The case against George W. Bush

[TheOne]

'The case against George W. Bush'
Date: Sunday, August 01 @ 0929 EDT

By Ron Reagan, Esquire

It may have been the guy in the hood teetering on the stool, electrodes clamped to his genitals. Or smirking Lynndie England and her leash. Maybe it was the smarmy memos tapped out by soft-fingered lawyers itching to justify such barbarism. The grudging, lunatic retreat of the neocons from their long-standing assertion that Saddam was in cahoots with Osama didn't hurt. Even the Enron audiotapes and their celebration of craven sociopathy likely played a part. As a result of all these displays and countless smaller ones, you could feel, a couple of months back, as summer spread across the country, the ground shifting beneath your feet. Not unlike that scene in The Day After Tomorrow, then in theaters, in which the giant ice shelf splits asunder, this was more a paradigm shift than anything strictly tectonic. No cataclysmic ice age, admittedly, yet something was in the air, and people were inhaling deeply.

I began to get calls from friends whose parents had always voted Republican, "but not this time." There was the staid Zbigniew Brzezinski on the staid NewsHour with Jim Lehrer sneering at the "Orwellian language" flowing out of the Pentagon. Word spread through the usual channels that old hands from the days of Bush the Elder were quietly (but not too quietly) appalled by his son's misadventure in Iraq. Suddenly, everywhere you went, a surprising number of folks seemed to have had just about enough of what the Bush administration was dishing out. A fresh age appeared on the horizon, accompanied by the sound of scales falling from people's eyes. It felt something like a demonstration of that highest of American prerogatives and the most deeply cherished American freedom: dissent.

article

The hits just keep on coming...

 

[JIHADTHIS]

12 Anti Bush threads started in less 2 hours: $1.00
Quoting slanted news sources: $.12
Constantly refering to "un-named officials" $.14

Being a KoolAde drinking Troll: Priceless

 

[Annie]

12 Anti Bush threads started in less 2 hours: $1.00
Quoting slanted news sources: $.12
Constantly refering to "un-named officials" $.14

Being a KoolAde drinking Troll: Priceless

:teeth: :rotflmao: :rotflmao:

 

[tim_duncan2000]

But when Nobel laureates, a vast majority of the scientific community, and a host of current and former diplomats, intelligence operatives, and military officials line up against you, it becomes increasingly difficult to characterize the opposition as fringe wackos.

You could also find a lot of people like that who are for Bush. He wants to make it seem like Bush-supporters are a bunch of far-right wackos, but then he complains about Republicans doing the same. Hmmmmmmmm.

As Bush's former Treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, and his onetime "terror czar," Richard A. Clarke, have made clear, the president, with the enthusiastic encouragement of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, was contemplating action against Iraq from day one. "From the start, we were building the case against Hussein and looking at how we could take him out," O'Neill said. All they needed was an excuse. Clarke got the same impression from within the White House. Afghanistan had to be dealt with first; that's where the actual perpetrators were, after all. But the Taliban was a mere appetizer; Saddam was the entrée. (Or who knows? The soup course?) It was simply a matter of convincing the American public (and our representatives) that war was justified.

I don't give a shit what they said. They were disgruntled and had books coming out. A lot of the stuff in them contradicted stuff they had said earlier.

ALL THESE ASSERTIONS have proved to be baseless and, we've since discovered, were regarded with skepticism by experts at the time they were made. But contrary opinions were derided, ignored, or covered up in the rush to war. Even as of this writing, Dick Cheney clings to his mad assertion that Saddam was somehow at the nexus of a worldwide terror network.

Since the Senate and the House had access to this information about how the experts were skeptical, then they should have voted against the war. It also has been proven that Iraq had plenty of ties to terrorism. I know people will point to the BS headline about how there were no links to al Qaeda, but what else can you expect from the NYT.

Philip Shenon and Christopher Marquis take the front page for "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie; Describes A Wider Plot For 9/11," the first in a series of blame-Bush stories the Times files Thursday in the wake of the release of the 9-11 commission's report. Besides the flat-wrong headline (the panel did find Al Qaeda-Iraq ties), the story's very focus is cockeyed.

Although the commission issued two reports totaling 32 pages, the Times focuses almost all of its news gathering power to a few lines in the first report, on ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, to show how terribly wrong Bush was to link them.

The story overreaches from the opening: "The staff of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks sharply contradicted one of President Bush's central justifications for the Iraq war, reporting on Wednesday that there did not appear to have been a 'collaborative relationship' between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein."

http://www.timeswatch.org/articles/2004/0617.asp

And then there was Abu Ghraib. Our "war president" may have been justified in his assumption that Americans are a warrior people. He pushed the envelope in thinking we'd be content as an occupying power, but he was sadly mistaken if he thought that ordinary Americans would tolerate an image of themselves as torturers.

Of course, the media kept talking about this over and over and said little about what Saddam's regime did and the beheadings. And even when they did mention the beheadings, they would usually mention Abu Ghraib as their motivation as if that justified it.

And chances are your America and George W. Bush's America are not the same place. If you are dead center on the earning scale in real-world twenty-first-century America, you make a bit less than $32,000 a year, and $32,000 is not a sum that Mr. Bush has ever associated with getting by in his world.

And Kerry has? I don't even think that's right anyway.

Mr. Bush has never had to worry that he couldn't afford the best available health care for his children.

Again, and Kerry has? Hell, he and his wife could just buy the hospital.

When Mr. Bush talks about the economy, he is not talking about your economy. His economy is filled with pals called Kenny-boy who fly around in their own airplanes. In Bush's economy, his world, friends relocate offshore to avoid paying taxes. Taxes are for chumps like you. You are not a friend. You're the help.

Actually, the tax cuts helped many people. The much-maligned $200,000+ earners include many small business owners (yeah, those jerks. Jerks who hire millions of people).

I guess he also does not care about Kerry's lies about how horrible the economy is. He created his own misery index because the one they usually use would show that things are too good (sad when good economic news is considered bad news, but that's how it is with the Democrats).

But this administration seems to lie reflexively, as if it were simply the easiest option for busy folks with a lot on their minds. While the big lies are more damning and of immeasurably greater import to the nation, it is the small, unnecessary prevarications that may be diagnostic. Who lies when they don't have to? When the simple truth, though perhaps embarrassing in the short run, is nevertheless in one's long-term self-interest? Why would a president whose calling card is his alleged rock-solid integrity waste his chief asset for penny-ante stakes? Habit, perhaps. Or an inability to admit even small mistakes.

He just described the Clinton administration.

In June 2001, CIA director George Tenet sent Rice an intelligence report warning that "it is highly likely that a significant Al Qaeda attack is in the near future, within several weeks." Two intelligence briefings given to Bush in the summer of 2001 specifically connected Al Qaeda to the imminent danger of hijacked planes being used as weapons. According to The New York Times, after the second of these briefings, titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside United States," was delivered to the president at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, in August, Bush "broke off from work early and spent most of the day fishing." This was the briefing Dr. Rice dismissed as "historical" in her testimony before the 9/11 Commission.

They get threat warnings every day. Also, it's not like these warnings he speaks of mention specific targets and specific dates. I really don't know how they could have used this to prevent 9/11.

fiscal evangelicals who talk openly of doing away with Social Security and Medicare

What's his solution for these two things? Does he think the government needs to take care of this for everyone? I could see how some people would need it, but many other people don't and they receive it anyway.

Yet he has governed from the right wing of his already conservative party, assiduously tending a "base" that includes, along with the expected Fortune 500 fat cats

Kerry has a lot of money. So does Soros. What about all those rich celebs for Kerry?

That base also encompasses a healthy share of anti-choice zealots, homophobic bigots, and assorted purveyors of junk science.

Speaking of junk science, what about those embryonic stem cells? He makes it seem like we are "this close" to being able to cure every disease known to man with embryonic stem cells. We are not "this close" and he never mentions much about adult stem cells, which have shown a lot of promise..

Bush has tossed bones to all of them—"partial birth" abortion legislation

Yeah, we should protect the right to stab babies in the head and suck their brains out

Even after 9/11, were people really looking to be dragged into an optional war under false pretenses?

As I've said before, the Senate and the House had access to the same intelligence and they voted for war.

It's not that Mr. Bush necessarily shares their worldview; indeed, it's unclear whether he embraces any coherent philosophy.

Again, he's describing Kerry.

The Bush team cannot expect a cabal of right-wing justices to once again deliver the White House.

So now the Supreme Court is right wing? What a joke. Liberals say they are on their side when they make a decision that they like, but when they don't, they are right wingers.

We can embrace a lie, or we can restore a measure of integrity to our government.

Who are you describing? I know it's not Kerry.

We can choose, as a bumper sticker I spotted in Seattle put it, SOMEONE ELSE FOR PRESIDENT.

That's a great attitude to have. Vote on someone because of who they are not rather than who they are.

 

[Annie]

My you're on a roll today!

 

[Arizona Liberal]

Good to have you here, TheOne

 

[Annie]

Good to have you here, TheOne

Welcome AZ LIB

 

[nycflasher]

12 Anti Bush threads started in less 2 hours: $1.00
Quoting slanted news sources: $.12
Constantly refering to "un-named officials" $.14

Being a KoolAde drinking Troll: Priceless

Who are you referring to, Ron Reagan?

 

[JIHADTHIS]

Who are you referring to, Ron Reagan?

TheOne.

 

[nycflasher]

TheOne.

ah

 

[Moi]

article

The hits just keep on coming...

what hits? the hits of a boy so jealous of his parents' relationship that he effectively has no idea who and what they were? A boy, who so early in his life, tried everything to get his parents attention by acting out?

Ron Reagan is nothing in the lexicon of our country. He started that way, he's still that way and my guess is he'll end that way. He's a boy born of privledge that is bucking the system and is obviously so grief stricken about his poor relationship with his father that he's acting out as best he can.

President Bush did not commit those torturous acts...soldiers did. Soldiers that had a choice to act like humans and chose not to. They were not following orders and they were not given a directive by the President, Rumsfeld or whomever little goblin Ron Reagan dreamt up to commit those acts. They have their own mind body and souls (for those that believe in such things). They CHOSE to perform those acts. They will pay the consequences.

Ron Reagan may have some valid points to make about certain observations he's made but please spare me the theatrics of "hits".

 

[musicman]

Thanks to decades of trembling, trouser-soaked foreign policy, the Soviet Union, as viewed by President Reagan in 1981, was infinitely stronger, bolder, and more dangerous than it was in 1962. Yet, he calmly, clearly denounced it as the "Evil Empire" and set about the task of toppling it . He certainly got no help from the left, who squealed on cue, every step of the way, about "this dangerous demagogue" ( perhaps, a more balanced view of history will someday expose the sheer treachery of Jim Wright, and the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives - but, that's for another discussion). Hollywood did it's dutiful part, with fear-mongering trash like, "The Day After Tomorrow" - designed to break America's resolve at the critical hour. It didn't work, and President Reagan was able to finish the job he started.

How interesting that Ron Reagan should now use that film to help illustrate that, when it came to the man his father essentially was, little Ron completely missed the point.

 

[TheOne]

Thanks to decades of trembling, trouser-soaked foreign policy, the Soviet Union, as viewed by President Reagan in 1981, was infinitely stronger, bolder, and more dangerous than it was in 1962. Yet, he calmly, clearly denounced it as the "Evil Empire" and set about the task of toppling it . He certainly got no help from the left, who squealed on cue, every step of the way, about "this dangerous demagogue" ( perhaps, a more balanced view of history will someday expose the sheer treachery of Jim Wright, and the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives - but, that's for another discussion). Hollywood did it's dutiful part, with fear-mongering trash like, "The Day After Tomorrow" - designed to break America's resolve at the critical hour. It didn't work, and President Reagan was able to finish the job he started.

How interesting that Ron Reagan should now use that film to help illustrate that, when it came to the man his father essentially was, little Ron completely missed the point.

Little known fact. Reagan extended the Cold War.

-snip-

Arbatov understood all too well the failings of Soviet totalitarianism in comparison to the economy and politics of the West. It is clear from this candid and nuanced memoir that the movement for change had been developing steadily inside the highest corridors of power ever since the death of Stalin. Arbatov not only provides considerable evidence for the controversial notion that this change would have come about without foreign pressure, he insists that the U.S. military buildup during the Reagan years actually impeded this development.

George F. Kennan agrees. The former US ambassador to the Soviet Union, and father of the theory of "containment" of the same country, asserts that "the suggestion that any United States administration had the power to influence decisively the course of a tremendous domestic political upheaval in another great country on another side of the globe is simply childish." He contends that the extreme militarization of American policy strengthened hard-liners in the Soviet Union. "Thus the general effect of Cold War extremism was to delay rather than hasten the great change that overtook the Soviet Union."

Though the arms-race spending undoubtedly damaged the fabric of the Soviet civilian economy and society even more than it did in the United States, this had been going on for 40 years by the time Mikhail Gorbachev came to power without the slightest hint of impending doom. Gorbachev's close adviser, Aleksandr Yakovlev, when asked whether the Reagan administration's higher military spending, combined with its "Evil Empire" rhetoric, forced the Soviet Union into a more conciliatory position, responded:

It played no role. None. I can tell you that with the fullest responsibility. Gorbachev and I were ready for changes in our policy regardless of whether the American president was Reagan, or Kennedy, or someone even more liberal. It was clear that our military spending was enormous and we had to reduce it.

-snip-

article

 

[Annie]

Hell no, they woke up one morning and decided to break up the USSR for fun!

Though the arms-race spending undoubtedly damaged the fabric of the Soviet civilian economy and society even more than it did in the United States, this had been going on for 40 years by the time Mikhail Gorbachev came to power without the slightest hint of impending doom. Gorbachev's close adviser, Aleksandr Yakovlev, when asked whether the Reagan administration's higher military spending, combined with its "Evil Empire" rhetoric, forced the Soviet Union into a more conciliatory position, responded:

It played no role. None. I can tell you that with the fullest responsibility. Gorbachev and I were ready for changes in our policy regardless of whether the American president was Reagan, or Kennedy, or someone even more liberal. It was clear that our military spending was enormous and we had to reduce it.

 

[musicman]

The One:

Righto. And we had Soviet expansionism in Central America as proof of their benign intentions.