More WARRING from bush??!!!:-(

[MMMike]

Re: RE: More WARRING from bush??!!!:-(

I'm sure there was a time when Bush would have been assassinated.

Oh great, now you've go Secret Service and CIA crawling all over this site!

 

[Reverend Blair]

RE: More WARRING from bus

They would have been here anyway, MMMike. These are the guys who harrass school kids for completing their Civics homework, after all.

 

[missile]

I don't know about killing the man,but I bet there have been numerous attempts on his life[ and all of them have been covered up by the govt]

 

[jimmoyer]

Man you all sound as jocular as Pat Robertson.

No better, and all said in the same spirit, for if it were to happen, what behavior of yours would there be ?

A shrug?

Good riddens, eh?

Oh?

You're different from Pat Robertson ?

 

[Reverend Blair]

RE: More WARRING from bus

Well, Jimmy, Pat Robertson was calling for the assassination of a man who has not attacked any notion outside of his own. Bush illegally attacked Iraq, killing perhaps 100,000 women and children.

 

[jimmoyer]

I don't see this whole thread doing anything differently than what Pat Robertson's stupid remark did.

 

[jimmoyer]

I don't see this whole thread doing anything differently than what Pat Robertson's stupid remark did.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

A Snake Oil President
Timothy Karr
October 11, 2005


Timothy Karr is the campaign director of Free Press ( www.freepress.net).

Treating policy as product to be marketed to the electorate is no great stretch for a president who fashions himself the CEO of White House Inc. But in its zeal to promote sales of the Bush brand, this administration has crossed the line that separates honest brokers from snake oil salesmen.

Bush and company sold Americans defective goods in clear violation of federal law. Yet Attorney General Alberto Gonzales hasn’t budged. Instead, the man charged with enforcing our laws has tasked his army of lawyers to throw a legal shield around the White House, telling the administration to ignore investigations by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which repeatedly has blasted Team Bush for using taxpayer money to fund “covert propaganda.”

In its latest report, issued on Sept. 30, the GAO’s federal auditors scolded the White House for squandering American tax dollars to hire fake news reporters and unleash a pre-packaged new blitz in advance of the 2004 elections. The GAO found the White House violated the law by hiring pundit Armstrong Williams to shower praise on Bush’s education initiative, the No Child Left Behind Act, while interviewing administration officials on the air.

The GAO also uncovered a previously undisclosed case in which the Education Department commissioned an article carried by several newspapers that extolled the administration’s role in promoting science education. Readers were not informed of the government’s role in the writing of the article.

The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 forbids the domestic dissemination of government-authored propaganda or "official news" deliberately designed to influence public opinion or policy. The law singles out materials that serve "a solely partisan purpose." The GAO has now found on at least four separate occasions that administration agencies violated this and other federal restrictions when they disseminated news written by the government or its contractors without disclosing the conflict of interest.

In 2003, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy produced for local newscasts eight “video news releases” that praised Bush’s plan for preventing teen drug use. They were beamed into more than 22 million households via nearly 300 local television stations. Around the same time, the Department of Health and Human Services contracted PR industry professional Karen Ryan to pose as a local news reporter giving the administration’s Medicare plan “an A-plus.” The resulting fake news segment was broadcast by more than 40 local newscasts. In both cases, these video news releases broke the law by not disclosing the government as their source.

It’s more than likely that the White House has set other propaganda efforts loose in the media mainstream. We just don’t know about them yet. A January report by members of the House Committee on Government Reform noted that this administration has set aside a quarter billion in taxpayer dollars for similar propaganda efforts—spending money on PR at four times the rate of any previous administration.

While the evidence is damning, the GAO lacks the enforcement powers to reveal the full extent of the abuse. The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel has final say over executive branch legal matters. And GAO and Justice have not seen eye to eye on covert propaganda in the past, specifically on the issue of unidentified video news releases.

Justice says that all the government’s publicity is legal, because they have been fact-based. DOJ advised executive agencies that they could ignore the GAO since the legal prohibition on propaganda does not apply to government-made television news segments that are "factual, politically neutral and useful to viewers."

The GAO’s most recent investigation correctly shot down that sophistry, saying that pre-packaged government news is inherently false because "the essential fact of attribution is missing."

The ball is now back in Gonzales’ court. If the White House indeed broke the law, it is incumbent upon DOJ to prosecute the crimes. Without legal action, an emboldened White House will continue to throw up obstacles to full disclosure and create propaganda that pushes Bush’s political bromides on unsuspecting viewers.

It’s been left to the public to do what our elected and appointed officials are unwilling or unable to: pressure our government to stop propaganda. Earlier this month, Free Press unleashed a public campaign to do just that. In less than a week, nearly 35,000 concerned citizens have signed letters to Congress and the Justice Department, urging Gonzales “to prosecute these crimes to the fullest extent of the law.” (To learn more, visit www.freepress.net.)

Justice should never be delivered by popular fiat—but it’s essential that our elected officials and their appointees understand that the public is watching. As more evidence comes into view, we're able to assemble a case against an administration that has gone too far, involving a systemic and quiet campaign to manipulate the Fourth Estate and sway the electorate in favor of presidential policies.

Chances are that this corporate-styled White House will continue to employ the tactics of PR and marketing firms—television advertising, product placement and media blitzes—to pitch them to the public. But if Bush’s sagging approval rating is any guide, Americans are no longer buying.

 

[jimmoyer]

C'mon. That article is ridiculously naive and childish.

You should read how our 2nd President John Adams fought Thomas Jefferson on getting two reporters to tell lies about him.

Man, if you think you can control in some righteous sterile manner the wild and wooly world of politics and its intention to influence us voters then perhaps you are too good for this messy world.

Let us emphasize personal responsibility in growing up and understanding this.

We are intelligent people and our autocratic impulse to control our leaders like representative sterile robots must be seriously questioned.

The more you control and regulate the more you will realize a quagmire that causes our leaders to move about in chains and make them more slippery, less responsible, and less brave to confront the illusions we voters hold.

For example the myriad campaign finance laws would trip up an honest person like you especially if you lacked competence in managing every little detail that could ensnare you by a media press bent on smearing any brave idiotic soul that dares run for office.


Obviously this ham-handed attempt by the Bush administration did not fool you and even if that fake reporter (not too much different from real ones, like our young good looking news anchors) was not exposed, you wouldn't bought in to a political administration's attempt to influence you anyway.

N'est pas ?

 

[Ocean Breeze]

That article is ridiculously naive and childish.

IS it?? Granted . the style of writing is less than sophisticated.......but it seems to carry the essential points. Keeping it within simple perimeters sometimes carries the most punch....

But can one truly argue the substance of the article??? And how?? in the present context of things??

 

[jimmoyer]

Technically such ham-handed efforts at influencing the public are not illegal, just as most vitamin companies' promises are taken out of context and not proven.

And that last effort at influence involves something you eat.

So this effort at influencing you is not illegal.

It should be exposed. But it's not illegal.

Yawn.

 

[Reverend Blair]

I don't see this whole thread doing anything differently than what Pat Robertson's stupid remark did.

As far as I know, the posters on this board do not have the kind of political influence that Robertson does. Not only does Robertson have a huge and mentally deficient following, but he has the ear of your mentally deficient president as well.

We do not.

 

[Ocean Breeze]

N'est pas ?

non..

 

[Ocean Breeze]

Bush's Latest Iraq War Lies
By Robert Parry
October 16, 2005


With his earlier war rationales shattered, George W. Bush now says the Iraq War must be continued indefinitely because of the presence of foreign Islamic fighters – even though they are estimated to represent only a tiny fraction of the Iraqi insurgency and might well quit the struggle if U.S. troops were to leave Iraq.

In an Oct. 6 speech aimed at rallying U.S. public support for the Iraq War, Bush painted a harrowing picture of the consequences that would follow an American withdrawal. Bush warned of “a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia” and the strategic isolation of the United States.

Bush’s alarmist vision, however, clashes with both recent intelligence assessments on the significance of foreign fighters to the Iraq War and fears expressed in an intercepted letter purportedly written by al-Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman Zawahiri to al-Qaeda’s chief in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi.

The “Zawahiri letter” cautions that an American withdrawal might prompt the “mujahedeen” in Iraq to “lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal.” To avert this military collapse, the letter calls for selling these foreign fighters on a broader vision of an Islamic “caliphate” in the Middle East, although nothing nearly as expansive as the global empire that Bush depicted.

But the “Zawahiri letter” indicates that even this more modest “caliphate” is just an “idea” that he mentioned “only to stress … that the mujahedeen must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq.”

In other words, assuming U.S. intelligence is correct that the letter was written by Zawahiri, al-Qaeda sees promoting the dream of an unlikely “caliphate” as a needed sales pitch to keep the jihadists from simply returning to their everyday lives once the Americans depart Iraq.

Exaggerated Threat

Bush also appears to be exaggerating the significance of the foreign fighters.

Though their spectacular suicide bombings have garnered headlines and killed hundreds of Iraqis, recent intelligence assessments put the size of this foreign jihadist force at only a few thousand, or around 5 percent of the overall Iraqi insurgency.

A recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a conservative Washington-based think tank, said the number of foreign fighters is “well below 10 percent, and may well be closer to 4 percent to 6 percent.” [See CSIS’s “Saudi Militants in Iraq,” Sept. 19, 2005]

A former U.S. official with access to intelligence on the Iraqi insurgency cited similar numbers in an interview with the New York Times, estimating that 95 percent of the insurgents are Iraqis.

The former official added that U.S. military officers returning from Iraq have complained that “the senior commanders are obsessed with the foreign fighters because they are easier to deal with. … It’s easier to blame foreign fighters instead of developing new counterinsurgency strategies.” [NYT, Oct. 15, 2005]

There is also the historical fact that Muslim nations have succeeded, again and again, in suppressing Islamic radical movements as long as Western powers have not gotten too directly involved.

In his Oct. 6 speech, Bush inadvertently underscored this point when he noted that “over the past few decades, radicals have specifically targeted Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and Jordan for potential takeover.” Algeria also faced a radical Islamic threat.

But the bottom line to all these cases is that the radicals were defeated, explaining why so many of al-Qaeda’s leaders are exiles. Osama bin-Laden is a Saudi; Zawahiri is an Egyptian; Zarqawi is a Jordanian. In the late 1990s, bin-Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders were even banished from the Sudan, forcing them to flee to remote Afghanistan.

Policy Shift?

This history also suggests that a policy shift in which U.S. and British forces withdraw from Iraq might not be nearly as catastrophic as Bush suggests.

Indeed, by removing the chief lure for foreign suicide-bombers – the American and British troops – the Iraqis themselves might have a much easier time eliminating Zarqawi’s depleted forces.

Many in Iraq’s Sunni minority have tolerated the bloody presence of the foreign jihadists only because they share mutual enemies in the Americans and the Shiite majority. If the Americans were gone and many of Zarqawi’s fighters left, too (as the “Zawahiri letter” fears), the Sunnis would find Zarqawi of little continued use.

Indeed, some critics of the Iraq War see a twisted symbiotic relationship between Bush’s policies and al-Qaeda’s interests, with Bush using the memory of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks to justify the continued U.S. presence in Iraq and al-Qaeda citing the U.S. occupation of Iraq as a way to recruit thousands of new jihadists. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Is Bush al-Qaeda’s ‘Useful Idiot?’”]

Without doubt, Bush has found it to his political advantage to play up the al-Qaeda connection in Iraq and downplay the indigenous aspects of the Iraqi insurgency.

By blurring the lines between an insurgency, led largely by Iraqi Sunnis, and the presence of a relatively small al-Qaeda contingent, Bush has persuaded many Americans to see Iraq through his prism of choice: as the most important front in the global War on Terror.

This strategy is similar to the Bush administration’s pre-war success in linking Iraq’s secular dictator Saddam Hussein with the Islamic fundamentalists who make up the core of al-Qaeda – even though the two sides were bitter enemies within the Arab world.

Counting on the lack of U.S. sophistication about the intricacies of Middle East politics, Bush convinced large numbers of Americans – a majority in some polls – that Hussein was somehow behind the Sept. 11 attacks. This supposed linkage to al-Qaeda, in turn, made Bush’s claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction far more powerful.

Since the March 2003 invasion, however, Bush’s pre-war case has collapsed. No WMD stockpiles were discovered and the supposed evidence of an al-Qaeda link evaporated. Even some of the biggest promoters of the case for an invasion have acknowledged that the earlier assertions were wrong.

“We are heroes in error,” influential Iraqi dissident Ahmad Chalabi said almost a year after the invasion. “As far as we’re concerned we’ve been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We’re ready to fall on our swords if he wants.” [London Telegraph, Feb. 19, 2004]

New Rationales

Instead, Bush brushed aside the discredited rationales and moved on to new ones. The president reprised his case for continuing the U.S. military operation in Iraq in his Oct. 6 address, arguing that failure to “stay the course” would give the Islamic terrorists a base to build a global empire and corner the United States.

“With greater economic and military and political power, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people, and to blackmail our government into isolation,” Bush said.

Instead of heeding advice that a phased U.S. withdrawal might defuse the conflict in Iraq and deny al-Qaeda a key recruiting tool, Bush declared, “We will never back down, never give in, and never accept anything less than complete victory.”

In effect, Bush appears to have latched onto this exaggerated threat of the foreign jihadists in Iraq as his new justification for continuing the military policies that he initially justified by exaggerating the threat from Saddam Hussein.

Rather than encouraging a precise analysis of what’s behind the Sunni-led insurgency, Bush has opted for comparisons that liken the danger from Islamic radicals to the threats posed by Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.

Yet, a close reading of the “Zawihiri letter” – as posted at the Web site of the U.S. director of national intelligence John Negroponte – reveals al-Qaeda to be a movement struggling with financial crises and lacking even a reliable means to get its messages out. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “‘Al-Qaeda Letter’ Belies Bush’s Iraq Claims.”]

Viewed from the perspective of this al-Qaeda weakness – and from the evidence that the Iraq War is overwhelmingly an indigenous struggle – Bush’s new arguments look like they may be just the latest in a long string of Iraq lies and distortions.

Seems that all little men in history and the present follow the same path.........WAR on others, to inflate their own sense of importance and power. And there is NO doubt that bush LOVES war.......and the power that "war " gives him. Patterns repeat themselves even though "we" should be the wiser by now. Meanwhile.......people are dying, country is being devestated.......and all "we" hear are more sick lies. What WAS a civilized nation (US) has regressed to the barbarism of the physical fight based on power/greed. ......the basic ugliness of mankind. May each Iraqi death be on the conscience of each American. THe US has killed a heck of a lot more people than the terrorists have.......and still going strong. When will the US learn that killing is not the solution??? It is what the likes of terrorists,criminals, and psychopaths do.......not a supposedly civilized nation.