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Dear Bushwatch,
I feel as if I've been reading you forever. Never thought you could get any better.
You are the grandparent of them all.
But this Progressive Forum is fantastic. One stop. You have gotten even better.
Thank you. --Susan, 03.31.04
9/11 And Iraq: Bush Is Zero For Two On Use Of Intelligence, by Dr. Gerry Lower
Bush and Blair: The "End of Time" and Other Religious Rot, by Dr. Gerry Lower
MESS-UP AT TAMIN' YA , by Dom Stasi
Nader Set To Help Bush Win
"Nader's...presence in the razor-close 2000 election helped deprive Al Gore of victory in states like New Hampshire and Florida, and [some Nader admirers] worry about some early polls that showed Mr. Kerry leading Mr. Bush in a two-way race, but trailing if Mr. Nader is added as an option.
"Nader acknowledged that four years ago he seemed to be tougher on Mr. Gore and Bill Clinton than he was on Mr. Bush.... Nader does not dispute that there are real differences between Republicans and Democrats on social issues like abortion and gay rights, and over judicial appointments." --NYT, 03.31.04
THE WEST WING THIS EVENING WAS BRILLIANT. A pseudo-documentary about the role of the White House press secretary. Over and over: The role of the press secreatary is to honestly present the President's position on the issues, while informing the media of the facts behind the news. No lies. No obfuscation.
While the show indicated the difficulties of being a White House press rep, caught between obligations to the President and obligations to one's colleagues, the viewer couldn't help but compare this fictional version of what goes on at the White House with the lying and obfuscation that comes from the Bush White house on a daily basis. That was likely one of the points of the show. --Jerry Politex, 03.31.04
Condoleezza Rice is finished as a political asset of the Bush Administration. She is no longer the great hope of the Republican Party. It was once thought that as the most admired woman in America she would be a shoo-in for high office. No more.
The 9/11 Commission is gunning for her full throttle. Watch the fireworks on Thursday when panelists will be looking to catch every inconsistency, every faltering misstep in her testimony. Nowhere to run to baby, nowhere to hide.
Back to Alabama for our fair princess. If there is any justice, history will judge Rice more harshly than the 9/11 Commission, which is concerned only with harms done to Americans. #2, 04.05.04
Methinks Condi doth protest too much. With recent network TV appearances pleading her case ad nauseam, Ms. Rice sinks deeper and deeper in the mire. Her tangled web is unraveling. No one ever thought they would use planes as weapons, eh? Washington is a majority African-American city and my friends here have not trusted her from day one. Something duplicitous about her that they have sussed out--she always seemed to be the one that the administration sent out to look good on television and smooth things over when Bush dropped a bomb (literally or otherwise). It seems like it took a while for the rest of us to catch on, but now that we have, the movement is snowballing. The Washington Post is all over her and it won't be long till something breaks. I think this one is finally the story that won't go away for Dubya. #1, 03.30.04
10 Minute Rice: Three Lies And No Apology
Condi Rice, Bush's National Security Adviser, appeared on 60 Minutes Sunday evening, but, unlike Bush anti-terrorism adviser Dick Clarke at the 9/11 Probe, she did not swear on the Bible that what she would say would be the truth. While Clarke on 60 Minutes last Sunday allowed himself to be probed and turned inside and out for nearly the entire program, the edited tape of the Rice interview with Ed Bradley lasted around 10 minutes, and she said nothing new. The short episode came across as political spin to control the bleeding, and nothing more.
Rice's Lie #1 (transcript)
DICK CLARKE (video):
I said 'Mr. President, we've done this before. We - we've been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind, there's no connection.' He came back at me and said, 'Iraq, Saddam - find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean, that we should come back with that answer....
CONDOLEEZZA RICE:
I - I have never seen the president say an - anything to an - people in an intimidating way, to try to get a particular answer out of them. I know this president very well. And the president doesn't talk to his staff in an intimidating way to ask them to produce information - that is false.
OUR RESPONSE:
Clarke and two others were in the room with Bush. The others have gone on record as agreeing with Clarke's description of the meeting. Condi was not present.
Rice's Lie #2 (transcript)
VOICE OVER:
All week long, the White House said it had no recollection that the September 12 meeting ever took place, and that it had no record that President Bush was even in the situation room that day. But two days ago, they changed their story, saying the meeting did happen.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE:
"None of us recall the specific - conversation....
OUR RESPONSE:
Actually, two lies here. First, the White House said the meeting didn't happen, then they changed their story. Second, Condi misleads Bradley by saying "us" did not recall the specific conversation. Of course "us" didn't since it has already been established that "us" was not in the room at the time of the conversation.
Rice's Lie #3 (transcript)
ED BRADLEY:
Clarke has alleged that the Bush administration underestimated the threat from - from al Qaeda, didn't act as if terrorism was an imminent and urgent problem. Was it?
CONDOLEEZZA RICE:
Of course it was an urgent - problem....
ED BRADLEY: :
But even the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Hugh Shelton, has said that the Bush administration pushed terrorism, and I'm quoting here, farther to the back burner.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE:
I just don't agree....
ED BRADLEY:
After 9/11, Bob Woodward wrote a book in which he had incredible access and interviewed the president of the United States. He quotes President Bush as saying that he didn't feel a sense of urgency about Osama bin Laden. Woodward wrote that bin Laden was not the president's focus or that of his nationally security team. You're saying that the administration says fighting terrorism and al-Qaeda has been a top priority since the beginning.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE:
I'm saying that the administration took seriously the threat - let's talk about what we did....
ED BRADLEY: :
You'd listed the things that you'd done. But here is the perception. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff at that time says you pushed it to the back burner. The former Secretary of the Treasury says it was not a priority. Mr. Clarke says it was not a priority. And at least, according to Bob Woodward, who talked with the president, he is saying that for the president, it wasn't urgent. He didn't have a sense of urgency about al Qaeda. That's the perception here.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE:
Ed, I don't know what a sense of urgency - any greater than the one that we had, would have caused us to do differently.
OUR RESPONSE:
It's clear that Bradley wants to discuss the Clarke charge that the Bush administration changed terrorism from the top priority to one of secondary concern, and Rice attepts to twist the question of giving terrorism "top priority" to taking terrorism "seriously," which are two different things. Then Bush is quoted as saying terrorism was not "urgent." Rice ignores this documented quote and goes on to disagree with Bush. As such, she is attempting to mislead by changing the terms from "top priority" to "seriously," and to simply ignore the evidence presented that Bush disagrees with her. As such, she is on auto-pilot as she lies, spinning the implicit scenario she wants Bradley to accept.
Finally, Bradley repeatedly gave Rice the program's forum to apologize for 9/11 to the millions of viewers watching the show, like Clarke did on the show last week and previously to that under oath in front of the 9/11 Panel, but she refused each time. (transcript)
--Jerry Politex, 03.29.04
"Neocons" believe that the United States should not be ashamed to use its unrivaled power – forcefully if necessary – to promote its values around the world. Some even speak of the need to cultivate a US empire. Neoconservatives believe modern threats facing the US can no longer be reliably contained and therefore must be prevented, sometimes through preemptive military action.
Most neocons believe that the US has allowed dangers to gather by not spending enough on defense and not confronting threats aggressively enough. One such threat, they contend, was Saddam Hussein and his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Since the 1991 Gulf War, neocons relentlessly advocated Mr. Hussein's ouster.
Most neocons share unwavering support for Israel, which they see as crucial to US military sufficiency in a volatile region. They also see Israel as a key outpost of democracy in a region ruled by despots. Believing that authoritarianism and theocracy have allowed anti-Americanism to flourish in the Middle East, neocons advocate the democratic transformation of the region, starting with Iraq. They also believe the US is unnecessarily hampered by multilateral institutions, which they do not trust to effectively neutralize threats to global security.
What are the roots of neoconservative beliefs?The original neocons were a small group of mostly Jewish liberal intellectuals who, in the 1960s and 70s, grew disenchanted with what they saw as the American left's social excesses and reluctance to spend adequately on defense. Many of these neocons worked in the 1970s for Democratic Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a staunch anti-communist. By the 1980s, most neocons had become Republicans, finding in President Ronald Reagan an avenue for their aggressive approach of confronting the Soviet Union with bold rhetoric and steep hikes in military spending. After the Soviet Union's fall, the neocons decried what they saw as American complacency. In the 1990s, they warned of the dangers of reducing both America's defense spending and its role in the world.
Unlike their predecessors, most younger neocons never experienced being left of center. They've always been "Reagan" Republicans.
What is the difference between a neoconservative and a conservative?
Liberals first applied the "neo" prefix to their comrades who broke ranks to become more conservative in the 1960s and 70s. The defectors remained more liberal on some domestic policy issues. But foreign policy stands have always defined neoconservatism. Where other conservatives favored détente and containment of the Soviet Union, neocons pushed direct confrontation, which became their raison d'etre during the 1970s and 80s.
Today, both conservatives and neocons favor a robust US military. But most conservatives express greater reservations about military intervention and so-called nation building. Neocons share no such reluctance. The post 9/11-campaigns against regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate that the neocons are not afraid to force regime change and reshape hostile states in the American image. Neocons believe the US must do to whatever it takes to end state-supported terrorism. For most, this means an aggressive push for democracy in the Middle East. Even after 9/11, many other conservatives, particularly in the isolationist wing, view this as an overzealous dream with nightmarish consequences.
How have neoconservatives influenced US foreign policy?
Finding a kindred spirit in President Reagan, neocons greatly influenced US foreign policy in the 1980s.
But in the 1990s, neocon cries failed to spur much action. Outside of Reaganite think tanks and Israel's right-wing Likud Party, their calls for regime change in Iraq were deemed provocative and extremist by the political mainstream. With a few notable exceptions, such as President Bill Clinton's decision to launch isolated strikes at suspected terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, their talk of preemptive military action was largely dismissed as overkill.
Despite being muted by a president who called for restraint and humility in foreign affairs, neocons used the 1990s to hone their message and craft their blueprint for American power. Their forward thinking and long-time ties to Republican circles helped many neocons win key posts in the Bush administration.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 moved much of the Bush administration closer than ever to neoconservative foreign policy. Only days after 9/11, one of the top neoconservative think tanks in Washington, the Project for a New American Century, wrote an open letter to President Bush calling for regime change in Iraq. Before long, Bush, who campaigned in 2000 against nation building and excessive military intervention overseas, also began calling for regime change in Iraq. In a highly significant nod to neocon influence, Bush chose the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) as the venue for a key February 2003 speech in which he declared that a US victory in Iraq "could begin a new stage for Middle Eastern peace." AEI – the de facto headquarters for neconservative policy – had been calling for democratization of the Arab world for more than a decade.
What does a neoconservative dream world look like?
Neocons envision a world in which the United States is the unchallenged superpower, immune to threats. They believe that the US has a responsibility to act as a "benevolent global hegemon." In this capacity, the US would maintain an empire of sorts by helping to create democratic, economically liberal governments in place of "failed states" or oppressive regimes they deem threatening to the US or its interests. In the neocon dream world the entire Middle East would be democratized in the belief that this would eliminate a prime breeding ground for terrorists. This approach, they claim, is not only best for the US; it is best for the world. In their view, the world can only achieve peace through strong US leadership backed with credible force, not weak treaties to be disrespected by tyrants.
Any regime that is outwardly hostile to the US and could pose a threat would be confronted aggressively, not "appeased" or merely contained. The US military would be reconfigured around the world to allow for greater flexibility and quicker deployment to hot spots in the Middle East, as well as Central and Southeast Asia. The US would spend more on defense, particularly for high-tech, precision weaponry that could be used in preemptive strikes. It would work through multilateral institutions such as the United Nations when possible, but must never be constrained from acting in its best interests whenever necessary. --Christian Science Monitor
Michael Moore: "I will work enthusiastically for any of the [7]....There are times to vote to make a statement, there are times to vote for the underdog and there are times to vote to save the country from catastrophe. This time we can and must do all three." (more)
BUSH LIE: Bush, who declared in the 2000 campaign that "the vast majority of my tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum," knew that this wasn't true. He worried that eliminating taxes on dividends would benefit only "top-rate people," asking his advisers, "Didn't we already give them a break at the top?" --Paul Krugman, 01.13.04. more Bush lies
Boiled Rice
Dick Clark, Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush career anti-terrorist, gave his sworn testimoney to the Bush-selected 9/11 probe panel Wednesday and proved he could more than hold his own against the Bush representatives on the committee. His message: Bush and his administration didn't do enough to protect the nation prior to 9/11, lowering the priorities that Clinton put upon terrorism, despite the very clear warnings the Clinton administration gave to Bush and his representatives.
The Republican members of the Bush-selected panel chose to attack Clarke on the grounds of character, rather than the facts he based his conclusions upon. His to-the-point responses, serious tone, and unwillingness to sling mud back made his attackers look like fools in the eyes of the applauding relatives of the 9/11 victims in the gallery. But the most repugnant performance of the day came from someone who should have been present but was not: Condi Rice, Bush's National Security Adviser.
Although the White House, through Rice stand-in Deputy Sec. of State Richard Armitage, claimed Rice couldn't attend due to "separation of power issues," one member of the panel pointed out that a number of previous National Security Advisers have given sworn testimony in public to government panels, suggesting that the Bush position was bogus. Although Armitage was identified as the stand-in for questions the panel wanted to direct to Rice, his inability to answer any of the relevant questions led one member of the panel to ask if Armitage owned a TV upon which he could have watched Rice on talk shows in preparation for his appearance as her stand-in. (Relatives of 9/11 victims had walked out in protest when it was announced that Armitage was standing-in for Rice.)
Rice has appeared before members of the panel to give secret, unsworn testimony, and even then she was caught in a lie, called a "misspoke" in Bushspeak. According to panel member Ben-Veniste, "Dr. Rice, following 9/11, made a statement that -- I want to make sure I get it right -- she said, I don't think anybody could have predicted that those people could take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center. Take another one, and slam it into the Pentagon. That they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile." In her later private meeting with members of the panel she retracted that statement: "Dr. Rice told us privately that she wished to correct that statement that she made publicly by saying to us that she misspoke and that she, like Secretary Rumsfeld yesterday, would say that she could not have imagined using planes as missiles." The point is, if everyone is now in agreement that, at the very least, anti-terrorism experts could imagine planes used as missiles, if not Condi or Rummy, why wasn't the administration doing something about such a scenario prior to 9/11?
Clearly, the White House can't afford to have Rice give sworn testimony in public, opening herself up to more such revisions of history, but it was perfectly willing to unchain Rice so that she could attack Clarke's sworn, public testimony immediately after he gave it. Calling reporters into her White House office, according to CNN, she characterized part of Clarke's testimony as a "scurrilous allegation," and objected to his report of his first briefing with her as ""Arrogance at its extreme...I'd heard of a few things before I met Dick Clarke." Perhaps if Rice were willing to make and expand upon the same comments under oath in public before the 9/11 panel, her opinion would be respected. As it stands it's just political hot air. --Jerry Politex, 03.25.04
Postscript: This afternoon on Sirius liberal talk-show host Thom Hartman said that Condi Rice lied on national television last night and if she were to testify under oath to the 9/11 panel she wouldn't be able to lie without penalty, like she's presently doing.
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