Seeside Motel, Albany Bulb (I)
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Bush Administration Iraq Lies Quantified
President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.
On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war.
It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose "Duelfer Report" established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq's nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.
In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003. Not surprisingly, the officials with the most opportunities to make speeches, grant media interviews, and otherwise frame the public debate also made the most false statements, according to this first-ever analysis of the entire body of prewar rhetoric.
President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).
The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews.
-- Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith, "False Pretenses," for The Center for Public Integrity.
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Congresswoman Baldwin on Cheney Impeachment
Tammy Baldwin in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal, January 19, 2008:
On Dec. 14, I joined with my colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee, Reps. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) and Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), in urging Chairman Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) to conduct hearings on a resolution of impeachment now pending consideration in that committee.
Among my constituents, there are those who say I have gone too far in calling for Congress to examine possible impeachable offenses by the Bush administration. There are also those who argue I have not gone far enough. In letters, emails, phone calls, personal conversations and listening sessions, I have heard passionate arguments from those who think we are losing our democracy and that I should do more to hold the Bush administration accountable for its actions.
The call to impeach is one I did not take lightly. But as we said in our letter to Chairman Conyers, the issues are too serious to ignore. We simply cannot discount or overlook numerous, credible allegations of abuse of power by the Bush administration that, if proven, may well constitute high crimes and misdemeanors under our Constitution. To prove this, we must follow the form of the signers of our own Declaration of Independence who wrote, "let Facts be submitted to a candid world."
Impeachment hearings in the House Judiciary Committee will establish the facts and prove whether or not this administration did the following:
- Spied on Americans without a court order in violation of the Fourth Amendment;
- Directed senior members of the administration to ignore subpoenas in contempt of Congress;
- Outed Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert agent of the CIA and then intentionally obstructed justice by disseminating false information through the White House press office;
- Ordered U.S. attorneys to pursue politically-motivated prosecutions in violation of the law;
- Fired eight U.S. attorneys and allowed others to retain their jobs because of partisan political considerations;
- Refused to provide subpoenaed emails and other documentation;
- Purposefully manipulated intelligence to deceive American citizens and the Congress;
- Fabricated a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the war in Iraq - a war that has taken the lives of nearly 4,000 U.S. troops, injured 60,000 more, and that will cost more than a trillion dollars by many accounts;
- Alleged, despite all evidence to the contrary, a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida, to justify the war in Iraq;
- Manipulated and exaggerated evidence of Iran's nuclear weapons capabilities;
- Undermined national security by openly threatening aggression against Iran, despite no evidence that Iran has the intention or capability of attacking the U.S.;
- Suspended habeas corpus by claiming the power to declare any person an "enemy combatant" - ignoring the Geneva Convention protections that the U.S. helped create;
- Endorsed torture and rendition of prisoners in violation of international law and stated American policy and values, and destroyed videotaped evidence of such torture;
- Awarded unlawful no-bid contracts to political friends at home and abroad; and
- Skirted legal consequences by employing paid mercenaries to act as bodyguards for American diplomats in Iraq.
The abuses of this administration demand a formal response. Congressional oversight is a fundamental part of our constitutionally-proscribed system of checks and balances.
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People’s Daily on Presidential Primaries through Nevada
The following major points, however, merit close observations with the ongoing US primaries:
First, Democrat candidates have imbued voters with an outburst of enthusiasm and interests, On the one hand, Americans hope that the Democratic Party will assume office to reform politics and re-orientate the direction, as they have become despaired with reality in the U.S. and aspire to make changes. On the other hand, one of the Democrat forerunners is a woman and the other a black man, and whoever gets elected will make the American history. Mrs. Clinton's race has greatly interested American women in politics, and the smart, handsome black Obama has filled Afro-Americans and young people with great enthusiasm.
The second point is a rivalry between the "reform" card and the "experience" card. Due to people's discontent with reality in Washington D.C., Obama first of all raised the "reform" card and attracted lots of students, youths and kids. Hillary hosted her "experience" card at first, and later shifted her card to the one of "reform" plus with "experienced preparations"so as to pluck up her initiative as her original card inclines to be linked to present reality in the U.S. by her opponents.
Third, Republican candidates vie with each other for unfolding their "security" card. They have reached consensus to beef up the U.S.' military might while vying with one another to release their tougher foreign policies. As the U.S. is currently faced with security challenges, they opt to pass themselves off as reliable guarantors of U.S. security once they get elected.
Fourth, Republican candidates meanwhile raise "anti-immigration" card. All Republican candidates, with the exception for John McCain, have advocated for expelling 12 million illegal immigrants from the U.S. Meanwhile, John McCain holds that they should also be "given a way out" and because of his once-declined supporting rate, he later had to emphasize on reinforcing border management and law enforcement. It is precisely owing to this cause that more minority races voters have turned to support Democrat candidates.
The fifth point represents a "religion" card. Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor, has striven to quell persistent concern about his Mormon religion. If elected, he pledged to voters, he will only serve public interest instead of working for any religious sect. And former Arkansas governor Mike Huchabee, an ordained Baptist minister, however, appeal to evangelical voters, or social conservatives. So far, he has picked up a key endorsement from a group of African American church leaders. But he gets reproached for collecting votes in the name of religion, and much remains to see what role his religion is to further play in his race for presidency.
Finally, the newest point has something to do with an "economy card". At start, Democrats unfolded the card of troop pullout from Iraq. But when it was reported that situation there had turned to the better recently, the value of this card has lowered. Meanwhile, faced with daily growing worries for the possible economic recession, candidates of both Parties vie with each other to hoist the "economy" card. General speaking, Democrats candidates are in favor of increasing government expenses and subsidizing the impoverished people, whereas Republican contenders opt to cut tax rate or offer tax refunds.
Looking ahead, South Carolina, the first state with a major black electorate, is due to hold the Democrats' next contest on January 26. Polls so far predict that Barack Obama will readily win with a margin of five to six percent over Hillary Clinton, as the black communities there makes up somewhat half the voters, and so the contest is all the more worth seeing and observing. Likewise, Republican hopefuls are looking forward to primaries on Super Tuesday on February 5 to sort out their frontrunners, and so much remains to be seen on that day.
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John Wesley Powell and State Expansion
The concept of the welfare state edged into the American consciousness and into American institutions more through the scientific bureaus of government than by any other way, and more through the problems raised by the public domain than through any other problems, and more through the labors of John Wesley Powell than through any other man. In its origins it probably owes nothing to Marx, and it was certainly not the abominable invention of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Brain Trust. It began as public information and extended gradually into a degree of control and paternalism increased by every national crisis and every stemp of the increasing concentration of power in Washington. The welfare state was present in embryo in Joseph Henry's Weather Bureau in the eighteen-fifties. It moved a long step in the passage of what Henry Adams called America's "first modern act of legislation," when the King and Hayden Surveys were established in 1867. . . . it would assume almost its contemporary look in the trust-busting and conservation activities of Theodore Roosevelt at the dawn of the next century. But what Powell and the earlier Adams and Theodore Roosevelt thought of as the logical development of American society, especially in the West, was by no means universally palatable by 1890 -- or by 1953. It looked dangerous; it repealed the long habit of a wide-open continent; it recanted a faith.
-- Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West (Lincoln, Neb.: Bison Books, 1982 [orig. pub. 1953]), 334.
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Ellenton, South Carolina
IT - IS - HARD - TO
UNDERSTAND - WHY
OUR - TOWN - MUST
BE - DESTROYED - TO
MAKE - A - BOMB - THAT
WILL - DESTROY - SOMEONE
ELSE'S TOWN - THAT -THEY
LOVE - AS - MUCH - AS - WE - LOVE
OURS -- BUT - WE - FEEL - THAT
THEY - PICKED - NOT JUST
THE - BEST - SPOT - IN - THE - U.S.
BUT - IN - THE - WORLDWE LOVE THESE
DEAR - HEARTS
AND GENTLE PEOPLE
WHO LIVE
IN OUR
HOME TOWN
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