, Well, If you aren't doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about, do you?

Folks, we know this program is being and will be misused. We know it from the past record and current reporting. The program has already targeted vegans and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals -- and if those aren't outposts of al Qaeda, what is? Could this be more pathetic?

This could scarcely be clearer. Either the president of the United States is going to have to understand and admit that he has done something very wrong, or he will have to be impeached. The first time this happened, the institutional response was magnificent. The courts, the press, the Congress all functioned superbly.

Anyone think we're up to that again? Then whom do we blame when we lose the republic?


Molly Ivins, based in Austin, writes for Creators Syndicate. 5777 W. Century Blvd., Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045

Forgotten Sacrifice...Good article...sm
Forgotten Sacrifice

By F. John Duresky
Wednesday, July 5, 2006; Page A13

A few days ago, as I do every day in Iraq, I listened to the commander's battle update. The briefer calmly and professionally described the day's events. Somewhere in Iraq, on some forgotten, dusty road, an insurgent fighting an occupying army detonated an improvised explosive device (IED) under a Humvee, killing an American soldier. The briefer fielded a question from the general and moved to the next item in the update.

The day before that, in America, a 15-year-old's incredibly rich parents planned the biggest sweet 16 party ever. They will spend more than $200,000 on an opulent event marking a single year in an otherwise unremarkable life. The soon-to-be-16 girl doesn't know where Iraq is and doesn't care. That same day an American soldier died in Iraq.

Two days earlier, a 35-year-old man went shopping for home entertainment equipment. He had the toughest time selecting the correct plasma screen; he could afford the biggest and best of everything. In the end, he had it installed by a specialty store. He spent about $50,000 on the whole system. He has never met anybody serving in the military nor served himself, but thinks we should turn the whole place into a parking lot. That day, another American soldier died in Iraq.

Three days earlier, some college students had a great kegger. There were tons of babes at the party, the music was awesome. Everybody got totally blitzed, and many missed class the next day. The young men all registered for the draft when they were 18, but even though our nation is at war, they aren't the least bit worried about the draft. It is politically impossible to conscript young people today, we are told. That day, another American volunteer died in Iraq.

Four days earlier, a harried housewife looked all over town for the perfect accessory for her daughter's upcoming recital. Her numerous chores wore her out, but she still found herself preoccupied. Her oldest son is having trouble in his first year of college, and he has been talking of enlisting in the Army. She is terrified that her child will go off to that horrible war she sees on TV. She and her husband decide to give their son more money so he doesn't have to work part-time; maybe that will help with his studies. That day, another soldier died.

Yesterday millions of Americans celebrated Independence Day. They attended parties and barbecues. Families came together from all across the country to celebrate the big day. Millions of dollars were spent on fireworks. At public events, there were speeches honoring the people who served and those who made the ultimate sacrifice. These words mostly fell on bored ears. While the country celebrated its own greatness, other Americans were still fighting in Iraq.

Today Americans go back to their normal business. The politicians in Washington have made sure the sacrifices of the war are borne by the very smallest percentage of Americans. They won't even change the tax rates to prevent deficits from running out of control. Future generations will pay the cost of this war.

Many Americans feel strongly about the war one way or another, but they aren't signing up their children for service or taking the protest to the streets. What can they do? It is they whom we in the military trust to influence our leaders in Washington.

Today, as on every other day in Iraq, American servicemen are in very real danger. Our country is at war. Mothers, fathers, wives, husbands and children are worrying about their loved ones in a faraway land. They all hope he or she isn't the one whose luck runs out today.

The writer is an Air Force captain stationed in Iraq.
Good article - link inside.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/sep/10/women.uselections2008


 


 


Good Article. The American Cancer Society sm
is also advocating national health care as are a lot of medical organizations.  They see the problems with the current system every day and know things cannot continue as they are.
That's a good, fair article. Very well stated. Thanks for posting the link!....nm

It puts you
at the top of my list of level-headed Christians from whom the rest of the party/religion could learn a thing or two, & that is no lie.

I am quite reassured to know that there are some very religious people out there who still manage to separate church & state. I wish there were more of you, or at least, more who were willing to insist that this view be part & parcel of the Republican party. If there were, I'd still be a Republican, but I left the party long ago because of its exclusionary principles.




Still, nobody puts a gun to their heads

and makes them sign on the dotted line.  You can always change your phone number and address.


Personaly, I don't believe much of that crap you're posting is true.  I know recruiters can be persistent, but all this conspiracy theory is just that, conspiracy.


Bush puts name to everything...sm

















Americas
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The Times March 24, 2006






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Bush puts name to everything


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President Bush has become the longest-sitting President since Thomas Jefferson — who occupied the White House between 1801 to 1809 — not to exercise his veto, surpassing James Monroe.










Monroe had been in office for 1,888 days before he vetoed his first Bill on May 4, 1822. Jefferson, America’s third president, never exercised his veto.

Yesterday was Mr Bush’s 1,889th day in office. Congress has sent him 1,091 Bills and he has signed them all. His refusal to wield the veto has angered fiscal conservatives. They have become dismayed by his failure to block legislation stuffed with “pork barrel” special interest projects, at a time of growing national debt and runaway spending.

Last month Mr Bush threatened to veto legislation aimed at blocking a sale of US port operations to a Dubai company. He was saved from a showdown after the company sold that part of its interests to a US entity.

Ronald Reagan vetoed 78 Bills, and Bill Clinton 36.


I will bet that he puts his pants on one
DH does! He really is JUST A MAN, his s**t stinks just like the homeless beggars hanging around DC. He really is JUST A MAN. This isn't even humorous any more, just beyond anything I have ever heard. He will never be "one of us", he has himself on too high a podium to drop to some peon's level.
That puts you in the 26% range...(sm)

according to a recent poll asking the question of whether or not Americans felt safe with Obama.


http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/04/13/cnn-poll-obama-not-making-us-less-safe/


Looks like you're still in the minority, a rather small one at that.


That puts you in the 26% range...(sm)

according to a recent poll asking the question of whether or not Americans felt safe with Obama.


[Exert] "Seventy-two percent of those questioned in the poll released Monday disagree with Cheney's view that some of Obama's actions have put the country at greater risk, with 26 percent agreeing with the former vice president."


http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/04/13/cnn-poll-obama-not-making-us-less-safe/


Looks like you're still in the minority, a rather small one at that.


I don't think that puts his reputation on the line
If Obama gets elected and he is truly as bad as we think, then we will know God has brought the judgment on us. Serves us right too.

God rarely answers when you try to bargain with him. Praying "prove to me by doing such and such" doesn't seem to bear much fruit from what I've seen. It should be "your will be done"

Flame away.... ;)
This how he puts his campaign coffers to their best use,
oh brother
It is words. When he puts that into action....
I will begin to trust him. His actions will dictate what he meant by that...and if it was just words or sincerity. Since almost everything he is for I am against, I don't see how he could hear my voice, with all due respect. But time will tell. His actions will determine what he meant.
As long as SP puts herself out there and threatens to
she will draw volleys from the firing squad. Truth is that this relentless criticism is the best thing that can happen for the GOP, who needs to turn their eyes in a MUCH different direction when it comes to the leadership void. If they cannot move themselves more toward the center, they are doomed to fail again.
Voucher Program Puts D.C.

Cant trust anything Moore puts out there
nm
And I hope God puts some love and
//
You tried. Some of us do see the light.

A lot of us (family, neighbors, friends) could not believe how Obama spoke about the (SECRET MEETING).  Obama should not have discussed to anyone about the talk in the meeting.  As for Obama's so called aides he picked, should have fired them on the spot for a leak like that.  What if Obama was to talk with the President of Iran?  Look out.  Do not want to mention what I think of all this because I WILL GET BLASTED.  I guess some have to learn the hard way in life.  I see a lot of government me, me, me and LOOK AT ME approach.  Totally into one-self. 


You explained it completely clear and totally made sense.  Writing totally on the wall and so many others could not believe today's secret meeting.


Prosecutor Puts Bush in Spotlight
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/washington/11leak.html?hp&ex=1144728000&en=cfd85f2bec48b42b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

April 11, 2006

White House Memo

 

With One Filing, Prosecutor Puts Bush in Spotlight



WASHINGTON, April 10 — From the early days of the C.I.A. leak investigation in 2003, the Bush White House has insisted there was no effort to discredit Joseph C. Wilson IV, the man who emerged as the most damaging critic of the administration's case that Saddam Hussein was seeking to build nuclear weapons.


But now White House officials, and specifically President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, have been pitched back into the center of the nearly three-year controversy, this time because of a prosecutor's court filing in the case that asserts there was a strong desire by many, including multiple people in the White House, to undermine Mr. Wilson.


The new assertions by the special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, have put administration officials on the spot in a way they have not been for months, as attention in the leak case seems to be shifting away from the White House to the pretrial procedural skirmishing in the perjury and obstruction charges against Mr. Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr.


Mr. Fitzgerald's filing talks not of an effort to level with Americans but of a plan to discredit, punish or seek revenge against Mr. Wilson. It concludes, It is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to 'punish Wilson.'


With more filings expected from Mr. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor's work has the potential to keep the focus on Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney at a time when the president is struggling with his lowest approval ratings since he took office.


Even on Monday, Mr. Bush found himself in an uncomfortable spot during an appearance at a Johns Hopkins University campus in Washington, when a student asked him to address Mr. Fitzgerald's assertion that the White House was seeking to retaliate against Mr. Wilson.


Mr. Bush stumbled as he began his response before settling on an answer that sidestepped the question. He said he had ordered the formal declassification of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq in July 2003 because it was important for people to get a better sense for why I was saying what I was saying in my speeches about Iraq's efforts to reconstitute its weapons program.


Mr. Bush said nothing about the earlier, informal authorization that Mr. Fitzgerald's court filing revealed. The prosecutor described testimony from Mr. Libby, who said Mr. Bush had told Mr. Cheney that it was permissible to reveal some information from the intelligence estimate, which described Mr. Hussein's efforts to acquire uranium.


But on Monday, Mr. Bush was not talking about that. You're just going to have to let Mr. Fitzgerald complete his case, and I hope you understand that, Mr. Bush said. It's a serious legal matter that we've got to be careful in making public statements about it.


Every prosecutor strives not just to prove a case, but also to tell a compelling story. It is now clear that Mr. Fitzgerald's account of what was happening in the White House in the summer of 2003 is very different from the Bush administration's narrative, which suggested that Mr. Wilson was seen as a minor figure whose criticisms could be answered by disclosing the underlying intelligence upon which Mr. Bush relied.


It turned out that much of the information about Mr. Hussein's search for uranium was questionable at best, and that it became the subject of dispute almost as soon as it was included in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.


The answer to the question of whose recounting of events is correct — Mr. Bush's or Mr. Fitzgerald's — may not be known for months or years, if ever. But it seems there will be more clues, including some about the conversations between Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney.


Mr. Fitzgerald said he was preparing to turn over to Mr. Libby 1,400 pages of handwritten notes — some presumably in Mr. Libby's own hand — that could shed light on two very different efforts at getting out the White House story.


One effort — the July 18 declassification of the major conclusions of the intelligence estimate — was taking place in public, while another, Mr. Fitzgerald argues, was happening in secret, with only Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby involved.


Last week's court filing has already led the White House to acknowledge, over the weekend, that Mr. Bush ordered the selective disclosure of parts of the intelligence estimate sometime in late June or early July. But administration officials insist that Mr. Bush played a somewhat passive role and did so without selecting Mr. Libby, or anyone else, to tell the story piecemeal to a small number of reporters.


But in one of those odd twists in the unpredictable world of news leaks, neither of the reporters Mr. Libby met, Bob Woodward of The Washington Post or Judith Miller, then of The New York Times, reported a word of it under their own bylines. In fact, other reporters working on the story were talking to senior officials who were warning that the uranium information in the intelligence estimate was dubious at best.


Mr. Fitzgerald did not identify who took part in the White House effort to argue otherwise, but the evidence he has cited so far shows that Mr. Cheney's office was the epicenter of concern about Mr. Wilson, the former ambassador sent to Niger by the C.I.A. to determine what deal, if any, Mr. Hussein had struck there.


Throughout the spring and early summer of 2003, Mr. Fitzgerald concluded, the former ambassador had become an irritant to the administration, raising doubts about the truthfulness of assertions — made publicly by Mr. Bush in his State of the Union address in January of that year — that Iraq might have sought uranium in Africa to further its nuclear ambitions.


Mr. Wilson's criticisms culminated in a July 6, 2003, Op-Ed article in The Times in which he voiced the same doubts for the first time on the record. He cited as his evidence his 2002 trip to Niger, instigated, he said, because of questions raised by Mr. Cheney's office.


Mr. Wilson's article, Mr. Fitzgerald said in the filing, was viewed in the Office of the Vice President as a direct attack on the credibility of the vice president (and the president) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq.


Mr. Fitzgerald suggested that the White House effort was a plan to undermine Mr. Wilson.


Disclosing the belief that Mr. Wilson's wife sent him on the Niger trip was one way for defendant to contradict the assertion that the vice president had done so, while at the same time undercutting Mr. Wilson's credibility if Mr. Wilson were perceived to have received the assignment on account of nepotism, Mr. Fitzgerald's filing said.




I think Lieberman puts Country first. -has guts.nm
nm
At least McCain's wife puts her money into

I haven't seen anything on that. I see where she helps her own race. I haven't heard anything about her helping children with health problems like Mrs. McC.


If anyone has any proof that Mrs. O does help others, I'd seriously like to know about it.


W puts money in blind trust It's been 8 yrs since
but claims he lost money in the meltdown.  Guess economics was/is not his strong suit.  This makes me wonder if his economic advisors were ever able to dumb down their reports enough for W to be able to understand them.  Just 6 more days, praise the Lord. 
Thanks, this does shed a different light.sm
I do admit, I have not been following this.
Here's another one that sheds even more light.

This also is pretty long and contains much of the same as the other link I provided, but this one also addresses how he should start a *small war* in order to be sucessful.  It also addresses how the George W. Bush camp tried to denigrate Mr. Herskowitz's character after he was pulled from the book (one of the classic trademarks of this administration), and that even after all that, former President George Herbert Walker Bush requested that Mr. Herskowitz write a book about his father, and he agreed.


 


http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1028-01.htm


 















Published on Thursday, October 28, 2004 by GNN.tv

Two Years Before 9/11, Candidate Bush was Already Talking Privately About Attacking Iraq, According to His Former Ghost Writer

by Russ Baker
 

HOUSTON -- Two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.

He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999, said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. It was on his mind. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade·.if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency. Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Suddenly, he's at 91 percent in the polls, and he'd barely crawled out of the bunker.

That President Bush and his advisers had Iraq on their minds long before weapons inspectors had finished their work - and long before alleged Iraqi ties with terrorists became a central rationale for war - has been raised elsewhere, including in a book based on recollections of former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. However, Herskowitz was in a unique position to hear Bush's unguarded and unfiltered views on Iraq, war and other matters - well before he became president.

In 1999, Herskowitz struck a deal with the campaign of George W. Bush about a ghost-written autobiography, which was ultimately titled A Charge to Keep : My Journey to the White House, and he and Bush signed a contract in which the two would split the proceeds. The publisher was William Morrow. Herskowitz was given unimpeded access to Bush, and the two met approximately 20 times so Bush could share his thoughts. Herskowitz began working on the book in May, 1999, and says that within two months he had completed and submitted some 10 chapters, with a remaining 4-6 chapters still on his computer. Herskowitz was replaced as Bush's ghostwriter after Bush's handlers concluded that the candidate's views and life experiences were not being cast in a sufficiently positive light.

According to Herskowitz, who has authored more than 30 books, many of them jointly written autobiographies of famous Americans in politics, sports and media (including that of Reagan adviser Michael Deaver), Bush and his advisers were sold on the idea that it was difficult for a president to accomplish an electoral agenda without the record-high approval numbers that accompany successful if modest wars.

The revelations on Bush's attitude toward Iraq emerged recently during two taped interviews of Herskowitz, which included a discussion of a variety of matters, including his continued closeness with the Bush family, indicated by his subsequent selection to pen an authorized biography of Bush's grandfather, written and published last year with the assistance and blessing of the Bush family.

Herskowitz also revealed the following:



  • In 2003, Bush's father indicated to him that he disagreed with his son's invasion of Iraq.

  • Bush admitted that he failed to fulfill his Vietnam-era domestic National Guard service obligation, but claimed that he had been excused.

  • Bush revealed that after he left his Texas National Guard unit in 1972 under murky circumstances, he never piloted a plane again. That casts doubt on the carefully-choreographed moment of Bush emerging in pilot's garb from a jet on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003 to celebrate Mission Accomplished in Iraq. The image, instantly telegraphed around the globe, and subsequent hazy White House statements about his capacity in the cockpit, created the impression that a heroic Bush had played a role in landing the craft.

  • Bush described his own business ventures as floundering before campaign officials insisted on recasting them in a positive light.

Throughout the interviews for this article and in subsequent conversations, Herskowitz indicated he was conflicted over revealing information provided by a family with which he has longtime connections, and by how his candor could comport with the undefined operating principles of the as-told-to genre. Well after the interviews-in which he expressed consternation that Bush's true views, experience and basic essence had eluded the American people -Herskowitz communicated growing concern about the consequences for himself of the publication of his remarks, and said that he had been under the impression he would not be quoted by name. However, when conversations began, it was made clear to him that the material was intended for publication and attribution. A tape recorder was present and visible at all times.

Several people who know Herskowitz well addressed his character and the veracity of his recollections. I don't know anybody that's ever said a bad word about Mickey, said Barry Silverman, a well-known Houston executive and civic figure who worked with him on another book project. An informal survey of Texas journalists turned up uniform confidence that Herskowitz's account as contained in this article could be considered accurate.

One noted Texas journalist who spoke with Herskowitz about the book in 1999 recalls how the author mentioned to him at the time that Bush had revealed things the campaign found embarrassing and did not want in print. He requested anonymity because of the political climate in the state. I can't go near this, he said.

According to Herskowitz, George W. Bush's beliefs on Iraq were based in part on a notion dating back to the Reagan White House - ascribed in part to now-vice president Dick Cheney, Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee under Reagan. Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade.

Bush's circle of pre-election advisers had a fixation on the political capital that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher collected from the Falklands War. Said Herskowitz: They were just absolutely blown away, just enthralled by the scenes of the troops coming back, of the boats, people throwing flowers at [Thatcher] and her getting these standing ovations in Parliament and making these magnificent speeches.

Republicans, Herskowitz said, felt that Jimmy Carter's political downfall could be attributed largely to his failure to wage a war. He noted that President Reagan and President Bush's father himself had (besides the narrowly-focused Gulf War I) successfully waged limited wars against tiny opponents - Grenada and Panama - and gained politically. But there were successful small wars, and then there were quagmires, and apparently George H.W. Bush and his son did not see eye to eye.

I know [Bush senior] would not admit this now, but he was opposed to it. I asked him if he had talked to W about invading Iraq. He said, 'No I haven't, and I won't, but Brent [Scowcroft] has.' Brent would not have talked to him without the old man's okaying it. Scowcroft, national security adviser in the elder Bush's administration, penned a highly publicized warning to George W. Bush about the perils of an invasion.

Herskowitz's revelations are not the sole indicator of Bush's pre-election thinking on Iraq. In December 1999, some six months after his talks with Herskowitz, Bush surprised veteran political chroniclers, including the Boston Globe 's David Nyhan, with his blunt pronouncements about Saddam at a six-way New Hampshire primary event that got little notice: It was a gaffe-free evening for the rookie front-runner, till he was asked about Saddam's weapons stash, wrote Nyhan. 'I'd take 'em out,' [Bush] grinned cavalierly, 'take out the weapons of mass destruction·I'm surprised he's still there, said Bush of the despot who remains in power after losing the Gulf War to Bush Jr.'s father·It remains to be seen if that offhand declaration of war was just Texas talk, a sort of locker room braggadocio, or whether it was Bush's first big clinker.

The notion that President Bush held unrealistic or naïve views about the consequences of war was further advanced recently by a Bush supporter, the evangelist Pat Robertson, who revealed that Bush had told him the Iraq invasion would yield no casualties. In addition, in recent days, high-ranking US military officials have complained that the White House did not provide them with adequate resources for the task at hand.

Herskowitz considers himself a friend of the Bush family, and has been a guest at the family vacation home in Kennebunkport. In the late 1960s, Herskowitz, a longtime Houston Chronicle sports columnist designated President Bush's father, then-Congressman George HW Bush, to replace him as a guest columnist, and the two have remained close since then. (Herskowitz was suspended briefly in April without pay for reusing material from one of his own columns, about legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden.)

In 1999, when Herskowitz turned in his chapters for Charge to Keep, Bush's staff expressed displeasure -often over Herskowitz's use of language provided by Bush himself. In a chapter on the oil business, Herskowitz included Bush's own words to describe the Texan's unprofitable business ventures, writing: the companies were floundering. I got a call from one of the campaign lawyers, he was kind of angry, and he said, 'You've got some wrong information.' I didn't bother to say, 'Well you know where it came from.' [The lawyer] said, 'We do not consider that the governor struggled or floundered in the oil business. We consider him a successful oilman who started up at least two new businesses.'

In the end, campaign officials decided not to go with Herskowitz's account, and, moreover, demanded everything back. The lawyer called me and said, 'Delete it. Shred it. Just do it.'

They took it and [communications director] Karen [Hughes] rewrote it, he said. A campaign official arrived at his home at seven a.m. on a Monday morning and took his notes and computer files. However, Herskowitz, who is known for his memory of anecdotes from his long history in journalism and book publishing, says he is confident about his recollections.

According to Herskowitz, Bush was reluctant to discuss his time in the Texas Air National Guard - and inconsistent when he did so. Bush, he said, provided conflicting explanations of how he came to bypass a waiting list and obtain a coveted Guard slot as a domestic alternative to being sent to Vietnam. Herskowitz also said that Bush told him that after transferring from his Texas Guard unit two-thirds through his six-year military obligation to work on an Alabama political campaign, he did not attend any Alabama National Guard drills at all, because he was excused. This directly contradicts his public statements that he participated in obligatory training with the Alabama National Guard. Bush's claim to have fulfilled his military duty has been subject to intense scrutiny; he has insisted in the past that he did show up for monthly drills in Alabama - though commanding officers say they never saw him, and no Guardsmen have come forward to accept substantial rewards for anyone who can claim to have seen Bush on base.

Herskowitz said he asked Bush if he ever flew a plane again after leaving the Texas Air National Guard in 1972 - which was two years prior to his contractual obligation to fly jets was due to expire. He said Bush told him he never flew any plane - military or civilian - again. That would contradict published accounts in which Bush talks about his days in 1973 working with inner-city children, when he claimed to have taken some of the children up in a plane.

In 2002, three years after he had been pulled off the George W. Bush biography, Herskowitz was asked by Bush's father to write a book about the current president's grandfather, Prescott Bush, after getting a message that the senior Bush wanted to see him. Former President Bush just handed it to me. We were sitting there one day, and I was visiting him there in his office·He said, 'I wish somebody would do a book about my dad.'

He said to me, 'I know this has been a disappointing time for you, but it's amazing how many times something good will come out of it.' I passed it on to my agent, he jumped all over it. I asked [Bush senior], 'Would you support it and would you give me access to the rest of family?' He said yes.

That book, Duty, Honor, Country: The Life and Legacy of Prescott Bush , was published in 2003 by Routledge. If anything, the book has been criticized for its over-reliance on the Bush family's perspective and rosy interpretation of events. Herskowitz himself is considered the ultimate as-told-to author, lending credibility to his account of what George W. Bush told him. Herskowitz's other books run the gamut of public figures, and include the memoirs of Reagan aide Deaver, former Texas Governor and Nixon Treasury Secretary John Connally, newsman Dan Rather, astronaut Walter Cunningham, and baseball greats Mickey Mantle and Nolan Ryan.

After Herskowitz was pulled from the Bush book project, the biographer learned that a scenario was being prepared to explain his departure. I got a phone call from someone in the Bush campaign, confidentially, saying 'Watch your back.'

Reporters covering Bush say that when they inquired as to why Herskowitz was no longer on the project, Hughes intimated that Herskowitz had personal habits that interfered with his writing - a claim Herskowitz said is unfounded. Later, the campaign put out the word that Herskowitz had been removed for missing a deadline. Hughes subsequently finished the book herself - it received largely critical reviews for its self-serving qualities and lack of spontaneity or introspection.

So, said Herskowitz, the best material was left on the cutting room floor, including Bush's true feelings.

He told me that as a leader, you can never admit to a mistake, Herskowitz said. That was one of the keys to being a leader.

Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute .

Russ Baker is an award-winning independent journalist who has been published in The New York Times ,The Nation ,Washington Post ,The Telegraph (UK), Sydney Morning-Herald , and Der Spiegel , among many others.

© Copyright 2004 gnn.tv


Why thank you....Ms sweetness and light....
Well, obviously your faith makes cursing a personal choice too. Try reading the post next time and do not, please, put words into my mouth. I was not comparing Hitler to a Jew. What a ridiculous statement. I was not comparing Hitler to abortion, even a more ridiculous statement. I was talking about moral relativity, and that the people in Germany during the rise of Hitler were probably defending his stand on Jews, just like you are defending abortion, because when people are led to believe that any life, at any stage, means nothing, or in your case state it does not even exist, it is a breeding ground for people like Hitler. I meant that people in Germany were probably rationalizing the killing of Jews like you are rationalizing the killing of babies, therefore making it easier to accept what Hitler was doing. You twist words and when you don't get your way you result to base name calling. Calm down, get a grip and a cup of coffee. I am not your enemy.
i am making light of the

attempts to discredit Barack by calling him a celebrity.  You will see the same issue repeated over and over on this board, only by those who seriously consider that a valid issues.


 


Perhaps because the book has only now come to light....
I didn't know about the book until now. The point being...it is known about now, she knew it then, she should not have taken the job. What if they had chosen Michelle Malkin or Ann Coulter? Would that be okay with you? Geez.