TownHall.com Wants YOU To Send Troops Propaganda
TownHall.com Wants YOU To Send Troops Propaganda
TownHall.com mass-mailed their readers this morning, urging them to celebrate July 4th by donating to a cause they said would “show our troops that you appreciate their work to promote freedom and democracy” and that you “value their outstanding service to our country.”
You’ll never guess the noble cause that TownHall is supporting. It isn’t helping our soldiers pay for armor and supplies. It’s not sending troops in Iraq spare clothing or phone cards or even toys for them to hand out. No, TownHall.com is raising $25,000 for the vital cause of mailing U.S. forces thousands of copies of Confronting Iraq, a deceptive film produced by the right-wing watchdog group Accuracy in Media.
According to its website, Confronting Iraq apparently shows that the Iraq war was “just and necessary,” part of the larger war “against the unrelenting forces of radical Islam” (wasn’t Saddam a committed secularist?), and that Iraq had “ongoing relations with Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organization, al Qaeda, among others.” It features upstanding luminaries like Bernie Kerik, who loved Iraq so much he decided to leave 9 months early.
And if those facts sound specious, it’s hardly surprising: the film’s director, Roger Aronoff, is an acclaimed “investigative journalist” whose previous films include TWA Flight 800: The Search for the Truth, a conspiracy epic that explains how the 1996 flight was actually shot from the air by Muslim terrorists, a fact hidden by President Clinton to ensure his re-election (and other such gems). More »
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Zogby Poll Finds Suprising Support For Impeachment
Zogby Poll Finds Suprising Support For Impeachment
A newly-released Zogby poll indicates that 42 percent of voters say that “if it is found that President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should hold him accountable through impeachment.”
That is a stunningly high number when you consider that only 41 percent of the American public supported Congress proceeding with impeachment hearings against President Clinton in late September 1998. This was after President Clinton’s grand jury testimony was made public and just before the House Judiciary Committee approved a resolution recommending an impeachment inquiry.
A Moment of Clarity In Social Security Debate
A Moment of Clarity In Social Security Debate
In the past week conservatives have floated several contradictory Social Security reform proposals, making it difficult to discern their true intentions.
Luckily, there have been a few moments of clarity in the debate that cut through the rhetorical clutter and get to the core goal of the conservative’s fight: the abolishment of the principle of shared responsibility and sacrifice that Social Security embodies.
The most recent example came yesterday when Republican Rep. Jack Kingston (GA) explicitly stated the Republican strategy — get any Social Security bill through the House and Senate and then add private accounts in a conference committee:
“Anything they can get passed out of the Senate we should consider a major victory,” Mr. Kingston said, adding that if the Senate can pass any sort of Social Security bill — even without personal accounts — the House would “meet them in conference committee with personal accounts.”
When All Else Fails, Blame the Advance Staff
When All Else Fails, Blame the Advance Staff
White House rule: When faced with a public relations debacle, blame the advance staff. Apparently, they have no bosses.
White House reaction to the soldiers’ silence at Ft. Bragg speech:
Capt. Tom Earnhardt, a public affairs officer at Fort Bragg who participated in the planning for the president’s trip, said that from the first meetings with White House officials there was agreement that a hall full of wildly cheering troops would not create the right atmosphere for a speech devoted to policy and strategy.
“The guy from White House advance, during the initial meetings, said, ‘Be careful not to let this become a pep rally,’” Captain Earnhardt recalled in a telephone interview. Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, confirmed that account.
Bush’s reaction to Mission Accomplished uproar:
Attention turned Tuesday to a giant “Mission Accomplished” sign that stood behind Bush aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln when he gave the speech May 1. The president told reporters the sign was put up by the Navy, not the White House. “I know it was attributed somehow to some ingenious advance man from my staff — they weren’t that ingenious, by the way,” the president said Tuesday.
After it was discovered that 42 people were put on a black list and not allowed to attend a Bush event:
The White House later said that the list was a mistake and may have been generated by its advance team — a mix of White House staffers and state and local volunteers.
Echoing Cheney, National Security Advisor Says Taliban Making Its “Last Stand”
Echoing Cheney, National Security Advisor Says Taliban Making Its “Last Stand”
As insurgent violence spiked in Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney was widely criticized for saying the insurgency in Iraq was in its “last throes.”
Now, as Taliban violence spikes in Afghanistan, National Security advisor Stephen Hadley says the Taliban is making “one last stand.” Here’s Hadley on PBS NewsHour last night:
[W]hat we know and what we believe is that the Taliban forces in Afghanistan were really set back by the presidential election that occurred and are trying to regroup and trying to stay relevant and trying to derail the elections that are now scheduled for September. So, regrettably, we’re going to probably see continuation of violence as they try and make one last stand to try and derail the progress of democracy there.
Bush Took His Eye Off The Ball
Bush Took His Eye Off The Ball
Here’s what the New York Times is reporting from Afghanistan today:
The loss of a military helicopter with 17 Americans aboard in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday comes at a time of growing insecurity here. For the first time since the United States overthrew the Taliban government three and a half years ago, Afghans say they are feeling uneasy about the future.
Violence has increased sharply in recent months, with a resurgent Taliban movement mounting daily attacks in southern Afghanistan, gangs kidnapping foreigners here in the capital and radical Islamists orchestrating violent demonstrations against the government and foreign-financed organizations.
VERSUS
Bush: “Working with a fine coalition, our military went to Afghanistan, destroyed the training camps of Al Qaida, and put the Taliban out of business forever.” [11/24/03]
Bush: “Because of American soldiers and our brave allies and friends, who have fought beside them, the Taliban is out of business.” [3/15/02]
Bush: “Our first objective in the first theater against the war against terror has been achieved: The Taliban are out of business.” [2/4/02]
Bush: “Now thanks to the United States and our fine allies, Afghanistan is no longer a haven for terror, the Taliban is history, and the Afghan people are free.” [8/14/03]
Bush: “Today, Afghanistan is a world away from the nightmare of the Taliban.” [7/12/04]
Seems to conjure up memories of Mission Accomplished
AP Drops the Ball In Interview With Blair On Downing Street Minutes
AP Drops the Ball In Interview With Blair On Downing Street Minutes
British Prime Minister Tony Blair responded to the Downing Street Minutes today. According to the AP, Blair said the document paints a distorted picture and insisted that the Iraq war was not predetermined by the United States. These are the key paragraphs of the story:
President Bush “wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD,” read the memo, seen by the AP. “But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”
In the interview, Blair said raising such concerns was a natural part of any examination of the cause for war.
“The trouble with having a political discussion on the basis of things that are leaked is that they are always taken right out of context. Everything else is omitted from the discussion and you end up focusing on a specific document,” he said.
“It would be absolutely weird if, when the Iraq issue was on the agenda, you were not constantly raising issues, trying to work them out, get them in the right place,” he said.
So while the AP mentions that they obtained the Downing Street memo containing the “fixed around the policy” claim, apparently they didn’t get Blair to respond directly to that accusation. What does Prime Minister Blair say in response to the word “fixed”? Seems the most obvious question, and it apparently didn’t get asked or the answer wasn’t reported.
As for Blair’s argument that the memos were “taken right out of context,” he should feel free to release pre-war papers that prove his point. We’d love to read them.
State Department Doctors Bono Quote
State Department Doctors Bono Quote
A State Department release from Monday doctored remarks from U2’s Bono, twisting his quote to mean the very opposite of what he apparently believes. Here’s the State Department paragraph, two graphs below the lede [besides underlining, excerpt appears exactly as published]:
Bono, lead singer of the Irish band U2 and longtime activist for aid to Africa, echoed Geldof’s praise for President Bush as he told an American television interviewer June 26, “[Bush] has already doubled and tripled aid to Africa . I think he has done an incredible job, his administration, on AIDS. 250,000 Africans are on anti-viral drugs; they literally owe their lives to America.”
In fact, Bono only said the latter half of that quote during his appearance on Meet the Press last Sunday. The first part — “[Bush] has already doubled and tripled aid to Africa” — is deceptively transplanted from an interview Bono did with Time magazine that Tim Russert quoted on the show, and the State Department has taken it entirely out of context. Here’s the full quote:
Question: Which of the G8 leaders do you think remains the toughest nut to crack?
Bono: The most important and toughest nut is still President Bush. He feels he’s already doubled and tripled aid to Africa, which he started from far too low a place. He can stand there and say he paid at the office already. He shouldn’t because he’ll be left out of the history books. But it’s hard for him because of the expense of the war and the debts.
In other words, Bono was relaying President Bush’s claim (which he repeated during his press conference with Tony Blair this month) that his administration has tripled aid to Africa. Yet we know Bono does not believe that Bush has tripled aid to Africa. On Meet the Press, Bono said that while Bush has made a commitment to triple aid, that will only be the case “if he follows through” on that pledge.
This blatant dishonesty is even more relevant in light of the study by Susan Rice that Brookings released this week. Rice’s analysis showed that…
…U.S. aid to Africa from FY 2000 (the last full budget year of the Clinton Administration) to FY2004 (the last completed fiscal year of the Bush Administration) has not “tripled” or even doubled. Rather, in real dollars, it has increased 56% (or 67% in nominal dollar terms). The majority of that increase consists of emergency food aid, rather than assistance for sustainable development of the sort Africa needs to achieve lasting poverty reduction.
Rationales For the Iraq War
Rationales For the Iraq War
President Bush has repeatedly offered differing reasons for why we went to war in Iraq. Last night, we heard the latest and most egregious explanation — that we had to go to war in Iraq as a direct result of 9/11. Here is a list of a few of Bush’s reasons for going into Iraq:
Reason #1) Went to War As a Direct Result of 9/11
Bush: “The war reached our shores on September the 11th, 2001 Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war.” [Bush, 6/28/05]
Bush: “We went to war because we were attacked.” [Bush, 6/18/05]
Reason #2) WMD
Bush: “This is not about inspectors; this is about a disarmed Iraq. He has weapons of mass destruction — the world’s deadliest weapons — which pose a direct threat to the United States, our citizens and our friends and allies. He has been told to disarm for 11 long years. He’s not disarming.” [Bush, 1/21/03]
Reason #3) Links to Al Qaeda
Bush: “This is a man who, in my judgment, would like to use al-Qaeda as a forward army.” [Bush, 10/14/02]
Reason #4) Reform the Greater Middle East
Bush: “A free Iraq can be a source of hope for all of the Middle East. Instead of threatening its neighbors and harboring terrorists, Iraq can be an example of progress and prosperity in a region that needs both. [Bush, 2/20/03]
Our New Look
Our New Look
Maybe you noticed: ThinkProgress got a makeover.
No major changes — mostly a sharper, simpler interface, more web-friendly colors, and some new java components — although we’ll be debuting a few more new features in the days to come.
Thoughts? Additions? Bugs? Drop us a comment.
Owning Our Successes, and Our Failures
Owning Our Successes, and Our Failures
The past few weeks have seen a number of positive steps toward righting the wrongs of the Jim Crow era. The Senate formally apologized for rejecting decades of pleas to make lynching a federal crime. Justice was finally served to Edgar Ray Killen, who murdered three civil rights workers in 1964. And new evidence (revealed in Keith A. Beauchamp’s film The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till) has sparked a new investigation into the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till.
Still many are asking, “Why bother?” Some — including Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS) — ask why we should apologize for the actions (or inactions) of senators long past. Others wonder why, after 50 years, the FBI has decided to reopen the Emmett Till case. Why not just leave the past — and the truth — buried?
The answer, I think, is found in the preamble of our Constitution, which contains the words “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and to our posterity.” The Founders were speaking for all Americans — past, present, and future. Surely no one alive today had any part in writing the Constitution or Declaration of Independence, but Americans proudly claim these documents as their own. But when the topics of slavery and crimes against Native Americans come up, no one wants to claim responsibility. President Kennedy was right: failure is an orphan.
America’s past failings belong to all Americans just as much as the Founders’ ideals and successes do. And so, rather than ask what the crimes of 50 years ago have to do with us, we should be asking our government to do more to right the wrongs. It’s time for us to confront our nation’s past of racial injustice head-on and do our best to make amends so we can more fully realize our Constitutional and democratic calling.
– Michael Thompson, CampusProgress
Putin Purloins Pats Paraphernalia?
Putin Purloins Pats Paraphernalia?
“I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy.” — President Bush, on his friend Russian President Vladmir Putin
VERSUS
“Putin Pockets Pats Owner’s Super Bowl Ring – Following a meeting of American business executives and Putin at Konstantinovsky Palace near St. Petersburg on Saturday, [New England Patriot's owner Robert] Kraft showed the [diamond-encrusted Super Bowl] ring to Putin — who tried it on, put it in his pocket and left, said Russian news reports.” — AP, 6/29/05
UPDATE: Kraft says ring was a gift.
Congressman Pushes 9/11-Saddam Myth
Congressman Pushes 9/11-Saddam Myth
President Bush might continue to intimate that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and the September 11th attacks but Rep. Robin Hayes (R-NC), the vice chairman of the House subcommittee on terrorism, is stating it explicitly. In an interview on CNN, Hayes insisted, “Saddam Hussein and people like him were very much involved in 9/11.” When confronted with the findings of the 9/11 commission — who definitively concluded there was no evidence of a link between Saddam and 9/11 — Hayes retorted, “I’m sorry, but you must have looked in the wrong places.” Hayes then defended his position by asserting that “legislators have access to evidence others do not.”
We’re not sure what kind of evidence Hayes has access to but apparently he has higher clearance than U.S. weapons inspectors, CIA directors, counterterrorism experts, Secretaries of State, and even the President…because all those people have accepted the fact that Saddam was not connected to 9/11.
Join The Virtual March To Stop Global Warming
Join The Virtual March To Stop Global Warming
Stopglobalwarming.org is organizing a virtual march to raise awareness on global warming and to urge our leaders to put the country on a path towards a renewable energy future. There could not be a more important time to join this effort. The Senate just moved on this issue. The G8 is moving on this issue. Tony Blair is moving on this issue. Only President Bush and Vice President Cheney are still sitting on their duffs.
We can all get off ours and sign up for the virtual march. Please join the effort.
Crackerjack Analysis From the Washington Post
Crackerjack Analysis From the Washington Post
Dan Balz, Washington Post, 6/29/05:
His critics long have accused Bush of falsely drawing a connection between Iraq and Sept. 11 as a way to justify the original decision to launch the war in Iraq. That was not the point Bush made last night.
George W. Bush, 6/28/05:
After September 11, I made a commitment to the American people: This Nation will not wait to be attacked again. We will take the fight to the enemy. We will defend our freedom…Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war.
So actually, “justifying the original decision to launch the war in Iraq” by ” drawing a connection between Iraq and Sept. 11″ was what Bush did last night.
War In Iraq Was Supposed To Prevent It From Becoming a Training Ground
War In Iraq Was Supposed To Prevent It From Becoming a Training Ground
The central thrust of Bush’s argument last night for the war in Iraq was that “Iraq is the latest battlefield” in the war on terror. He stated the same case later in the speech: “Some wonder whether Iraq is a central front in the war on terror. Among the terrorists, there is no debate.”
The fact that Iraq has BECOME a terrorist training ground is true. It wasn’t one before the invasion of Iraq. And Bush admitted as much in November 2002. Before the war, Bush claimed we needed to attack Iraq to PREVENT it from becoming a terrorist training ground. Here’s what he said:
Imagine a terrorist network with Iraq as an arsenal and as a training ground, so that a Saddam Hussein could use his shadowy group of people to attack his enemy and leave no fingerprint behind. [Bush, 11/4/02]
We don’t have to imagine any longer. Bush’s miscalculations in his handling of Iraq have unified the terrorists and have allowed Iraqi territory to become the terrorist training ground that the extremists desired.
Time Magazine Reported the “goal” of the militants in a July 2004 article:
A “Time investigation of the insurgency today — based on meetings with insurgents, tribal leaders, religious clerics and U.S. intelligence officials — reveals that the militants are turning the resistance into an international jihadist movement. … Their goal now, say the militants interviewed, is broader than simply forcing the U.S. to leave. They want to transform Iraq into what Afghanistan was in the 1980s: a training ground for young jihadists who will form the next wave of recruits for al-Qaeda and like-minded groups.”
Nearly a year later and with little headway having been made against the insurgents, the CIA recently reported the results:
“A new classified assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency says Iraq may prove to be an even more effective training ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was in Al Qaeda’s early days, because it is serving as a real-world laboratory for urban combat.”
Mo Money, Mo Money, Mo Money
Mo Money, Mo Money, Mo Money
The House of Representatives voted yesterday to give themselves a cost-of-living raise. Congratulations, lawmakers! Next year you’ll be making $3,100 more than you did this year.
Unfortunately, Congress doesn’t want to share the wealth. This makes the eighth time Congress has voted to increase its own pay since 1997; they, however, have voted down every attempt to give minimum wage earners a cost of living raise since 1997. Today, the real value of the minimum wage is $3.50 below what it was in 1968. Working full time for minimum wage today will rake in a whopping $10,700 a year, or about $5,000 below the poverty level for a family of three
Hope your conscience doesn’t bother you so much that you can’t enjoy that extra $3,100, Congress.
The Two Faces Of George
The Two Faces Of George
President Bush invoked 9/11 five times last night. He refereneced Osama bin Laden twice.
It was a desperate attempt to imply a link between the increasingly deadly war in Iraq and the attacks on American soil in 2001. America knows that’s not true. Actually, so does President Bush.
In a press conference on 1/31/03, asked if he believed there was a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, President Bush admitted, “I can’t make that claim.”
Bush Iraq Speech: By The Numbers
Bush Iraq Speech: By The Numbers
References to “September 11″: 5
References to “weapons of mass destruction”: 0
References to “freedom”: 21
References to “exit strategy”: 0
References to “Saddam Hussein”: 2
References to “Osama Bin Laden”: 2
References to “a mistake”: 1 (setting a timetable for withdrawal)
References to “mission”: 11
References to “mission accomplished”: 0
Bush Recycles Old Ideas As “New”
Bush Recycles Old Ideas As “New”
Bush: “To further prepare Iraqi forces to fight the enemy on their own, we are taking three new steps: First, we are partnering Coalition units with Iraqi units Second, we are embedding Coalition ‘Transition Teams’ inside Iraqi units Third, we are working with the Iraqi Ministries of Interior and Defense to improve their capabilities to coordinate anti-terrorist operations.”
Fact: This Is Not New; Bush Said We Would Work With Iraqi Units Last February.
Bush: “The game plan is to stand with the Iraqis, is to train them better, is to give them a chain of command, is to work with their junior officers, so that the Iraqi units — which did very well on election day — have got what it takes to defend their own country.” [Bush, 2/4/05]
Fact: Bush Said He Would Work With Iraqi Government Before.
Bush: “But I believe that the Iraqi government’s going to be plenty capable of dealing with them, and our job is to help train them so that they can.” [Bush, 5/31/05]
Bush: “This [Iraq] is a government that’s got the ministries in place, that spends the money. We’re willing to help — and we have helped. And I want to thank the Congress and the American people for their generosity in helping Iraq rebuild. And we’re spending money.” [Bush, 6/24/05]
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