We Needed A Big Gas Tax

Hank wrote:
> Michael Johnson, PE wrote:
>
>>Hank wrote:
>
>
>>> The voices of the radical extremists in your "mind"
>>>are heard only by you. <chuckle>
>
>
>>Yeah, I'm a real radical.
>
>
> No doubt. Anyone who can support doing this
>
> http://www.robert-fisk.com/iraqwarvictims_mar2003.htm
>
> to innocent children, in violation of international
> law, and blindly swallow all of bu$h's blatant, moronic
> lies, is not only radical and extreme, but rather
> gullible and short sighted.

did you conveniently forget about all those children that watched their
fathers shot and mothers raped by Saddam's henchmen? You are pathetic.
You don't want to address the mass graves do you? Doesn't fit your
Bush hating mantra. There's that nasty old truth getting in the way a a
good Bush hating session. It must suck to be you.

>>How many would Saddam have killed in the last two years if
>>he were still in power? Maybe 500,000 or more?
>
>
> It's kinda funny to watch you pull random numbers out of your
> ass as though they actually mean something. <g> Fact is, when
> your buddy Saddam was using his Reagan/bu$h supplied chemical
> weapons to murder innocent women and children, the Reagan/bu$h
> regime obstructed all efforts to condemn his atrocities, and rushed
> to his defense. Saddam was their good friend and ally.

I see, in the liberal handbook it is OK to mass murder as long as the
weapons used are made in the good old USA? I'm sure he used some from
the French and Russians among others. You don't want to acknowledge the
number of people annually murdered in Iraq under Saddam because it makes
your arguments look quite lame and retarded.

>> I see you're now on the "America is the REAL Terrorist
>>State" mantra.
>
>
> LOL! Your worship of bu$h is so overwhelming that your
> actually "think" he's America. That's pitifully amusing,
> Mike. <g> bu$h is a liar, a thief, a mass murderer, a war
> criminal, and a terrorist who's cut from the same cloth
> as other violent extremists such as Hitler or Hussein. But
> bu$h does not represent the values of most U.S citizens, as
> we are opposed to his lies, theft, and terrorism. bu$h is
> doing more damage to our Country than any terrorist could have
> hoped for. He's selling our Country to Communist China, abusing
> and devastating our armed forces (from which he went AWOL),
> exporting our jobs, ripping off the middle class, and raping
> our environment. The fact that you blindly and rabidly support
> his tragic anti-American policies, his lies, and his terrorism
> is quite telling.

Where were you when Clinton and Gore was selling off America to the
Chinese? I see you don't require logic, truth or consistency to depend
your lame, retarded statements.

>>I guess the next mantra will be "Saddam was Really a Kind
>>Hearted, Mass Murdering Dictator"?
>
>
> That was certainly the Reagan/bu$h take on him. Why else
> would they give him $5 billion U.S. taxpayer dollars,
> sell him WMD technology, and rush to his defense when the
> rest of the world was condemning his atrocities?

Ever heard the phrase, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend"? Probably not.

>>> Repeating the silly lie that the radical extremists
>>>who support bu$h's war crimes and terrorism represent
>>>the majority, only makes you look like a fool, and it
>>>won't change the facts. Your anti American lies will be
>>>continue to be exposed.
>
>
>>Last time I checked Bush won a second term. I think in a
>>two person race that means he received a majority of the votes.
>
>
> Unlike you, however, many people have the ability to
> think and learn. They no longer support his disastrous
> polices, war crimes, and terrorism - and bu$h's approval
> rating is at a record low. Do try to keep up. <chuckle>

Repeat that again but this time click your heels together three times
too. Then what you type just might be the truth.

>>I'm a real hate filled person.
>
>
> It takes a lot of hate to support this level of terrorism
> and suffering -
>
> http://www.robert-fisk.com/iraqwarvictims_mar2003.htm
>
> - especially when it's done in violation of international
> law, based on lies, and motivated by greed. You're much
> like the al Qaeda extremists who murder women and children,
> only you prefer to stay thousands of miles away from danger,
> and let 18 year old kids do your killing for you.

You and your cronies are the real haters. You hate Bush, America and
damn near anything that is good and right. Your goal is to tear down
the country and turn it into a cesspool where we all rely on the
government for everything. Most people know this, fortunately.

>>>>Well, I guess based on the outcome of the last election we have at
>>>>least 51% of the population meeting the above description.
>
>
>>> I see your math is as weak as your knowledge of the
>>>facts. 51% percent of voters is clearly not 51% of
>>>the population. Are you really that clueless, or are
>>>you being deliberately dishonest?
>
>
>>I guess all those Bush haters had better things to do on
>>election day?
>
>
> Are you able to comprehend that 51% of the voters is not
> 51% of the population, or is that also beyond your "thinking"
> ability?

Evidently you are too stupid to know that 51% of the VOTERS in any
election is all that counts.

>>> Nah, if it was bull****, you'd be able to refute it,
>>>rather than just mindlessly cry about it.
>>> Seems like the fact that your values and beliefs are
>>>"supported" primarily by lies, ignorance, and hate,
>>>while those you so rabidly attack are supported by truth,
>>>integirty, and facts, would tell you something.....
>
>
>>Believe me,
>
>
> That would be rather foolish considering your record
> of spewing utter nonsense and parroting the moronic
> lies of a deceitful war criminal/terrorist.

No parroting done by me. You're the one that appears to not have an
original thought. You just retype the same BS response after response.
It makes you look a dullard.

>>if it was in your response it was bull****.
>
>
> But for obvious reasons, when challenged to quote something -
> =anything= inaccurate from that list of 40 bu$h lies, you
> come undone and start your predictable whining and crying.
> One thing all of you bu$h apologists have in common is your
> aversion to truth, facts, and details. You scurry away from
> a challenge to address the facts like a cockroach from
> insecticide.
> There are 40 bu$h lies in the list below Mike. Are you saying
> that you're helplessly unable to explain even =one= of them?
> That's kinda pitiful doncha "think". <chuckle>

You post the same drivel in every response. It is just the same
liberal, Bush/America hating BS that your side drools everyday. If it
was worth listening to then a liberal would be residing in the White
House. Now why don't you booger off or are you going to post another
round of Bush/America hating propaganda?

On Fri, 02 Sep 2005 07:25:42 -0400, Hank >
wrote:


> Obviously, you're defending the current system, and you
>think it's fair. It isn't. For one thing, your income figure
>is for adjusted gross income. If you knew the tax system you'd
>know that AGI is far less than actual income, and the gap
>between actual income and AGI widens as incomes increase. The
>elite have tax deductions that would make your head spin. Hell,
>I deduct over $25K from my income as depreciation, even though
>it's not an out of pocket expense - in fact, the value of my
>rental properties increases over time. And that's just a damp
>spot in the bucket compared to the deductions of the elite few.
>They deduct interest on their million dollar vacation homes,
>"business" vacations, the cost of their private jets, etc..
>Look at the tax breaks a billionaire can get for owning a yacht:

So, what you're saying is that even though your property is
appreciating you still take a depreciating deduction on your taxes.
Hmmm. Sounds like you're stealing money out of my pocket that I
wouldn't necessarily have to pay the government if you were paying
your fair share. I think you should practice what you are preaching.
You are just as bad as every body who doesn't think like you.

All that you have written and/or copied has had a decidedly socialist
flavor to it. You know, from those who can afford it to those that
can't. Or redistribution of weath. What's it like to be a part of
the new communist party?

This country wasn't built on the precepts of taking from the rich and
giving to the poor. Charity is a good thing, but not when it is
forced upon you. It's called extortion or stealing at that point. So
Hank, why do you want to steal more money out of my pocket?

...Ron
--
68' Camaro RS
88' Firebird Formula
00' Mustang GT Vert

On Sun, 04 Sep 2005 18:15:19 -0500,
(Brent P) wrote:

>In article >, Hank wrote:
>> Brent P wrote:
>>> In article >, Hank wrote:
>>
>>> > Obviously, you're defending the current system,
>>> > and you think it's fair.
>>
>>> I wrote nothing of the sort.
>>
>> So, when you wrote:
>> "Could you point out what isn't fair here and in which
>> direction?"
>> You meant, "It's so obvious that the current system
>> is unfair, that no one should need it pointed out to
>> them." You have a strange way of expressing yourself.
>
>No, I meant: Could you point out what isn't fair here and in which direction?
>I asked you to clairify your views. You still haven't. What's unfair
>about about the share of taxes paid by the top 5%? And in what direction?
>
>>> > They deduct interest on their million dollar vacation homes,
>>> > "business" vacations, the cost of their private jets, etc..
>>> > Look at the tax breaks a billionaire can get for owning a yacht:
>
>>> I know they do. It's sick. But then again, the elites, democrat and
>>> republican alike make the rules. Do you think John Kerry is going to
>>> increase his taxes to help 'the poor'? Of course not. He'll increase
>>> mine.
>
>> Democrats =strongly= opposed bu$h's tax cuts for the
>> elite at the expense of the working class. There may not
>> be a world of difference between the dems and reps, but
>> there's enough to make a huge difference in our lives...
>
>Their 'opposition' is simply drama for our consumption. They play the
>role of being for the "working man" when they themselves are bunch of
>rich people who are making a complex tax code that punishes ordinary
>folks just trying to get ahead and allows them, who can afford to play
>all the games and loopholes to not pay taxes. The republicans play them
>too, but the republicans use a different set of excuses to sell it to us.

Darn if that doesn't sound like the description of a union
leader......
>
>That aside, the last I saw the tax cuts on a percentage basis were pretty
>fair across the board for those who pay taxes. But the democrats want to
>make me feel it's unfair that 2% of what I pay in taxes is a much smaller
>dollar amount than 2% of what someone else pays in taxes. Sorry, I
>understand math too well to feel that to be unfair.

It would seem that if you and Bill gates each paid 2% YOU would
actually be paying a higher amount of your "disposable income". Gates
would pay a higher dollar figure, but would have far more left over to
pay for planes and trains and whatever other toys he might want.

Spike
1965 Ford Mustang fastback 2+2 A Code 289 C4 Trac-Lok
Vintage Burgundy w/Black Standard Interior; Vintage 40
16" rims w/BF Goodrich Comp T/A gForce Radial
225/50ZR16 KDWS skins; surround sound audio-video.

Gad what fools these morons be....
Children are obscene but should not be heard
Give me a peperoni pizza... or give me a calzone!

In article >, Spike wrote:

> It would seem that if you and Bill gates each paid 2% YOU would
> actually be paying a higher amount of your "disposable income". Gates
> would pay a higher dollar figure, but would have far more left over to
> pay for planes and trains and whatever other toys he might want.

I was refering to the reduction in taxes. Not a flat tax. For instance,
assume everyone pays 2% less after a tax cut. If I payed $10,000 in taxes
before, I pay 9,800 after. Someone else who paid $50,000 before, pays
49000 after.

The problem I have is more with how some people get their money by
playing dirty.

I see said the blind man as he was introduced to the fine lady by
Braille..... ; 0 ) Sorry, I must have dropped back from the Twilight
Zone, and right into the middle of the topic.

Playing dirty? Seems like that would be up for interpretation. What
one might consider right and normal, another would consider unjust.

Look at the Martha Stewart's and the dot com heads who felt they did
nothing wrong.... or the Jim and Tammy Faye types with their air
conditioned dog houses, fleet of Rolls Royce cars, and gold bathroom
fixtures. They believed they were doing right. It would seem that only
a professional thief might think they got their money by dirty
methods.

On Mon, 05 Sep 2005 20:22:28 -0500,
(Brent P) wrote:

>In article >, Spike wrote:
>
>> It would seem that if you and Bill gates each paid 2% YOU would
>> actually be paying a higher amount of your "disposable income". Gates
>> would pay a higher dollar figure, but would have far more left over to
>> pay for planes and trains and whatever other toys he might want.
>
>I was refering to the reduction in taxes. Not a flat tax. For instance,
>assume everyone pays 2% less after a tax cut. If I payed $10,000 in taxes
>before, I pay 9,800 after. Someone else who paid $50,000 before, pays
>49000 after.
>
>The problem I have is more with how some people get their money by
>playing dirty.

Spike
1965 Ford Mustang fastback 2+2 A Code 289 C4 Trac-Lok
Vintage Burgundy w/Black Standard Interior; Vintage 40
16" rims w/BF Goodrich Comp T/A gForce Radial
225/50ZR16 KDWS skins; surround sound audio-video.

Gad what fools these morons be....
Children are obscene but should not be heard
Give me a peperoni pizza... or give me a calzone!

Brent P wrote:
> In article >, Hank wrote:

>> So, when you wrote:
>> "Could you point out what isn't fair here and in which
>>direction?"
>> You meant: "It's so obvious that the current system
>>is unfair, that no one should need it pointed out to
>>them." You have a strange way of expressing yourself.

> No, I meant: Could you point out what isn't fair here and
> in which direction? I asked you to clairify your views.
> You still haven't.

Wow, your memory is shot. I clarified and supported my views
very clearly, giving specific examples of tax loopholes that
favor the elite. I also included this link...

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/198998_boats10.html

....which explains some of deductions for yacht owners.
You replied to that post and stated, "I know they do.
It's sick." Remember?
So, you agree that the current system is so unfair that
it's sick, yet you're still asking for proof that it's
unfair. You're not making any sense at all, and you're
blatantly contradicting yourself. Come back to the
discussion when you're able to express your opinions
coherently...


-

Ever wonder who benefits from the 150 MILLION
U.S. taxpayer dollars spent each DAY in Iraq?
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0223-08.htm
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=21

http://www.commondreams.org/
http://www.truthout.org/
http://www.prohibitioncosts.org/
http://thirdworldtraveler.com/
http://counterpunch.org/
http://responsiblewealth.org/


"They are waging a campaign of murder and destruction. And
there is no limit to the innocent lives they are willing to
take... men with blind hatred and armed with lethal weapons
who are capable of any atrocity... they respect no laws of
warfare or morality."
-bu$h describing his own illegal invasion of Iraq.
http://www.robert-fisk.com/iraqwarvictims_mar2003.htm

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things
that matter." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

"God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them. And then
he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did."
-- George W. Bush

"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the
will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the
Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."
-- Adolf Hitler

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President,
or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is
not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable
to the American public."
-- Theodore Roosevelt (1918)

Don't let bu$h do to the United States what his very close
friend and top campaign contributor, Ken Lay, did to Enron...

Michael Johnson, PE wrote:
> Hank wrote:
>> Michael Johnson, PE wrote:

>>> Yeah, I'm a real radical.

>> No doubt. Anyone who can support doing this

>> http://www.robert-fisk.com/iraqwarvictims_mar2003.htm

>> to innocent children, in violation of international
>> law, and blindly swallow all of bu$h's blatant, moronic
>> lies, is not only radical and extreme, but rather
>> gullible and short sighted.

> did you conveniently forget about all those children that
> watched their fathers shot and mothers raped by Saddam's
> henchmen?

Not at all. In fact, Liberals condemned the Reagan/bu$h
regime for selling WMD technology to their good friend and
ally, Saddam, for obstructing all efforts to condemn his
atrocities, and for giving him billions of U.S. tax payer
dollars to buy and build even more weapons. Remember? Do
try to keep up.
Also, if you "think" it's okay for our government to
terrorize and mass murder innocent women and children
simply because your old crony Saddam did it, you're even
more of an extremist whack job than I'd imagined.

>>> How many would Saddam have killed in the last two years
>>> if he were still in power? Maybe 500,000 or more?

>> It's kinda funny to watch you pull random numbers out of your
>> ass as though they actually mean something. <g> Fact is, when
>> your buddy Saddam was using his Reagan/bu$h supplied chemical
>> weapons to murder innocent women and children, the Reagan/bu$h
>> regime obstructed all efforts to condemn his atrocities, and rushed
>> to his defense. Saddam was their good friend and ally.

> I see, in the liberal handbook it is OK to mass murder as long
> as the weapons used are made in the good old USA?

WTF? Obviously, it was quite okay with the Reagan/bu$h
regime and it's ignorant, gullible followers, but it was
never okay with those of us who value human rights and
freedom - namely Liberals.
You seem to have great difficulty comprehending what you
read, although that does help to explain your blind and
rabid support for the anti American war criminals, torturers,
terrorists, liars, thieves, and dictator supporting misfits
on the bu$h regime...

>> But bu$h does not represent the values of most U.S citizens, as we are
>> opposed to his lies, theft, and terrorism. bu$h is doing more damage
>> to our Country than any terrorist could have hoped for. He's selling
>> our Country to Communist China, abusing and devastating our armed
>> forces (from which he went AWOL), exporting our jobs, ripping off the
>> middle class, and raping our environment. The fact that you blindly
>> and rabidly support his tragic anti-American policies, his lies, and
>> his terrorism is quite telling.

> Where were you when Clinton

Riiiight, it's all Clinton's fault, and bu$h has made no
mistakes or is in any way responsible. If you weren't such
a brainwashed and gullible right wing extremist, you'd be
able to laugh at this sort of idiocy along with your betters.

>>> I guess the next mantra will be "Saddam was Really a Kind
>>> Hearted, Mass Murdering Dictator"?

>> That was certainly the Reagan/bu$h take on him. Why else
>> would they give him $5 billion U.S. taxpayer dollars,
>> sell him WMD technology, and rush to his defense when the
>> rest of the world was condemning his atrocities?

> Ever heard the phrase, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend"?

Yes, and it's so short sighted and destructive, that you
probably choose to live by it.

>> Unlike you, however, many people have the ability to
>> think and learn. They no longer support his disastrous
>> polices, war crimes, and terrorism - and bu$h's approval
>> rating is at a record low. Do try to keep up. <chuckle>

> Repeat that again but this time click your heels together
> three times too. Then what you type just might be the truth.

Are you denying that bu$h's approval rating is at an all
time low? Apparently, you're even too helpless to perform a
basic google search. Thanks for proving your ignorance yet
again.

>> It takes a lot of hate to support this level of terrorism
>> and suffering -

>> http://www.robert-fisk.com/iraqwarvictims_mar2003.htm

> You and your cronies are the real haters.

So, in MikeyWorld, those who come to the defense of innocent
women and children who are being terrorized and murdered by
war criminals and radical right wing extremists are the haters,
eh? You're still not making any sense, and your blind, rabid
support for the mass murder of innocent women and children
clearly reveals you to be among the haters.

>> Are you able to comprehend that 51% of the voters is not 51%
>> of the population, or is that also beyond your "thinking"
>> ability?

> Evidently you are too stupid to know that 51% of the VOTERS
> in any election is all that counts.

You said 51% of the =population= supports bu$h. Here, try
again to answer the question: "Are you able to comprehend
that 51% of the =voters= is not 51% of the =population=,
or is that also beyond your "thinking" ability?"

>> But for obvious reasons, when challenged to quote something -
>> =anything= inaccurate from that list of 40 bu$h lies, you
>> come undone and start your predictable whining and crying.
>> One thing all of you bu$h apologists have in common is your
>> aversion to truth, facts, and details. You scurry away from a
>> challenge to address the facts like a cockroach from insecticide.
>> There are 40 bu$h lies in the list below Mike. Are you saying
>> that you're helplessly unable to explain even =one= of them?
>> That's kinda pitiful doncha "think". <chuckle>

> You post the same drivel in every response.

Obviously, I post the truth, which is why you are so clearly
and helplessly unable to refute even one word of it. All you
can do is bitch, cry, and spew utter nonsense while avoiding
the facts.
This is typical for you freedom, human rights, and American
hating bu$h apologists. The truth and facts are your worst
enemy so you're forced to avoid them and resort to nonsensical,
fact-free rants. If you weren't so brainwashed and gullible,
that would tell you something....


-


Ever wonder who benefits from the 150 MILLION
U.S. taxpayer dollars spent each DAY in Iraq?
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0223-08.htm
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=21

http://www.commondreams.org/
http://www.truthout.org/
http://www.prohibitioncosts.org/
http://thirdworldtraveler.com/
http://counterpunch.org/
http://responsiblewealth.org/


"They are waging a campaign of murder and destruction. And
there is no limit to the innocent lives they are willing to
take... men with blind hatred and armed with lethal weapons
who are capable of any atrocity... they respect no laws of
warfare or morality."
-bu$h describing his own illegal invasion of Iraq.
http://www.robert-fisk.com/iraqwarvictims_mar2003.htm

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things
that matter." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

"God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them. And then
he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did."
-- George W. Bush

"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the
will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the
Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."
-- Adolf Hitler

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President,
or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is
not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable
to the American public."
-- Theodore Roosevelt (1918)

Don't let bu$h do to the United States what his very close
friend and top campaign contributor, Ken Lay, did to Enron...

In this post, we have 1036 lines / 137k of political, ideological and
religious argument and spewings, and not ONCE do the words "MUSTANG" or
"FORD" appear in any of it.

We have many things here, but we don't have Ford Mustangs.

Hey, gas prices suck, and they're only $3 in my neck of the woods. But
who in the hell was talking about child butchering terrorists or Hitler?

You want to know what my problems with RAMFM are?

This is number one. Anything written to and from hurc ast, his legion
of inner selves, and his entire ilk is number two. Number three is
people who don't know what a repair manual is. We all overlook the
obvious, but you know what I mean - lazy people who want answers handed
to them.

Do people want this group to be stronger, more vital, and more on-topic?
Then take your politics, take your religion, your ideologies, your
bull****, and your agendas regarding all of the above... elsewhere! You
do that, you eliminate a lot of troll bait. You eliminate bait, you
start eliminating trolls.

I'm not saying any of you are wrong or don't deserve to say whatever you
wish to say. I'm all for free speech and talking **** out. But this
type of potentially endless crap is what kills a lot of people's
enthusiasm for this and many other groups.

Jafo, you were dead on....

--
Wound Up
ThunderSnake #65

Hank wrote:
> Michael Johnson, PE wrote:
>
>>Hank wrote:
>
>
>>> They're guilty primarily of being ignorant and gullible.
>>>But now that we know beyond any doubt that bu$h is a liar,
>>>a thief, an AWOL draft dodging coward, a war criminal, a
>>>torturer, and a child butchering terrorist, the minority
>>>of radical extremists who still support him, border on being
>>>treasonous.
>>
>
>>Did you hear that noise?
>
>
> The voices of the radical extremists in your "mind"
> are heard only by you. <chuckle>
>
>>> Why should that surprise you? Hitler enjoyed considerable
>>>support while he was destroying his Country, too.
>>
>
>>Wow, now that was an impressive display of shoving a large festering,
>>stinking foot in your mouth. So now over half of the US population are
>>the equivalent of WWII Nazis party supporters?
>
>
> bu$h's approval rating is far less the half. The radical
> extremists who support bu$h's lies, taxpayer theft, war
> crimes and terrorism are a minority. There are still enough
> of them to be a significant disgrace and embarrassment to
> the rest of us and our Country, but they are most definitely
> a minority.
>
>
>>Let me guess the Germans in 1943 German didn't know the
>>Jews were being slaughtered?
>
>
> They may have known, but rallied behind Hitler's war
> crimes and terrorism anyway - just like the radical
> extremists who support bu$h's war crimes and terrorism
> in Iraq. They know that tens of thousands of innocent
> women and children have been murdered, but they are so
> full of hate and ignorance that they just don't care.
>
>
>>Yeah, right and you think 51% of the population here is
>>JUST LIKE THEM!!!
>
>
> Repeating the silly lie that the radical extremists
> who support bu$h's war crimes and terrorism represent
> the majority, only makes you look like a fool, and it
> won't change the facts. Your anti American lies will be
> continue to be exposed.
>
> http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0504-12.htm
>
>
>>That sound you heard
>
>
> Again, no one but you hears the voices in your head
> telling you that murdering tens of thousands of innocent
> women and children over lies, hate, ignorance, and greed
> is the right thing to do. Those demons exist only in your
> gullible, hateful, simple, and confused mind.
>
> http://www.robert-fisk.com/iraqwarvictims_mar2003.htm
>
>
>>another horde of Bush supporters being created after
>>reading yet another mindless "Hate America First" rant.
>
>
> If you realize that bu$h and his supporters hate The
> United States of America, why are you in their camp?
> Why do you reject the moral values that your many
> betters cherish and embrace?
>
>
>>>The gullible and brainwashed extremists who still
>>>support his illegal, immoral, and treasonous policies,
>>>represent a rapidly shrinking minority.
>>
>
>>Well, I guess based on the outcome of the last election
>>we have at least 51% of the population meeting the above
>>description.
>
>
> I see your math is as weak as your knowledge of the
> facts. 51% percent of voters is clearly not 51% of
> the population. Are you really that clueless, or are
> you being deliberately dishonest?
> Also, we're discussing current support for bu$h's
> illegal and immoral terror attack on the innocent
> people of Iraq, which is well below 50%. Do try to
> keep up. LOL...
>
>
>>Keep hating America, Hank.
>
>
> Wow, after all I've written, you still mistake
> me for a supporter of bu$h's destructive and anti
> American polices. I suppose this should be no surprise.
> After all, you have demonstrated a remarkable ability
> get your "facts" exactly and repeatedly dead wrong....
>
>
>>> These are kinda funny. Even funnier, is that folks like you
>>>were gullible enough to believe 'em. <chuckle>
>>
>
>>What's even funnier is that some left wing, mouth foaming,
>>rabid, ranting idiot wasted that much effort compiling something
>>so worthless.
>
>
> Why do you hate The United States of America so much
> that you consider the efforts of dedicated Patriots who
> defend Her to be "worthless". If you hate the United States
> so much that you rabidly support it's abuse and destruction
> by treasonous war criminals, tortureres, terrorists, liars,
> and thieves, why do you choose to live here?
>
> <link restored because we can't afford to let the America
> haters hide the Truth and Facts>
>
> http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0730-06.htm
>
>
>>><snipped one HUGE pile of steaming left wing bull****>
>>
>
> Nah, if it was bull****, you'd be able to refute it,
> rather than just mindlessly cry about it.
> Seems like the fact that your values and beliefs are
> "supported" primarily by lies, ignorance, and hate,
> while those you so rabidly attack are supported by truth,
> integirty, and facts, would tell you something.....
>
> http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0730-06.htm
>
> The Bush Administration's Top 40 Lies about War and Terrorism
> Bring 'em On!
>
> by Steve Perry
>
> 1) The administration was not bent on war with Iraq from 9/11 onward.
>
> Throughout the year leading up to war, the White House publicly
> maintained that the U.S. took weapons inspections seriously, that
> diplomacy would get its chance, that Saddam had the opportunity to
> prevent a U.S. invasion. The most pungent and concise evidence to the
> contrary comes from the president's own mouth. According to Time's
> March 31 road-to-war story, Bush popped in on national security
> adviser Condi Rice one day in March 2002, interrupting a meeting on UN
> sanctions against Iraq. Getting a whiff of the subject matter, W
> peremptorily waved his hand and told her, "**** Saddam. We're taking
> him out." Clare Short, Tony Blair's former secretary for international
> development, recently lent further credence to the anecdote. She told
> the London Guardian that Bush and Blair made a secret pact a few
> months afterward, in the summer of 2002, to invade Iraq in either
> February or March of this year.
>
> Last fall CBS News obtained meeting notes taken by a Rumsfeld aide at
> 2:40 on the afternoon of September 11, 2001. The notes indicate that
> Rumsfeld wanted the "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit
> S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time. Not only UBL [Usama bin Laden]....
> Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not."
>
> Rumsfeld's deputy Paul Wolfowitz, the Bushmen's leading intellectual
> light, has long been rabid on the subject of Iraq. He reportedly told
> Vanity Fair writer Sam Tanenhaus off the record that he believes
> Saddam was connected not only to bin Laden and 9/11, but the 1995
> Oklahoma City bombing.
>
> The Bush administration's foreign policy plan was not based on
> September 11, or terrorism; those events only brought to the forefront
> a radical plan for U.S. control of the post-Cold War world that had
> been taking shape since the closing days of the first Bush presidency.
> Back then a small claque of planners, led by Wolfowitz, generated a
> draft document known as Defense Planning Guidance, which envisioned a
> U.S. that took advantage of its lone-superpower status to consolidate
> American control of the world both militarily and economically, to the
> point where no other nation could ever reasonably hope to challenge
> the U.S. Toward that end it envisioned what we now call "preemptive"
> wars waged to reset the geopolitical table.
>
> After a copy of DPG was leaked to the New York Times, subsequent
> drafts were rendered a little less frank, but the basic idea never
> changed. In 1997 Wolfowitz and his true believers--Richard Perle,
> William Kristol, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld--formed an organization
> called Project for the New American Century to carry their cause
> forward. And though they all flocked around the Bush administration
> from the start, W never really embraced their plan until the events of
> September 11 left him casting around for a foreign policy plan.
>
> 2) The invasion of Iraq was based on a reasonable belief that Iraq
> possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to the U.S.,
> a belief supported by available intelligence evidence.
>
> Paul Wolfowitz admitted to Vanity Fair that weapons of mass
> destruction were not really the main reason for invading Iraq: "The
> decision to highlight weapons of mass destruction as the main
> justification for going to war in Iraq was taken for bureaucratic
> reasons.... [T]here were many other important factors as well." Right.
> But they did not come under the heading of self-defense.
>
> We now know how the Bushmen gathered their prewar intelligence: They
> set out to patch together their case for invading Iraq and ignored
> everything that contradicted it. In the end, this required that
> Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al. set aside the findings of analysts from
> the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (the Pentagon's own spy
> bureau) and stake their claim largely on the basis of isolated,
> anecdotal testimony from handpicked Iraqi defectors. (See #5, Ahmed
> Chalabi.) But the administration did not just listen to the defectors;
> it promoted their claims in the press as a means of enlisting public
> opinion. The only reason so many Americans thought there was a
> connection between Saddam and al Qaeda in the first place was that the
> Bushmen trotted out Iraqi defectors making these sorts of claims to
> every major media outlet that would listen.
>
> Here is the verdict of Gregory Thielman, the recently retired head of
> the State Department's intelligence office: "I believe the Bush
> administration did not provide an accurate picture to the American
> people of the military threat posed by Iraq. This administration has
> had a faith-based intelligence attitude--we know the answers, give us
> the intelligence to support those answers." Elsewhere he has been
> quoted as saying, "The principal reasons that Americans did not
> understand the nature of the Iraqi threat in my view was the failure
> of senior administration officials to speak honestly about what the
> intelligence showed."
>
> 3) Saddam tried to buy uranium in Niger.
>
> Lies and distortions tend to beget more lies and distortions, and here
> is W's most notorious case in point: Once the administration decided
> to issue a damage-controlling (they hoped) mea culpa in the matter of
> African uranium, they were obliged to couch it in another, more
> perilous lie: that the administration, and quite likely Bush himself,
> thought the uranium claim was true when he made it. But former acting
> ambassador to Iraq Joseph Wilson wrote an op-ed in the New York Times
> on July 6 that exploded the claim. Wilson, who traveled to Niger in
> 2002 to investigate the uranium claims at the behest of the CIA and
> Dick Cheney's office and found them to be groundless, describes what
> followed this way: "Although I did not file a written report, there
> should be at least four documents in U.S. government archives
> confirming my mission. The documents should include the ambassador's
> report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the
> embassy staff, a CIA report summing up my trip, and a specific answer
> from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have
> been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I
> have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard
> operating procedure."
>
> 4) The aluminum tubes were proof of a nuclear program.
>
> The very next sentence of Bush's State of the Union address was just
> as egregious a lie as the uranium claim, though a bit cagier in its
> formulation. "Our intelligence sources tell us that [Saddam] has
> attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for
> nuclear weapons production." This is altogether false in its
> implication (that this is the likeliest use for these materials) and
> may be untrue in its literal sense as well. As the London Independent
> summed it up recently, "The U.S. persistently alleged that Baghdad
> tried to buy high-strength aluminum tubes whose only use could be in
> gas centrifuges, needed to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. Equally
> persistently, the International Atomic Energy Agency said the tubes
> were being used for artillery rockets. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed
> El Baradei, told the UN Security Council in January that the tubes
> were not even suitable for centrifuges." [emphasis added]
>
> 5) Iraq's WMDs were sent to Syria for hiding.
>
> Or Iran, or.... "They shipped them out!" was a rallying cry for the
> administration in the first few nervous weeks of finding no WMDs, but
> not a bit of supporting evidence has emerged.
>
> 6) The CIA was primarily responsible for any prewar intelligence
> errors or distortions regarding Iraq.
>
> Don't be misled by the news that CIA director George Tenet has taken
> the fall for Bush's falsehoods in the State of the Uranium address. As
> the journalist Robert Dreyfuss wrote shortly before the war, "Even as
> it prepares for war against Iraq, the Pentagon is already engaged on a
> second front: its war against the Central Intelligence Agency. The
> Pentagon is bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to
> produce intelligence reports more supportive of war with Iraq. ...
> Morale inside the U.S. national-security apparatus is said to be low,
> with career staffers feeling intimidated and pressured to justify the
> push for war."
>
> In short, Tenet fell on his sword when he vetted Bush's State of the
> Union yarns. And now he has had to get up and fall on it again.
>
> 7) An International Atomic Energy Agency report indicated that Iraq
> could be as little as six months from making nuclear weapons.
>
> Alas: The claim had to be retracted when the IAEA pointed out that no
> such report existed.
>
> 8) Saddam was involved with bin Laden and al Qaeda in the plotting of
> 9/11.
>
> One of the most audacious and well-traveled of the Bushmen's fibs,
> this one hangs by two of the slenderest evidentiary threads
> imaginable: first, anecdotal testimony by isolated, handpicked Iraqi
> defectors that there was an al Qaeda training camp in Iraq, a claim
> CIA analysts did not corroborate and that postwar U.S. military
> inspectors conceded did not exist; and second, old intelligence
> accounts of a 1991 meeting in Baghdad between a bin Laden emissary and
> officers from Saddam's intelligence service, which did not lead to any
> subsequent contact that U.S. or UK spies have ever managed to turn up.
> According to former State Department intelligence chief Gregory
> Thielman, the consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies well in advance
> of the war was that "there was no significant pattern of cooperation
> between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist operation."
>
> 9) The U.S. wants democracy in Iraq and the Middle East.
>
> Democracy is the last thing the U.S. can afford in Iraq, as anyone who
> has paid attention to the state of Arab popular sentiment already
> realizes. Representative government in Iraq would mean the rapid
> expulsion of U.S. interests. Rather, the U.S. wants westernized,
> secular leadership regimes that will stay in pocket and work to
> neutralize the politically ambitious anti-Western religious sects
> popping up everywhere. If a little brutality and graft are required to
> do the job, it has never troubled the U.S. in the past. Ironically,
> these standards describe someone more or less like Saddam Hussein.
> Judging from the state of civil affairs in Iraq now, the Bush
> administration will no doubt be looking for a strongman again, if and
> when they are finally compelled to install anyone at all.
>
> 10) Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress are a homegrown
> Iraqi political force, not a U.S.-sponsored front.
>
> Chalabi is a more important bit player in the Iraq war than most
> people realize, and not because he was the U.S.'s failed choice to
> lead a post-Saddam government. It was Chalabi and his INC that
> funneled compliant defectors to the Bush administration, where they
> attested to everything the Bushmen wanted to believe about Saddam and
> Iraq (meaning, mainly, al Qaeda connections and WMD programs). The
> administration proceeded to take their dubious word over that of the
> combined intelligence of the CIA and DIA, which indicated that Saddam
> was not in the business of sponsoring foreign terrorism and posed no
> imminent threat to anyone.
>
> Naturally Chalabi is despised nowadays round the halls of Langley, but
> it wasn't always so. The CIA built the Iraqi National Congress and
> installed Chalabi at the helm back in the days following Gulf War I,
> when the thought was to topple Saddam by whipping up and sponsoring an
> internal opposition. It didn't work; from the start Iraqis have
> disliked and distrusted Chalabi. Moreover, his erratic and duplicitous
> ways have alienated practically everyone in the U.S. foreign policy
> establishment as well--except for Rumsfeld's Department of Defense,
> and therefore the White House.
>
> 11) The United States is waging a war on terror.
>
> Practically any school child could recite the terms of the Bush
> Doctrine, and may have to before the Ashcroft Justice Department is
> finished: The global war on terror is about confronting terrorist
> groups and the nations that harbor them. The United States does not
> make deals with terrorists or nations where they find safe lodging.
>
> Leave aside the blind eye that the U.S. has always cast toward
> Israel's actions in the territories. How are the Bushmen doing
> elsewhere vis-à-vis their announced principles? We can start with
> their fabrications and manipulations of Iraqi WMD evidence--which, in
> the eyes of weapons inspectors, the UN Security Council, American
> intelligence analysts, and the world at large, did not pose any
> imminent threat.
>
> The events of recent months have underscored a couple more gaping
> violations of W's cardinal anti-terror rules. In April the Pentagon
> made a cooperation pact with the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), an
> anti-Iranian terrorist group based in Iraq. Prior to the 1979 Iranian
> revolution, American intelligence blamed it for the death of several
> U.S. nationals in Iran.
>
> Most glaring of all is the Bush administration's remarkable treatment
> of Saudi Arabia. Consider: Eleven of the nineteen September 11
> hijackers were Saudis. The ruling House of Saud has longstanding and
> well-known ties to al Qaeda and other terrorist outfits, which it
> funds (read protection money) to keep them from making mischief at
> home. The May issue of Atlantic Monthly had a nice piece on the House
> of Saud that recounts these connections.
>
> Yet the Bush government has never said boo regarding the Saudis and
> international terrorism. In fact, when terror bombers struck Riyadh in
> May, hitting compounds that housed American workers as well, Colin
> Powell went out of his way to avoid tarring the House of Saud:
> "Terrorism strikes everywhere and everyone. It is a threat to the
> civilized world. We will commit ourselves again to redouble our
> efforts to work closely with our Saudi friends and friends all around
> the world to go after al Qaeda." Later it was alleged that the Riyadh
> bombers purchased some of their ordnance from the Saudi National
> Guard, but neither Powell nor anyone else saw fit to revise their
> statements about "our Saudi friends."
>
> Why do the Bushmen give a pass to the Saudi terror hotbed? Because the
> House of Saud controls a lot of oil, and they are still (however
> tenuously) on our side. And that, not terrorism, is what matters most
> in Bush's foreign policy calculus.
>
> While the bomb craters in Riyadh were still smoking, W held a meeting
> with Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Speaking publicly
> afterward, he outlined a deal for U.S. military aid to the Philippines
> in exchange for greater "cooperation" in getting American hands round
> the throats of Filipino terrorists. He mentioned in particular the
> U.S.'s longtime nemesis Abu Sayyaf--and he also singled out the Moro
> Islamic Liberation Front, a small faction based on Mindanao, the
> southernmost big island in the Philippine chain.
>
> Of course it's by purest coincidence that Mindanao is the location of
> Asia's richest oil reserves.
>
> 12) The U.S. has made progress against world terrorist elements, in
> particular by crippling al Qaeda.
>
> A resurgent al Qaeda has been making international news since around
> the time of the Saudi Arabia bombings in May. The best coverage by far
> is that of Asia Times correspondent Syed Saleem Shahzad. According to
> Shahzad's detailed accounts, al Qaeda has reorganized itself along
> leaner, more diffuse lines, effectively dissolving itself into a
> coalition of localized units that mean to strike frequently, on a
> small scale, and in multiple locales around the world. Since claiming
> responsibility for the May Riyadh bombings, alleged al Qaeda
> communiqués have also claimed credit for some of the strikes at U.S.
> troops in Iraq.
>
> 13) The Bush administration has made Americans safer from terror on
> U.S. soil.
>
> Like the Pentagon "plan" for occupying postwar Iraq, the Department of
> Homeland Security is mainly a Bush administration PR dirigible
> untethered to anything of substance. It's a scandal waiting to happen,
> and the only good news for W is that it's near the back of a fairly
> long line of scandals waiting to happen.
>
> On May 26 the trade magazine Federal Computer Week published a report
> on DHS's first 100 days. At that point the nerve center of Bush's
> domestic war on terror had only recently gotten e-mail service. As for
> the larger matter of creating a functioning organizational grid and,
> more important, a software architecture plan for integrating the
> enormous mass of data that DHS is supposed to process--nada. In the
> nearly two years since the administration announced its intention to
> create a cabinet-level homeland security office, nothing meaningful
> has been accomplished. And there are no funds to implement a network
> plan if they had one. According to the magazine, "Robert David Steele,
> an author and former intelligence officer, points out that there are
> at least 30 separate intelligence systems [theoretically feeding into
> DHS] and no money to connect them to one another or make them
> interoperable. 'There is nothing in the president's homeland security
> program that makes America safer,' he said."
>
> 14) The Bush administration has nothing to hide concerning the events
> of September 11, 2001, or the intelligence evidence collected prior to
> that day.
>
> First Dick Cheney personally intervened to scuttle a broad
> congressional investigation of the day's events and their origins. And
> for the past several months the administration has fought a quiet
> rear-guard action culminating in last week's delayed release of
> Congress's more modest 9/11 report. The White House even went so far
> as to classify after the fact materials that had already been
> presented in public hearing.
>
> What were they trying to keep under wraps? The Saudi connection,
> mostly, and though 27 pages of the details have been excised from the
> public report, there is still plenty of evidence lurking in its
> extensively massaged text. (When you see the phrase "foreign nation"
> substituted in brackets, it's nearly always Saudi Arabia.) The report
> documents repeated signs that there was a major attack in the works
> with extensive help from Saudi nationals and apparently also at least
> one member of the government. It also suggests that is one reason
> intel operatives didn't chase the story harder: Saudi Arabia was by
> policy fiat a "friendly" nation and therefore no threat. The report
> does not explore the administration's response to the intelligence
> briefings it got; its purview is strictly the performance of
> intelligence agencies. All other questions now fall to the independent
> 9/11 commission, whose work is presently being slowed by the White
> House's foot-dragging in turning over evidence.
>
> 15) U.S. air defenses functioned according to protocols on September
> 11, 2001.
>
> Old questions abound here. The central mystery, of how U.S. air
> defenses could have responded so poorly on that day, is fairly easy to
> grasp. A cursory look at that morning's timeline of events is enough.
> In very short strokes:
>
> 8:13 Flight 11 disobeys air traffic instructions and turns off its
> transponder.
>
> 8:40 NORAD command center claims first notification of likely Flight
> 11 hijacking.
>
> 8:42 Flight 175 veers off course and shuts down its transponder.
>
> 8:43 NORAD claims first notification of likely Flight 175 hijacking.
>
> 8:46 Flight 11 hits the World Trade Center north tower.
>
> 8:46 Flight 77 goes off course.
>
> 9:03 Flight 175 hits the WTC south tower.
>
> 9:16 Flight 93 goes off course.
>
> 9:16 NORAD claims first notification of likely Flight 93 hijacking.
>
> 9:24 NORAD claims first notification of likely Flight 77 hijacking.
>
> 9:37 Flight 77 hits the Pentagon.
>
> 10:06 Flight 93 crashes in a Pennsylvania field.
>
> The open secret here is that stateside U.S. air defenses had been
> reduced to paltry levels since the end of the Cold War. According to a
> report by Paul Thompson published at the endlessly informative Center
> for Cooperative Research website (www.cooperativeresearch.org),
> "[O]nly two air force bases in the Northeast region... were formally
> part of NORAD's defensive system. One was Otis Air National Guard
> Base, on Massachusetts's Cape Cod peninsula and about 188 miles east
> of New York City. The other was Langley Air Force Base near Norfolk,
> Virginia, and about 129 miles south of Washington. During the Cold
> War, the U.S. had literally thousands of fighters on alert. But as the
> Cold War wound down, this number was reduced until it reached only 14
> fighters in the continental U.S. by 9/11."
>
> But even an underpowered air defense system on slow-response status
> (15 minutes, officially, on 9/11) does not explain the magnitude of
> NORAD's apparent failures that day. Start with the discrepancy in the
> times at which NORAD commanders claim to have learned of the various
> hijackings. By 8:43 a.m., NORAD had been notified of two probable
> hijackings in the previous five minutes. If there was such a thing as
> a system-wide air defense crisis plan, it should have kicked in at
> that moment. Three minutes later, at 8:46, Flight 11 crashed into the
> first WTC tower. By then alerts should have been going out to all
> regional air traffic centers of apparent coordinated hijackings in
> progress. Yet when Flight 77, which eventually crashed into the
> Pentagon, was hijacked three minutes later, at 8:46, NORAD claims not
> to have learned of it until 9:24, 38 minutes after the fact and just
> 13 minutes before it crashed into the Pentagon.
>
> The professed lag in reacting to the hijacking of Flight 93 is just as
> striking. NORAD acknowledged learning of the hijacking at 9:16, yet
> the Pentagon's position is that it had not yet intercepted the plane
> when it crashed in a Pennsylvania field just minutes away from
> Washington, D.C. at 10:06, a full 50 minutes later.
>
> In fact, there are a couple of other circumstantial details of the
> crash, discussed mostly in Pennsylvania newspapers and barely noted in
> national wire stories, that suggest Flight 93 may have been shot down
> after all. First, officials never disputed reports that there was a
> secondary debris field six miles from the main crash site, and a few
> press accounts said that it included one of the plane's engines. A
> secondary debris field points to an explosion on board, from one of
> two probable causes--a terrorist bomb carried on board or an Air Force
> missile. And no investigation has ever intimated that any of the four
> terror crews were toting explosives. They kept to simple tools like
> the box cutters, for ease in passing security. Second, a handful of
> eyewitnesses in the rural area around the crash site did report seeing
> low-flying U.S. military jets around the time of the crash.
>
> Which only raises another question. Shooting down Flight 93 would have
> been incontestably the right thing to do under the circumstances. More
> than that, it would have constituted the only evidence of anything
> NORAD and the Pentagon had done right that whole morning. So why deny
> it? Conversely, if fighter jets really were not on the scene when 93
> crashed, why weren't they? How could that possibly be?
>
> 16) The Bush administration had a plan for restoring essential
> services and rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure after the shooting war
> ended.
>
> The question of what the U.S. would do to rebuild Iraq was raised
> before the shooting started. I remember reading a press briefing in
> which a Pentagon official boasted that at the time, the American
> reconstruction team had already spent three weeks planning the postwar
> world! The Pentagon's first word was that the essentials of rebuilding
> the country would take about $10 billion and three months; this stood
> in fairly stark contrast to UN estimates that an aggressive rebuilding
> program could cost up to $100 billion a year for a minimum of three
> years.
>
> After the shooting stopped it was evident the U.S. had no plan for
> keeping order in the streets, much less commencing to rebuild. (They
> are upgrading certain oil facilities, but that's another matter.)
> There are two ways to read this. The popular version is that it proves
> what bumblers Bush and his crew really are. And it's certainly true
> that where the details of their grand designs are concerned, the
> administration tends to have postures rather than plans. But this
> ignores the strategic advantages the U.S. stands to reap by leaving
> Iraqi domestic affairs in a chronic state of (managed, they hope)
> chaos. Most important, it provides an excuse for the continued
> presence of a large U.S. force, which ensures that America will call
> the shots in putting Iraqi oil back on the world market and seeing to
> it that the Iraqis don't fall in with the wrong sort of oil company
> partners. A long military occupation is also a practical means of
> accomplishing something the U.S. cannot do officially, which is to
> maintain air bases in Iraq indefinitely. (This became necessary after
> the U.S. agreed to vacate its bases in Saudi Arabia earlier this year
> to try to defuse anti-U.S. political tensions there.)
>
> Meanwhile, the U.S. plans to pay for whatever rebuilding it gets
> around to doing with the proceeds of Iraqi oil sales, an enormous cash
> box the U.S. will oversee for the good of the Iraqi people.
>
> In other words, "no plan" may have been the plan the Bushmen were
> intent on pursuing all along.
>
> 17) The U.S. has made a good-faith effort at peacekeeping in Iraq
> during the postwar period.
>
> "Some [looters] shot big grins at American soldiers and Marines or put
> down their prizes to offer a thumbs-up or a quick finger across the
> throat and a whispered word--Saddam--before grabbing their loot and
> vanishing."
>
> --Robert Fisk, London Independent, 4/11/03
>
> Despite the many clashes between U.S. troops and Iraqis in the three
> months since the heavy artillery fell silent, the postwar performance
> of U.S. forces has been more remarkable for the things they have not
> done--their failure to intervene in civil chaos or to begin
> reestablishing basic civil procedures. It isn't the soldiers' fault.
> Traditionally an occupation force is headed up by military police
> units schooled to interact with the natives and oversee the
> restoration of goods and services. But Rumsfeld has repeatedly
> declined advice to rotate out the combat troops sooner rather than
> later and replace some of them with an MP force. Lately this has been
> a source of escalating criticism within military ranks.
>
> 18) Despite vocal international opposition, the U.S. was backed by
> most of the world, as evidenced by the 40-plus-member Coalition of the
> Willing.
>
> When the whole world opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the outcry was
> so loud that it briefly pierced the slumber of the American public,
> which poured out its angst in poll numbers that bespoke little taste
> for a war without the UN's blessing. So it became necessary to assure
> the folks at home that the whole world was in fact for the invasion.
> Thus was born the Coalition of the Willing, consisting of the U.S. and
> UK, with Australia caddying--and 40-some additional co-champions of
> U.S.-style democracy in the Middle East, whose ranks included such
> titans of diplomacy and pillars of representative government as
> Angola, Azerbaijan, Colombia, Eritrea, and Micronesia. If the American
> public noticed the ruse, all was nonetheless forgotten when Baghdad
> fell. Everybody loves a winner.
>
> 19) This war was notable for its protection of civilians.
>
> This from the Herald of Scotland, May 23: "American guns, bombs, and
> missiles killed more civilians in the recent war in Iraq than in any
> conflict since Vietnam, according to preliminary assessments carried
> out by the UN, international aid agencies, and independent study
> groups. Despite U.S. boasts this was the fastest, most clinical
> campaign in military history, a first snapshot of 'collateral damage'
> indicates that between 5,000 and 10,000 Iraqi non-combatants died in
> the course of the hi-tech blitzkrieg."
>
> 20) The looting of archaeological and historic sites in Baghdad was
> unanticipated.
>
> General Jay Garner himself, then the head man for postwar Iraq, told
> the Washington Times that he had put the Iraqi National Museum second
> on a list of sites requiring protection after the fall of the Saddam
> government, and he had no idea why the recommendation was ignored.
> It's also a matter of record that the administration had met in
> January with a group of U.S. scholars concerned with the preservation
> of Iraq's fabulous Sumerian antiquities. So the war planners were
> aware of the riches at stake. According to Scotland's Sunday Herald,
> the Pentagon took at least one other meeting as well: "[A] coalition
> of antiquities collectors and arts lawyers, calling itself the
> American Council for Cultural Policy (ACCP), met with U.S. Defense and
> State department officials prior to the start of military action to
> offer its assistance.... The group is known to consist of a number of
> influential dealers who favor a relaxation of Iraq's tight
> restrictions on the ownership and export of antiquities....
> [Archaeological Institute of America] president Patty Gerstenblith
> said: 'The ACCP's agenda is to encourage the collecting of antiquities
> through weakening the laws of archaeologically rich nations and
> eliminate national ownership of antiquities to allow for easier export.'"
>
> 21) Saddam was planning to provide WMD to terrorist groups.
>
> This is very concisely debunked in Walter Pincus's July 21 Washington
> Post story, so I'll quote him: "'Iraq could decide on any given day to
> provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or
> individual terrorists,' President Bush said in Cincinnati on October
> 7.... But declassified portions of a still-secret National
> Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released Friday by the White House show
> that at the time of the president's speech the U.S. intelligence
> community judged that possibility to be unlikely. In fact, the NIE,
> which began circulating October 2, shows the intelligence services
> were much more worried that Hussein might give weapons to al Qaeda
> terrorists if he were facing death or capture and his government was
> collapsing after a military attack by the United States."
>
> 22) Saddam was capable of launching a chemical or biological attack in
> 45 minutes.
>
> Again the WashPost wraps it up nicely: "The 45-minute claim is at the
> center of a scandal in Britain that led to the apparent suicide on
> Friday of a British weapons scientist who had questioned the
> government's use of the allegation. The scientist, David Kelly, was
> being investigated by the British parliament as the suspected source
> of a BBC report that the 45-minute claim was added to Britain's public
> 'dossier' on Iraq in September at the insistence of an aide to Prime
> Minister Tony Blair--and against the wishes of British intelligence,
> which said the charge was from a single source and was considered
> unreliable."
>
> 23) The Bush administration is seeking to create a viable Palestinian
> state.
>
> The interests of the U.S. toward the Palestinians have not
> changed--not yet, at least. Israel's "security needs" are still the
> U.S.'s sturdiest pretext for its military role in policing the Middle
> East and arming its Israeli proxies. But the U.S.'s immediate needs
> have tilted since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Now the
> Bushmen need a fig leaf--to confuse, if not exactly cover, their
> designs, and to give shaky pro-U.S. governments in the region some
> scrap to hold out to their own restive peoples. Bush's roadmap has
> scared the hell out of the Israeli right, but they have little reason
> to worry. Press reports in the U.S. and Israel have repeatedly
> telegraphed the assurance that Bush won't try to push Ariel Sharon any
> further than he's comfortable going.
>
> 24) People detained by the U.S. after 9/11 were legitimate terror
> suspects.
>
> Quite the contrary, as disclosed officially in last month's critical
> report on U.S. detainees from the Justice Department's own Office of
> Inspector General. A summary analysis of post-9/11 detentions posted
> at the UC-Davis website states, "None of the 1,200 foreigners arrested
> and detained in secret after September 11 was charged with an act of
> terrorism. Instead, after periods of detention that ranged from weeks
> to months, most were deported for violating immigration laws. The
> government said that 752 of 1,200 foreigners arrested after September
> 11 were in custody in May 2002, but only 81 were still in custody in
> September 2002."
>
> 25) The U.S. is obeying the Geneva conventions in its treatment of
> terror-related suspects, prisoners, and detainees.
>
> The entire mumbo-jumbo about "unlawful combatants" was conceived to
> skirt the Geneva conventions on treatment of prisoners by making them
> out to be something other than POWs. Here is the actual wording of
> Donald Rumsfeld's pledge, freighted with enough qualifiers to make it
> absolutely meaningless: "We have indicated that we do plan to, for the
> most part, treat them in a manner that is reasonably consistent with
> the Geneva conventions to the extent they are appropriate." Meanwhile
> the administration has treated its prisoners--many of whom, as we are
> now seeing confirmed in legal hearings, have no plausible connection
> to terrorist enterprises--in a manner that blatantly violates several
> key Geneva provisions regarding humane treatment and housing.
>
> 26) Shots rang out from the Palestine hotel, directed at U.S.
> soldiers, just before a U.S. tank fired on the hotel, killing two
> journalists.
>
> Eyewitnesses to the April 8 attack uniformly denied any gunfire from
> the hotel. And just two hours prior to firing on the hotel, U.S.
> forces had bombed the Baghdad offices of Al-Jazeera, killing a
> Jordanian reporter. Taken together, and considering the timing, they
> were deemed a warning to unembedded journalists covering the fall of
> Baghdad around them. The day's events seem to have been an extreme
> instance of a more surreptitious pattern of hostility demonstrated by
> U.S. and UK forces toward foreign journalists and those non-attached
> Western reporters who moved around the country at will. (One of them,
> Terry Lloyd of Britain's ITN, was shot to death by UK troops at a
> checkpoint in late March under circumstances the British government
> has refused to disclose.)
>
> Some days after firing on the Palestine Hotel, the U.S. sent in a
> commando unit to raid select floors of the hotel that were known to be
> occupied by journalists, and the news gatherers were held on the floor
> at gunpoint while their rooms were searched. A Centcom spokesman later
> explained cryptically that intelligence reports suggested there were
> people "not friendly to the U.S." staying at the hotel. Allied forces
> also bombed the headquarters of Abu Dhabi TV, injuring several.
>
> 27) U.S. troops "rescued" Private Jessica Lynch from an Iraqi hospital.
>
> If I had wanted to run up the tally of administration lies, the Lynch
> episode alone could be parsed into several more. Officials claimed
> that Lynch and her comrades were taken after a firefight in which
> Lynch battled back bravely. Later they announced with great fanfare
> that U.S. Special Forces had rescued Lynch from her captors. They
> reported that she had been shot and stabbed. Later yet, they reported
> that the recuperating Lynch had no memory of the events.
>
> Bit by bit it all proved false. Lynch's injuries occurred when the
> vehicle she was riding in crashed. She did not fire on anybody and she
> was not shot or stabbed. The Iraqi soldiers who had been holding her
> had abandoned the hospital where she was staying the night before U.S.
> troops came to get her--a development her "rescuers" were aware of. In
> fact her doctor had tried to return her to the Americans the previous
> evening after the Iraqi soldiers left. But he was forced to turn back
> when U.S. troops fired on the approaching ambulance. As for Lynch's
> amnesia, her family has told reporters her memory is perfectly fine.
>
> 28) The populace of Baghdad and of Iraq generally turned out en masse
> to greet U.S. troops as liberators.
>
> There were indeed scattered expressions of thanks when U.S. divisions
> rolled in, but they were neither as extensive nor as enthusiastic as
> Bush image-makers pretended. Within a day or two of the Saddam
> government's fall, the scene in the Baghdad streets turned to
> wholesale ransacking and vandalism. Within the week, large-scale
> protests of the U.S. occupation had already begun occurring in every
> major Iraqi city.
>
> 29) A spontaneous crowd of cheering Iraqis showed up in a Baghdad
> square to celebrate the toppling of Saddam's statue.
>
> A long-distance shot of the same scene that was widely posted on the
> internet shows that the teeming mob consisted of only one or two
> hundred souls, contrary to the impression given by all the close-up TV
> news shots of what appeared to be a massive gathering. It was later
> reported that members of Ahmed Chalabi's local entourage made up most
> of the throng.
>
> 30) No major figure in the Bush administration said that the Iraqi
> populace would turn out en masse to welcome the U.S. military as
> liberators.
>
> When confronted with--oh, call them reality deficits--one habit of the
> Bushmen is to deny that they made erroneous or misleading statements
> to begin with, secure in the knowledge that the media will rarely
> muster the energy to look it up and call them on it. They did it when
> their bold prewar WMD predictions failed to pan out (We never said it
> would be easy! No, they only implied it), and they did it when the
> "jubilant Iraqis" who took to the streets after the fall of Saddam
> turned out to be anything but (We never promised they would welcome us
> with open arms!).
>
> But they did. March 16, Dick Cheney, Meet the Press: The Iraqis are
> desperate "to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as
> liberators the United States when we come to do that.... [T]he vast
> majority of them would turn on [Saddam] in a minute if, in fact, they
> thought they could do so safely").
>
> 31) The U.S. achieved its stated objectives in Afghanistan, and
> vanquished the Taliban.
>
> According to accounts in the Asia Times of Hong Kong, the U.S. held a
> secret meeting earlier this year with Taliban leaders and Pakistani
> intelligence officials to offer a deal to the Taliban for inclusion in
> the Afghan government. (Main condition: Dump Mullah Omar.) As Michael
> Tomasky commented in The American Prospect, "The first thing you may
> be wondering: Why is there a possible role for the Taliban in a future
> government? Isn't that fellow Hamid Karzai running things, and isn't
> it all going basically okay? As it turns out, not really and not at
> all.... The reality... is an escalating guerilla war in which 'small
> hit-and-run attacks are a daily feature in most parts of the country,
> while face-to-face skirmishes are common in the former Taliban
> stronghold around Kandahar in the south.'"
>
> 32) Careful science demonstrates that depleted uranium is no big risk
> to the population.
>
> Pure nonsense. While the government has trotted out expert after
> expert to debunk the dangers of depleted uranium, DU has been
> implicated in health troubles experienced both by Iraqis and by U.S.
> and allied soldiers in the first Gulf War. Unexploded DU shells are
> not a grave danger, but detonated ones release particles that
> eventually find their way into air, soil, water, and food.
>
> While we're on the subject, the BBC reported a couple of months ago
> that recent tests of Afghani civilians have turned up with unusually
> high concentrations of non-depleted uranium isotopes in their urine.
> International monitors have called it almost conclusive evidence that
> the U.S. used a new kind of uranium-laced bomb in the Afghan war.
>
> 33) The looting of Iraqi nuclear facilities presented no big risk to
> the population.
>
> Commanders on the scene, and Rumsfeld back in Washington, immediately
> assured everyone that the looting of a facility where raw uranium
> powder (so-called "yellowcake") and several other radioactive isotopes
> were stored was no serious danger to the populace--yet the looting of
> the facility came to light in part because, as the Washington Times
> noted, "U.S. and British newspaper reports have suggested that
> residents of the area were suffering from severe ill health after
> tipping out yellowcake powder from barrels and using them to store food."
>
> 34) U.S. troops were under attack when they fired upon a crowd of
> civilian protesters in Mosul.
>
> April 15: U.S. troops fire into a crowd of protesters when it grows
> angry at the pro-Western speech being given by the town's new mayor,
> Mashaan al-Juburi. Seven are killed and dozens injured. Eyewitness
> accounts say the soldiers spirit Juburi away as he is pelted with
> objects by the crowd, then take sniper positions and begin firing on
> the crowd.
>
> 35) U.S. troops were under attack when they fired upon two separate
> crowds of civilian protesters in Fallujah.
>
> April 28: American troops fire into a crowd of demonstrators gathered
> on Saddam's birthday, killing 13 and injuring 75. U.S. commanders
> claim the troops had come under fire, but eyewitnesses contradict the
> account, saying the troops started shooting after they were spooked by
> warning shots fired over the crowd by one of the Americans' own
> Humvees. Two days later U.S. soldiers fired on another crowd in
> Fallujah, killing three more.
>
> 36) The Iraqis fighting occupation forces consist almost entirely of
> "Saddam supporters" or "Ba'ath remnants."
>
> This has been the subject of considerable spin on the Bushmen's part
> in the past month, since they launched Operation Sidewinder to capture
> or kill remaining opponents of the U.S. occupation. It's true that the
> most fierce (but by no means all) of the recent guerrilla opposition
> has been concentrated in the Sunni-dominated areas that were Saddam's
> stronghold, and there is no question that Saddam partisans are
> numerous there. But, perhaps for that reason, many other guerrilla
> fighters have flocked there to wage jihad, both from within and
> without Iraq. Around the time of the U.S. invasion, some 10,000 or so
> foreign fighters had crossed into Iraq, and I've seen no informed
> estimate of how many more may have joined them since.
>
> (No room here, but if you check the online version of this story,
> there's a footnote regarding one less-than-obvious reason former
> Republican Guard personnel may be fighting mad at this point.)
>
> 37) The bidding process for Iraq rebuilding contracts displayed no
> favoritism toward Bush and Cheney's oil/gas cronies.
>
> Most notoriously, Dick Cheney's former energy-sector employer,
> Halliburton, was all over the press dispatches about the first round
> of rebuilding contracts. So much so that they were eventually obliged
> to bow out of the running for a $1 billion reconstruction contract for
> the sake of their own PR profile. But Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg
> Brown Root still received the first major plum in the form of a $7
> billion contract to tend to oil field fires and (the real purpose) to
> do any retooling necessary to get the oil pumping at a decent rate, a
> deal that allows them a cool $500 million in profit. The fact that
> Dick Cheney's office is still fighting tooth and nail to block any
> disclosure of the individuals and companies with whom his energy task
> force consulted tells everything you need to know.
>
> 38) "We found the WMDs!"
>
> There have been at least half a dozen junctures at which the Bushmen
> have breathlessly informed the press that allied troops had found the
> WMD smoking gun, including the president himself, who on June 1 told
> reporters, "For those who say we haven't found the banned
> manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them."
>
> Shouldn't these quickly falsified statements be counted as errors
> rather than lies? Under the circumstances, no. First, there is just
> too voluminous a record of the administration going on the media
> offensive to tout lines they know to be flimsy. This appears to be
> more of same. Second, if the great genius Karl Rove and the rest of
> the Bushmen have demonstrated that they understand anything about the
> propaganda potential of the historical moment they've inherited, they
> surely understand that repetition is everything. Get your message out
> regularly, and even if it's false a good many people will believe it.
>
> Finally, we don't have to speculate about whether the administration
> would really plant bogus WMD evidence in the American media, because
> they have already done it, most visibly in the case of Judith Miller
> of the New York Times and the Iraqi defector "scientist" she wrote
> about at the military's behest on April 21. Miller did not even get to
> speak with the purported scientist, but she graciously passed on
> several things American commanders claimed he said: that Iraq only
> destroyed its chemical weapons days before the war, that WMD materiel
> had been shipped to Syria, and that Iraq had ties to al Qaeda. As
> Slate media critic Jack Shafer told WNYC Radio's On the Media program,
> "When you... look at [her story], you find that it's gas, it's air.
> There's no way to judge the value of her information, because it comes
> from an unnamed source that won't let her verify any aspect of it. And
> if you dig into the story... you'll find out that the only thing that
> Miller has independently observed is a man that the military says is
> the scientist, wearing a baseball cap, pointing at mounds in the dirt."
>
> 39) "The Iraqi people are now free."
>
> So says the current U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, in a
> recent New York Times op-ed. He failed to add that disagreeing can get
> you shot or arrested under the terms of the Pentagon's latest plan for
> pacifying Iraq, Operation Sidewinder (see #36), a military op launched
> last month to wipe out all remaining Ba'athists and Saddam
> partisans--meaning, in practice, anyone who resists the U.S.
> occupation too zealously.
>
> 40) God told Bush to invade Iraq.
>
> Not long after the September 11 attacks, neoconservative high priest
> Norman Podhoretz wrote: "One hears that Bush, who entered the White
> House without a clear sense of what he wanted to do there, now feels
> there was a purpose behind his election all along; as a born-again
> Christian, it is said, he believes he was chosen by God to eradicate
> the evil of terrorism from the world."
>
> No, he really believes it, or so he would like us to think. The
> Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, told the Israeli newspaper
> Ha'aretz that Bush made the following pronouncement during a recent
> meeting between the two: "God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I
> struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I
> did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."
>
> Oddly, it never got much play back home.
>
>
>
>

In article >, Hank wrote:
> Brent P wrote:
>> In article >, Hank wrote:
>
>>> So, when you wrote:
>>> "Could you point out what isn't fair here and in which
>>>direction?"
>>> You meant: "It's so obvious that the current system
>>>is unfair, that no one should need it pointed out to
>>>them." You have a strange way of expressing yourself.
>
>> No, I meant: Could you point out what isn't fair here and
>> in which direction? I asked you to clairify your views.
>> You still haven't.
>
> Wow, your memory is shot. I clarified and supported my views
> very clearly, giving specific examples of tax loopholes that
> favor the elite. I also included this link...
> http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/198998_boats10.html

No, you never stated what you found unfair. You just dumped two links of
the home pages of two sites. I commented on both sites. You never
clairified your idea of what a fair share is. Just posted a link to
some group ranting about 'tax cuts for the rich' and another group of
rich people who felt they should be taxed a lot. You never clairified
what a 'fair share' is.

What is a fair share? You've not answered. And continue to avoid
answering. My guess is you don't have a clue what a fair share is. If the
the top 5% paid 110% of all income taxes you'd still rant about rich not
paying their fair share.

And trim that sig file to 5 lines, I am sick of deleting it on
each reply. Or at least use the mark that gets it auto deleted.

Wound Up wrote:
> In this post, we have 1036 lines / 137k of political, ideological and
> religious argument and spewings, and not ONCE do the words "MUSTANG" or
> "FORD" appear in any of it.

Why do you read it if it doesn't interest you? Also,
why did you post it again in its entirety? When I come
across a post that doesn't interest me, I ignore it
and move on. That way, I don't get all Wound Up. <g>
HTH!



> We have many things here, but we don't have Ford Mustangs.
>
> Hey, gas prices suck, and they're only $3 in my neck of the woods. But
> who in the hell was talking about child butchering terrorists or Hitler?
>
> You want to know what my problems with RAMFM are?
>
> This is number one. Anything written to and from hurc ast, his legion
> of inner selves, and his entire ilk is number two. Number three is
> people who don't know what a repair manual is. We all overlook the
> obvious, but you know what I mean - lazy people who want answers handed
> to them.
>
> Do people want this group to be stronger, more vital, and more on-topic?
> Then take your politics, take your religion, your ideologies, your
> bull****, and your agendas regarding all of the above... elsewhere! You
> do that, you eliminate a lot of troll bait. You eliminate bait, you
> start eliminating trolls.
>
> I'm not saying any of you are wrong or don't deserve to say whatever you
> wish to say. I'm all for free speech and talking **** out. But this
> type of potentially endless crap is what kills a lot of people's
> enthusiasm for this and many other groups.
>
> Jafo, you were dead on....
>
> --
> Wound Up
> ThunderSnake #65
>
> Hank wrote:
>
>> Michael Johnson, PE wrote:
>>
>>> Hank wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>> They're guilty primarily of being ignorant and gullible. But now
>>>> that we know beyond any doubt that bu$h is a liar, a thief, an AWOL
>>>> draft dodging coward, a war criminal, a torturer, and a child
>>>> butchering terrorist, the minority of radical extremists who still
>>>> support him, border on being
>>>> treasonous.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>> Did you hear that noise?
>>
>>
>>
>> The voices of the radical extremists in your "mind"
>> are heard only by you. <chuckle>
>>
>>>> Why should that surprise you? Hitler enjoyed considerable
>>>> support while he was destroying his Country, too.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>> Wow, now that was an impressive display of shoving a large festering,
>>> stinking foot in your mouth. So now over half of the US population
>>> are the equivalent of WWII Nazis party supporters?
>>
>>
>>
>> bu$h's approval rating is far less the half. The radical
>> extremists who support bu$h's lies, taxpayer theft, war
>> crimes and terrorism are a minority. There are still enough
>> of them to be a significant disgrace and embarrassment to
>> the rest of us and our Country, but they are most definitely
>> a minority.
>>
>>
>>> Let me guess the Germans in 1943 German didn't know the Jews were
>>> being slaughtered?
>>
>>
>>
>> They may have known, but rallied behind Hitler's war
>> crimes and terrorism anyway - just like the radical
>> extremists who support bu$h's war crimes and terrorism
>> in Iraq. They know that tens of thousands of innocent
>> women and children have been murdered, but they are so full of hate
>> and ignorance that they just don't care.
>>
>>
>>> Yeah, right and you think 51% of the population here is JUST LIKE
>>> THEM!!!
>>
>>
>>
>> Repeating the silly lie that the radical extremists
>> who support bu$h's war crimes and terrorism represent
>> the majority, only makes you look like a fool, and it won't change the
>> facts. Your anti American lies will be continue to be exposed.
>>
>> http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0504-12.htm
>>
>>
>>> That sound you heard
>>
>>
>>
>> Again, no one but you hears the voices in your head telling you that
>> murdering tens of thousands of innocent women and children over lies,
>> hate, ignorance, and greed is the right thing to do. Those demons
>> exist only in your gullible, hateful, simple, and confused mind.
>>
>> http://www.robert-fisk.com/iraqwarvictims_mar2003.htm
>>
>>
>>> another horde of Bush supporters being created after reading yet
>>> another mindless "Hate America First" rant.
>>
>>
>>
>> If you realize that bu$h and his supporters hate The United States of
>> America, why are you in their camp?
>> Why do you reject the moral values that your many betters cherish and
>> embrace?
>>
>>
>>>> The gullible and brainwashed extremists who still support his
>>>> illegal, immoral, and treasonous policies, represent a rapidly
>>>> shrinking minority.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>> Well, I guess based on the outcome of the last election we have at
>>> least 51% of the population meeting the above description.
>>
>>
>>
>> I see your math is as weak as your knowledge of the
>> facts. 51% percent of voters is clearly not 51% of
>> the population. Are you really that clueless, or are
>> you being deliberately dishonest?
>> Also, we're discussing current support for bu$h's
>> illegal and immoral terror attack on the innocent
>> people of Iraq, which is well below 50%. Do try to
>> keep up. LOL...
>>
>>
>>> Keep hating America, Hank.
>>
>>
>>
>> Wow, after all I've written, you still mistake
>> me for a supporter of bu$h's destructive and anti
>> American polices. I suppose this should be no surprise.
>> After all, you have demonstrated a remarkable ability
>> get your "facts" exactly and repeatedly dead wrong....
>>
>>
>>>> These are kinda funny. Even funnier, is that folks like you
>>>> were gullible enough to believe 'em. <chuckle>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>> What's even funnier is that some left wing, mouth foaming,
>>> rabid, ranting idiot wasted that much effort compiling something so
>>> worthless.
>>
>>
>>
>> Why do you hate The United States of America so much
>> that you consider the efforts of dedicated Patriots who defend Her to
>> be "worthless". If you hate the United States so much that you rabidly
>> support it's abuse and destruction by treasonous war criminals,
>> tortureres, terrorists, liars,
>> and thieves, why do you choose to live here?
>>
>> <link restored because we can't afford to let the America
>> haters hide the Truth and Facts>
>>
>> http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0730-06.htm
>>
>>
>>>> <snipped one HUGE pile of steaming left wing bull****>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Nah, if it was bull****, you'd be able to refute it,
>> rather than just mindlessly cry about it.
>> Seems like the fact that your values and beliefs are
>> "supported" primarily by lies, ignorance, and hate,
>> while those you so rabidly attack are supported by truth,
>> integirty, and facts, would tell you something.....
>>
>> http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0730-06.htm
>>
>> The Bush Administration's Top 40 Lies about War and Terrorism
>> Bring 'em On!
>>
>> by Steve Perry
>>
>> 1) The administration was not bent on war with Iraq from 9/11 onward.
>>
>> Throughout the year leading up to war, the White House publicly
>> maintained that the U.S. took weapons inspections seriously, that
>> diplomacy would get its chance, that Saddam had the opportunity to
>> prevent a U.S. invasion. The most pungent and concise evidence to the
>> contrary comes from the president's own mouth. According to Time's
>> March 31 road-to-war story, Bush popped in on national security
>> adviser Condi Rice one day in March 2002, interrupting a meeting on UN
>> sanctions against Iraq. Getting a whiff of the subject matter, W
>> peremptorily waved his hand and told her, "**** Saddam. We're taking
>> him out." Clare Short, Tony Blair's former secretary for international
>> development, recently lent further credence to the anecdote. She told
>> the London Guardian that Bush and Blair made a secret pact a few
>> months afterward, in the summer of 2002, to invade Iraq in either
>> February or March of this year.
>>
>> Last fall CBS News obtained meeting notes taken by a Rumsfeld aide at
>> 2:40 on the afternoon of September 11, 2001. The notes indicate that
>> Rumsfeld wanted the "best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit
>> S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time. Not only UBL [Usama bin Laden]....
>> Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not."
>>
>> Rumsfeld's deputy Paul Wolfowitz, the Bushmen's leading intellectual
>> light, has long been rabid on the subject of Iraq. He reportedly told
>> Vanity Fair writer Sam Tanenhaus off the record that he believes
>> Saddam was connected not only to bin Laden and 9/11, but the 1995
>> Oklahoma City bombing.
>>
>> The Bush administration's foreign policy plan was not based on
>> September 11, or terrorism; those events only brought to the forefront
>> a radical plan for U.S. control of the post-Cold War world that had
>> been taking shape since the closing days of the first Bush presidency.
>> Back then a small claque of planners, led by Wolfowitz, generated a
>> draft document known as Defense Planning Guidance, which envisioned a
>> U.S. that took advantage of its lone-superpower status to consolidate
>> American control of the world both militarily and economically, to the
>> point where no other nation could ever reasonably hope to challenge
>> the U.S. Toward that end it envisioned what we now call "preemptive"
>> wars waged to reset the geopolitical table.
>>
>> After a copy of DPG was leaked to the New York Times, subsequent
>> drafts were rendered a little less frank, but the basic idea never
>> changed. In 1997 Wolfowitz and his true believers--Richard Perle,
>> William Kristol, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld--formed an organization
>> called Project for the New American Century to carry their cause
>> forward. And though they all flocked around the Bush administration
>> from the start, W never really embraced their plan until the events of
>> September 11 left him casting around for a foreign policy plan.
>>
>> 2) The invasion of Iraq was based on a reasonable belief that Iraq
>> possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to the U.S.,
>> a belief supported by available intelligence evidence.
>>
>> Paul Wolfowitz admitted to Vanity Fair that weapons of mass
>> destruction were not really the main reason for invading Iraq: "The
>> decision to highlight weapons of mass destruction as the main
>> justification for going to war in Iraq was taken for bureaucratic
>> reasons.... [T]here were many other important factors as well." Right.
>> But they did not come under the heading of self-defense.
>>
>> We now know how the Bushmen gathered their prewar intelligence: They
>> set out to patch together their case for invading Iraq and ignored
>> everything that contradicted it. In the end, this required that
>> Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al. set aside the findings of analysts from
>> the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (the Pentagon's own spy
>> bureau) and stake their claim largely on the basis of isolated,
>> anecdotal testimony from handpicked Iraqi defectors. (See #5, Ahmed
>> Chalabi.) But the administration did not just listen to the defectors;
>> it promoted their claims in the press as a means of enlisting public
>> opinion. The only reason so many Americans thought there was a
>> connection between Saddam and al Qaeda in the first place was that the
>> Bushmen trotted out Iraqi defectors making these sorts of claims to
>> every major media outlet that would listen.
>>
>> Here is the verdict of Gregory Thielman, the recently retired head of
>> the State Department's intelligence office: "I believe the Bush
>> administration did not provide an accurate picture to the American
>> people of the military threat posed by Iraq. This administration has
>> had a faith-based intelligence attitude--we know the answers, give us
>> the intelligence to support those answers." Elsewhere he has been
>> quoted as saying, "The principal reasons that Americans did not
>> understand the nature of the Iraqi threat in my view was the failure
>> of senior administration officials to speak honestly about what the
>> intelligence showed."
>>
>> 3) Saddam tried to buy uranium in Niger.
>>
>> Lies and distortions tend to beget more lies and distortions, and here
>> is W's most notorious case in point: Once the administration decided
>> to issue a damage-controlling (they hoped) mea culpa in the matter of
>> African uranium, they were obliged to couch it in another, more
>> perilous lie: that the administration, and quite likely Bush himself,
>> thought the uranium claim was true when he made it. But former acting
>> ambassador to Iraq Joseph Wilson wrote an op-ed in the New York Times
>> on July 6 that exploded the claim. Wilson, who traveled to Niger in
>> 2002 to investigate the uranium claims at the behest of the CIA and
>> Dick Cheney's office and found them to be groundless, describes what
>> followed this way: "Although I did not file a written report, there
>> should be at least four documents in U.S. government archives
>> confirming my mission. The documents should include the ambassador's
>> report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the
>> embassy staff, a CIA report summing up my trip, and a specific answer
>> from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have
>> been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I
>> have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard
>> operating procedure."
>>
>> 4) The aluminum tubes were proof of a nuclear program.
>>
>> The very next sentence of Bush's State of the Union address was just
>> as egregious a lie as the uranium claim, though a bit cagier in its
>> formulation. "Our intelligence sources tell us that [Saddam] has
>> attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for
>> nuclear weapons production." This is altogether false in its
>> implication (that this is the likeliest use for these materials) and
>> may be untrue in its literal sense as well. As the London Independent
>> summed it up recently, "The U.S. persistently alleged that Baghdad
>> tried to buy high-strength aluminum tubes whose only use could be in
>> gas centrifuges, needed to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. Equally
>> persistently, the International Atomic Energy Agency said the tubes
>> were being used for artillery rockets. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed
>> El Baradei, told the UN Security Council in January that the tubes
>> were not even suitable for centrifuges." [emphasis added]
>>
>> 5) Iraq's WMDs were sent to Syria for hiding.
>>
>> Or Iran, or.... "They shipped them out!" was a rallying cry for the
>> administration in the first few nervous weeks of finding no WMDs, but
>> not a bit of supporting evidence has emerged.
>>
>> 6) The CIA was primarily responsible for any prewar intelligence
>> errors or distortions regarding Iraq.
>>
>> Don't be misled by the news that CIA director George Tenet has taken
>> the fall for Bush's falsehoods in the State of the Uranium address. As
>> the journalist Robert Dreyfuss wrote shortly before the war, "Even as
>> it prepares for war against Iraq, the Pentagon is already engaged on a
>> second front: its war against the Central Intelligence Agency. The
>> Pentagon is bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to
>> produce intelligence reports more supportive of war with Iraq. ...
>> Morale inside the U.S. national-security apparatus is said to be low,
>> with career staffers feeling intimidated and pressured to justify the
>> push for war."
>>
>> In short, Tenet fell on his sword when he vetted Bush's State of the
>> Union yarns. And now he has had to get up and fall on it again.
>>
>> 7) An International Atomic Energy Agency report indicated that Iraq
>> could be as little as six months from making nuclear weapons.
>>
>> Alas: The claim had to be retracted when the IAEA pointed out that no
>> such report existed.
>>
>> 8) Saddam was involved with bin Laden and al Qaeda in the plotting of
>> 9/11.
>>
>> One of the most audacious and well-traveled of the Bushmen's fibs,
>> this one hangs by two of the slenderest evidentiary threads
>> imaginable: first, anecdotal testimony by isolated, handpicked Iraqi
>> defectors that there was an al Qaeda training camp in Iraq, a claim
>> CIA analysts did not corroborate and that postwar U.S. military
>> inspectors conceded did not exist; and second, old intelligence
>> accounts of a 1991 meeting in Baghdad between a bin Laden emissary and
>> officers from Saddam's intelligence service, which did not lead to any
>> subsequent contact that U.S. or UK spies have ever managed to turn up.
>> According to former State Department intelligence chief Gregory
>> Thielman, the consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies well in advance
>> of the war was that "there was no significant pattern of cooperation
>> between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist operation."
>>
>> 9) The U.S. wants democracy in Iraq and the Middle East.
>>
>> Democracy is the last thing the U.S. can afford in Iraq, as anyone who
>> has paid attention to the state of Arab popular sentiment already
>> realizes. Representative government in Iraq would mean the rapid
>> expulsion of U.S. interests. Rather, the U.S. wants westernized,
>> secular leadership regimes that will stay in pocket and work to
>> neutralize the politically ambitious anti-Western religious sects
>> popping up everywhere. If a little brutality and graft are required to
>> do the job, it has never troubled the U.S. in the past. Ironically,
>> these standards describe someone more or less like Saddam Hussein.
>> Judging from the state of civil affairs in Iraq now, the Bush
>> administration will no doubt be looking for a strongman again, if and
>> when they are finally compelled to install anyone at all.
>>
>> 10) Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress are a homegrown
>> Iraqi political force, not a U.S.-sponsored front.
>>
>> Chalabi is a more important bit player in the Iraq war than most
>> people realize, and not because he was the U.S.'s failed choice to
>> lead a post-Saddam government. It was Chalabi and his INC that
>> funneled compliant defectors to the Bush administration, where they
>> attested to everything the Bushmen wanted to believe about Saddam and
>> Iraq (meaning, mainly, al Qaeda connections and WMD programs). The
>> administration proceeded to take their dubious word over that of the
>> combined intelligence of the CIA and DIA, which indicated that Saddam
>> was not in the business of sponsoring foreign terrorism and posed no
>> imminent threat to anyone.
>>
>> Naturally Chalabi is despised nowadays round the halls of Langley, but
>> it wasn't always so. The CIA built the Iraqi National Congress and
>> installed Chalabi at the helm back in the days following Gulf War I,
>> when the thought was to topple Saddam by whipping up and sponsoring an
>> internal opposition. It didn't work; from the start Iraqis have
>> disliked and distrusted Chalabi. Moreover, his erratic and duplicitous
>> ways have alienated practically everyone in the U.S. foreign policy
>> establishment as well--except for Rumsfeld's Department of Defense,
>> and therefore the White House.
>>
>> 11) The United States is waging a war on terror.
>>
>> Practically any school child could recite the terms of the Bush
>> Doctrine, and may have to before the Ashcroft Justice Department is
>> finished: The global war on terror is about confronting terrorist
>> groups and the nations that harbor them. The United States does not
>> make deals with terrorists or nations where they find safe lodging.
>>
>> Leave aside the blind eye that the U.S. has always cast toward
>> Israel's actions in the territories. How are the Bushmen doing
>> elsewhere vis-à-vis their announced principles? We can start with
>> their fabrications and manipulations of Iraqi WMD evidence--which, in
>> the eyes of weapons inspectors, the UN Security Council, American
>> intelligence analysts, and the world at large, did not pose any
>> imminent threat.
>>
>> The events of recent months have underscored a couple more gaping
>> violations of W's cardinal anti-terror rules. In April the Pentagon
>> made a cooperation pact with the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), an
>> anti-Iranian terrorist group based in Iraq. Prior to the 1979 Iranian
>> revolution, American intelligence blamed it for the death of several
>> U.S. nationals in Iran.
>>
>> Most glaring of all is the Bush administration's remarkable treatment
>> of Saudi Arabia. Consider: Eleven of the nineteen September 11
>> hijackers were Saudis. The ruling House of Saud has longstanding and
>> well-known ties to al Qaeda and other terrorist outfits, which it
>> funds (read protection money) to keep them from making mischief at
>> home. The May issue of Atlantic Monthly had a nice piece on the House
>> of Saud that recounts these connections.
>>
>> Yet the Bush government has never said boo regarding the Saudis and
>> international terrorism. In fact, when terror bombers struck Riyadh in
>> May, hitting compounds that housed American workers as well, Colin
>> Powell went out of his way to avoid tarring the House of Saud:
>> "Terrorism strikes everywhere and everyone. It is a threat to the
>> civilized world. We will commit ourselves again to redouble our
>> efforts to work closely with our Saudi friends and friends all around
>> the world to go after al Qaeda." Later it was alleged that the Riyadh
>> bombers purchased some of their ordnance from the Saudi National
>> Guard, but neither Powell nor anyone else saw fit to revise their
>> statements about "our Saudi friends."
>>
>> Why do the Bushmen give a pass to the Saudi terror hotbed? Because the
>> House of Saud controls a lot of oil, and they are still (however
>> tenuously) on our side. And that, not terrorism, is what matters most
>> in Bush's foreign policy calculus.
>>
>> While the bomb craters in Riyadh were still smoking, W held a meeting
>> with Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Speaking publicly
>> afterward, he outlined a deal for U.S. military aid to the Philippines
>> in exchange for greater "cooperation" in getting American hands round
>> the throats of Filipino terrorists. He mentioned in particular the
>> U.S.'s longtime nemesis Abu Sayyaf--and he also singled out the Moro
>> Islamic Liberation Front, a small faction based on Mindanao, the
>> southernmost big island in the Philippine chain.
>>
>> Of course it's by purest coincidence that Mindanao is the location of
>> Asia's richest oil reserves.
>>
>> 12) The U.S. has made progress against world terrorist elements, in
>> particular by crippling al Qaeda.
>>
>> A resurgent al Qaeda has been making international news since around
>> the time of the Saudi Arabia bombings in May. The best coverage by far
>> is that of Asia Times correspondent Syed Saleem Shahzad. According to
>> Shahzad's detailed accounts, al Qaeda has reorganized itself along
>> leaner, more diffuse lines, effectively dissolving itself into a
>> coalition of localized units that mean to strike frequently, on a
>> small scale, and in multiple locales around the world. Since claiming
>> responsibility for the May Riyadh bombings, alleged al Qaeda
>> communiqués have also claimed credit for some of the strikes at U.S.
>> troops in Iraq.
>>
>> 13) The Bush administration has made Americans safer from terror on
>> U.S. soil.
>>
>> Like the Pentagon "plan" for occupying postwar Iraq, the Department of
>> Homeland Security is mainly a Bush administration PR dirigible
>> untethered to anything of substance. It's a scandal waiting to happen,
>> and the only good news for W is that it's near the back of a fairly
>> long line of scandals waiting to happen.
>>
>> On May 26 the trade magazine Federal Computer Week published a report
>> on DHS's first 100 days. At that point the nerve center of Bush's
>> domestic war on terror had only recently gotten e-mail service. As for
>> the larger matter of creating a functioning organizational grid and,
>> more important, a software architecture plan for integrating the
>> enormous mass of data that DHS is supposed to process--nada. In the
>> nearly two years since the administration announced its intention to
>> create a cabinet-level homeland security office, nothing meaningful
>> has been accomplished. And there are no funds to implement a network
>> plan if they had one. According to the magazine, "Robert David Steele,
>> an author and former intelligence officer, points out that there are
>> at least 30 separate intelligence systems [theoretically feeding into
>> DHS] and no money to connect them to one another or make them
>> interoperable. 'There is nothing in the president's homeland security
>> program that makes America safer,' he said."
>>
>> 14) The Bush administration has nothing to hide concerning the events
>> of September 11, 2001, or the intelligence evidence collected prior to
>> that day.
>>
>> First Dick Cheney personally intervened to scuttle a broad
>> congressional investigation of the day's events and their origins. And
>> for the past several months the administration has fought a quiet
>> rear-guard action culminating in last week's delayed release of
>> Congress's more modest 9/11 report. The White House even went so far
>> as to classify after the fact materials that had already been
>> presented in public hearing.
>>
>> What were they trying to keep under wraps? The Saudi connection,
>> mostly, and though 27 pages of the details have been excised from the
>> public report, there is still plenty of evidence lurking in its
>> extensively massaged text. (When you see the phrase "foreign nation"
>> substituted in brackets, it's nearly always Saudi Arabia.) The report
>> documents repeated signs that there was a major attack in the works
>> with extensive help from Saudi nationals and apparently also at least
>> one member of the government. It also suggests that is one reason
>> intel operatives didn't chase the story harder: Saudi Arabia was by
>> policy fiat a "friendly" nation and therefore no threat. The report
>> does not explore the administration's response to the intelligence
>> briefings it got; its purview is strictly the performance of
>> intelligence agencies. All other questions now fall to the independent
>> 9/11 commission, whose work is presently being slowed by the White
>> House's foot-dragging in turning over evidence.
>>
>> 15) U.S. air defenses functioned according to protocols on September
>> 11, 2001.
>>
>> Old questions abound here. The central mystery, of how U.S. air
>> defenses could have responded so poorly on that day, is fairly easy to
>> grasp. A cursory look at that morning's timeline of events is enough.
>> In very short strokes:
>>
>> 8:13 Flight 11 disobeys air traffic instructions and turns off its
>> transponder.
>>
>> 8:40 NORAD command center claims first notification of likely Flight
>> 11 hijacking.
>>
>> 8:42 Flight 175 veers off course and shuts down its transponder.
>>
>> 8:43 NORAD claims first notification of likely Flight 175 hijacking.
>>
>> 8:46 Flight 11 hits the World Trade Center north tower.
>>
>> 8:46 Flight 77 goes off course.
>>
>> 9:03 Flight 175 hits the WTC south tower.
>>
>> 9:16 Flight 93 goes off course.
>>
>> 9:16 NORAD claims first notification of likely Flight 93 hijacking.
>>
>> 9:24 NORAD claims first notification of likely Flight 77 hijacking.
>>
>> 9:37 Flight 77 hits the Pentagon.
>>
>> 10:06 Flight 93 crashes in a Pennsylvania field.
>>
>> The open secret here is that stateside U.S. air defenses had been
>> reduced to paltry levels since the end of the Cold War. According to a
>> report by Paul Thompson published at the endlessly informative Center
>> for Cooperative Research website (www.cooperativeresearch.org),
>> "[O]nly two air force bases in the Northeast region... were formally
>> part of NORAD's defensive system. One was Otis Air National Guard
>> Base, on Massachusetts's Cape Cod peninsula and about 188 miles east
>> of New York City. The other was Langley Air Force Base near Norfolk,
>> Virginia, and about 129 miles south of Washington. During the Cold
>> War, the U.S. had literally thousands of fighters on alert. But as the
>> Cold War wound down, this number was reduced until it reached only 14
>> fighters in the continental U.S. by 9/11."
>>
>> But even an underpowered air defense system on slow-response status
>> (15 minutes, officially, on 9/11) does not explain the magnitude of
>> NORAD's apparent failures that day. Start with the discrepancy in the
>> times at which NORAD commanders claim to have learned of the various
>> hijackings. By 8:43 a.m., NORAD had been notified of two probable
>> hijackings in the previous five minutes. If there was such a thing as
>> a system-wide air defense crisis plan, it should have kicked in at
>> that moment. Three minutes later, at 8:46, Flight 11 crashed into the
>> first WTC tower. By then alerts should have been going out to all
>> regional air traffic centers of apparent coordinated hijackings in
>> progress. Yet when Flight 77, which eventually crashed into the
>> Pentagon, was hijacked three minutes later, at 8:46, NORAD claims not
>> to have learned of it until 9:24, 38 minutes after the fact and just
>> 13 minutes before it crashed into the Pentagon.
>>
>> The professed lag in reacting to the hijacking of Flight 93 is just as
>> striking. NORAD acknowledged learning of the hijacking at 9:16, yet
>> the Pentagon's position is that it had not yet intercepted the plane
>> when it crashed in a Pennsylvania field just minutes away from
>> Washington, D.C. at 10:06, a full 50 minutes later.
>>
>> In fact, there are a couple of other circumstantial details of the
>> crash, discussed mostly in Pennsylvania newspapers and barely noted in
>> national wire stories, that suggest Flight 93 may have been shot down
>> after all. First, officials never disputed reports that there was a
>> secondary debris field six miles from the main crash site, and a few
>> press accounts said that it included one of the plane's engines. A
>> secondary debris field points to an explosion on board, from one of
>> two probable causes--a terrorist bomb carried on board or an Air Force
>> missile. And no investigation has ever intimated that any of the four
>> terror crews were toting explosives. They kept to simple tools like
>> the box cutters, for ease in passing security. Second, a handful of
>> eyewitnesses in the rural area around the crash site did report seeing
>> low-flying U.S. military jets around the time of the crash.
>>
>> Which only raises another question. Shooting down Flight 93 would have
>> been incontestably the right thing to do under the circumstances. More
>> than that, it would have constituted the only evidence of anything
>> NORAD and the Pentagon had done right that whole morning. So why deny
>> it? Conversely, if fighter jets really were not on the scene when 93
>> crashed, why weren't they? How could that possibly be?
>>
>> 16) The Bush administration had a plan for restoring essential
>> services and rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure after the shooting war
>> ended.
>>
>> The question of what the U.S. would do to rebuild Iraq was raised
>> before the shooting started. I remember reading a press briefing in
>> which a Pentagon official boasted that at the time, the American
>> reconstruction team had already spent three weeks planning the postwar
>> world! The Pentagon's first word was that the essentials of rebuilding
>> the country would take about $10 billion and three months; this stood
>> in fairly stark contrast to UN estimates that an aggressive rebuilding
>> program could cost up to $100 billion a year for a minimum of three
>> years.
>>
>> After the shooting stopped it was evident the U.S. had no plan for
>> keeping order in the streets, much less commencing to rebuild. (They
>> are upgrading certain oil facilities, but that's another matter.)
>> There are two ways to read this. The popular version is that it proves
>> what bumblers Bush and his crew really are. And it's certainly true
>> that where the details of their grand designs are concerned, the
>> administration tends to have postures rather than plans. But this
>> ignores the strategic advantages the U.S. stands to reap by leaving
>> Iraqi domestic affairs in a chronic state of (managed, they hope)
>> chaos. Most important, it provides an excuse for the continued
>> presence of a large U.S. force, which ensures that America will call
>> the shots in putting Iraqi oil back on the world market and seeing to
>> it that the Iraqis don't fall in with the wrong sort of oil company
>> partners. A long military occupation is also a practical means of
>> accomplishing something the U.S. cannot do officially, which is to
>> maintain air bases in Iraq indefinitely. (This became necessary after
>> the U.S. agreed to vacate its bases in Saudi Arabia earlier this year
>> to try to defuse anti-U.S. political tensions there.)
>>
>> Meanwhile, the U.S. plans to pay for whatever rebuilding it gets
>> around to doing with the proceeds of Iraqi oil sales, an enormous cash
>> box the U.S. will oversee for the good of the Iraqi people.
>>
>> In other words, "no plan" may have been the plan the Bushmen were
>> intent on pursuing all along.
>>
>> 17) The U.S. has made a good-faith effort at peacekeeping in Iraq
>> during the postwar period.
>>
>> "Some [looters] shot big grins at American soldiers and Marines or put
>> down their prizes to offer a thumbs-up or a quick finger across the
>> throat and a whispered word--Saddam--before grabbing their loot and
>> vanishing."
>>
>> --Robert Fisk, London Independent, 4/11/03
>>
>> Despite the many clashes between U.S. troops and Iraqis in the three
>> months since the heavy artillery fell silent, the postwar performance
>> of U.S. forces has been more remarkable for the things they have not
>> done--their failure to intervene in civil chaos or to begin
>> reestablishing basic civil procedures. It isn't the soldiers' fault.
>> Traditionally an occupation force is headed up by military police
>> units schooled to interact with the natives and oversee the
>> restoration of goods and services. But Rumsfeld has repeatedly
>> declined advice to rotate out the combat troops sooner rather than
>> later and replace some of them with an MP force. Lately this has been
>> a source of escalating criticism within military ranks.
>>
>> 18) Despite vocal international opposition, the U.S. was backed by
>> most of the world, as evidenced by the 40-plus-member Coalition of the
>> Willing.
>>
>> When the whole world opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the outcry was
>> so loud that it briefly pierced the slumber of the American public,
>> which poured out its angst in poll numbers that bespoke little taste
>> for a war without the UN's blessing. So it became necessary to assure
>> the folks at home that the whole world was in fact for the invasion.
>> Thus was born the Coalition of the Willing, consisting of the U.S. and
>> UK, with Australia caddying--and 40-some additional co-champions of
>> U.S.-style democracy in the Middle East, whose ranks included such
>> titans of diplomacy and pillars of representative government as
>> Angola, Azerbaijan, Colombia, Eritrea, and Micronesia. If the American
>> public noticed the ruse, all was nonetheless forgotten when Baghdad
>> fell. Everybody loves a winner.
>>
>> 19) This war was notable for its protection of civilians.
>>
>> This from the Herald of Scotland, May 23: "American guns, bombs, and
>> missiles killed more civilians in the recent war in Iraq than in any
>> conflict since Vietnam, according to preliminary assessments carried
>> out by the UN, international aid agencies, and independent study
>> groups. Despite U.S. boasts this was the fastest, most clinical
>> campaign in military history, a first snapshot of 'collateral damage'
>> indicates that between 5,000 and 10,000 Iraqi non-combatants died in
>> the course of the hi-tech blitzkrieg."
>>
>> 20) The looting of archaeological and historic sites in Baghdad was
>> unanticipated.
>>
>> General Jay Garner himself, then the head man for postwar Iraq, told
>> the Washington Times that he had put the Iraqi National Museum second
>> on a list of sites requiring protection after the fall of the Saddam
>> government, and he had no idea why the recommendation was ignored.
>> It's also a matter of record that the administration had met in
>> January with a group of U.S. scholars concerned with the preservation
>> of Iraq's fabulous Sumerian antiquities. So the war planners were
>> aware of the riches at stake. According to Scotland's Sunday Herald,
>> the Pentagon took at least one other meeting as well: "[A] coalition
>> of antiquities collectors and arts lawyers, calling itself the
>> American Council for Cultural Policy (ACCP), met with U.S. Defense and
>> State department officials prior to the start of military action to
>> offer its assistance.... The group is known to consist of a number of
>> influential dealers who favor a relaxation of Iraq's tight
>> restrictions on the ownership and export of antiquities....
>> [Archaeological Institute of America] president Patty Gerstenblith
>> said: 'The ACCP's agenda is to encourage the collecting of antiquities
>> through weakening the laws of archaeologically rich nations and
>> eliminate national ownership of antiquities to allow for easier export.'"
>>
>> 21) Saddam was planning to provide WMD to terrorist groups.
>>
>> This is very concisely debunked in Walter Pincus's July 21 Washington
>> Post story, so I'll quote him: "'Iraq could decide on any given day to
>> provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or
>> individual terrorists,' President Bush said in Cincinnati on October
>> 7.... But declassified portions of a still-secret National
>> Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released Friday by the White House show
>> that at the time of the president's speech the U.S. intelligence
>> community judged that possibility to be unlikely. In fact, the NIE,
>> which began circulating October 2, shows the intelligence services
>> were much more worried that Hussein might give weapons to al Qaeda
>> terrorists if he were facing death or capture and his government was
>> collapsing after a military attack by the United States."
>>
>> 22) Saddam was capable of launching a chemical or biological attack in
>> 45 minutes.
>>
>> Again the WashPost wraps it up nicely: "The 45-minute claim is at the
>> center of a scandal in Britain that led to the apparent suicide on
>> Friday of a British weapons scientist who had questioned the
>> government's use of the allegation. The scientist, David Kelly, was
>> being investigated by the British parliament as the suspected source
>> of a BBC report that the 45-minute claim was added to Britain's public
>> 'dossier' on Iraq in September at the insistence of an aide to Prime
>> Minister Tony Blair--and against the wishes of British intelligence,
>> which said the charge was from a single source and was considered
>> unreliable."
>>
>> 23) The Bush administration is seeking to create a viable Palestinian
>> state.
>>
>> The interests of the U.S. toward the Palestinians have not
>> changed--not yet, at least. Israel's "security needs" are still the
>> U.S.'s sturdiest pretext for its military role in policing the Middle
>> East and arming its Israeli proxies. But the U.S.'s immediate needs
>> have tilted since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Now the
>> Bushmen need a fig leaf--to confuse, if not exactly cover, their
>> designs, and to give shaky pro-U.S. governments in the region some
>> scrap to hold out to their own restive peoples. Bush's roadmap has
>> scared the hell out of the Israeli right, but they have little reason
>> to worry. Press reports in the U.S. and Israel have repeatedly
>> telegraphed the assurance that Bush won't try to push Ariel Sharon any
>> further than he's comfortable going.
>>
>> 24) People detained by the U.S. after 9/11 were legitimate terror
>> suspects.
>>
>> Quite the contrary, as disclosed officially in last month's critical
>> report on U.S. detainees from the Justice Department's own Office of
>> Inspector General. A summary analysis of post-9/11 detentions posted
>> at the UC-Davis website states, "None of the 1,200 foreigners arrested
>> and detained in secret after September 11 was charged with an act of
>> terrorism. Instead, after periods of detention that ranged from weeks
>> to months, most were deported for violating immigration laws. The
>> government said that 752 of 1,200 foreigners arrested after September
>> 11 were in custody in May 2002, but only 81 were still in custody in
>> September 2002."
>>
>> 25) The U.S. is obeying the Geneva conventions in its treatment of
>> terror-related suspects, prisoners, and detainees.
>>
>> The entire mumbo-jumbo about "unlawful combatants" was conceived to
>> skirt the Geneva conventions on treatment of prisoners by making them
>> out to be something other than POWs. Here is the actual wording of
>> Donald Rumsfeld's pledge, freighted with enough qualifiers to make it
>> absolutely meaningless: "We have indicated that we do plan to, for the
>> most part, treat them in a manner that is reasonably consistent with
>> the Geneva conventions to the extent they are appropriate." Meanwhile
>> the administration has treated its prisoners--many of whom, as we are
>> now seeing confirmed in legal hearings, have no plausible connection
>> to terrorist enterprises--in a manner that blatantly violates several
>> key Geneva provisions regarding humane treatment and housing.
>>
>> 26) Shots rang out from the Palestine hotel, directed at U.S.
>> soldiers, just before a U.S. tank fired on the hotel, killing two
>> journalists.
>>
>> Eyewitnesses to the April 8 attack uniformly denied any gunfire from
>> the hotel. And just two hours prior to firing on the hotel, U.S.
>> forces had bombed the Baghdad offices of Al-Jazeera, killing a
>> Jordanian reporter. Taken together, and considering the timing, they
>> were deemed a warning to unembedded journalists covering the fall of
>> Baghdad around them. The day's events seem to have been an extreme
>> instance of a more surreptitious pattern of hostility demonstrated by
>> U.S. and UK forces toward foreign journalists and those non-attached
>> Western reporters who moved around the country at will. (One of them,
>> Terry Lloyd of Britain's ITN, was shot to death by UK troops at a
>> checkpoint in late March under circumstances the British government
>> has refused to disclose.)
>>
>> Some days after firing on the Palestine Hotel, the U.S. sent in a
>> commando unit to raid select floors of the hotel that were known to be
>> occupied by journalists, and the news gatherers were held on the floor
>> at gunpoint while their rooms were searched. A Centcom spokesman later
>> explained cryptically that intelligence reports suggested there were
>> people "not friendly to the U.S." staying at the hotel. Allied forces
>> also bombed the headquarters of Abu Dhabi TV, injuring several.
>>
>> 27) U.S. troops "rescued" Private Jessica Lynch from an Iraqi hospital.
>>
>> If I had wanted to run up the tally of administration lies, the Lynch
>> episode alone could be parsed into several more. Officials claimed
>> that Lynch and her comrades were taken after a firefight in which
>> Lynch battled back bravely. Later they announced with great fanfare
>> that U.S. Special Forces had rescued Lynch from her captors. They
>> reported that she had been shot and stabbed. Later yet, they reported
>> that the recuperating Lynch had no memory of the events.
>>
>> Bit by bit it all proved false. Lynch's injuries occurred when the
>> vehicle she was riding in crashed. She did not fire on anybody and she
>> was not shot or stabbed. The Iraqi soldiers who had been holding her
>> had abandoned the hospital where she was staying the night before U.S.
>> troops came to get her--a development her "rescuers" were aware of. In
>> fact her doctor had tried to return her to the Americans the previous
>> evening after the Iraqi soldiers left. But he was forced to turn back
>> when U.S. troops fired on the approaching ambulance. As for Lynch's
>> amnesia, her family has told reporters her memory is perfectly fine.
>>
>> 28) The populace of Baghdad and of Iraq generally turned out en masse
>> to greet U.S. troops as liberators.
>>
>> There were indeed scattered expressions of thanks when U.S. divisions
>> rolled in, but they were neither as extensive nor as enthusiastic as
>> Bush image-makers pretended. Within a day or two of the Saddam
>> government's fall, the scene in the Baghdad streets turned to
>> wholesale ransacking and vandalism. Within the week, large-scale
>> protests of the U.S. occupation had already begun occurring in every
>> major Iraqi city.
>>
>> 29) A spontaneous crowd of cheering Iraqis showed up in a Baghdad
>> square to celebrate the toppling of Saddam's statue.
>>
>> A long-distance shot of the same scene that was widely posted on the
>> internet shows that the teeming mob consisted of only one or two
>> hundred souls, contrary to the impression given by all the close-up TV
>> news shots of what appeared to be a massive gathering. It was later
>> reported that members of Ahmed Chalabi's local entourage made up most
>> of the throng.
>>
>> 30) No major figure in the Bush administration said that the Iraqi
>> populace would turn out en masse to welcome the U.S. military as
>> liberators.
>>
>> When confronted with--oh, call them reality deficits--one habit of the
>> Bushmen is to deny that they made erroneous or misleading statements
>> to begin with, secure in the knowledge that the media will rarely
>> muster the energy to look it up and call them on it. They did it when
>> their bold prewar WMD predictions failed to pan out (We never said it
>> would be easy! No, they only implied it), and they did it when the
>> "jubilant Iraqis" who took to the streets after the fall of Saddam
>> turned out to be anything but (We never promised they would welcome us
>> with open arms!).
>>
>> But they did. March 16, Dick Cheney, Meet the Press: The Iraqis are
>> desperate "to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as
>> liberators the United States when we come to do that.... [T]he vast
>> majority of them would turn on [Saddam] in a minute if, in fact, they
>> thought they could do so safely").
>>
>> 31) The U.S. achieved its stated objectives in Afghanistan, and
>> vanquished the Taliban.
>>
>> According to accounts in the Asia Times of Hong Kong, the U.S. held a
>> secret meeting earlier this year with Taliban leaders and Pakistani
>> intelligence officials to offer a deal to the Taliban for inclusion in
>> the Afghan government. (Main condition: Dump Mullah Omar.) As Michael
>> Tomasky commented in The American Prospect, "The first thing you may
>> be wondering: Why is there a possible role for the Taliban in a future
>> government? Isn't that fellow Hamid Karzai running things, and isn't
>> it all going basically okay? As it turns out, not really and not at
>> all.... The reality... is an escalating guerilla war in which 'small
>> hit-and-run attacks are a daily feature in most parts of the country,
>> while face-to-face skirmishes are common in the former Taliban
>> stronghold around Kandahar in the south.'"
>>
>> 32) Careful science demonstrates that depleted uranium is no big risk
>> to the population.
>>
>> Pure nonsense. While the government has trotted out expert after
>> expert to debunk the dangers of depleted uranium, DU has been
>> implicated in health troubles experienced both by Iraqis and by U.S.
>> and allied soldiers in the first Gulf War. Unexploded DU shells are
>> not a grave danger, but detonated ones release particles that
>> eventually find their way into air, soil, water, and food.
>>
>> While we're on the subject, the BBC reported a couple of months ago
>> that recent tests of Afghani civilians have turned up with unusually
>> high concentrations of non-depleted uranium isotopes in their urine.
>> International monitors have called it almost conclusive evidence that
>> the U.S. used a new kind of uranium-laced bomb in the Afghan war.
>>
>> 33) The looting of Iraqi nuclear facilities presented no big risk to
>> the population.
>>
>> Commanders on the scene, and Rumsfeld back in Washington, immediately
>> assured everyone that the looting of a facility where raw uranium
>> powder (so-called "yellowcake") and several other radioactive isotopes
>> were stored was no serious danger to the populace--yet the looting of
>> the facility came to light in part because, as the Washington Times
>> noted, "U.S. and British newspaper reports have suggested that
>> residents of the area were suffering from severe ill health after
>> tipping out yellowcake powder from barrels and using them to store food."
>>
>> 34) U.S. troops were under attack when they fired upon a crowd of
>> civilian protesters in Mosul.
>>
>> April 15: U.S. troops fire into a crowd of protesters when it grows
>> angry at the pro-Western speech being given by the town's new mayor,
>> Mashaan al-Juburi. Seven are killed and dozens injured. Eyewitness
>> accounts say the soldiers spirit Juburi away as he is pelted with
>> objects by the crowd, then take sniper positions and begin firing on
>> the crowd.
>>
>> 35) U.S. troops were under attack when they fired upon two separate
>> crowds of civilian protesters in Fallujah.
>>
>> April 28: American troops fire into a crowd of demonstrators gathered
>> on Saddam's birthday, killing 13 and injuring 75. U.S. commanders
>> claim the troops had come under fire, but eyewitnesses contradict the
>> account, saying the troops started shooting after they were spooked by
>> warning shots fired over the crowd by one of the Americans' own
>> Humvees. Two days later U.S. soldiers fired on another crowd in
>> Fallujah, killing three more.
>>
>> 36) The Iraqis fighting occupation forces consist almost entirely of
>> "Saddam supporters" or "Ba'ath remnants."
>>
>> This has been the subject of considerable spin on the Bushmen's part
>> in the past month, since they launched Operation Sidewinder to capture
>> or kill remaining opponents of the U.S. occupation. It's true that the
>> most fierce (but by no means all) of the recent guerrilla opposition
>> has been concentrated in the Sunni-dominated areas that were Saddam's
>> stronghold, and there is no question that Saddam partisans are
>> numerous there. But, perhaps for that reason, many other guerrilla
>> fighters have flocked there to wage jihad, both from within and
>> without Iraq. Around the time of the U.S. invasion, some 10,000 or so
>> foreign fighters had crossed into Iraq, and I've seen no informed
>> estimate of how many more may have joined them since.
>>
>> (No room here, but if you check the online version of this story,
>> there's a footnote regarding one less-than-obvious reason former
>> Republican Guard personnel may be fighting mad at this point.)
>>
>> 37) The bidding process for Iraq rebuilding contracts displayed no
>> favoritism toward Bush and Cheney's oil/gas cronies.
>>
>> Most notoriously, Dick Cheney's former energy-sector employer,
>> Halliburton, was all over the press dispatches about the first round
>> of rebuilding contracts. So much so that they were eventually obliged
>> to bow out of the running for a $1 billion reconstruction contract for
>> the sake of their own PR profile. But Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg
>> Brown Root still received the first major plum in the form of a $7
>> billion contract to tend to oil field fires and (the real purpose) to
>> do any retooling necessary to get the oil pumping at a decent rate, a
>> deal that allows them a cool $500 million in profit. The fact that
>> Dick Cheney's office is still fighting tooth and nail to block any
>> disclosure of the individuals and companies with whom his energy task
>> force consulted tells everything you need to know.
>>
>> 38) "We found the WMDs!"
>>
>> There have been at least half a dozen junctures at which the Bushmen
>> have breathlessly informed the press that allied troops had found the
>> WMD smoking gun, including the president himself, who on June 1 told
>> reporters, "For those who say we haven't found the banned
>> manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them."
>>
>> Shouldn't these quickly falsified statements be counted as errors
>> rather than lies? Under the circumstances, no. First, there is just
>> too voluminous a record of the administration going on the media
>> offensive to tout lines they know to be flimsy. This appears to be
>> more of same. Second, if the great genius Karl Rove and the rest of
>> the Bushmen have demonstrated that they understand anything about the
>> propaganda potential of the historical moment they've inherited, they
>> surely understand that repetition is everything. Get your message out
>> regularly, and even if it's false a good many people will believe it.
>>
>> Finally, we don't have to speculate about whether the administration
>> would really plant bogus WMD evidence in the American media, because
>> they have already done it, most visibly in the case of Judith Miller
>> of the New York Times and the Iraqi defector "scientist" she wrote
>> about at the military's behest on April 21. Miller did not even get to
>> speak with the purported scientist, but she graciously passed on
>> several things American commanders claimed he said: that Iraq only
>> destroyed its chemical weapons days before the war, that WMD materiel
>> had been shipped to Syria, and that Iraq had ties to al Qaeda. As
>> Slate media critic Jack Shafer told WNYC Radio's On the Media program,
>> "When you... look at [her story], you find that it's gas, it's air.
>> There's no way to judge the value of her information, because it comes
>> from an unnamed source that won't let her verify any aspect of it. And
>> if you dig into the story... you'll find out that the only thing that
>> Miller has independently observed is a man that the military says is
>> the scientist, wearing a baseball cap, pointing at mounds in the dirt."
>>
>> 39) "The Iraqi people are now free."
>>
>> So says the current U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, in a
>> recent New York Times op-ed. He failed to add that disagreeing can get
>> you shot or arrested under the terms of the Pentagon's latest plan for
>> pacifying Iraq, Operation Sidewinder (see #36), a military op launched
>> last month to wipe out all remaining Ba'athists and Saddam
>> partisans--meaning, in practice, anyone who resists the U.S.
>> occupation too zealously.
>>
>> 40) God told Bush to invade Iraq.
>>
>> Not long after the September 11 attacks, neoconservative high priest
>> Norman Podhoretz wrote: "One hears that Bush, who entered the White
>> House without a clear sense of what he wanted to do there, now feels
>> there was a purpose behind his election all along; as a born-again
>> Christian, it is said, he believes he was chosen by God to eradicate
>> the evil of terrorism from the world."
>>
>> No, he really believes it, or so he would like us to think. The
>> Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, told the Israeli newspaper
>> Ha'aretz that Bush made the following pronouncement during a recent
>> meeting between the two: "God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I
>> struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I
>> did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."
>>
>> Oddly, it never got much play back home.



-


Ever wonder who benefits from the 150 MILLION
U.S. taxpayer dollars spent each DAY in Iraq?
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0223-08.htm
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=21

http://www.commondreams.org/
http://www.truthout.org/
http://www.prohibitioncosts.org/
http://thirdworldtraveler.com/
http://counterpunch.org/
http://responsiblewealth.org/


"They are waging a campaign of murder and destruction. And
there is no limit to the innocent lives they are willing to
take... men with blind hatred and armed with lethal weapons
who are capable of any atrocity... they respect no laws of
warfare or morality."
-bu$h describing his own illegal invasion of Iraq.
http://www.robert-fisk.com/iraqwarvictims_mar2003.htm

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things
that matter." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

"God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them. And then
he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did."
-- George W. Bush

"Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the
will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the
Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."
-- Adolf Hitler

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President,
or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is
not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable
to the American public."
-- Theodore Roosevelt (1918)

Don't let bu$h do to the United States what his very close
friend and top campaign contributor, Ken Lay, did to Enron...