Our leaders

Recently Vice-President Dick Cheney said the Iraq insurgency was in its "last throes".

Last Sunday Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned that the insurgency could last up to 12 years.

Tonight on national TV, George Bush again connected Iraq to 9/11.

May we suppose that tomorrow Fox TV will present an all-day marathon of The Three Stooges?

Plain English

About the Downing Street memo:

Sunday Times Reporter Michael Smith told the Washington Post on June 16::
“There are a number of people asking about ‘fixed’ and its meaning. This is a real joke. I do not know anyone in the UK who took it to mean anything other than fixed, as in fixed a race, fixed an election, fixed the intelligence. If you fix something, you make it the way you want it. The intelligence was fixed...the head of MI-6 has just been to Washington. He has just talked with George Tenet. He said the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. That translates in clearer terms as the intelligence was being cooked to match what the administration wanted it to say to justify invading Iraq.”

The Case for Impeachment

On Wednesday, June 22, CommonDreams.org published "HC-9: Where the Case for Impeachment Slipped into Gear" by David Michael Green. Green points out how the internet/blogging will not allow the Downing Street Memo to be swept under the carpet. Those of you on my j&p list have already seen this very hope-filled article. To others, I highly recommend a visit to CommonDreams to read it. Here is a quote from the article:

"George Bush tells incredible lies, makes policy choices of disastrous proportions, and produces death and destruction every chance he gets. Not only does the press give him a free pass (as some have even admitted to doing) by failing to critically assess his wild assertions, they are now willfully ignoring and distorting evidence of lies which have cost tens of thousands of lives."

The cost of Bush's war/occupation

(Just reported by BBC online)

The Associated Press reports that as of Tuesday, June 21, at least 1,724 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003. At least 1,319 died as a result of hostile action.

The British military has reported 89 deaths; Italy, 25; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 17; Spain, 11; Bulgaria, 12; Slovakia, three; Estonia, Thailand and the Netherlands, two each; and Denmark, El Salvador, Hungary, Kazakhstan and Latvia one death each.

Since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, 1,585 U.S. military members have died.

(I am presently trying to find an update on the number of Iraqi deaths in the wake of the Lancet study fhat found 100,000 Iraqis had been killed.)

A US majority now recognizes the arrogant Mr. Bush's bloody Iraq fiasco. Will a majority now also open their eyes to the devastating domestic fiasco, summarized last April 7th by Congressman Bernie Sanders?

"Over the past 4 years, poverty has gone up. Today, over 4 million more Americans, 36 million overall, are living in poverty than was the case 4 years ago. Sadly, 21.9 percent of U.S. children live in poverty, only slightly better than Mexico where the childhood poverty rate is 27.9 percent. Mr. Chairman, compare that to Denmark, where only 2.4 percent of children live in poverty.
"Today, over five million more Americans do not have health insurance, 45 million in all, than was the case four years ago, and the United States is the only industrialized nation on earth that does not have universal health care.
"Over 14 million American families today are paying more than 50 percent of their income on rent. There are now over 20 million Americans with incomes so low that they had to enter the food stamp program in order to feed their families.
"Last year, more than 1.6 million American families went bankrupt, up from up from 289,000 in 1980. 90 percent of these bankruptcy filings were the result of a lost job, a medical emergency or a divorce.
"Real (inflationary-adjusted) wages have gone down over the past 2 years. The new jobs being created today pay 21 percent less than the jobs that are being lost."

Beyond the White House baloney

Bush, Rumsfeld and Rice continue to look the world in the face and say that things are getting better in Iraq. In the meantime, Dahr Jamail wrote the following in his "Iraq Dispatch" of June 10, 2005:

"Car bombs are a daily occurrence, yet now we have seen motorcycle bombs, push-cart bombs, donkey bombs, donkey-cart bombs, dog bombs, human bombs, bicycle bombs and recently two Iraqi policemen dying from eating poisoned watermelon.

"Roadside bombs continue to take their toll on US soldiers and are now the number one killer of occupation forces. At least 1,679 have died in Iraq since the invasion, along with roughly 100 times as many Iraqis."

(Suggestion: read that last line again, slowly.)

Beyond looniness

How many people are hearing about the real number of US casualties in Iraq? About the real number of Iraqis killed? About real prospects for ending the occupation? About Bush's effect on the environment? About what his favorite judges really believe? About a plethora of power moves that are silently eroding the heart of the nation?

In the meantime, there are 400 reporters covering the Michael Jackson trial and 2,200 (nope, not a typo) media people with credentials to cover that sad media circus.

Maybe we are already beyond redemption.

Nailing Rumsfeld

British Member of Parliament George Galloway came to the US to testify before a Senate committee to refute charges of corruption in connection with the Iraq oil-for-food program. When attacked for meeting with Saddam Hussein, he not only explained his actions but also nailed Rumsfeld at the same time:

"I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr. Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country...."


Source: The Times (of London)

On Bush the kid

Here are a few quotes from a rather long article by Mark Morford in the San Francisco Chronicle on June 3:

"How can this man remain so blindly, staggeringly resolute? How can he be so appallingly ignorant of fact, of truth, of evidence, of deep thought? In short, what the hell is wrong with George W. Bush?"

"Unlike you or me or any human anywhere who happens to be in possession of humility or subtlety of mind, Bush, to this day, admits zero mistakes. He refuses help, rejects suggestions that everything is not dandy and swell. He is confounded by questions that dare suggest he might be somewhat inept, or failing. And he absolutely insists that America exists in some sort of bizarre utopian vacuum, isolated and virtuous..."

"Notice, when you read: There is no eloquent, deeply felt defense of ideas. There is no intellectual breakdown of opinion, no multifaceted explanation, no passionate clarification. And there is certainly no reference to outside ideas, a confession that we might need help, input, wisdom from our neighbors, from science, from the wise and the experienced."

"(Bush) is the very emblem of this childish, polarizing, sclerotic worldview. He literally cannot speak with any complexity, depth, resonance. He cannot function in a world of deep intellect, nuance, mature perspective. He is incapable of asking for help. He is unable to admit mistakes or discuss shortcomings or expand his mind-set to include the new and the possible."