|
Daschle
speech: administration attacking good people for telling the truth
by
IseFire
- Wed 03/24/04; 10:49 pm EST
[edited re-post] This morning Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle
spoke--with characteristic understatement born of caution, not wit--about
"a disturbing pattern of conduct by the people around President
Bush." They are attacking good, honest American citizens simply
for stating the facts about issues important to our nation. It bothers
Tom (but I hope it doesn't surprise him) that
*Larry
Lindsay was fired as the President's Economic Advisor
because he spoke honestly
about the costs of the Iraq War; that
*General
Shinseki, the Army's top general, was targeted when
he spoke honestly about the number of troops that would be needed
in Iraq; that
*U.S.
Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers
was suspended from her job when she disclosed budget problems that
make our nation's parks are less safe; that
*Professor
Elizabeth Blackburn was replaced on the Council on
Bioethics because of her fair and balanced scientific views on stem-cell
research; that
*Richard
Foster, an actuary for the Dept. of Health and Human
Services, was told he would be fired if he told Congress and the
American people the real costs of last year's Medicare bill; that
*Former
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill , when he stepped
forward to criticize the Bush Administration's Iraq policy, was
ridiculed and then made the victim of a spurious government investigation
to see if he improperly disclosed classified documents. "He
was, of course, exonerated," Daschle reminds us, "but
the message was clear. If you speak freely,
there will be consequences."
The most heinous example of this "disturbing pattern of conduct
by the people around President Bush" crosses the boundry of
the realm of odious dirty tricks into that of High Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Daschle relates what we all likely have heard once at least, but
must never forget: that
"Ambassador
Joseph Wilson....who by all accounts served bravely
under President Bush in the early 1990s, felt a responsibility to
speak out on President Bush's false State of the Union statement
on Niger and uranium; but when he did...[his] wife was the target
of a despicable act. Her identity as a deep-cover CIA agent was
revealed to Bob Novak, a syndicated columnist, and was printed in
newspapers around the country." Otherwise-subtle Daschle adds
significantly that: "That was the first time in our history
that ... the identity...of a CIA agent was disclosed for purely
political purposes."
Daschle
concludes: "The purpose of government isn't to make the President
look good. .....
We shouldn't fire or demean people for telling the truth. We shouldn't
reveal the names of law enforcement officials for political gain.
And we shouldn't try to destroy people who are out to make country
safer."
The
war on Clarke
by
IseFire
- Tue 03/23/04; 11:07 pm EST
Sunday night on 60 Minutes, Bush's
counter-terrorism chief,
Richard Clarke, highlighted Club
Bush's failure to heed warnings about al-Qaeda. Earlier
in the day on Sunday, I happened to write about Rand Beers (see
below), who Josh
Marshall--again
on the ball--reminds us was
essentially the replacement for Clarke. Beers
and Clarke each left the Bush administration in disgust
over its fixation with Iraq--a fixation that drew precious
resources and focus away from addressing the threat of terrorism.
Now Clarke can look forward to the Club Bush treatment, like this.
Who's
flying this thing?!
by
IseFire
- Tue 03/23/04; 7:49 pm EST
(click cartoon to enlarge)
Tom Smith, President of Stonewall
Democrats of NYC, sent me this cartoon with the question
more and more Americans are asking about our economy: Anybody know
how to fly this thing?
*Massive net job loss over 3 years.
*Trade deficit at all-time high.
*Social Security on the chopping block.
*Dollar weak against the Euro.
*Federal deficit out of control.
60
failures and falsehoods of the Bush administration
by
IseFire
- Tue 03/23/04; 10:57 pm EST
Former NYC Public Advocate Mark Green, simply one of
the sharpest people I've ever met, has put togethor with Eric Alterman
a great list of Bush failures and falsehoods. It's
a must-read. (The real specifics are in this new
book.)
Yassin
assassinated; Bush escapes news cycle
damage
by
IseFire
- Mon 03/21/04; 7:37 am EST
Israel
has assassinated Sheik Yassin, the founder-terrorist
of Hamas who unflaggingly war-mongered as the "spiritual leader"
of Palestinian extremists, including suicide bombers. This assassination,
done by missile strike, will dominate the news today, sparing Bush's
mishandling
of American security from scrutiny following
Richard Clarke's
damning allegations last night on 60 Minutes.
On the Yassin strike itself, I don't know if it's akin to the invasion
of Afghanistan--i.e. something probably helpful but nonetheless
perilous--or the invasion of Iraq--i.e. a Bad Idea that will only
weaken the security of, in this case, Israel.
With the caveat that this is only my gut reaction: I think Israeli
PM Sharon has become myopic. From my limited vantage point, the
negatives of killing Yassin outweigh the positives for Israel.
It's going to be a PR boon for Hamas, Arafat, al-Qaeda, Iranian
conservatives, and all militantly fundamentalist Muslims worldwide--one
of the points UK
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw seemed to be making
today. Yassin was 80. He wasn't exactly
in good health. Now he's a martyr whose death will enrage an entire
people
subjugated by a nation itself under seige. What a mess. Alas, the
peace process is probably the real victim of all this.
Bush's
Sr. Dir. for Combating Terrorism stumping online for Kerry
by
IseFire
- Sun 03/20/04; 9:27 am EST
Rand Beers resigned back in (June?) 2003 and joined
Team Kerry. Given that at that time the Kerry campaign
had less "mo'" than Bush or Dean, I think that Beers genuinely
thought, and still thinks, Kerry the best to handle America's security
issues. I assume Beers made his decision on who to support based
on his extensive
international law enforcement expertise. Beers, who
was also a State Dept. Deputy Assistant Sec. for regional affairs
(the Middle East & Persian Gulf), and who is a Vietnam vet,
made a decision I hope America will make in November = Bush: out;
Kerry: in.
White
House counterterrorism chief to slam Bush on 60 Minutes tonight
by
IseFire
- Sun 03/20/04; 7:30 am EST
You've hear about Richard Clarke by now, but hear with your
own ears tonight on 60 Minutes. Clarke--a 30-year gov't veteran
and one of the longest-serving White House staffers--rips the Bush
squad to shreds.
Stunning allegations:
*Clarke wrote to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on Jan.
24, 2001, asking "urgently" for a Cabinet-level meeting
"to deal with the impending al-Qaida attack." It was months
later when finally, in April, Clarke met with deputy cabinet secretaries,
and the conversation was about terrorism, right? No. Iraq.
*Clarke: "I'm sure I'll be criticized for lots of things, and
I'm sure they'll launch their dogs on me. But frankly I
find it outrageous that the president is running for reelection
on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism.
He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could
have done something."
*Clarke harshly criticizes Bush's decision to invade Iraq, noting
that it has whipped supporters
of Osama bin Laden into a frenzy
of anti-American." Clarke: "Bin
Laden had been saying for years, 'America wants to invade an Arab
country and occupy it, an oil-rich Arab country.' This is part of
his propaganda. So what did we do after 9/11? We invade ... and
occupy an oil-rich Arab country, which was doing nothing to threaten
us."
Team
Bush squirrely with numbers and facts... "Fuzzy data,"
I call it
by
IseFire
- Sun 03/20/04; 7:30 am EST
Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo is did a nice job
recently of exposing the
dishonesty of Bush's ads about Kerry. One ad that
says Kerry voted against higher combat pay Josh beautifully called,
"a milestone in the long bilious history of gall." Josh
summarizes, "And so the White House which was pushing to save
money by reducing combat pay for troops currently serving in two
combat zones is now challenging Kerry's national security bona-fides
by alleging that he opposed increases in combat pay."
Bush
seems blissfully unaware--but I suspect he is cynically very aware--that
according to his own self-proclaimed religion this is a...sin! (Hello!?)
Ever heard of "Do not bear false witness against they neighbor,"
Mr. Bush? It's one of those Ten Commandments you want to put in
the schools. Maybe your should READ THEM.
100,000
U.S. troops in Iraq thru '07 (at a cost of many millions of dollars)
by
IseFire
- Sat 03/20/04; 7:30 am EST
[Excerpt] The Army's top officer, Gen. Peter Schoomaker,
has told Congress that the Army is planning for a steady troop level
of 100,000 through yearlong rotations that extend into spring 2007.
More here.
Another
horrific Africa AIDS stat that Bush will ignore
by
IseFire
- Sat 03/20/04; 7:00 am EST
Attending funerals has become the principle non-work activity
for S. Africans, according to a
new report.
It's
facts like the above that make all the more reprehensible the Bush
administration's all-talk-and-no-action
attitude about combating AIDS globally. Bush's commitment,
announced
in his Jan. 2003 State of the Union address, to help the people
of Africa defeat AIDS has proven to be merely another Bush-Cheney-Rove-Frist
PR stunt aimed at bolstering the bogus "compassionate conservative"
image...another example of the Bush administration's cynical contempt
for truth-telling.
In 1996, I wrote an article for the nonprofit Funders Concerned
About AIDS, following a presentation by U.N.-affiliated
researchers that revealed that the destruction of more that 50%
of the senior military command in Rwanda before that
nation's genocide created a military and political
vacuum into which murderous Hutu extremists poured.
AIDS has a terribly destabilizing effect on developing nations.
While the humanitarian reasons for fighting AIDS should be reasons
enough, even from a geopolitical standpoint the US ought to make
aid to African nations infested with HIV a priority.
DFA2
by
IseFire
- Thur 03/18/04; 11:33 pm EST
On MSNBC's "Hardball" tonight, Howard Dean said he
wouldn't give John Kerry's campaign his list of donors, but would
use that list to raise money for Kerry and start a progressive grassroots
organization modeled after the religious right. Very smart. (Go,
Howard!)
Howard's
wise to model "Dean For America II" (DFA2), his post-presidential
run organization, after the religious right. I watched 1st-hand
in '88, while growing up in a fundamentalist Xian household in Iowa,
as the religious right took over the GOP machine from the ground
up. It was frighteningly impressive and a sure sign of the vulnerability
of the republic.
It's
yet to be shown to me convincingly that This American Experiment
will not end in tyranny, most likely of a theocratic nature.
I hope--dare
I pray--that DFA2 can play a role in stopping the forces of America's
Shiite Christians, even while it models their grassroots political
strategies.
Blog
echo chamber can make music
by
IseFire
- Thur 03/18/04; 3:33 9m EST
Bush has negligently mishandled America's security. Consider
how long ago we could have apprehended al-Qaeda mastermind and deputy
Ayman
al-Zawahri if all the intelligence and military resources
applied to the Iraq invasion had been applied to hunting down terrorists.
Now...The
truth of Bush's foreign affairs and military bungling has been reverberating
among progressive-leaning blogs for many months. But tracing the
tightly structured path among blogs of the below summary of Bush's
weak leadership post-9-11 demonstrates just how small the liberal
political blogsphere can be despite its collective readership of
millions.
"Kos" of DailyKos reposted
an argument
first made by "Artois"--on
his blog, "Eschaton"--that itself was first brought
up by the masterful Josh Marshall on his blog, "Talking
Points Memo," and is now finding its way here:
Isebrand.com's blog, "IseFire."
No more talk about Bush's "strong leadership" post-9-11.
There was none.
*Bush
took power
*Bush
ignored the threat of terrorism
*9-11
occured
*Bush
was indecisive in that kindergarten class
*Bush
then hid out in Nebraska while his staff invented a "threat"
to Air Force One to justify his absence
*Bush went to war against Afghanistan...But
instead of finishing the job, he let Bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and
lots of Taliban and Al Qaeda to escape
*Why
did they get away? Because they diverted intelligence and military
assets to fight a non-threat in Iraq
*And
how do we know Iraq was a non-threat? Because they invented evidence
to justify the war and lied to Congress and the American people
*They
botched the occupation of Iraq, and close to 700 allied and countless
Iraqis have paid the ultimate price, and more continue to do so
*They
botched the occupation of Afghanistan, as the US-backed government
controls nothing more than Kabul, and the rest of the country is
a haven for terrorists, religious fanatics, opium producers, and
regional warlords
*And
now, over two years after 9-11, the administration is finally training
all of our intelligence and military resources toward capturing
Osama Bin Laden.
Commissioners
seek to ban gays from living in county
by
IseFire
- Thur 03/18/04; 7:33 am EST
The commissioners of the same Tennessee county where the infamous
Scopes trial took place voted 8-0 to ask lawmakers to change the
law so they can charge "homosexuals" with crimes
against nature and ban them from living in the county.
|
