S.O.N. - Save Our Nation

'Worse than 2000: Tuesday's electoral disaster'

2004-11-11T07:15:00.000-08:00

William Rivers Pitt: 'Worse than 2000: Tuesday's electoral disaster'
Posted on Wednesday, November 10 @ 10:20:29 EST

By William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t

Everyone remembers Florida's 2000 election debacle, and all of the new terms it introduced to our political lexicon: Hanging chads, dimpled chads, pregnant chads, overvotes, undervotes, Sore Losermans, Jews for Buchanan and so forth. It took several weeks, battalions of lawyers and a questionable decision from the U.S. Supreme Court to show the nation and the world how messy democracy can be. By any standard, what happened in Florida during the 2000 Presidential election was a disaster.

What happened during the Presidential election of 2004, in Florida, in Ohio, and in a number of other states as well, was worse.

Some of the problems with this past Tuesday's election will sound all too familiar. Despite having four years to look into and deal with the problems that cropped up in Florida in 2000, the 'spoiled vote' chad issue reared its ugly head again. Investigative journalist Greg Palast, the man almost singularly responsible for exposing the more egregious examples of illegitimate deletions of voters from the rolls, described the continued problems in an article published just before the election, and again in an article published just after the election.

Four years later, and none of the Florida problems were fixed. In fact, by all appearances, they spread from Florida to Ohio, New Mexico, Michigan and elsewhere. Worse, these problems only scratch the surface of what appears to have happened in Tuesday's election. The fix that was put in place to solve these problems - the Help America Vote Act passed in 2002 after the Florida debacle - appears to have gone a long way towards making things worse by orders of magnitude, for it was the Help America Vote Act which introduced paperless electronic touch-screen voting machines to millions of voters across the country.

At first blush, it seems like a good idea. Forget the chads, the punch cards, the archaic booths like pianos standing on end with the handles and the curtains. This is the 21st century, so let's do it with computers. A simple screen presents straightforward choices, and you touch the spot on the screen to vote for your candidate. Your vote is recorded by the machine, and then sent via modem to a central computer which tallies the votes. Simple, right?

Not quite.

Is there any evidence that these machines went haywire on Tuesday? Nationally, there were more than 1,100 reports of electronic voting machine malfunctions. A few examples:
· In Broward County, Florida, election workers were shocked to discover that their shiny new machines were counting backwards. "Tallies should go up as more votes are counted," according to this report. "That's simple math. But in some races, the numbers had gone down. Officials found the software used in Broward can handle only 32,000 votes per precinct. After that, the system starts counting backward."
· In Franklin County, Ohio, electronic voting machines gave Bush 3,893 extra votes in one precinct alone. "Franklin County's unofficial results gave Bush 4,258 votes to Democratic challenger John Kerry's 260 votes in Precinct 1B," according to this report. "Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, said Bush received 365 votes there. The other 13 voters who cast ballots either voted for other candidates or did not vote for president."
· In Craven County, North Carolina, a software error on the electronic voting machines awarded Bush 11,283 extra votes. "The Elections Systems and Software equipment," according to this report, "had downloaded voting information from nine of the county's 26 precincts and as the absentee ballots were added, the precinct totals were added a second time. An override, like those occurring when one attempts to save a computer file that already exists, is supposed to prevent double counting, but did not function correctly."
· In Carteret County, North Carolina, "More than 4,500 votes may be lost in one North Carolina county because officials believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did. Local officials said UniLect Corp., the maker of the county's electronic voting system, told them that each storage unit could handle 10,500 votes, but the limit was actually 3,005 votes. Officials said 3,005 early votes were stored, but 4,530 were lost."
· In LaPorte County, Indiana, a Democratic stronghold, the electronic voting machines decided that each precinct only had 300 voters. "At about 7 p.m. Tuesday," according to this report, "it was noticed that the first two or three printouts from individual precinct reports all listed an identical number of voters. Each precinct was listed as having 300 registered voters. That means the total number of voters for the county would be 22,200, although there are actually more than 79,000 registered voters."
· In Sarpy County, Nebraska, the electronic touch screen machines got generous. "As many as 10,000 extra votes," according to this report, "have been tallied and candidates are still waiting for corrected totals. Johnny Boykin lost his bid to be on the Papillion City Council. The difference between victory and defeat in the race was 127 votes. Boykin says, 'When I went in to work the next day and saw that 3,342 people had shown up to vote in our ward, I thought something's not right.' He's right. There are not even 3,000 people registered to vote in his ward. For some reason, some votes were counted twice."
Stories like this have been popping up in many of the states that put these touch-screen voting machines to use. Beyond these reports are the folks who attempted to vote for one candidate and saw the machine give their vote to the other candidate. Sometimes, the flawed machines were taken off-line, and sometimes they were not. As for the reports above, the mistakes described were caught and corrected. How many mistakes made by these machines were not caught, were not corrected, and have now become part of the record?

The flaws within these machines are well documented. Professors and researchers from Johns Hopkins performed a detailed analysis of these electronic voting machines in May of 2004. In their results, the Johns Hopkins researchers stated, "This voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts. We identify several problems including unauthorized privilege escalation, incorrect use of cryptography, vulnerabilities to network threats, and poor software development processes. We show that voters, without any insider privileges, can cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanisms within the voting terminal software."

"Furthermore," they continued, "we show that even the most serious of our outsider attacks could have been discovered and executed without access to the source code. In the face of such attacks, the usual worries about insider threats are not the only concerns; outsiders can do the damage. That said, we demonstrate that the insider threat is also quite considerable, showing that not only can an insider, such as a poll worker, modify the votes, but that insiders can also violate voter privacy and match votes with the voters who cast them. We conclude that this voting system is unsuitable for use in a general election."

Many of these machines do not provide the voter with a paper ballot that verifies their vote. So if an error - or purposefully inserted malicious code - in the untested machine causes their vote to go for the other guy, they have no way to verify that it happened. The lack of a paper ballot also means the end of recounts as we have known them; now, on these new machines, a recount amounts to pushing a button on the machine and getting a number in return, but without those paper ballots to do a comparison, there is no way to verify the validity of that count.

Worst of all is the fact that all the votes collected by these machines are sent via modem to a central tabulating computer which counts the votes on Windows software. This means, essentially, that any gomer with access to the central tabulation machine who knows how to work an Excel spreadsheet can go into this central computer and make wholesale changes to election totals without anyone being the wiser.

Bev Harris, who has been working tirelessly since the passage of the Help America Vote Act to inform people of the dangers present in this new process, got a chance to demonstrate how easy it is to steal an election on that central tabulation computer while a guest on the CNBC program 'Topic A With Tina Brown.' Ms. Brown was off that night, and the guest host was none other than Governor Howard Dean. Thanks to Governor Dean and Ms. Harris, anyone watching CNBC that night got to see just how easy it is to steal an election because of these new machines and the flawed processes they use.

"In a voting system," Harris said on the show, "you have all the different voting machines at all the different polling places, sometimes, as in a county like mine, there's a thousand polling places in a single county. All those machines feed into the one machine so it can add up all the votes. So, of course, if you were going to do something you shouldn't to a voting machine, would it be more convenient to do it to each of the 4000 machines, or just come in here and deal with all of them at once? What surprises people is that the central tabulator is just a PC, like what you and I use. It's just a regular computer."

Harris then proceeded to open a laptop computer that had on it the software used to tabulate the votes by one of the aforementioned central processors. Journalist Thom Hartman describes what happened next: "So Harris had Dean close the Diebold GEMS tabulation software, go back to the normal Windows PC desktop, click on the 'My Computer' icon, choose 'Local Disk C:,' open the folder titled GEMS, and open the sub-folder 'LocalDB' which, Harris noted, 'stands for local database, that's where they keep the votes.' Harris then had Dean double-click on a file in that folder titled Central Tabulator Votes,' which caused the PC to open the vote count in a database program like Excel. 'Let's just flip those,' Harris said, as Dean cut and pasted the numbers from one cell into the other. Harris sat up a bit straighter, smiled, and said, 'We just edited an election, and it took us 90 seconds.'"

Any system that makes it this easy to steal or corrupt an election has no business being anywhere near the voters on election day.

The counter-argument to this states that people with nefarious intent, people with a partisan stake in the outcome of an election, would have to have access to the central tabulation computers in order to do harm to the process. Keep the partisans away from the process, and everything will work out fine. Surely no partisan political types were near these machines on Tuesday night when the votes were counted, right?

One of the main manufacturers of these electronic touch-screen voting machines is Diebold, Inc. More than 35 counties in Ohio alone used the Diebold machines on Tuesday, and millions of voters across the country did the same. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Diebold gave $100,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2000, along with additional contributions between 2001 and 2002 which totaled $95,000. Of the four companies competing for the contracts to manufacture these voting machines, only Diebold contributed large sums to any political party. The CEO of Diebold is a man named Walden O'Dell. O'Dell was very much on board with the Bush campaign, having said publicly in 2003 that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

So much for keeping the partisans at arm's length.

Is there any evidence that vote totals were deliberately tampered with by people who had a stake in the outcome? Nothing specific has been documented to date. Jeff Fisher, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District, claims to have evidence that the Florida election was hacked, and says further that he knows who hacked it and how it was done. Such evidence is not yet forthcoming.

There are, however, some disturbing and compelling trends that indicate things are not as they should be. This chart displays a breakdown of counties in Florida. It lists the voters in each county by party affiliation, and compares expected vote totals to the reported results. It also separates the results into two sections, one for 'touch-screen' counties and the other for optical scan counties.

Over and over in these counties, the results, based upon party registration, did not come close to matching expectations. It can be argued, and has been argued, that such results indicate nothing more or less than a President getting cross-over voters, as well as late-breaking undecided voters, to come over to his side. These are Southern Democrats, and the numbers from previous elections show that many have often voted Republican. Yet the news wires have been inundated for well over a year with stories about how stridently united Democratic voters were behind the idea of removing Bush from office. It is worth wondering why that unity did not permeate these Democratic voting districts. If that unity was there, it is worth asking why the election results in these counties do not reflect this.

Most disturbing of all is the reality that these questionable Diebold voting machines are not isolated to Florida. This list documents, as of March 2003, all of the counties in all of the 37 states where Diebold machines were used to count votes. The document is 28 pages long. That is a lot of counties, and a lot of votes, left in the hands of machines that have a questionable track record, that send their vote totals to central computers which make it far too easy to change election results, that were manufactured by a company with a personal, financial, and publicly stated stake in George W. Bush holding on to the White House.

A poster named 'TruthIsAll' on the DemocraticUnderground.com forums laid out the questionable results of Tuesday's election in succinct fashion: "To believe that Bush won the election, you must also believe: That the exit polls were wrong; that Zogby's 5pm election day calls for Kerry winning Ohio and Florida were wrong (he was exactly right in his 2000 final poll); that Harris' last-minute polling for Kerry was wrong (he was exactly right in his 2000 final poll); that incumbent rule #1 - undecideds break for the challenger - was wrong; That the 50% rule - an incumbent doesn't do better than his final polling - was wrong; That the approval rating rule - an incumbent with less than 50% approval will most likely lose the election - was wrong; that it was just a coincidence that the exit polls were correct where there was a paper trail and incorrect (+5% for Bush) where there was no paper trail; that the surge in new young voters had no positive effect for Kerry; that Kerry did worse than Gore against an opponent who lost the support of scores of Republican newspapers who were for Bush in 2000; that voting machines made by Republicans with no paper trail and with no software publication, which have been proven by thousands of computer scientists to be vulnerable in scores of ways, were not tampered with in this election."

In short, we have old-style vote spoilage in minority communities. We have electronic voting machines losing votes and adding votes all across the country. We have electronic voting machines whose efficiency and safety have not been tested. We have electronic voting machines that offer no paper trail to ensure a fair outcome. We have central tabulators for these machines running on Windows software, compiling results that can be demonstrably tampered with. We have the makers of these machines publicly professing their preference for George W. Bush. We have voter trends that stray from the expected results. We have these machines counting millions of votes all across the country.

Perhaps this can all be dismissed. Perhaps rants like the one posted by 'TruthIsAll' are nothing more than sour grapes from the side that lost. Perhaps all of the glitches, wrecked votes, unprecedented voting trends and partisan voting-machine connections can be explained away. If so, this reporter would very much like to see those explanations. At a bare minimum, the fact that these questions exist at all represents a grievous undermining of the basic confidence in the process required to make this democracy work. Democracy should not ever require leaps of faith, and we have put the fate of our nation into the hands of machines that require such a leap. It is unacceptable across the board, and calls into serious question not only the election we just had, but any future election involving these machines.

Representatives John Conyers, Jerrold Nadler and Robert Wexler, all members of the House Judiciary Committee, posted a letter on November 5th to David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States. In the letter, they asked for an investigation into the efficacy of these electronic voting machines. The letter reads as follows:
November 5, 2004

The Honorable David M. Walker
Comptroller General of the United States
U.S. General Accountability Office
441 G Street, NW
Washington, DC 20548

Dear Mr. Walker:

We write with an urgent request that the Government Accountability Office immediately undertake an investigation of the efficacy of voting machines and new technologies used in the 2004 election, how election officials responded to difficulties they encountered and what we can do in the future to improve our election systems and administration.

In particular, we are extremely troubled by the following reports, which we would also request that you review and evaluate for us:

In Columbus, Ohio, an electronic voting system gave President Bush nearly 4,000 extra votes. ("Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes," Associated Press, November 5)

An electronic tally of a South Florida gambling ballot initiative failed to record thousands of votes. "South Florida OKs Slot Machines Proposal," (Id.)

In one North Carolina county, more than 4,500 votes were lost because officials mistakenly believed a computer that stored ballots could hold more data that it did. "Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes," (Id.)

In San Francisco, a glitch occurred with voting machines software that resulted in some votes being left uncounted. (Id.)

In Florida, there was a substantial drop off in Democratic votes in proportion to voter registration in counties utilizing optical scan machines that was apparently not present in counties using other mechanisms.

The House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff has received numerous reports from Youngstown, Ohio that voters who attempted to cast a vote for John Kerry on electronic voting machines saw that their votes were instead recorded as votes for George W. Bush. In South Florida, Congressman Wexler's staff received numerous reports from voters in Palm Beach, Broward and Dade Counties that they attempted to select John Kerry but George Bush appeared on the screen. CNN has reported that a dozen voters in six states, particularly Democrats in Florida, reported similar problems. This was among over one thousand such problems reported. ("Touchscreen Voting Problems Reported," Associated Press, November 5)

Excessively long lines were a frequent problem throughout the nation in Democratic precincts, particularly in Florida and Ohio. In one Ohio voting precinct serving students from Kenyon College, some voters were required to wait more than eight hours to vote. ("All Eyes on Ohio," Dan Lothian, CNN, November 3)

We are literally receiving additional reports every minute and will transmit additional information as it comes available. The essence of democracy is the confidence of the electorate in the accuracy of voting methods and the fairness of voting procedures. In 2000, that confidence suffered terribly, and we fear that such a blow to our democracy may have occurred in 2004.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this inquiry.

Sincerely,

John Conyers, Jr., Jerrold Nadler, Robert Wexler

Ranking Member, Ranking Member, Member of Congress
House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution

cc: Hon. F. James Sensenbrenner, Chairman
"The essence of democracy," wrote the Congressmen, "is the confidence of the electorate in the accuracy of voting methods and the fairness of voting procedures. In 2000, that confidence suffered terribly, and we fear that such a blow to our democracy may have occurred in 2004." Those fears appear to be valid.

John Kerry and John Edwards promised on Tuesday night that every vote would count, and that every vote would be counted. By Wednesday morning, Kerry had conceded the race to Bush, eliciting outraged howls from activists who were watching the reports of voting irregularities come piling in. Kerry had said that 10,000 lawyers were ready to fight any wrongdoing in this election. One hopes that he still has those lawyers on retainer.

According to black-letter election law, Bush does not officially get a second term until the electors from the Electoral College go to Washington D.C on December 12th. Perhaps Kerry's 10,000 lawyers, along with a real investigation per the request of Conyers, Nadler and Wexler, could give those electors something to think about in the interim.

In the meantime, soon-to-be-unemployed DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe sent out an email on Saturday night titled 'Help determine the Democratic Party's next steps.' In the email, McAuliffe states, "If you were involved in these grassroots activities, we want to hear from you about your experience. What did you do? Did you feel the action you took was effective? Was it a good experience for you? How would you make it better? Tell us your thoughts." He provided a feedback form where such thoughts can be sent.

Use the form. Give Terry your thoughts on the matter. Ask him if those 10,000 lawyers are still available. It seems the validity of Tuesday's election remains a wide-open question.

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and international bestseller of two books - 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' and 'The Greatest Sedition is Silence.'

© : t r u t h o u t 2004

Reprinted from t r u t h o u t :
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110804A.shtml

4 NEW Years!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2004-11-02T09:57:00.000-08:00

100 UNDISPUTABLE Facts about the Bush Administration & 1 Opinion

On this Election Day, Bush supporters will tell you that Kerry is a flip-flopper, that he cannot be trusted with the security of our country. They will tell you that Kerry supporters believe that Kerry transcends fault, and that we who support Kerry blame everything on George W. Bush.

I admit that not EVERY bad thing that has happened in this war is a direct result of Bush. However, do not forget how he rushed us into this war without the proper preparation to get the job done with the least amount of casualties. Do not forget about the way Bush LIED to the American people about WHY we were going into the war; and then later, in light of overwhelming evidence, boldly stated that he would do it all over again, the same way, had he known then what we know now – that he would repeat the mistake. Don’t forget how bad things have gotten for the middle class, with our jobs being shipped over seas. Do not forget the fact that Bush NEVER served in a war himself, but is so very eager to send other people’s children and fathers and mothers to war and put them at risk. Do not lose sight of the fact that even though good is being done in Iraq, the war is costing our country heavily. Do not lose sight of the fact that we began this “War On Terror” with a campaign against Al-Qaeda, and then suddenly attacked a country that had absolutely NOTHING to do with the 9/11 terror attacks. Do not forget the fact that under his watch, our healthcare system has fallen and is failing fast. Do not forget the fact that Bush has other pre-emptive strikes in mind for the future; he holds fast and true to his methods of how to lead his war, and he doesn’t plan on stopping it.

They attack Kerry’s military record; at least Kerry HAS a record that shows that he was willing to put his own life on the line for the U.S. And no one can dispute that Vietnam was a war we should never have fought in the first place, and Kerry knew it then, before most people, and did the right and honorable thing; and Bush and Bush-supporters attack that (except for Francesca, of course). They attack Kerry on the flip-flopping issue; at least Kerry is a man who can alter and update his opinions and positions in light of new evidence, unlike Bush, who would defend colossal mistakes no matter what.

Friends…Council members…you can’t honestly tell me that Bush has done a good job leading our nation. Forget about the war, set that aside. Look at the state of our country RIGHT HERE and NOW. Everything is falling apart. Just think of how damaging four more years with Bush in office could be. The right choice for president today, the ONLY good choice, is John Kerry. The absolute wrong choice is George W. Bush. You’ll either know that fact today, or a year or two down the line when he’s ruining this country further. You’ll know Kerry is the right man for the job, either way, sooner or later. Wouldn’t you rather know it sooner? Wouldn’t you rather vote for the right man?

I am not an unintelligent drone like most people would lead you to believe, or like most voters you’ll run into at the polls. I was behind Bush in the days and weeks after 9/11 – I supported our president, and argued in his favor many times. I have researched the facts and looked at the hard evidence. I am NOT a democrat. I am NOT a republican. Like my parents, I vote for the man, not the party. And because of that, I always, without fail, seek out every angle that I can, so I don’t make the wrong choice. Bush, overall, is the wrong choice. Dante stated, in his most recent posting on the Council, and I quote:

“Now go out and Vote Bush!!!!! BUSH IN 04 SEIG HILE!!!!!!!!!!”

I couldn’t agree more, Dante…seig hile is EXACTLY the right thing to say about George W. Bush.

IF you love our country, and what it stands for, vote for individual freedoms. Vote for freedom of speech, and the right to live your life on your OWN ideals, instead of the ideals of one man. Vote for a better tomorrow. Vote for the safety of our country. Vote for the safety of our boys at war. Vote for a better job market. Vote for a better economy. Vote for JOHN KERRY!!!!!!!!!!!

**ADDITION** Originally posted as a comment on Pheonix's post:

Council Chambers - Pheonix: Fear For This Country

"IF you love our country, and what it stands for, vote for individual freedoms. Vote for freedom of speech, and the right to live your life on your OWN ideals, instead of the ideals of one man. Vote for a better tomorrow. Vote for the safety of our country. Vote for the safety of our boys at war. Vote for a better job market. Vote for a better economy. Vote for JOHN KERRY!!!!!!!!!!!"

The above was part of my post "4 NEW Years" and I believe every word of it. I agree with you that Kerry, like all politicians, is not above personal motive and saying things to become elected. But do not forget that Bush and his administration is the reason things have gotten so bad; the reason that now, more than EVER before, the rest of the world hates the United States of America. We did not have this fear under the presidency of Bill Clinton. We did not have this fear under the presidency of George Bush Sr., although we DID have war. Bush Jr. is the ONLY president to actually USE the power of pre-emption, and unfortunately, we are now on dark times that seem to only grow darker over the horizon.

I vote for Kerry not because I believe he is some righteous savior, exempt of being polluted or free from hypocrisy; I vote for Kerry because it's a chance for a better tomorrow. Under Bush, we will have four more years of turmoil and misery and an even worse fate after four years - a mess that we, in all likelihood, cannot fix or clean up. I'm not saying things aren't bad now, but it's better NOW than it WILL BE in four more years. With John Kerry, our great nation has the opportunity to begin a clean-up of the terrible messes caused by the as-of-now current administration.

I understand your fears. I hear them. I share some of them. But unlike you, I have not lost my hope, and I know my voice can make a difference. I see the truth in front of my eyes; unhindered by propaganda, untainted by mud-slinging. I look at the hard facts of Kerry and of Bush. I see all that Bush has done. I see what Bush's administration has done to healthcare, to stem-cell research, to basic civil rights, to our soliders, to our nation's economy. I see all that Kerry has done that can be legitimately questioned; not the war-record, not the flip-flopping - but the questionable senate record. I look at all of it, setting aside all else, and I weigh the pros and the cons of having each in office. Bush has, UNDENIABLY, racked up an infinitely HIGHER list of cons than Kerry has. There IS a lesser of two evils. There IS a hope for our country.

That hope is John Kerry. If you truly pray for our country, for Peter's future, for the life of your husband; then I join you in your prayers, for I believe that God will see us through this rough time. I believe that your prayers will be answered and John Kerry will be elected.

After Terror, a Secret Rewriting of Military Law

2004-10-28T07:53:00.000-07:00

After Terror, a Secret Rewriting of Military Law
By Tim Golden
The Lakeland Ledger

Sunday 24 October 2004

Washington - In early November 2001, with Americans still staggered by the Sept. 11 attacks, a small group of White House officials worked in great secrecy to devise a new system of justice for the new war they had declared on terrorism.

Determined to deal aggressively with the terrorists they expected to capture, the officials bypassed the federal courts and their constitutional guarantees, giving the military the authority to detain foreign suspects indefinitely and prosecute them in tribunals not used since World War II.

The plan was considered so sensitive that senior White House officials kept its final details hidden from the president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and the secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, officials said. It was so urgent, some of those involved said, that they hardly thought of consulting Congress.

White House officials said their use of extraordinary powers would allow the Pentagon to collect crucial intelligence and mete out swift, unmerciful justice. "We think it guarantees that we'll have the kind of treatment of these individuals that we believe they deserve," said Vice President Dick Cheney, who was a driving force behind the policy.

But three years later, not a single terrorist has been prosecuted. Of the roughly 560 men being held at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, only 4 have been formally charged. Preliminary hearings for those suspects brought such a barrage of procedural challenges and public criticism that verdicts could still be months away. And since a Supreme Court decision in June that gave the detainees the right to challenge their imprisonment in federal court, the Pentagon has stepped up efforts to send home hundreds of men whom it once branded as dangerous terrorists.

"We've cleared whole forests of paper developing procedures for these tribunals, and no one has been tried yet," said Richard L. Shiffrin, who worked on the issue as the Pentagon's deputy general counsel for intelligence matters. "They just ended up in this Kafkaesque sort of purgatory."

The story of how Guantánamo and the new military justice system became an intractable legacy of Sept. 11 has been largely hidden from public view.

But extensive interviews with current and former officials and a review of confidential documents reveal that the legal strategy took shape as the ambition of a small core of conservative administration officials whose political influence and bureaucratic skill gave them remarkable power in the aftermath of the attacks.

The strategy became a source of sharp conflict within the Bush administration, eventually pitting the highest-profile cabinet secretaries - including Ms. Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld - against one another over issues of due process, intelligence-gathering and international law.

In fact, many officials contend, some of the most serious problems with the military justice system are rooted in the secretive and contentious process from which it emerged.

Military lawyers were largely excluded from that process in the days after Sept. 11. They have since waged a long struggle to ensure that terrorist prosecutions meet what they say are basic standards of fairness. Uniformed lawyers now assigned to defend Guantánamo detainees have become among the most forceful critics of the Pentagon's own system.

Foreign policy officials voiced concerns about the legal and diplomatic ramifications, but had little influence. Increasingly, the administration's plan has come under criticism even from close allies, complicating efforts to transfer scores of Guantánamo prisoners back to their home governments.

To the policy's architects, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon represented a stinging challenge to American power and an imperative to consider measures that might have been unimaginable in less threatening times. Yet some officials said the strategy was also shaped by longstanding political agendas that had relatively little to do with fighting terrorism.

The administration's claim of authority to set up military commissions, as the tribunals are formally known, was guided by a desire to strengthen executive power, officials said. Its legal approach, including the decision not to apply the Geneva Conventions, reflected the determination of some influential officials to halt what they viewed as the United States' reflexive submission to international law.

In devising the new system, many officials said they had Osama bin Laden and other leaders of Al Qaeda in mind. But in picking through the hundreds of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, military investigators have struggled to find more than a dozen they can tie directly to significant terrorist acts, officials said. While important Qaeda figures have been captured and held by the C.I.A., administration officials said they were reluctant to bring those prisoners before tribunals they still consider unreliable.

Some administration officials involved in the policy declined to be interviewed, or would do so only on the condition they not be identified. Others defended it strongly, saying the administration had a responsibility to consider extraordinary measures to protect the country from a terrifying enemy.

"Everybody who was involved in this process had, in my mind, a white hat on," Timothy E. Flanigan, the former deputy White House counsel, said in an interview. "They were not out to be cowboys or create a radical new legal regime. What they wanted to do was to use existing legal models to assist in the process of saving lives, to get information. And the war on terror is all about information."

As the policy has faltered, other current and former officials have criticized it on pragmatic grounds, arguing that many of the problems could have been avoided. But some of the criticism also has a moral tone.

"What several of us were concerned about was due process," said John A. Gordon, a retired Air Force general and former deputy C.I.A. director who served as both the senior counterterrorism official and homeland security adviser on President Bush's National Security Council staff. "There was great concern that we were setting up a process that was contrary to our own ideals."

An Aggressive Approach

The administration's legal approach to terrorism began to emerge in the first turbulent days after Sept. 11, as the officials in charge of key agencies exhorted their aides to confront Al Qaeda's threat with bold imagination.

"Legally, the watchword became 'forward-leaning,' " said a former associate White House counsel, Bradford Berenson, "by which everybody meant: 'We want to be aggressive. We want to take risks.' "

That challenge resounded among young lawyers who were settling into important posts at the White House, the Justice Department and other agencies. Many of them were members of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal fraternity. Some had clerked for Supreme Court justices, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia in particular. A striking number had clerked for a prominent Reagan appointee, Lawrence H. Silberman of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

One young lawyer recalled looking around the room during a meeting with Attorney General John Ashcroft. "Of 10 people, 7 of us were former Silberman clerks," he said.

Mr. Berenson, then 36, had been consumed with the nomination of federal judges until he was suddenly reassigned to terrorism issues and thrown into intense, 15-hour workdays, filled with competing urgencies and intermittent new alerts.

"All of a sudden, the curtain was lifted on this incredibly frightening world," he said. "You were spending every day looking at the dossiers of the world's leading terrorists. There was a palpable sense of threat."

As generals prepared for war in Afghanistan, lawyers scrambled to understand how the new campaign against terrorism could be waged within the confines of old laws.

Mr. Flanigan was at the center of the administration's legal counteroffensive. A personable, soft-spoken father of 14 children, his easy manner sometimes belied the force of his beliefs. He had arrived at the White House after distinguishing himself as an agile legal thinker and a Republican stalwart: During the Clinton scandals, he defended the independent counsel, Kenneth W. Starr, saying he had conducted his investigation "in a moderate and appropriate fashion." In 2000, he played an important role on the Bush campaign's legal team in the Florida recount.

In the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Flanigan sought advice from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel on "the legality of the use of military force to prevent or deter terrorist activity inside the United States," according to a previously undisclosed department memorandum that was reviewed by The New York Times.

The 20-page response came from John C. Yoo, a 34-year-old Bush appointee with a glittering résumé and a reputation as perhaps the most intellectually aggressive among a small group of legal scholars who had challenged what they saw as the United States' excessive deference to international law. On Sept. 21, 2001, Mr. Yoo wrote that the question was how the Constitution's Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure might apply if the military used "deadly force in a manner that endangered the lives of United States citizens."

Mr. Yoo listed an inventory of possible operations: shooting down a civilian airliner hijacked by terrorists; setting up military checkpoints inside an American city; employing surveillance methods more sophisticated than those available to law enforcement; or using military forces "to raid or attack dwellings where terrorists were thought to be, despite risks that third parties could be killed or injured by exchanges of fire."

Mr. Yoo noted that those actions could raise constitutional issues, but said that in the face of devastating terrorist attacks, "the government may be justified in taking measures which in less troubled conditions could be seen as infringements of individual liberties." If the president decided the threat justified deploying the military inside the country, he wrote, then "we think that the Fourth Amendment should be no more relevant than it would be in cases of invasion or insurrection."

The prospect of such military action at home was mostly hypothetical at that point, but with the government taking the fight against terrorism to Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world, lawyers in the administration took the same "forward-leaning" approach to making plans for the terrorists they thought would be captured.

The idea of using military commissions to try suspected terrorists first came to Mr. Flanigan, he said, in a phone call a couple of days after the attacks from William P. Barr, the former attorney general under whom Mr. Flanigan had served as head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel during the first Bush administration.

Mr. Barr had first suggested the use of military tribunals a decade before, to try suspects in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Although the idea made little headway at the time, Mr. Barr said he reminded Mr. Flanigan that the Legal Counsel's Office had done considerable research on the question. Mr. Flanigan had an aide call for the files.

"I thought it was a great idea," he recalled.

Military commissions, he thought, would give the government wide latitude to hold, interrogate and prosecute the sort of suspects who might be silenced by lawyers in criminal courts. They would also put the control over prosecutions squarely in the hands of the president.

The same ideas were taking hold in the office of Vice President Cheney, championed by his 44-year-old counsel, David S. Addington. At the time, Mr. Addington, a longtime Cheney aide with an indistinct portfolio and no real staff, was not well-known even in the government. But he would become legendary as a voraciously hard-working official with strongly conservative views, an unusually sharp pen and wide influence over military, intelligence and other matters. In a matter of months, he would make a mark as one of the most important architects of the administration's legal strategy against foreign terrorism.

Beyond the prosecutorial benefits of military commissions, the two lawyers saw a less tangible, but perhaps equally important advantage. "From a political standpoint," Mr. Flanigan said, "it communicated the message that we were at war, that this was not going to be business as usual."

Changing the Rules

In fact, very little about how the tribunal policy came about resembled business as usual. For half a century, since the end of World War II, most major national-security initiatives had been forged through interagency debate. But some senior Bush administration officials felt that process placed undue power in the hands of cautious, slow-moving foreign policy bureaucrats. The sense of urgency after Sept. 11 brought that attitude to the surface.

Little more than a week after the attacks, officials said, the White House counsel, Alberto F. Gonzales, set up an interagency group to draw up options for prosecuting terrorists. They came together with high expectations.

"We were going to go after the people responsible for the attacks, and the operating assumption was that we would capture a significant number of Al Qaeda operatives," said Pierre-Richard Prosper, the State Department official assigned to lead the group. "We were thinking hundreds."

Mr. Prosper, then 37, had just been sworn in as the department's ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues. As a prosecutor, he had taken on street gangs and drug Mafias and had won the first genocide conviction before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Even so, some administration lawyers eyed him suspiciously - as more diplomat than crime-fighter.

Mr. Gonzales had made it clear that he wanted Mr. Prosper's group to put forward military commissions as a viable option, officials said. The group laid out three others - criminal trials, military courts-martial and tribunals with both civilian and military members, like those used for Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg.

Representatives of the Justice Department's criminal division, which had prosecuted a string of Qaeda defendants in federal district court over the previous decade, argued that the federal courts could do the job again. The option of toughening criminal laws or adapting the courts, as several European countries had done, was discussed, but only briefly, two officials said.

"The towers were still smoking, literally," Mr. Prosper said. "I remember asking: Can the federal courts in New York handle this? It wasn't a legal question so much as it was logistical. You had 300 Al Qaeda members, potentially. And did we want to put the judges and juries in harm's way?"

Lawyers at the White House saw criminal courts as a minefield, several officials said.

Much of the evidence against terror suspects would be classified intelligence that would be difficult to air in court or too sketchy to meet federal standards, the lawyers warned. Another issue was security: Was it safe to try Osama bin Laden in Manhattan, where he was facing federal charges for the 1998 bombings of American Embassies in East Africa?

Then there was a tactical question. To act preemptively against Al Qaeda, the authorities would need information that defense lawyers and due-process rules might discourage suspects from giving up.

Mr. Flanigan framed the choice starkly: "Are we going to go with a system that is really guaranteed to prevent us from getting information in every case or are we going to go another route?"

Military commissions had no statutory rules of their own. In past American wars, when such tribunals had been used to carry out battlefield justice against spies, saboteurs and others accused of violating the laws of war, they had generally hewed to prevailing standards of military justice. But the advocates for commissions in the Bush administration saw no reason they could not adapt the rules, officials said. Standards of proof could be lowered. Secrecy provisions could be expanded. The death penalty could be more liberally applied.

But some members of the interagency group saw it as more complicated. Terrorism had not been clearly established as a war crime under international law. Writing new law for a military tribunal might end up being more difficult than prosecuting terrorism cases in existing courts.

By late October 2001, the White House lawyers had grown impatient with what they saw as the dithering of Mr. Prosper's group and what one former official called the "cold feet" of some of its members. Mr. Flanigan said he thought the government needed to move urgently in case a major terrorist linked to the attacks was apprehended.

He gathered up the research that the Prosper group had completed on military commissions and took charge of the matter himself. Suddenly, the other options were off the table and the Prosper group was out of business.

"Prosper is a thoughtful, gentle, process-oriented guy," the former official said. "At that time, gentle was not an adjective that anybody wanted."

A Secretive Circle

With the White House in charge, officials said, the planning for tribunals moved forward more quickly, and more secretly. Whole agencies were left out of the discussion. So were most of the government's experts in military and international law.

The legal basis for the administration's approach was laid out on Nov. 6 in a confidential 35-page memorandum sent to Mr. Gonzales from Patrick F. Philbin, a deputy in the Legal Counsel's office. (Attorney General Ashcroft has refused recent Congressional requests for the document, but a copy was reviewed by The Times.)

The memorandum's plain legalese belied its bold assertions.

It said that the president, as commander in chief, has "inherent authority" to establish military commissions without Congressional authorization. It concluded that the Sept. 11 attacks were "plainly sufficient" to warrant applying the laws of war.

Opening a debate that would later divide the administration, the memorandum also suggested that the White House could apply international law selectively. It stated specifically that trying terrorists under the laws of war "does not mean that terrorists will receive the protections of the Geneva Conventions or the rights that laws of war accord to lawful combatants."

The central legal precedent cited in the memorandum was a 1942 case in which the Supreme Court upheld President Franklin D. Roosevelt's use of a military commission to try eight Nazi saboteurs who had sneaked into the United States aboard submarines. Since that ruling, revolutions had taken place in both international and military law, with the adoption of the Geneva Conventions in 1949 and the Uniform Code of Military Justice in 1951. Even so, the Justice memorandum said the 1942 ruling had "set a clear constitutional analysis" under which due process rights do not apply to military commissions.

Roosevelt, too, created his military commission without new and explicit Congressional approval, and authorized the military to fashion its own procedural rules. He also established himself, rather than a military judge, as the "final reviewing authority" for the case.

Mr. Addington seized on the Roosevelt precedent as a model, two people involved in the process said, despite vast differences. Roosevelt acted against enemy agents in a traditional war among nations. Mr. Bush would be asserting the same power to take on a shadowy network of adversaries with no geographic boundaries, in a conflict with no foreseeable end.

Mr. Addington, who drafted the order with Mr. Flanigan, was particularly influential, several officials said, because he represented Mr. Cheney and brought formidable experience in national-security law to a small circle of senior officials. Mr. Addington turned down several requests for interviews and a spokesman for the vice president's office declined to comment.

"He was probably the only one there who would know what an order would look like, what it would say," a former Justice Department official said, noting Mr. Addington's work at the Defense Department, the C.I.A., and Congressional intelligence committees. "He didn't have authority over anyone. But he's a persuasive guy."

To many officials outside the circle, the secrecy was remarkable.

While Mr. Ashcroft and his deputy, Larry D. Thompson, were closely consulted, the head of the Justice Department's criminal division, Michael Chertoff, who had argued for trying terror suspects in federal court, saw the military order only when it was published, officials said. Mr. Rumsfeld was kept informed of the plan mainly through his general counsel, William J. Haynes II, several Pentagon officials said.

Many of the Pentagon's experts on military justice, uniformed lawyers who had spent their careers working on such issues, were mostly kept in the dark. "I can't tell you how compartmented things were," said retired Rear Adm. Donald J. Guter, who was then the Navy's senior military lawyer, or judge advocate general. "This was a closed administration."

A group of experienced Army lawyers had been meeting with Mr. Haynes repeatedly on the process, but began to suspect that what they said did not resonate outside the Pentagon, several of them said.

On Friday, Nov. 9, Defense Department officials said, Mr. Haynes called the head of the team, Col. Lawrence J. Morris, into his office to review a draft of the presidential order. He was given 30 minutes to study it but was not allowed to keep a copy or even take notes.

The following day, the Army's judge advocate general, Maj. Gen. Thomas J. Romig, hurriedly convened a meeting of senior military lawyers to discuss a response. The group worked through the Veterans Day weekend to prepare suggestions that would have moved the tribunals closer to existing military justice. But when the final document was issued that Tuesday, it reflected none of the officers' ideas, several military officials said. "They hadn't changed a thing," one official said.

In fact, while the military lawyers were pulling together their response, they were unaware that senior administration officials were already at the White House putting finishing touches on the plan. At a meeting that Saturday in the Roosevelt Room, Mr. Cheney led a discussion among Attorney General Ashcroft, Mr. Haynes of the Defense Department, the White House lawyers and a few other aides.

Senior officials of the State Department and the National Security Council staff were excluded from final discussions of the policy, even at a time when they were meeting daily about Afghanistan with the officials who were drafting the order. According to two people involved in the process, Mr. Cheney advocated withholding the draft from Ms. Rice and Secretary Powell.

When the two cabinet members found out about the military order - upon its public release - Ms. Rice was particularly angry, several senior officials said. Spokesmen for both officials declined to comment.

Mr. Bush played only a modest role in the debate, senior administration officials said. In an initial discussion, he agreed that military commissions should be an option, the officials said. Later, Mr. Cheney discussed a draft of the order with Mr. Bush over lunch, one former official said. The president signed the three-page order on Nov. 13.

No ceremony accompanied the signing, and the order was released to the public that day without so much as a press briefing. But its historic significance was unmistakable.

The military could detain and prosecute any foreigner whom the president or his representative determined to have "engaged in, aided or abetted, or conspired to commit" terrorism. Echoing the Roosevelt order, the Bush document promised "free and fair" tribunals but offered few guarantees: There was no promise of public trials, no right to remain silent, no presumption of innocence. As in 1942, guilt did not necessarily have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt and a death sentence could be imposed even with a divided verdict.

Despite those similarities, some military and international lawyers were struck by the differences.

"The Roosevelt order referred specifically to eight people, the eight Nazi saboteurs," said Mr. Shiffrin, who was then the Defense Department's deputy general counsel for intelligence matters and had studied the Nazi saboteurs' case. "Here we were putting in place a parallel system of justice for a universe of people who we had no idea about - who they would be, how many of them there would be. It was a very dramatic measure."

Mounting Criticism

The White House did its best to play down the drama, but criticism of the order was immediate and widespread.

Civil libertarians and some Congressional leaders saw an attempt to supplant the criminal justice system. Critics also worried about the concentration of power: The president or his proxies would define the crimes (often after an act had been committed); set the rules for trial; and choose the judges, juries and appellate panels.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who was then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was among a handful of legislators who argued that the administration's plan required explicit Congressional authorization. The Congress had just passed the Patriot Act by a huge margin, and Mr. Leahy proposed authorizing military commissions, but with some important changes, including a presumption of innocence for defendants and appellate review by the Supreme Court.

Critics seized on complaints from abroad, including an announcement from the Spanish authorities that they would not extradite some terrorist suspects to the United States if they would face the tribunals. "We are the most powerful nation on earth," Mr. Leahy said. "But in the struggle against terrorism, we don't have the option of going it alone. Would these military tribunals be worth jeopardizing the cooperation we expect and need from our allies?"

Senators called for Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Ashcroft to testify about the tribunals plan. Instead, the administration sent Mr. Prosper from the State Department and Mr. Chertoff of the Justice Department - both of whom had questioned the use of commissions and were later excluded from the administration's final deliberations.

But the Congressional opposition melted in the face of opinion polls showing strong support for the president's measures against terrorism.

There was another reason fears were allayed. With the order signed, the Pentagon was writing rules for exactly how the commissions would be conducted, and an early draft that was leaked to the news media suggested defendants' rights would be expanded. Mr. Rumsfeld, who assembled a group of outside legal experts - including some who had worked on World War II-era tribunals - to consult on the rules, said critics' concerns would be taken into account.

But all of the critics were not outside the administration.

Many of the Pentagon's uniformed lawyers were angered by the implication that the military would be used to deliver "rough justice" for the terrorists. The Uniform Code of Military Justice had moved steadily into line with the due-process standards of the federal courts, and senior military lawyers were proud and protective of their system. They generally supported using commissions for terrorists, but argued that the system would not be fair without greater rights for defendants.

"The military lawyers would from time to time remind the civilians that there was a Constitution that we had to pay attention to," said Admiral Guter, who, after retiring as the Navy judge advocate general, signed a "friend of the court" brief on behalf of plaintiffs in the Guantánamo Supreme Court case.

Even as uniformed lawyers were given a greater role in writing rules for the commissions, they still felt out of the loop.

In early 2002, Admiral Guter said, during a weekly lunch with Mr. Haynes and the top lawyers for the military branches, he raised the issue with Mr. Haynes directly: "We need more information."

Mr. Haynes looked at him coldly. "No, you don't," he quoted Mr. Haynes as saying.

Mr. Haynes declined to comment on the exchange.

Lt. Col. William K. Lietzau, a Yale-trained Marine lawyer on Mr. Haynes's staff, often found himself in the middle. "I could see how the JAGs were frustrated that the task of setting up the commissions hadn't been delegated to them," he said, referring to the senior military lawyers. "On the other hand, I could see how some of their recommendations frustrated the leadership because they didn't always appear to embrace the paradigm shift needed to deal with terrorism."

Some Justice Department officials also urged changes in the commission rules, current and former officials said. While Attorney General Ashcroft staunchly defended the policy in public, in a private meeting with Pentagon officials, he said some of the proposed commission rules would be seen as "draconian," two officials said.

On nearly every issue, interviews and documents show, the harder line was staked out by White House lawyers: Mr. Addington, Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Flanigan. They opposed allowing civilian lawyers to assist the tribunal defendants, as military courts-martial permit, or allowing civilians to serve on the appellate panel that would oversee the commissions. They also opposed granting defendants a presumption of innocence.

In the end, Mr. Rumsfeld compromised. He granted defendants a presumption of innocence and set "beyond a reasonable doubt" as a standard for proving guilt. He also allowed the defendants to hire civilian lawyers, but restricted the lawyers' access to case information. And he gave the presiding officer at a tribunal license to admit any evidence he thought might be convincing to a "reasonable person."

One right the administration sought to deny the prisoners was the ability to appeal the legality of their detentions in federal court. The administration had done its best to decide the question when searching for a place to detain hundreds of prisoners captured in Afghanistan. Every location it seriously considered - including an American military base in Germany and islands in the South Pacific - was outside the United States and, the administration believed, beyond the reach of the federal judiciary.

On Dec. 28, 2001, after officials settled on Guantánamo Bay, Mr. Philbin and Mr. Yoo told the Pentagon in a memorandum that it could make a "very strong" claim that prisoners there would be outside the purview of American courts. But the memorandum cautioned that a reasonable argument could also be made that Guantánamo "while not part of the sovereign territory of the United States, is within the territorial jurisdiction of a federal court." That warning would come back to haunt the administration.

A Shift in Power

Some of the officials who helped design the new system of justice would later explain the influence they exercised in the chaotic days after Sept. 11 as a response to a crisis. But a more enduring shift of power within the administration was taking place - one that became apparent in a decision that would have significant consequences for how terror suspects were interrogated and detained.

At issue was whether the administration would apply the Geneva Conventions to the conflicts with Al Qaeda and the Taliban and whether those enemies would be treated as prisoners of war.

Based on the advice of White House and Justice Department lawyers, Mr. Bush initially decided on Jan. 18, 2002, that the conventions would not apply to either conflict. But at a meeting of senior national security officials several days later, Secretary of State Powell asked him to reconsider.

Mr. Powell agreed that the conventions did not apply to the global fight against Al Qaeda. But he said troops could be put at risk if the United States disavowed the conventions in dealing with the Taliban - the de facto government of Afghanistan. Both Mr. Rumsfeld and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, supported his position, Pentagon officials said.

In a debate that included the administration's most experienced national-security officials, a voice heard belonged to Mr. Yoo, only a deputy in the Office of Legal Counsel. He cast Afghanistan as a "failed state," and said its fighters should not be considered a real army but a "militant, terrorist-like group." In a Jan. 25 memorandum, the White House counsel, Mr. Gonzales, characterized that opinion as "definitive," although it was not the final basis for the president's decision.

The Gonzales memorandum suggested that the "new kind of war" Mr. Bush wanted to fight could hardly be reconciled with the "quaint" privileges that the Geneva Conventions gave to prisoners of war, or the "strict limitations" they imposed on interrogations.

Military lawyers disputed the idea that applying the conventions would necessarily limit interrogators to the name, rank and serial number of their captives. "There were very good reasons not to designate the detainees as prisoners of war, but the claim that they couldn't be interrogated was not one of them," Colonel Lietzau said. Again, though, such questions were scarcely heard, officials involved in the discussions said.

Mr. Yoo's rise reflected a different approach by the Bush administration to sensitive legal questions concerning foreign affairs, defense and intelligence.

In past administrations, officials said, the Office of Legal Counsel usually weighed in with opinions on questions that had already been deliberated by the legal staffs of the agencies involved. Under Mr. Bush, the office frequently had a first and final say. "O.L.C. was definitely running the show legally, and John Yoo in particular," a former Pentagon lawyer said. "He's kind of fun to be around, and he has an opinion on everything. Even though he was quite young, he exercised disproportionate authority because of his personality and his strong opinions."

Mr. Yoo's influence was amplified by friendships he developed not just with Mr. Addington and Mr. Flanigan, but also Mr. Haynes, with whom he played squash as often as three or four times a week at the Pentagon Officers Athletic Club.

If the Geneva Conventions debate raised Mr. Yoo's stature, it had the opposite effect on lawyers at the State Department, who were later excluded from sensitive discussions on matters like the interrogation of detainees, officials from several agencies said.

"State was cut out of a lot of this activity from February of 2002 on," one senior administration official said. "These were treaties that we were dealing with; they are meant to know about that."

The State Department legal adviser, William H. Taft IV, was shunned by the lawyers who dominated the detainee policy, officials said. Although Mr. Taft had served as the deputy secretary of defense during the Reagan administration, more conservative colleagues whispered that he lacked the constitution to fight terrorists.

"He was seen as ideologically squishy and suspect," a former White House official said. "People did not take him very seriously."

Through a State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, Mr. Taft declined to comment.

The rivalries could be almost adolescent. When field trips to Guantánamo Bay were arranged for administration lawyers, the invitations were sometimes relayed last to the State Department and National Security Council, officials said, in the hope that lawyers there would not be able to go on short notice.

It was on the first field trip, 10 days after detainees began to arrive there on Jan. 11, 2002, that White House lawyers made clear their intention to move forward quickly with military commissions.

On the flight home, several officials said, Mr. Addington urged Mr. Gonzales to seek a blanket designation of all the detainees being sent to Guantánamo as eligible for trial under the president's order. Mr. Gonzales agreed.

The next day, the Pentagon instructed military intelligence officers at the base to start filling out one-page forms for each detainee, describing their alleged offenses. Weeks later, Mr. Haynes issued an urgent call to the military services, asking them to submit nominations for a chief prosecutor.

The first trials, many military and administration officials believed, were just around the corner.

(Found @ http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/102504D.shtml)

'Saving Our Nation'

2004-10-27T07:27:00.000-07:00

Jack Lessenberry: 'Saving the nation'
Posted on Wednesday, October 27 @ 10:28:22 EDT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This column doesn't contain enough space to recite all the appalling deeds of the Bush administration.

By Jack Lessenberry, Metro Times

Nobody among the intellectual and power elites was overwhelmed by the Democratic candidate for president; the only thing they agreed on is that he would be marginally better than the alternative, who was a disaster.

And while they wanted him to win, they worried about whether he was decisive enough. They regarded him as a rich guy with a high society wife who liked hanging out with the beautiful people as well as the movers and shakers. While they didn't expect great things, they thought he'd be pretty safe, at least.

That's what they're saying now about John Forbes Kerry.

Which makes me smile, because that's exactly what they said back in the day about John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Pardon me, but I'm very optimistic about the prospect of a president who is intelligent, tested in battle, has a lifetime record of public service, and who, unlike any other chief executive in decades, actually knows how Congress works.

Incidentally, the record shows that presidents who actually fought in a war are less likely to send young men into half-baked military adventures. I actually have a growing feeling that Kerry might surprise us all and be a superior president. I thought I was out there alone on this until The New York Times, in one of the best editorials I can remember reading, said the same thing last week, praising "his wide knowledge and clear thinking, and adding that "he strikes us, above all, as a man with a strong moral core."

But what if I'm wrong? What if Kerry is merely another establishment politician? Well, at the very least, it will be nice to have a president who's not actively hostile to science and intelligent thought. It will be nice not to have to worry that he'll name Useless P. Claypool to the U.S. Supreme Court, or try to dig up Yellowstone National Park if Halliburton thinks it might have oil.

That is, if John Kerry makes it.

What is dismaying beyond belief is the thought that the smirking chimp, the worst president we've had since at least the Civil War, might still win. The polls are neck and neck, many with a slight edge for Bush. This election ought to have been over the moment it was demonstrated that the Democratic nominee could read, write and wasn't an al Qaeda spy.

The mess is such that Kerry, if he wins, is likely to have to make rapid decisions that will make enemies and disillusion some. You could, in fact, make a powerful case that the best thing that could happen to the Democratic Party would be to have Dubya narrowly re-elected next week.

So monumental are the looming disasters that the Democrats would be a cinch to win both houses of Congress two years from now, and then reclaim the presidency, possibly with John Edwards as the candidate, in two years more.

But I don't especially care about the Democrats; I care about this country. George W. Bush has been a disaster in nearly every way, and a second term would be disaster beyond belief for this nation.

It's not so much that the man's policies are ridiculously and dangerously wrongheaded, although they are. It isn't even that he'd be in a position to do far more damage to our rights and liberties for decades by naming a bunch of new Supreme Court justices, although that is a hugely legitimate fear.

What's most frightening about George W. Bush is his seemingly total inability to admit error, let alone change course. Asked repeatedly during press conferences and during a debate to name a mistake he has made, he refused.

Worse, he seems to think any admission of error is a weakness. Whether this is because of his own insecurity or, ominously, because he thinks that God talks directly to him, that's a potential prescription for the end of the world.

This column doesn't contain enough space to recite all the appalling deeds of the Bush administration, from running up huge deficits that our children will pay for to needlessly creating new enemies for our nation. Social Security is a mess; public education is getting there, and the national health system is worse.

Cheerfully ignorant of legal and political traditions, Bush has angered even true conservatives with the pseudo-fascist portions of the Soviet-sounding "Department of Homeland Security," and the truly Orwellian "Patriot Act." The Patriot Act, by the way, is so bad that the right-wing Detroit News said it "trashed personal privacy protections, suspended due process safeguards and upset the balance between the power of the government and the rights of the individual."

The full effects of the incompetence and the recklessness of the Bush administration's policies are unlikely to be realized for many years to come. You can count for sure on high inflation, growing unemployment and a health care crisis that will take resources we can't even imagine to solve, not to speak of new waves of terrorism created by our ham-handed actions in the Middle East.

Yet even if the nation were prosperous, if we had caught Osama bin Laden, if thousands of jobs weren't continuing to be shipped offshore, we'd have to vote out George W. Bush for the biggest reason of all: Iraq.

This nation never before launched a pre-emptive attack on another nation that hasn't attacked us. Nor have we gone into war based on a complete lie -- that the "enemy" had weapons he never had at all.

Nor have we ever so blown the aftermath of combat. Our occupation of Iraq has been perhaps the worst failure in our nation's modern history. We have lost the peace. The other night I saw a shaken Martha Raddatz, the veteran ABC correspondent who covered Bosnia, discussing a recent visit to Iraq.

While she was there, the "insurgents" put a dozen Iraqi National Guard (our puppets) against a wall and blew them away. It didn't even make the papers here; things like that are too common. We've lost the occupation; Iraq is, by any rational measure, worse off than under Saddam, and it will get worse still.

Does anyone really believe the American people will tolerate our staying there for much longer? Whoever wins will have to withdraw our troops sooner rather than later, and likely leave the place to civil war and an eventual Shiite strongman. We've taken a baseball bat to the hornet's nest that is the Middle East, and there's no sign that Bush has a clue about what the long-term effects of what he's done are likely to be. The fact is, Osama couldn't have asked for better.

The Detroit News has never -- repeat, never -- endorsed a Democrat for president of the United States. Yet Sunday, in the strongest language possible, they told their readers that George W. Bush was a monumental failure who doesn't deserve another term. (They didn't endorse Kerry either. Apparently afraid that its editorial writers' fingers would fall off if they endorsed a Democrat, The News bizarrely declared Kerry an enemy of the auto industry, and took the weasel course of endorsing nobody, though it's impossible to read its editorial as anything but a call to transplant the Shrub.)

Anyone who sits this one out deserves what they get. And if the wrong man wins this election, we're all terribly likely to get it good and hard.

Jack Lessenberry opines weekly for Metro Times.

(c)2004, Metro Times, Inc.

Reprinted from The Metro Times:
http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=6900

...The War Bin Laden Wanted...

2004-10-26T13:22:00.000-07:00

The War Bin Laden Wanted
By Paul W. Schroeder
The American Conservative

Monday 25 October 2004

How the U.S. played into the terrorist’s plan.
George W. Bush’s re-election campaign rests on three claims, distinct but always run together: that the United States is at war against terror, that it is winning the war, and that it can ultimately achieve victory but only under his leadership.

The second and third propositions are hotly debated. Critics of Bush contend that the U.S. is losing the struggle against terror on the most important fronts and that only new leadership can bring victory, but except for a few radicals, no one denies that the struggle against international terrorism in general and groups like al-Qaeda in particular constitutes a real war. The question comes up in the campaign only when Republicans such as Vice President Cheney charge that Democrats view terrorists as mere criminals and do not recognize that the country is at war. The charge, though false - no Democratic leader would commit political suicide by even hinting this - is effective politically.

Some experts on international law and foreign policy object to calling the struggle against terrorism a war, pointing for example to the legal problem of whether under international law a state can declare war on a non-state movement and claim the rights of war, or arguing that terrorism constitutes a tactic and that no one declares war against a tactic. Both arguments indicate the sloppy thinking that pervades the rhetoric of the War on Terror. The first point, moreover, has important practical consequences for such questions as the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere, and for our relations with allies, other states, and the UN. Yet these kinds of arguments seem too academic to matter. The general public can hardly understand them, much less let them influence their votes.

Other reasons, however - different, more powerful, highly practical, and astonishingly overlooked - argue against conceiving of the struggle as a war and, more important still, waging it as such. The reasons and the logic behind them are somewhat complicated, but the overall conclusion is simple: by conceiving of the struggle against international terrorism as a war, loudly proclaiming it as such, and waging it as one, we have given our enemies the war they wanted and aimed to provoke but could not get unless the United States gave it to them.

This conclusion is not about semantics or language but has enormous implications. It points to fundamentally faulty thinking as one of the central reasons that America is currently losing the struggle, and it means that a change in leadership in Washington, though essential, will not by itself turn the course of events. What is required is a new, different way of thinking about the struggle against terrorism and from that a different way of waging it.

Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda repeatedly and publicly declared war on the United States and waged frequent attacks against its property, territory (including embassies abroad), and citizens for years before the spectacular attack on 9/11. This admission would seem to destroy my case at the outset and end the discussion. If bin Laden and al-Qaeda declared war on the United States and committed unmistakable acts of war against it, then obviously the U.S. had no choice but to declare war in reply, just as it had to do so against Japan after Pearl Harbor.

No, not really. Some other obvious facts also need consideration. First, states frequently wage real, serious wars of the conventional sort against other states without declaring war or putting their countries on a war footing. In the latter 20th century, this practice became the rule rather than the exception. Korea and Vietnam are only two of many examples. Second, revolutionary and terrorist organizations and movements have for centuries declared war on the governments or societies they wished to subvert and overthrow. Yet even while fighting them ruthlessly, states rarely made formal declarations of war against such movements. Instead, they treated these groups as criminals, revolutionaries, rebels, or tools of a hostile foreign power, not as organizations against which a recognized legitimate government declares and wages war.

The reasons are obvious. A revolutionary or terrorist movement has much to gain from getting a real government to declare war upon it. This gives the movement considerable status, putting it in some sense in the same league with the government with which it is now recognized as at war. No sensible government wishes to give such quasi-legitimacy to a movement it is trying to stamp out. Consider Napoleon’s treatment of the insurrection in Spain from 1808 to 1813. The insurgents had powerful claims to belligerent status and even legitimacy. They maintained a government in a small corner of Spain, represented the former legitimate Bourbon government Napoleon had overthrown, included the regular Spanish army, and were supported and recognized by a major power, Great Britain. But Napoleon always insisted they were nothing but brigands, used this designation as justification for the brutal campaign he waged against them, and acknowledged a state of war with them only when, defeated in Spain and on other fronts, he decided to cut his losses, evacuate Spain, and make peace with them and the Bourbon regime.

Other reasons further explain why legitimate governments have not declared war on terrorist or revolutionary organizations that waged war against them - for example, the fact that when one declares war one has to operate under the prevailing laws of war, and these can be constricting for a legitimate government, as the United States is currently finding out in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Thus declaring a war on terrorism and waging it as a genuine war has to be justified as an exception to a powerful rule, not accepted as the obvious response to a terrorist attack.

Readers may find this an impractical, academic argument and respond, "So what? This is a unique situation. Our country never faced a threat just like this before. Besides, what difference does it make what you call a campaign against terrorism if in fact you intend to wage an all-out fight to exterminate terrorist organizations with every weapon at your command? In practical terms, that is war, whatever name you use for it, and it is good for the American public, the world, and the enemy to face it."

Again, not so fast. The issue is not whether the American public after 9/11 needed squarely to face the fact that the United States had been attacked by a dangerous enemy and had to fight back. It still needs to understand this - and does. Neither is the issue whether in fighting back the U.S. had a right to use military force against that enemy anywhere (though only where) it was sensible and practical to do so. Those points are not in dispute. The relevant, practical questions instead are, first, whether it was necessary to declare war on that enemy in order to confront the attack and fight back with every useful means, including military force. As just indicated, the historical and practical answer to that question is no. Second, was a public declaration of war against terrorism in general needed to prepare psychologically for a serious campaign against the enemy? The reaction of the American public and virtually every other government and people to the 9/11 attack and the subsequent American counterattack makes clear that for this purpose a formal declaration was unnecessary. The support in America and abroad for a powerful campaign against al-Qaeda was overwhelming.

The only question left is the one central to the argument: did the American government, by constantly and solemnly declaring the nation at war against terrorism and repeatedly summoning the rest of the world to join up or else be ranked among America’s enemies actually help or hurt the campaign against the terrorist enemy?

The natural response might be, "How could the declarations of war possibly have hurt? Even if they were not strictly necessary, they served to unite the American people and gird them for possible sacrifices and losses and to rally the rest of the world behind the American effort. What harm did they supposedly do?"

It was never in dispute that Osama bin Laden deliberately, repeatedly, and in the most spectacular way possible provoked a war with the United States. What should that tell us? Why did he do this? What was he after?

Once again this looks like an intellectual befogging the issue and ignoring the obvious. Osama bin Laden did this because America is his enemy. He hates America and its ideals, America stands in the way of his creating the kind of world he is fanatically determined to bring about, and so he declared war on America and tried to destroy it and kill as many Americans as possible. This interpretation is perfectly understandable and defensible from a moral and emotional standpoint. Unfortunately, it is counterproductive from the standpoint of rational analysis and policymaking.

Two vital principles in foreign-policy thinking are, first, know the enemy - this means doing one’s best to enter into his thought world and decision-making processes, to think from his presuppositions and standpoint - and second, expect a hidden agenda and look for it. Assume that the enemy’s decisions and actions have a purposive rationality behind them, that he hopes to achieve by them some concrete result that is rational in terms of his goals and worldview, however fanatical, irrational, or simply evil his actions may seem.

Apply these two principles to the question here. Take for granted that Osama bin Laden is an evil fanatic, totally determined to pursue his goals and wholly unscrupulous in the means he is willing to use to reach them. But assume also that he is highly intelligent, shrewd, patient, and focused in his strategy. Supposing this and knowing that he is the leader of a relatively small, highly secret terrorist organization, strong in devotion to its cause but weak in both numbers and weapons in comparison to the resources available to any major state, much less the world’s one superpower, ask yourself: why would he go out of his way to challenge that superpower with its awesome array of resources and weapons, deliberately provoking it into declaring war to the death upon him and his organization? The enormous risks are obvious. What were the potential gains?

Any serious and unemotional consideration of this question makes it apparent that the answer "He hates America and wants to destroy it" will not do. If that were his concrete strategy and end, that would make him a fool, which he is not. Any fairly intelligent person would know that an attack like that of 9/11, or even ten such attacks, would not suffice to defeat the United States or make it give up the struggle against terrorism and accept the unhindered spread of radical revolutionary Islam in the world. Any intelligent person would instead expect the attack on the American homeland to have precisely the political, psychological, and military effects it actually had - to mobilize the government, the American public, and many of its allies around the globe for an all-out struggle against al-Qaeda and international terrorism. Anyone with intelligence would also have anticipated the huge risks to himself and his organization from the inevitable counterattack - a military campaign by an overwhelmingly superior foe against his political base and secret camps in Afghanistan, blows to his cells wherever they could be found, international police, intelligence, and financial measures against his organization on a vastly increased scale, heavy pressure on regimes that had secretly supported or tolerated his activities to crack down on them, the imprisonment or death of anyone in al-Qaeda’s ranks from bottom to top - in short, all the measures that the Bush administration carried out and has trumpeted as successes in the War on Terror. Why would bin Laden knowingly risk all this for the sake of an attack, however spectacular, that he knew would not seriously damage the United States as a nation?

Two replies frequently offered need to be considered before getting to the real answer. Each, though superficially more plausible than "He did it because he’s evil," is fundamentally no more satisfactory. The first is that bin Laden did it to demonstrate the power, bravery, skill, and fanatical resolve of his organization and thereby gain new recruits and allies. This is undoubtedly true in a sense but far too vague. As just noted, the overwhelming surface probability was that the attack would result in gravely weakening and threatening al-Qaeda. That is certainly what the Bush administration confidently promised. Why precisely did bin Laden expect, against all probabilities, that the attack would eventually expand and strengthen his organization and cause?

The second reply is that the 9/11 operation was intended as only one step in a long campaign against the United States, a kind of dress rehearsal for worse blows, perhaps with weapons of mass destruction - nuclear, biological, or chemical. Once again, this argument makes no sense. If one intends to start a long campaign to destroy the enemy, one does not begin with an action that can be expected to galvanize rather than cripple the enemy and make him more prepared to anticipate, prevent, and counter new attacks. It would be as if Japan in 1941, having decided to fight the United States and needing first of all to cripple American naval power in the Pacific, chose to attack by bombing buildings in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The only sensible answer, once the foolish and inadequate ones are discarded, is that Osama bin Laden anticipated the American reaction and wanted it. His purpose in attacking the United States directly in its homeland was to get the American government to do what it had not done in response to his previous attacks: to declare an all-out war against him and al-Qaeda and a worldwide War on Terror led and organized by the United States, with every other country in the world summoned to follow and support or be considered an enemy. That seems to deepen the puzzle. Why thus deliberately multiply the ranks of his enemies and organize their efforts under the leadership of a single, powerful, aroused country?

The answer, if one thinks about it free from emotion and preoccupation with oneself, is clear. Deliberately provoking the United States into open, declared war against him, his forces, radical Islamism, and worldwide terrorism was bin Laden’s way of expanding a struggle he was already waging but losing, one he could not win on account of its insoluble contradictions, into a larger war free from internal contradictions that he could hope ultimately to win. To put it in a nutshell, Osama bin Laden needed the United States as a declared enemy to enable him to win his war against his primary enemies and thus achieve his goals.

To understand this, we need once again to take bin Laden’s fanatical ideology and his hatred for the United States and the West for granted and concentrate on his situation and the purposive rationality behind his tactics. Consider his central goal - a Muslim world ruled by true Islamic law and teaching, purged of all evil, materialist, secular, infidel, and heretical influences. Of course he regards the West, especially the United States, as the source of many of the evils corrupting and oppressing Islam and would like ideally to destroy it, but the immediate obstacles to achieving his vision and the main foes to be overcome have always lain within the Muslim world itself. (There is a good parallel here with 16th-century Europe. The Ottoman Turks were the great military and religious threat to Christendom, but the most bitter quarrels and wars were between Christians of different creeds, churches, rulers, and countries.) The obstacles he faced consisted of the divisions in sects, beliefs, and world visions within Islam; hostile governments ruling in Islamic countries, virtually all of whom regarded his kind of Islamic radicalism as a threat to their rule and were determined to repress it; and the attitude of most Muslims, loyal to their creed but unwilling to sacrifice what security and well-being they had in his kind of jihad. Osama bin Laden tried to overcome these obstacles and foes directly but the struggle, besides being difficult, dangerous, and largely unsuccessful, was inherently divisive and counterproductive. It meant pitting Muslim against Muslim, alienating more followers and potential recruits to the movement than it attracted, and giving free rein to the spread within Islam of infidel influences from outside while Muslims fought each other.

There was, however, one good way to overcome these obstacles - that is, to unite Muslims of divergent beliefs, sects, and visions against a single foe; to discredit, paralyze, and possibly overthrow secular Muslim governments; and to galvanize more believers into that suicidal zeal that al-Qaeda and its kindred organizations need as a baby needs its mother’s milk. That way was to make the United States, already the Great Satan in much of the Muslim world for a variety of reasons - its support of Israel against the Palestinians, its support of corrupt dictatorships and secular regimes, its encouragement of Iraq’s war against Iran and toleration of Saddam Hussein’s atrocities, its later conquest, humiliation, and ongoing punishment of the Iraqi people through sanctions, its long record of imperialism, its greed for Arab oil, its military occupation of sacred Muslim soil, its penetration of Muslim societies with its decadent culture and values - declare open war on him and his followers united in a true, heroic Islamic resistance movement.

The solution, further, was if possible to provoke the U.S. into actually attacking Muslim countries, using its awesome weapons against pitifully outmatched Muslim forces, destroying and humiliating them, killing and wounding civilians and destroying much property, occupying more Muslim land, and miring itself in an attempt to control what it had conquered and to impose its secular values and institutions on Arab and Muslim societies. From this would arise the chance to demonstrate that faithful Muslims under leaders and movements like bin Laden and al-Qaeda could be David to America’s Goliath. If they could not immediately slay the oppressor, they could survive its onslaught, grow and spread despite it, and gradually reduce it to a helpless giant, isolated from its former friends, trapped in an interminable occupation of hostile territory and peoples, with its armed forces stretched thin and its awesome weapons unusable, while al-Qaeda and similar groups could continue to launch even bolder attacks against it or anyone still associated with it.

That, I believe, is a reasonable rendition of Osama bin Laden’s hopes and strategy. It was a tremendous gamble, of course, and he could not possibly have predicted exactly how it would turn out. But it is beyond doubt that his gamble succeeded, that for more than three years after 9/11 things have generally been going his way, and that he could not have achieved this huge, improbable victory without indispensable American help. In declaring and waging a War on Terror with al-Qaeda as its initial announced focus and the United States as its self-acclaimed World Leader, America gave bin Laden precisely the war he needed and wanted.

One can anticipate at least three reactions to this conclusion (three that are printable, that is). Starting with the least important, they are:

1. This is all hindsight, Monday - morning quarterbacking.

2. Given the circumstances, there was nothing else the United States could have done.

3. Even if this is all true, it is water under the bridge, useless in deciding what to do now.

The first is easy to answer. Hindsight is a good exercise in politics, especially for the public at election time - but this is not that. Quite a few observers warned about these dangers at the time, and I was among them. In an article written just after 9/11 and published in November 2001 ("The Risks of Victory," The National Interest, Winter 2001/2002) I argued, among other things, against allowing a necessary and justified military campaign in Afghanistan to draw us into leading a general War on Terror in the wider Middle East and the world. More warnings were included in my "Iraq: The Case Against Preventive War," appearing in this journal in October 2002. Mine was only one voice in a steady, growing chorus, though one always drowned out by crowds of raucous hawks.

The second objection has a little more substance. Certainly 9/11 required strong action including military measures against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and the natural, inevitable war psychology pervading the country had to be reckoned with. Yet as was pointed out earlier, these needs required actions like those taken initially more than words. As far as the public rhetoric and justification was concerned, nothing hindered the administration from conceiving and explaining the undertaking differently both to the American public and the world, especially the Arab-Muslim world that was Osama bin Laden’s real target.

There is little point now in drafting the kind of address Bush should have delivered to Congress and the public. But one can readily imagine an American president (though not Bush) persuasively making the two cardinal points. First, the United States intended to pursue al-Qaeda with all the weapons at its command on grounds of legitimate self-defense and, while respecting the rights of other countries, would allow no one to interfere with these actions. It would not, however, dignify al-Qaeda’s atrocious crimes by calling them acts of war or give Osama bin Laden and his fellow criminals what they obviously wanted, a pretext to portray themselves as soldiers in a holy war against the United States. Instead, it would pursue them ruthlessly the way civilized nations had always pursued criminal organizations, as international outlaws and pirates, enemies of all governments and of civilization itself, and it expected other countries to co-operate in this struggle.

Second, the United States recognized that though it was the direct target of this attack and that in one sense it represented al-Qaeda’s final enemy and target, it was not the country most menaced by the current threat from al-Qaeda and international terrorism generally. As bin Laden well knew, neither this attack nor possible future ones, tragic though the individual deaths and losses were, could really hurt the United States, much less deter it from its purpose of hunting down the criminals behind the atrocities. The attack instead had already had just the opposite effect. It had strengthened the country and united Americans and their friends throughout the world for a long struggle against him and his fellow terrorist criminals. America’s government, institutions, and civil society were rock solid. It had no homegrown terrorist organizations to fear or ethnic and religious differences for terrorists to exploit. Its relatively small Muslim population was well integrated and overwhelmingly loyal to the United States, thankful for its blessings and freedoms.

Many other countries in the world could not say this, especially the Arab and Muslim countries that Osama bin Laden wanted to subvert and revolutionize as he had already done in Afghanistan. These countries and governments had the most to fear from al-Qaeda and international terrorism; they and not the United States were the real targets of the 9/11 attack. Even America’s European allies and friends, sound though their countries and institutions were for the most part, had more to fear directly from terrorism than the United States, given their large unassimilated Muslim populations and their proximity to the Middle East. The United States was, of course, vitally concerned with the general problem of international terrorism. It had interests around the world to protect, including those in the Middle East and other threatened regions. Nonetheless, this was not first and foremost America’s problem, nor was it America’s place primarily to provide the solution. The terrorists wanted to make the United States appear an imperialist Great Satan imposing its will and its solutions on others and forcing them to follow its lead. America would not fall into that trap. The U.S. had a particular right and duty to its citizens and the world to pursue al-Qaeda and exterminate it as a criminal organization. It would help, advise, support, and even where specifically desired lead others in the global struggle against terrorism. But it would not try to force others who had an even greater and more immediate stake in that struggle to do what their own self-interest ought to compel them to do, nor would it try to dictate the kinds of internal measures and reforms they needed to take to combat the common enemy.

That kind of language would have done everything language can do both to free the United States to attack al-Qaeda and to put pressure on other governments, especially in the Middle East, to confront their own problems and responsibilities and seek help if necessary from the United States, rather than hiding behind it. It also would have undercut the al-Qaeda strategy of making the United States into the main enemy, helped place responsibilities where they belonged, and galvanized genuine world support in the struggle against terrorism. What is more, it would have been entirely consistent with the campaign against terrorism the United States actually waged at the outset. That was very much an international effort, a largely proxy war directed but not mainly fought by the U.S. and focused strictly on destroying al-Qaeda’s organization and governmental base - until this focus was foolishly abandoned to attack Iraq.

To heighten the irony, this kind of language would have conformed to the actual wartime policies the administration has followed. Let us be honest: the "War on Terror" in America is basically a sham, a charade. While great, even ultimate sacrifices have been demanded of relatively few, chiefly those in the armed forces, for the overwhelming majority of Americans having the country at war has meant massive tax cuts, exhortations to spend and consume, enormous deficits, politics and government spending as usual - in short, no wartime sacrifice at all. The rest of the world knows this and sees the hypocrisy, if we do not.

As for the last reply, that this argument now represents water under the bridge, useless for current or future policy, if that were true, it would constitute the most devastating indictment of the Bush strategy possible. It would mean that the administration had so ruined America’s position that nothing could now remedy it. But it is not true. This administration’s policy deserves harsh condemnation for the reckless incompetence that has made the way out now much more painful and costly, but a way out still lies in recognizing that the United States needs to abandon not the struggle against international terrorism but the conception of that struggle as a war fought and led mainly by the United States, making itself the chief target of the enemy.

This is a change only a new administration could make, though obviously not during the electoral campaign, when it would be suicidal. Once in office, however, it could claim that it had found things to be even worse than it knew and could make the kind of 180-degree turn Bush executed after his election. A gradual disengagement from Iraq and re-concentration on Afghanistan and Pakistan in the pursuit of al-Qaeda, a devolution of tasks onto the UN and NATO on the grounds that even the best meant efforts of the United States are frustrated by the fact that it is seen as the enemy by too many in the region, a willingness to admit past mistakes and agree to focus co-operatively on other problems as well - all this would become possible, though not easy, if only the current American war mentality and psyche gave way to a saner one. This still could happen - but of course not under Bush.

...Bush Admin Drops Ball AGAIN...

2004-10-25T13:25:00.000-07:00

(CNN) -- Some 380 tons of explosives powerful enough to detonate nuclear warheads are missing from a former Iraqi military facility that was supposed to be under American control, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog says.

Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told CNN the interim Iraqi government reported several days ago that the explosives were missing from the Al Qaqaa complex, south of Baghdad.

The explosives -- considered powerful enough to demolish buildings or detonate nuclear warheads -- were under IAEA control until the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. IAEA workers left the country before the fighting began.

"Our immediate concern is that if the explosives did fall into the wrong hands they could be used to commit terrorist acts and some of the bombings that we've seen," Fleming said.

She described Al Qaqaa as "massive" and said it is one of the most well-known storage sites. Besides the 380 tons, there were large caches of artillery there.

Fleming said the IAEA does not know whether some of the explosives may have been used in past attacks.

The multinational force in Iraq and the Bush administration's Iraq Survey Group have been ordered to "look into" the disappearance of the explosives, a senior Pentagon official said.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said President Bush wants to determine what went wrong.

McClellan, on Air Force One, stressed that the missing explosives were not nuclear materials, and said the storage site was the responsibility of the interim Iraqi government, not the United States, as of June 28, when the United States turned over the nation's administration to the Iraqis.

McClellan said the Iraqi government reported the missing weaponry to the IAEA on October 10, and the IAEA informed the U.S. mission in Vienna on October 15. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice was told a few days later, then informed the president.

According to the Pentagon official, coalition forces, who went to the area around Al Qaqaa in the months after the war ended, searched 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings. They found no weapons of mass destruction, but indications of looting.

The discovery was not made public sooner because standard intelligence practice is not to let enemies know such information, said a senior administration official.

There are hundreds of tons of other weapons and munitions missing around the country, and it is impossible for the United States to track down all of them, the official said.

Even so, he conceded, the story is not a good one for the White House, just over a week from Election Day.

Threat from terrorists
A European diplomat told The New York Times that Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the IAEA, is "extremely concerned" about the potentially "devastating consequences" of the vanished stockpile.

"The immediate danger" of the lost stockpiles is its potential use by insurgents to make small, but powerful, bombs, an expert told the Times. The expert said the explosives could be transported easily across the Middle East.

According to the Times, the stockpiles missing from Al Qaqaa are the strongest and fastest in common use by militaries around the globe.

The Iraqi letter to IAEA identified the vanished explosives as containing 194.7 metric tons of HMX, or "high melting point explosive," 141.2 metric tons of RDX, or "rapid detonation explosive," among other designations, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, or "pentaerythritol tetranitrate."

Fleming said the IAEA, whose mission is to keep track of everything with potential nuclear weapons applications, had been monitoring about 100 sites in Iraq, but there were only a few of special concern, including Al Qaqaa.

"The concern is that other sites that have items that are potentially dangerous have gone missing," Fleming added.

The senior administration official downplayed the importance of the missing explosives, describing them as dangerous material but "stuff you can buy anywhere." The official added that the administration did not see this necessarily as a "proliferation risk."

"In the grand scheme -- and on a grand scale -- there are hundreds of tons of weapons, munitions, artillery, explosives that are unaccounted for in Iraq," the official said. "And like the Pentagon has said, there is really no way the U.S. military could safeguard all of these weapons depots or find all of these missing materials."

The official said the Iraq Survey Group, the administration's weapons investigators, concluded that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, and documented the scope of the problem.

Political fallout
Reacting to the IAEA announcement on Monday, Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry said the "incredible incompetence of this president and this administration has put our troops at risk and put this country at greater risk than we ought to be."

In response, the Bush campaign accused Kerry of using the IAEA announcement to attack the president.

"John Kerry has no vision for fighting and winning the war on terror, so he is basing his attack on the headlines he wakes up to each day," said Bush-Cheney campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt.

"If John Kerry wants to spend the next eight days trying to explain positions again, we welcome that debate. John Kerry can't lead the nation to victory in a war he doesn't believe in." (Full story)

(Found @ http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/25/iraq.explosives/index.html)

My views; why I do this...

2004-10-22T11:55:00.000-07:00

...explanation from Quill (this one I ask that you all read)...

I know some people aren’t too thrilled with all the political postings that I have been making as of late. I thank each of you for bearing with me. I feel some explanation about my true stance on this election is clearly overdue and in order:

As you have noticed, I have no real love for George W. Bush, or his administration. Believe it or not, I was behind Bush in the days after September 11th, after we were attacked. It is my belief that at that moment, he was exactly the type of man we needed in office; someone who wasn’t going to pussy out, who was going to take this fight to our enemies and show them that they had made the worst mistake ever.

However, since then, I have sat back and watched this man make every colossal mistake a president could possibly make. Our health-care system is crappier than it’s EVER been; the Patriot Act side-steps several rights of individuals (and no, I’m not just saying that because of that stupid Fahrenheit movie); I’ve watched him lie and appear to be probably the dumbest C.I.C. we’ve ever had; although the numbers on paper look good for our economy, the job market for the middle/lower class is unbelievably shitty; I’ve seen him take us into war in Iraq.

About Iraq: I agree that Saddam was, simply put, an evil fucker, and he needed to be taken down. I’ve believed that since we DIDN’T finish things the first time, since Bush Sr. dropped the ball. However, Bush’s reasons for going to war weren’t true; the truth is, he DID lie to the American people. And sure, Saddam was TRYING to get those weapons; but at the very least, we could have delayed doing this for about a year before it because a desperate situation. Bush just got us into this war too fast; he rushed it.

Because of Bush’s decision, there have been many more casualties than were necessary. Think about that for just a second. A president’s JOB is to act in the best interests of his people; and there is no bigger judgment for a president to make than how to go into a war situation. Bush didn’t act in the best interest of our troops, and he clearly doesn’t have the proper judgment about war. For all the good in the world that’s resulting from it, the hard fact of the matter is that people, like Shark, and dying when they don’t necessarily need to, had Bush just had us go in there PREPARED. It’s good that Iraq has hope now; but was that hope worth the 1000 plus brave souls that have died for this cause, died when they might not have had to? Dammit, if we had just gotten allies, if we had the proper equipment out there…and on top of it all, those were things Bush PROMISED and SAID he was going to do, and he didn’t. The soldiers that are fighting in Iraq right now are in a greater level of danger than they would have been if we hadn’t rushed into this.

My main reason for believing so strongly in this is our job market and the economy. I graduated with a bachelor of science in construction management from SMSU in December of 2002. I didn’t get a job in my field until mid-July of 2004. That’s nearly TWO YEARS. And it wasn’t because of laziness on my part. It was not because I didn’t have an impressive enough resume, or because I don’t know how to interview. It’s because the job market, and our economy, sucked for jobs. When I finally landed my position with LaClair, it was a right-place, right-time situation. It helps that my resume and interviewing skills and portfolio is top-notch, but for the most part, in THIS job market we’re in, I got lucky. For nearly two years I struggled, battling both the shitty state of the market and my own internal struggle. There were times that I felt like just curling up into a ball and dying, it was so hard; and by nature I am one of the most optimistic and positive people you will meet, EVER. I don’t ever need to go to hell, because I’ve already lived through it, guys. I went through doubts about my own abilities to wondering if I was ever going to make it through this tough time. I suffered through Radio Shack, being on unemployment for a time, having to swallow every bit of pride I’ve ever had and more. Starting about Christmas of 2003, when I got FIRED (yes, fired) from Radio Shack because they had to let someone go, I was operating solely on the belief that I had to keep my hope alive for just one more day. That if I could just make it through ONE more day, tomorrow might just produce something. I did that for the remainder of my days before being saved by LaClair.

The whole job market thing is my personal story in all of this; like so many others, I’ve experienced, tasted, first hand what this president has allowed to happen to our country’s economy. Now, he’s begun to outsource jobs, making an already flailing job market/economy even worse.

Why do I care so much? Why do I beat this issue into the ground? I don’t want anyone to have to go through the hell that I did. I don’t want my friends who are getting out of college in a year or two to have to struggle like I did. I don’t want anyone else to die for a war in which we were ill prepared to go into. I have my issues with Shark; but I don’t wish him to die. Phoenix’s husband, Cyclops, is going to be a marine in just a few short weeks, and he quite possibly could be sent off right away. There are 1000 people, people with families, even people that some of you KNEW, that are dead that might not have died under safer circumstances.

My reasons for fighting tooth and nail on this election are not selfish; I have my job now, I don’t necessarily have an uber-personal bid for our market anymore. I think of my friends; I think of my family; I think of the families of those thousand plus soliders that were put in more danger than they needed to be. I think of the future of our country in this.

Bush has made a fucking mess of things. I can’t deny that there’s no guarantee that Kerry can do any better; but there’s a pretty clear picture of why Bush definitely isn’t good for this country. Is the worth of Bush’s resilience in this whole “War on Terror” really equal to thousands of lives? Does it balance out the way he’s let our health system turn to complete shit, or how the school systems are rapidly disintegrating in his administration’s wake? Do the ends of his methods in Homeland Security justify the means by which he accomplishes them, namely by stomping on rights that have existed since the U.S. began? How many middle class families are struggling just to make ends meet while tax breaks are given to the richest in our country, as a result of his doing? I mean, wake the fuck up…do you guys honestly think that if Bush has done this for the part FOUR YEARS that another four with him in office will get any better?! He’s had four years to do anything for our country, and the only thing he did of any worth was to go after the 9/11 terrorists, which looking back at it, I think any president would have done as well. Would Clinton have let it slide? Would Reagan? I don’t think they would have.

With every new president we’ve ever had, there’s been a 50/50 chance that they’d just fuck everything up. With politicians, you can never predict if they’ll be good or bad; you can only listen to what they say and hope you make the right choice. Kerry does have some bad points about him. I’m not talking about the ‘flip-flop’ issue, because we all know that’s bullshit, tripe slung around to make Kerry look bad, a.k.a. the politics game; Bush ‘flip-flops’ on things as well. And I’m not even talking about the so-called “shady” war record. The way I look at it, Kerry went to war and fought for his country; Bush did not. Kerry got wounded in war, thus he received the Purple Heart three times; it shouldn’t matter how wounded he was or how deep the bullet went into him. If you fight in a war, and you get wounded as a result of that fighting, you deserve whatever the military deems fit to decorate you with. Bush would understand all of this, had he gone to war himself. I would have come home from Vietnam and protested the war, too; history has shown us that Vietnam was a mistake for us. We got our asses handed to us in that war, and it was a situation that we shouldn’t have gotten into in the first place.

Bush has proven that he is not a good president. I could cite a million different examples of this and some still wouldn’t accept it. Personally, I think you’d have to be blind not to see how terrible he’s done in office. Voting for Bush won’t change anything about the current state of our country. Voting for Kerry might change things. It comes down to voting for things to be crap for the next four years and voting for a chance, a shot, that things might get better.

Bush is a man of great faith; he believes in Jesus and the Bible. He believes that life is precious. He believes what a lot of religious, faithful people can get behind. He believes what people who are pro-life can get behind. But there’s more at stake here than abortion rights and religion. There’s an entire world of issues outside of this, and they affect everyone, whether you realize it or not. Just as an example, some people say, “I don’t care about health care issues; Bush is pro-life and I’m voting for him.” To this person I confidently say, “You are blind to the world around you, and it is people like you that allow people like Bush to fuck things up for everyone.” It blows my mind that some people would rather stick with what they know rather than take a chance with Kerry, given what Bush has done and the state of our country in general.

Bottom line: I don’t care if we have a democrat, republican, independent, hell, even a chinchilla with mange and an overbite in office, as long as things are good in our country. I’m a split-ticket voter; I go for the best man for the job, regardless of political affiliation. Bush is not good for our country. Kerry may not be the BEST choice for president, but he’s a league better than Bush. And the only way to get Bush out of office, due to our current political system, is to vote for John Kerry.

...Voter Fraud in Florida...

2004-10-22T11:50:00.000-07:00

Florida fields widespread voter complaints

State investigates allegations of fraud in registration

Friday, October 22, 2004 Posted: 1:00 PM EDT (1700 GMT)

(CNN) -- With 11 days to go before the November 2 presidential election, officials in the battleground state of Florida are looking into complaints of widespread voter fraud, the state's Department of Law Enforcement said.

Over the last several weeks, the department has received numerous complaints from elections supervisors, the secretary of state's office and citizens alleging "sometimes organized efforts" to commit fraud in voter registrations, party affiliation forms and absentee ballots, the department said in a statement.

Investigations are under way throughout the state. (Showdown state Florida)

Some people who thought they were signing petitions apparently "later found out that their signatures or possible forged signatures were used to complete a fraudulent voter registration," the department said. (Special Report: America Votes 2004)

There were also reports of problems involving workers hired to obtain legitimate voter registrations.

Some allegedly "filled in the information on the registration forms that should have been completed by the registrants," and in several cases workers "appear to have signed multiple voter registrations themselves using information obtained during the registration drive," the department said.

"In many of the situations complained about, the workers were being paid on the basis of each registration form submitted."

Most cases of voter fraud are third-degree felonies in Florida, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine for each charge, the department said.

Florida became the central battleground of the 2000 presidential race after Election Day, when the tally proved extremely close and questions were raised about voter intimidation, people being refused the right to vote and problems with the state's electoral process.

After weeks of legal battles, the U.S. Supreme Court determined the matter.

State officials have vowed to avoid a repeat of such problems.

Florida -- where the governor is President Bush's brother Jeb -- is one of the most hotly contested states in this year's election. President Bush and Sen. John Kerry have teams of lawyers in the state.

The Department of Law Enforcement said regional task forces are addressing voter safety issues and looking into groups that may be involved in voter fraud.

The task forces communicate directly with local law enforcement, state attorney's offices, the FBI and elections supervisors, the department's statement said.

"While we conduct this investigation, we are mindful that our No. 1 priority will be to protect the rights of those individuals that are eligible to vote and allow them the opportunity to do so," department Commissioner Guy Tunnell said in a written statement. "Our agents will do nothing that will impede or hinder that process."

The department encouraged voters to check with local elections supervisors to ensure their registration information is accurate and report any irregularities or suspected fraud.

(Found @ http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/22/florida.registration/index.html)

...even more information...

2004-10-22T08:28:00.000-07:00

The Ashcroft Report

Bush Pushes Expansion of Controversial Patriot Act
"Acting at the Bush administration's behest, a joint House-Senate conference committee has approved a provision in the 2004 Intelligence Authorization bill that will permit the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to demand records from a number of businesses without the approval of a judge or grand jury," OneWorld U.S. News Service reports. This measure, which builds on the USA Patriot Act, would extend the FBI's power to seize records from securities dealers, currency exchanges, travel agencies, car dealers, post offices, casinos, pawnbrokers and any other business that has a "high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax or regulatory matters." Until now, only banks, credit unions and similar financial institutions were required to turn over such records to the FBI. According to the New York Times, lawmakers from both parties expressed concerns that the measure gave the government too much authority and that the public had been shut out of the debate.
Sources: New York Times, "Lawmakers Approve Expansion of F.B.I.'s Antiterrorism Powers," Nov. 20, 2003; OneWorld U.S. News Service, "Patriot Act Expansion Moves Through Congress," Nov. 21, 2003.

Justice Department Reportedly Deletes Information from Report to Cover Up Its Poor Diversity Record
According to the New York Times, "an internal report that harshly criticized the Justice Department's diversity efforts was edited so heavily when it was posted on the department's Web site two weeks ago that half of its 186 pages, including the summary, were blacked out." The deleted sections showed the department's record on diversity as "seriously flawed, specifically in the hiring, promotion, and retention of minority lawyers." The unedited report, completed by the consulting firm KPMG, "found that minority employees at the department, which is responsible for enforcing the country's civil rights laws, perceive their own workplace as biased and unfair." Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) have asked the Justice Department's inspector general to investigate the decision to delete large parts of the report before releasing it to the public. Reps. Conyers and Nadler wrote in a letter to the inspector general that the Justice Department had ignored the Freedom of Information Act "simply to cover up its own poor record" with minority employees. They went on to say that they found it "outrageous that the very agency that is charged with rooting out discrimination would make it so difficult for the public to scrutinize its own civil rights record."
Sources: New York Times, "Critical Study Minus Criticism of Justice Department," Oct. 31, 2003; New York Times, "Inquiry Is Sought About Deletions in Report on Justice Department," Nov. 4, 2003.

Ashcroft Promotes the Patriot Act
The Fort Wayne, Indiana Journal Gazette reports that Attorney General John Ashcroft is turning "front-line federal prosecutors into a politicized lobbying team to defend an ill-conceived law." On Sept. 3 in Indianapolis, U.S. Attorney Susan Brooks hosted an intense primer on the USA Patriot Act as part of a coordinated nationwide effort initiated by Ashcroft to require U.S. attorneys to conduct community meetings promoting the Act. Under Ashcroft, these attorneys have been directed to engage in lobbying for partisan gain rather than focus exclusively on the prosecution of federal crimes. Many believe that Ashcroft is shamelessly misusing the general high regard that U.S. attorneys enjoy to lobby in favor of keeping the controversial Patriot Act, which has triggered a vital debate about civil liberties and the law.
Source: Fort Wayne, Indiana Journal Gazette, "Shilling for Ashcroft," September 5, 2003.

Internal Investigators Find 34 "Credible" Claims of Abuse Under Patriot Act
In a report recently released by the Justice Department, internal investigators indicated that between Dec. 16, 2002, and June 15, 2003, their office received 1,073 complaints of civil liberties infractions under the enforcement of the USA Patriot Act. Of these complaints—by and large filed by Muslim and Arab immigrants and naturalized citizens—34 were considered "credible" complaints under the jurisdiction of the inspector general, with the potential to be proven. According to the New York Times, the complaints against Justice Department employees range from the alleged physical and verbal abuse of detainees to accusations against the F.B.I. from one man who claimed they invaded his home and accused him of having an AK-47 rifle based on false information. Another complaint involved a federal prison doctor who reportedly remarked to a prisoner during an exam that, if he was in charge, he would "execute every one" of the detainees for crimes they supposedly committed.
Sources: New York Times, "Report on USA Patriot Act Alleges Civil Rights Violations," Philip Shenon, July 21, 2003

Justice Department Reports Abuse of Immigrants in Post-9/11 Pursuit of Terrorists
A recent report released by the Justice Department showed that the government’s treatment of 762 illegal immigrants during the investigation into the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. was riddled by "significant problems" including physical and verbal abuse. The report, which prompted sharp criticism of Attorney General John Ashcroft, catalogs the harsh conditions encountered by the detainees including: confinement to their cells for 23 hours a day, being slammed against walls and taunted by guards, and an allowance of only one legal phone call per week and one social phone call per month. The report indicated that detainees—who were mostly held in the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn and the Passaic County jail in Paterson, N.J.—were not told for unusually long periods why they were being held. Although Ashcroft claims the Department of Justice did not violate the law in any of the detainees' cases, none of the 762—who, on average, were held for 80 days—were charged as terrorists.
Sources: Washington Post, "Justice Dept. Report Faults Post-9/11 Detention Practice," Deborah Charles, June 2, 2003; New York Times, "Ashcroft Defends Detentions as Immigrants Recount Toll," Eric Lichtblau, June 5, 2003; Washington Post, "Justice Dept. Review Outlines Immigrant Rights Violations," Steve Fainaru, June 3, 2003

Ashcroft Defends Mistreatment of Detainees and Pushes for Greater Power to Pursue Terrorists
Attorney General John Ashcroft undermined the criticism arising from a recent Justice Department report which indicated that illegal immigrants detained after Sept. 11, 2001 experienced harsh conditions during their detention. According to the New York Times, Ashcroft told members of the House Judiciary Committee that authorities "need still greater powers to track and pursue terrorists" and claimed that the USA Patriot Act—the anti-terrorism law passed in response to the 9/11 tragedies that has been fervently opposed by civil liberties proponents—does not go far enough. According to the New York Times, several committee members expressed concern that civil liberties may be undermined if Ashcroft's bid for increased power—including the ability to institute the death penalty for terrorism-related crimes—is granted. In his comments, Ashcroft expressed no qualms about detaining suspects indefinitely, or in other words, as long as it takes to determine that they have no ties to terrorists.
Source: New York Times, "Ashcroft Seeks More Power to Pursue Terror Suspects," Eric Lichtblau, June 6, 2003

Ashcroft to Issue New Regulations for Asylum for Battered Women
Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that he will issue new gender-persecution regulations limiting battered immigrant women seeking asylum in the United States. Immigration and women's rights groups have expressed concern that Ashcroft does not support regulations proposed by former Attorney General Janet Reno that would have allowed battered women to be considered for asylum. The decision stems from a case involving Rodi Alvarado, a Guatemalan woman whose husband threatened to kill her if she returned home. Alvarado was granted asylum by Reno, who reversed the INS' original decision. Ashcroft is reportedly reconsidering the decision to grant asylum to Alvarado, who could be forced to return to Guatemala.
Source: Washington Post, "Ashcroft Reconsiders Asylum Granted to Abused Guatemalan," George Lardner, Jr., March 3, 2003

Details of 'Patriot Act II' Released
As a follow-up to the 2001 U.S.A. Patriot Act, the Justice Department is reportedly preparing "Patriot Act II," which will beef up the surveillance and law enforcement powers granted to the government under the guise of fighting terrorism. According to David Cole, a Georgetown Law professor, the proposed legislation would "reduce or eliminate judicial oversight over surveillance, authorize secret arrests ... create new death penalties, and even seek to take American citizenship away from persons who belong to or support disfavored political groups."
Source: The Center for Public Integrity, "Justice Dept. Drafts Sweeping Expansion of Anti-Terrorism Act," Charles Lewis and Adam Mayle, Feb. 7, 2003

New Detention Sweep Targets Individuals from Muslim Nations
The Justice Department announced the Absconder Apprehension Initiative, targeting immigrants from Middle East nations against whom deportation orders are outstanding. The department seeks to apprehend and interview Middle Eastern citizens to "prosecute any who have ties to terrorism and [compile] the results of interviews in a new computer database." According to the New York Times, many of those picked up in this sweep are individuals with strong community ties, including small business owners, families, and parents of U.S. citizens.
Sources: The New York Times, "Cost of Vigilance: This Broken Home," Susan Sachs, June 4, 2002; The Washington Post, "Tenet Paints Grim Picture Of A …," Feb. 10, 2002

Ashcroft Supports Bush's Faith-Based Initiative
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft expressed strong support for George Bush's faith-based initiative, which would permit discrimination in the provision of federal social services. Ashcroft, who hosts prayer meetings for Justice Department staff, crafted legislation while a senator to facilitate the federal funding of religious social services programs. "I find it sad that the person who ought to be the top law enforcement official in America is actively trying to erase both civil rights and First Amendment protections," said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Source: The Associated Press, "Attorney General Speaks Up for Religious Initiative Criticized by Some," P. Solomon Banda, Jan. 14, 2003

Ashcroft Criticized for Politicizing Justice Department Hiring Process
Current and former Justice Department officials have accused Ashcroft of politicizing the hiring process for the prestigious Attorney General's Honors Program. Under past Democratic and Republican administrations, the recruitment program had been managed by career employees in the department, but it is now under the direct control of Ashcroft and his aides. Career employees and school placement officers have expressed concern that Ashcroft's real objective is to hire more conservatives into the Justice Department. Although Justice Department spokesperson Mark Corallo denies the allegations, school placement officers have privately indicated there has been "a marked shift to the right in the political makeup of students who were approached for interviews this year."
Source: The Washington Post, "Justice Dept. Hiring Changes Drawn Fire," Dan Eggen, Jan. 12, 2003

Ashcroft Collects Personal Data on College Students, Staff
Attorney General John Ashcroft has requested that U.S. colleges and universities submit personal information about foreign students and employees to the FBI, angering civil liberties activists. In late 2002, the FBI asked colleges to turn over information such as names, addresses, telephone numbers and citizenship information of foreign students and employees, allegedly to help avert terrorist attacks. The Association of American College Registrars and Admissions Officers has advised its members "not to pass on information unless served with a court order," and according to the FBI, compliance is voluntary.
Source: The Independent, "FBI Asks Colleges to Hand Over Files on All Foreigners," Andrew Gumbel, Dec. 26, 2002

Ashcroft Wins Broad Powers to Spy on Citizens
Shortly after a three-judge panel ruled favorably on the Justice Department's plans to broaden its power to wiretap powers and secretly investigate suspects in the United States in November 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft released a number of new directives to increase the use of secret surveillance. The ruling will make it easier for Justice Department lawyers and investigators to obtain approval to conduct wiretaps and carry out search warrants in the United States by sidestepping stiffer requirements they would face seeking a standard warrant in a criminal court. Civil libertarians expressed concern that the ruling, issued by a panel comprised of judges appointed by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, will give the government free rein "to spy on U.S. citizens with few restrictions and little oversight."
Source: The Washington Post, "Broad U.S. Wiretap Powers Upheld," Dan Eggen, Nov. 19, 2002

Ashcroft Refuses to Identify Detainees
The Justice Department is appealing a ruling ordering the government to release the names of those detained as part of the war against terrorism. According to Deputy Assistant Attorney General Gregory Katsas, the government opposes releasing the names of detainees, as well as the charges against them, on the grounds that it would allow terrorists to cull vital information. According to Kate Martin, the lawyer for one of the 22 groups asking that the government release the detainees' names, "the concept of secret arrests is odious to a democratic society."
Source: The Associated Press, "U.S. Argues for Secret Detentions," Jonathan D. Salant, Nov. 18, 2002

Ethnic/Gender Profiling of Visitors from Muslim Countries Raises Concerns
The Department of Justice issued guidelines in early November 2002 requiring male students, workers and temporary residents from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and Syria to be fingerprinted and photographed. Muslim and Arab American groups criticized the initiative as "ethnic profiling" that was "drawn out of political convenience" and emphasized that none of the Sept. 11 hijackers came from the countries on the list. Although the program will affect a small segment of the tens of millions of individuals who cross the country's borders each year, the American Immigration Lawyers Association expressed concern that the plan will be a "burden on visitors and yield few positive results."
Source: The Washington Post, Mary Beth Sheridan, "U.S. Wants Prints of Muslim Visitors," Nov. 7, 2002

Ashcroft Can't Bear Bare Statues
Ashcroft was reportedly so disturbed by the insufficiently clad (in his view) torsos of two statues in the Great Hall of the Justice Department building, the Spirit of Justice and her partner, Majesty of Law, that he ordered them covered by blue drapes. Ashcroft is apparently concerned about the fact that photographers often "go to great lengths" to include the Spirit of Justice's bare breast in pictures taken in the Justice Department building.
Source: The Independent, "Cover-up at U.S. Justice Department," Andrew Buncombe, Jan. 29, 2002

Ashcroft's Dragnets Yield Few al Qaeda Links
After the September 11 attacks, Ashcroft oversaw massive dragnets that resulted in the detention of hundreds of people, mostly Arabs or Muslims, who were mostly detained on charges completely unrelated to terrorism. Less than a dozen are believed to have any ties to al Qaeda. The Justice Department refused to release the names of nearly 550 of the 1200 persons who had been detained by November 2001. Law enforcement officials involved in the operation also said they were "skeptical" of Ashcroft's assertion that the detentions were having a "profound impact on interrupting terrorist activity" in the United States.
Source: The New York Times, "Al Qaeda Link Seen In Only a Handful of 1,200 Detainees," David Firestone and Christopher Drew, Nov. 29, 2001

Ashcroft Reluctant to Protect Abortion Providers from Violence
Attorney General John Ashcroft demonstrated a worrisome unwillingness to take actions needed to support women's reproductive rights when he initially declined to enforce the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act during an announced summer 2001 campaign by violent anti-abortion extremists. Ashcroft originally decided not to provide protection to a Kansas clinic operated by Dr. George Tiller, who in 1993 was shot in front of his clinic. Only after three abortion rights groups called a news conference to denounce Ashcroft's decision did the Justice Department reverse itself and announce it would send U.S. Marshals to help protect Tiller and his staff.
Source: People for the American Way, "John Ashcroft's First Year as Attorney General."

Ashcroft's Opinions Show He Is an Anti-Abortion Extremist
John Ashcroft's reluctance as attorney general to protect women in the exercise of their constitutional right to choose abortion is entirely consistent with his extremist views. Prior to landing the job, Ashcroft openly espoused the view that life begins at conception, that any abortion kills a human being, and that all abortions should be banned, even those resulting from rape and incest. At one point Ashcroft even claimed he would try to dismantle the Task Force on Violence Against Health Care Providers, although he backed away from that stance during his confirmation hearings.
Source: People for the American Way, "John Ashcroft's First Year as Attorney General."

Ashcroft's Justice Department Offers Little Support for Affirmative Action
John Ashcroft's Justice Department is systematically undermining affirmative action programs and other efforts to enforce anti-discrimination laws. Early in Ashcroft's tenure, the department offered only tepid support, in a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, for the rule allowing the U.S. Department of Transportation to operate affirmative action programs. Furthermore, Departing from the Clinton Administration's support for diversity in higher education, Ashcroft's Justice Department chose not to file a brief in a case before the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals challenging the University of Michigan Law School's diversity program. Moreover, when the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the Federal Communications Commission's equal employment opportunity rules—which, according to the Washington Post, represented "the most inoffensive corner of affirmative action," because they only required broadcasters to make an effort to inform women and minorities about job openings and encourage them to apply—Ashcroft's department filed a brief urging the Supreme Court not to review that regressive decision.
Source: People for the American Way, "John Ashcroft's First Year as Attorney General."

Ashcroft Hides Behind Sept. 11 to Trample Civil Liberties
Attorney General John Ashcroft has aggressively used the September 11 tragedy to justify policies that trample civil liberties, the cornerstone of a democratic society, according to People for the American Way. PFAW concluded that Ashcroft's proposed anti-terrorism legislation "aimed to radically broaden the government's wiretapping, surveillance and search-and-seizure authority, as well as its power to detain non-citizen suspects indefinitely while radically shrinking or abolishing meaningful judicial review or oversight of executive branch actions, a key part of our constitutional system of checks and balances."
Source: People for the American Way, "John Ashcroft's First Year as Attorney General."

Ashcroft Holds Bible Study Class in Office, Concerns Civil Libertarians
A Washington Post article revealed that Attorney General John Ashcroft, a fundamentalist Pentecostal Christian, holds a Bible study class with Justice Department staffers in his office. Although Ashcroft's spokesperson insisted that attendance is not compulsory, many Justice Department employees privately expressed concern that not attending the prayer meetings might have repercussions. Employees and civil liberties advocates also expressed concern about the fact that Ashcroft, as the nation's top law enforcement official, is the person entrusted with enforcing the separation of church and state.
Source: The Washington Post, "Ashcroft's Faith Plays Visible Role at Justice," Dan Eggen, May 14, 2001

White House Continues to Mislead on Zarqawi

2004-10-21T07:19:00.000-07:00

White House Continues to Mislead on Zarqawi

The White House, now in full spin mode, today claimed that the reason we are fighting in Iraq is because of terrorists like Zarqawi. What they fail to mention is that the White House was told Zarqawi was a threat before the war and had three separate opportunities to kill him but failed to do so. Moreover, because Zarqawi had no relationship with Saddam, his presence in Iraq now does not establish that Iraq was part of the war on terror before the invasion. The recent reports of Zarqawi's loyalty to Osama bin Laden prove once again that Bush took his eye off the real threat of terrorism and has served to make us less safe by emboldening the true threats.

BUSH MISSED HIS CHANCE TO KILL ZARQAWI

McClellan: "We are fighting Zarqawi and his network in Iraq so that we don't have to fight — we are fighting them there in Iraq so that we don't have to fight them here at home. The way to win the war on terrorism is to stay on the offensive and to continue to advance freedom to defeat the ideology of hatred that leads — that leads to terrorism." [WH Gaggle, 10/20/04]

Intelligence Reports Predicted Zarqawi's Tactics. "In a prediction that has proved deadly accurate, the British Joint Intelligence Committee in March 2003 wrote, 'These cells apparently intend to attack U.S. targets using car bombs and other weapons,'" according to the Butler Commission. Zarqawi set up "sleeper cells" in Baghdad before the Iraq war to attack American forces occupying the country. [Washington Post, 7/15/04; AP, 7/15/04]

White House Stopped Three Plans To Kill Zarqawi Before the Iraq War. "In June 2002, U.S. officials said they had information suggesting [Zarqawi] and al-Qaeda were producing deadly ricin and cyanide at the newly-built laboratory at Kirma in the north. The Pentagon drew up an attack plan with cruise missiles and air-strikes, but the National Security Council at the White House decided against taking any action. On two other occasions before the war began, intelligence showed al-Zarqawi was planning a ricin attack in Europe, but again, plans were drawn up and vetoed by the National Security Council, the Mirror said." [UPI, 10/11/04]

Bush Now Claims To Be Pursuing Zarqawi. Bush: "The first part of the question was how come we haven't found Zarqawi? We're looking for him. He hides." [Bush, 9/23/04]

BEFORE THE WAR, Zarqawi Did Not Have Any Relationship With Saddam

Question: "I think the Senator today says, 'War of Iraq is not part of the war on terrorism.' I assume you disagree with that?"
McClellan: "Yes, well — and again, that shows that he — that is another example of his fundamental misunderstanding of the war on terrorism. Zarqawi is in Iraq." [WH Gaggle, 10/20/04]

CIA Now Says No Conclusive Tie Between Zarqawi and Hussein. "A new CIA assessment undercuts the White House claim that Saddam Hussein maintained ties to al-Qaeda, saying there is no conclusive evidence that the regime harbored terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, U.S. officials said Monday. The CIA review, which the officials said was requested some months ago by Vice President Dick Cheney, is the latest assessment that calls into question one of President Bush's key justifications for last year's U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. … 'The evidence is that Saddam never gave Zarqawi anything,' said another U.S. official. … The findings — delivered to Cheney last week — appear to again put the Bush administration and the CIA on a collision course over intelligence regarding Iraq." [Miami Herald, 10/5/04]

Saddam Never Knew Zarqawi Was In Baghdad. "But a senior US official tells ABC News the CIA report, based on captured documents and interviews with former Iraqi officials, raises serious questions about such statements. The official says there is no clear-cut evidence that Saddam Hussein even knew Zarqawi was in Baghdad, contrary to what President Bush said just last month." [ABC, "World News Tonight," 10/5/04]

THOUGH BUSH CLAIMED OSAMA HAS BEEN MARGINALIZED, HE HAS GAINED A NEW POWERFUL ALLY IN THE WAR ON TERROR

McClellan: "He is someone who just the other day pledged his allegiance to Osama bin Laden." [WH Gaggle, 10/20/04]

Bush Claimed Bin Laden Had Been Marginalized. Bush: "I Am Truly Not That Concerned About Him." In 2002 Bush said: "Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I—I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him." [http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/03/20020313-8.html]

BEFORE THE WAR, Zarqawi's Attempts To Ally With Bin Laden Were Rejected. "In February, the American military released a letter it said had been written by Mr. Zarqawi to senior leaders in Al-Qaeda, who are thought to be hiding in the mountainous area of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. In the letter, the author beseeched Mr. bin Laden for help in Iraq and made clear his subservience to him. According to American intelligence, Mr. Zarqawi's request was rebuffed." [New York Times, 10/18/04]

Because Bush Took His Eye Off the Real Threat of Terrorism, Bin Laden Has Gained a New Ally. "Iraq's most wanted militant has pledged his loyalty to Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda, according to a message posted Sunday on Islamist Web sites." In a statement posted on Islamist Web sites, the Unification and Jihad group headed by al-Zarqawi promised bin Laden it would "listen to your orders." [New York Times, 10/17/04; CNN, 10/18/04]

Kerry & Bush: Military Service Records

2004-10-21T06:55:00.000-07:00

George W. Bush and John Kerry both spent their mid twenties in uniform. The similarities end there.

John Kerry

February 18, 1966:
A senior at Yale, Kerry commits to enlist in the Navy.

December, 1967:
Kerry is assigned as an Ensign to the guided-missile frigate USS Gridley. After five-months aboard, he returns to San Diego to undergo training to command a Swift boat, used by the Navy for patrols in Vietnam.

June, 1968:
Kerry is promoted to Lieutenant.

November 17, 1968:
Kerry arrives in Vietnam, where he is given command of Swift boat No. 44, operating in the Mekong Delta.

December 2, 1968:
Kerry gets his first taste of intense combat, and is wounded in the arm. He is awarded a Purple Heart.

January, 1969:
Kerry takes command of a new Swift boat, completing 18 missions over 48 days, almost all in the Mekong Delta area.

February 20, 1969:
Kerry is wounded again, taking shrapnel in the left thigh, after a gunboat battle. He is awarded a second Purple Heart.

February 28, 1969:
Kerry and his boat crew, coming under attack while patroling in the Mekong Delta, decide to counterattack. In the middle of the ensuing firefight, Kerry leaves his boat, pursues a Viet Cong fighter into a small hut, kills him, and retreives a rocket launcher. He is awarded a Silver Star.

March 13, 1969:
A mine detonates near Kerry's boat, wounding him in the right arm. He is awarded a third Purple Heart. He is also awarded a Bronze Star for pulling a crew member, who had fallen overboard, back on the boat amidst a firefight.

April, 1969:
According to Navy rules, sailors that have been wounded three times in combat are eligible to be transfered to the U.S. for noncombat duty. Kerry is transferred to desk duty in Brooklyn, NY.

January 3, 1970:
Kerry requests that he be discharged early from the Navy so that he can run for Congress in Massachusetts' Third District. The request is granted, and Kerry begins his first political campaign.

February 1970:
Kerry drops his bid for the Democratic nomination and supports Robert F. Drinan. Drinan, a staunch opponent of the war, wins the race and goes on to serve in Congress for ten years.

June 1970:
Kerry joins Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and becomes one of the group's unofficial spokespeople.

April 23, 1971:
Kerry helps to organize a huge anti-war protest outside Congress, earning a place on president Richard Nixon's "enemies' list." He joins a group of Vietnam veterans who throw medals and campaign ribbons over a fence in front of the Capitol.

April 23, 1971:
Kerry testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He tells lawmakers: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

November 10, 1971:
Kerry quits Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

April 1972:
Kerry moves to Massachusetts' 5th District to run for Congress again. He wins the Democratic nomination but loses to Republican Paul Cronin, in part because of his anti-war views.

November 1972:
After losing the election, Kerry is hired as a regional coordinator for Cooperative for American Relief to Everywhere(CARE).

September, 1973:
Kerry enrolls at Boston College Law School.

*************************************************************

George W. Bush

February, 1968:
A senior at Yale, Bush takes an Air Force officers test. He scores in 25th percentile in the pilot aptitude portion, and declares that he does not wish to serve overseas.

May 27, 1968:
Bush enlists in Texas Air National Guard. Aided by Texas House Speaker Ben Barnes, he jumps over waiting list. He pledges two years of active duty and four years of reserve duty.

June 9, 1968:
Bush's student deferment expires.

September 1968:
After basic training, Bush pulls inactive duty to act as gopher on Florida Senator Edward J. Gurney's campaign.

November 1968:
After Gurney wins, Bush is reactivated and transferred to Georgia.

November 1969:
Bush is flown to the White House by President Nixon for a date with daughter Tricia.

December 1969:
Bush transfers to Houston and moves into Chateaux Dijon complex. Laura lives there too, but they don't meet till later.

March 1970:
Bush gets his wings.

June 1970:
Bush joins the Guard's "Champagne Unit," where he flies with sons of Texas' elite.

November 3, 1970:
George Bush Sr. loses Senate election to Lloyd Bentsen, whose son is also in the "Champagne Unit."

November 7, 1970:
Bush is promoted to first lieutenant. Rejected by University of Texas School of Law.

January 1971:
The Texas Air National Guard begins testing for drugs during physicals.

Spring 1971:
Bush is hired by a Texas agricultural importer. He uses a National Guard F-102 to shuttle tropical plants from Florida.

May 26, 1972:
Bush transfers to Alabama Guard unit so he can work on Senator William Blount's reelection campaign. According to his commanding officer, Bush never shows up for duty while in Alabama.

August 1972:
Bush is grounded for missing a mandatory physical.

November 1972:
Bush returns to Houston, but never reports for Guard duty.

December 1972:
In D.C. for the holidays, Bush takes 16-year-old brother Marvin drinking and driving. Confronted by father, Bush suggests they settle it "mano a mano."

October 1, 1973:
The Air National Guard relieves Bush from commitment eight months early, allowing him to attend Harvard Business School.

(Found @ http://www.mojones.com/news/update/2004/02/02_400.html)

Bush's Record for the Middle Class

2004-10-21T06:36:00.000-07:00

The Bush Record: The Middle Class Squeeze

Despite gains in the economy, wages have fallen and the Bush Administration has decided to change the rules, denying overtime to 8 million Americans. And, most new jobs created in the coming years will both pay less and require less education. Poverty continues to increase and bankruptcies have followed.

"Today the American economy is strong, and it is getting stronger." President Bush, 1/8/04

American workers have not benefited from GDP growth. "Since the last quarter of 2001, real G.D.P. [Gross Domestic Product] has risen 7.2 percent. But wage and salary income, after adjusting for inflation, is up only 0.6 percent."1

GOP Congress approved new overtime rules that would exclude 8 million workers, including veterans. The Republican Congress recently voted to deny overtime to more than 8 million Americans. Under the rule change, those making between $22,100 and $65,000 would also be excluded if they were deemed an executive, administrator or professional. The definition of these titles will be expanded to include those who have gained on-the-job training or served in the military.2

New jobs created will pay, on average, $8,000 less than old jobs and require less education. According to the US Conference of Mayors, the average wage for new jobs created during 2004-2005 is forecast to be significantly lower than those jobs lost between 2001-2003. A new study also showed that the bulk of the new jobs created between now and 2012 will not require as much education as previous jobs.3

A record 1.6 million families will declare bankruptcy in 2004. Household bankruptcies set a record in 2003 at 1.6 million and experts believe the number will be even higher in 2004. In addition, an estimated 11 million families are carrying enough debt that they are at high risk of bankruptcy. Ninety percent of these families are in the middle class.4

Consumer debt at all-time high. According to the Federal Reserve, in 2003 U.S. consumer debt topped $2 trillion for the first time. At the same time, personal savings has dropped 40 percent over the last decade.5

Out-of-pocket health care costs for workers have risen 50 percent under Bush. Annual out-of-pocket expenses for workers are up $174 (52 percent) for individuals and $793 (49 percent) for families.6

Tuition and fees increased in 49 of 50 states in 2003. State budget cuts fueled by the Bush recession have forced colleges to hike tuitions and fees-threatening access to higher education for low-income students. In 2003, public universities and colleges in 49 states increased their tuition.7

Sources: 1New York Times, 2/10/04; 2Gannett News Service, 1/23/04; 3US Conference on Mayors, November 2003; St. Petersburg Times, 2/16/04; 4NOW With Bill Moyers, 2/6/04; Washington Post, 2/1/04; Orlando Sentinel Tribune, 2/15/04; NBC Nightly News, 2/23/04; 5Washington Post, 3/4/04; www.bea.gov; 6Kaiser Family Foundation, Employer Health Benefits Survey 2000 and 2003; 7Associated Press, 8/25/03; College Board, College Costs 2003

The Bush Record: Top 10 Bush Lies

2004-10-21T06:32:00.000-07:00

Bush on Iraq

1. "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." [Bush Remarks, Cincinnati OH, 10/7/02]
Fact:Saddam Did not Have Chief Requirements for Nuclear Weapons

The Washington Post reported, "What Hussein did not have was the principal requirement for a nuclear weapon, a sufficient quantity of highly enriched uranium or plutonium. And the U.S. government, authoritative intelligence officials said, had only circumstantial evidence that Iraq was trying to obtain those materials." Inspectors in postwar Iraq have "found the former nuclear weapons program, described as a 'grave and gathering danger' by President Bush and a 'mortal threat' by Vice President Cheney, in much the same shattered state left by U.N. inspectors in the 1990s." [Washington Post, 8/10/03, 1/7/04]

2. "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." [Bush, State of the Union, 1/28/03]
Fact: Bush Administration Knew Claim Was False

In March 2002, both the CIA and State Department learned that evidence linking Iraq to Niger was unfounded. In October, CIA Director Tenet personally intervened with Condoleezza Rice's deputy National Security Advisor to have the charge removed from Bush's speech to the nation. Rice herself was sent a memo debunking the claim. In January, just days before Bush uttered the false charge CIA officials tried again to remove the language, but the White House insisted it remain -- with added the caveat that they had received the information from British sources. [Bush State of the Union, 1/28/03; Time, 7/21/03 Issue; Hadley/Bartlett Gaggle, 7/22/03; New York Times, 7/13/03; Washington Post, 7/20/03; NPR, 6/19/03]

3. "In an interview with Polish television on May 30, Mr. Bush cited the trailers [found in postwar Iraq] as evidence that the United States had 'found the weapons of mass destruction' it was looking for." [New York Times, 6/26/03]
Fact: State Department Said Bush Rushed to Judgment

The New York Times reported, "The State Department's intelligence division is disputing the Central Intelligence Agency's conclusion that mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making biological weapons, United States government officials said today. In a classified June 2 [2003] memorandum, the officials said, the department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research said it was premature to conclude that the trailers were evidence of an Iraqi biological weapons program, as President Bush has done...Administration officials said the State Department agency was given no warning that the C.I.A. report was being produced, or made public." [New York Times, 6/26/03]

4. "The 'Mission Accomplished' sign, of course, was put up by the members of the USS Abraham Lincoln saying that their mission was accomplished." [Bush, News Conference, 10/28/03]
Fact: Sign Was Produced by White House

"White House press secretary Scott McClellan later acknowledged that the sign was produced by the White House," though he claimed that the Lincoln's crew had requested some sort of banner. According to reports, "The man responsible for the banner, Scott Sforza, a former ABC producer now with the White House communications office...is known for the production of the sophisticated backdrops that appear behind Mr. Bush with the White House message of the day, like 'Helping Small Business,' repeated over and over." [Washington Post, 10/29/03; New York Times, 10/29/03]

Bush on the Economy
5. "Our budget will run a deficit that will be small and short-term." [Bush, State of the Union, 2002]
Fact: Deficit Will Be Largest in History and Will Exceed $400 Billion Every Year for Next Ten Years

The deficit will exceed $400 billion every year through 2014. By 2014, the deficit will reach $708 billion. In 2004, the deficit is projected to reach a record high of $477 billion, dwarfing the previous record of $290 billion posted by Bush's father in 1992. [Congressional Budget Office, 1/26/04, 2/27/04; Center on Budget & Policy Priorities, 1/21/04, 2/1/04]

6. "Tax relief is central to my plan to encourage economic growth, and we can proceed with tax relief without fear of budget deficits, even if the economy softens," Bush promised. [Bush Remarks at Western Michigan University, 3/27/01]
Fact: Bush Deficits Due Largely to Tax Cuts

In 2002, due largely to Bush's tax cuts, the federal government posted a deficit of $158 billion and returned to deficit for the first time since 1997. In 2004, Bush's three tax cuts over as many years reduced revenues by $270 billion. Over 35 percent of the $9.9 trillion deterioration from 2002-2011 is due to Bush's tax cuts. By 2014, tax cuts will account for 40 percent of the deterioration. Despite Bush's claims to the contrary, only 6 percent of the $477 billion deficit in 2004 is due to the lackluster economy. [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 10/21/03; Congressional Budget Office, 3/04; CBO, Historical Budget Data, Table 1 http://www.cbo.gov; Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 10/27/03]

Bush on His Own Policies
7. "We must uncover every detail and learn every lesson September the 11th." [Bush 11/27/02]
Fact: Bush Initially Opposed Independent 9-11 Commission

Bush opposed an independent inquiry into 9/11, arguing it would duplicate a probe conducted by Congress. In July 2002, his administration issued a "statement of policy" that read "...the Administration would oppose an amendment that would create a new commission to conduct a similar review [to Congress's investigation]." [Statement of Administration Policy, Executive Office of the President, 7/24/02; Los Angeles Times, 11/28/02]

8. "Bush had pushed hard for the Medicare drug benefit, but said he would not sign anything that exceeded $400 billion." [Boston Globe, 1/30/04]
Fact: Bush Administration Intentionally Hid Cost of Plan To Win Votes in Congress

In late January 2004, the Administration announced they had underestimated the total cost of the package by $135 billion. Bush relied on a $400 billion figure for the first decade of the prescription drug benefit in persuading fiscal conservatives to support the plan last November. But less than two months after signing the legislation, and two years before the benefit becomes available to seniors, the Department of Health and Human Services revised the number up to $535 billion. According to the Washington Post, "Among a small group of lawmakers who negotiated the bill's final version, 'it was an open secret' that administration officials believed 'there is no way this is $400 billion.'" [New York Times, 1/30/04; Washington Times, 12/8/03; Washington Post, 1/31/04; Boston Globe, 1/30/04; New York Times, 2/2/04]

9. "We will require all power plants to meet clean air standards in order to reduce emissions of...carbon dioxide." [Bush speech, "A Comprehensive National Energy Policy," 9/29/00, Saginaw, MI]
Fact: Bush Overruled Whitman, Broke Campaign Promise to Regulate Carbon Dioxide Emissions

In March 2001, in a letter to Republican Senators, Bush overruled then-E.P.A. Administrator Christine Todd Whitman and backed off a campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, after encountering strong resistance from the coal and oil industries, as well as Republicans. "I do not believe, however, that the government should impose on power plants mandatory emissions reductions for carbon dioxide, which is not a 'pollutant' under the Clean Air Act," Bush wrote in his letter. Many conservationists view curbing carbon dioxide emissions, like "greenhouse gases," as a key to reducing global warming. [AP, 3/13/01; Washington Post, 3/14/01; Bush letter to Senator Chuck Hagel, 3/13/01]

Bush on Bush
10. "I'm a uniter, not a divider." [Bush, Austin American-Statesman, 7/30/00]
Fact: No, He's a Divider

The Washington Post reported, "As Bush begins the final year of his term with Tuesday night's State of the Union address, partisans on both sides say the tone of political discourse is as bad as ever -- if not worse." One senior administration official said, Bush could have built "trust and goodwill" by pursuing more broadly appealing initiatives. One former Bush aide said the White House "relished the 'us versus them' thing." [Washington Post, 1/18/04]

After former Ambassador Joseph Wilson publicly challenged Bush's claim that Iraq sought uranium in Africa, his wife--a covert CIA operative--was exposed by columnist Robert Novak. Novak said her identity was given to him by senior administration officials. "A senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife... 'Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge,' the senior official said of the alleged leak. Sources familiar with the conversations said the leakers were seeking to undercut Wilson's credibility." [Washington Post, 9/28/03]

Bush called on senior White House advisers and the Republican Party leadership to wage attacks against Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. According to the Washington Times, "The White House is escalating its attacks against Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle... [W]ith polls showing the Republican Party is losing some support in its handling of the economy, President Bush last week ordered senior advisers to take the gloves off and sharpen their rhetoric." [Washington Times, 12/7/01]

...more information...

2004-10-21T06:26:00.000-07:00

I found a plethora of information about both Bush and Kerry. Keep in mind the sources these come from, however...I've reviewed the info on each of these links, but I suspect the info is biased based on the sources. The first link is from a non-biased source, CNN.com...

This site shows where both Bush and Kerry stand on the issues involved in this election:

Kerry's Record

Bush's Presidential Record (found on the Democratic National Committee site, www.democrats.org):

Bush's Record

Kerry's "Liberal" Record (found on the Bush/Cheney campaign site, www.georgewbush.com):

Kerry's Record

...what's been said about John Kerry...

2004-10-21T06:10:00.000-07:00

(My brother asked me to post some of things that have been said about John Kerry, to make it fair. On the Council, Dante posted the two main points that the Bush campaign focuses on already, so I just simply copied and pasted the exact exchance, with all the information in it.)

FarenHype 9-11

I am reposting this, because I met to put it in its own Blog... But I have decided I have taken all the Libral dreck I can stand. This came to me when I saw a bumper sticker that said: "Vote Bush is 04' Seig Heil!" So here I am after the debates... stareing at my bottle of Heintz Ketchup. Reflecting on what I've learned. So what did we learn you ask? Well all I can say about the St. Louis debate was... HE SAID IT!

President George W. Bush: "He's Got A Record. He's Been There For 20 Years. You Can Run, But You Can't Hide." (President George W. Bush, Second Presidential Debate, St. Louis, MO, 10/8/04)

Setting the Record Straight on the $87 Billion

In Response To Question 18 President Bush Criticized Kerry's Vote Against The $87 Billion. “He complains about the fact our troops don't have adequate equipment, yet he voted against the $87 billion supplemental I sent to the Congress and then issued one of the most amazing quotes in political history: "I actually did vote for $87 billion before I voted against it.” (President George W. Bush, Second Presidential Debate, St. Louis, MO, 10/8/04)

THE REAL RECORD: KERRY'S NINE POSITIONS ON THE $87 BILLION

1. Kerry Has Already Taken Eight Positions On The $87 Billion

2. Kerry Said It Would Be "Irresponsible" To Vote Against Funding Troops. (CBS' "Face the Nation," 9/14/03)

3. Kerry Claims "I Actually Did Vote For The $87 Billion Before I Voted Against It." (Sen. John Kerry, Speech In Huntington, WV, 3/16/04)

4. Kerry Later Said He Was "Proud" That He Voted Against $87 Billion In Funding For U.S. Soldiers. (John Kerry, Remarks at "Women's Voices: A Luncheon with John Kerry," Boston, MA, 7/12/04)

5. Kerry Then Said His Vote Against Body Armor And Supplies For Troops Was "Complicated." (MSNBC's "Imus in the Morning," 7/15/04)

6. Kerry Even Said His Vote For The War And Against Funding For Our Troops Was "Not A Flip-Flop." (CBS' "Evening News," 7/21/04)

7. Kerry Then Defended His Vote Against The $87 Billion By Saying President Bush "Didn't Have A Plan To Win The Peace, It Was Irresponsible To Give [President Bush] A Blank Check That Gave $20 Billion That Was Going To Go…To Halliburton And All These Other Companies." (Mike Allen And Lois Romano, "Closing Laps In Race To November," The Washington Post, 9/4/04)

8. Kerry Said He's "Glad" He Voted Against The Iraq Supplemental. (CBS' "The Late Show With David Letterman," 9/20/04)

9. Kerry Said His Vote Against The Iraq Supplemental "Was A Protest. Sometimes You Have To Stand Up And Be Counted." (ABC's "Good Morning America," 9/29/04)

Kerry's Flip-Flop On Labels

Tonight's Flip:

In Response To Question 12 John Kerry Said, "Number One, Don't Throw The Labels Around. Labels Don't Mean Anything." (Sen. John Kerry, Second Presidential Debate, St. Louis, MO, 10/8/04)

Yesterday's Flop:

John Kerry: "I'm A Liberal And Proud Of It." ("Gee, There Were So Many In 1988," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 7/21/91)

Kerry Flip-Flops On The Patriot Act

Tonight's Flip:

In Response To Question One, John Kerry Said: "Now, The Three Things They Try To Say I've Changed Position On Are The Patriot Act. I Haven't. I Support It." (Sen. John Kerry, Second Presidential Debate, St. Louis, MO, 10/8/04)

Yesterday's Flops:

Kerry Called For Replacing PATRIOT With New Law. "So it is time to end the era of John Ashcroft. That starts with replacing the Patriot Act with a new law that protects our people and our liberties at the same time." (Sen. John Kerry, Remarks At Iowa State University, 12/1/03)

Kerry Attacks Patriot Act. "We are a nation of laws and liberties, not of a knock in the night. So it is time to end the era of John Ashcroft. That starts with replacing the Patriot Act with a new law that protects our people and our liberties at the same time. I've been a District Attorney and I know that what law enforcement needs are real tools not restrictions on American's basic rights." (Sen. John Kerry, Remarks At Iowa State University, 12/1/03)

Kerry Said It: "I've Never Changed My Mind About Iraq"

In Response To Question Two John Kerry Claimed He Has Not Changed His Mind On Iraq. Kerry: "I've never changed my mind about Iraq. I did believe Saddam Hussein was a threat. I always believed he was a threat – believed it in 1998, when Clinton was president. I wanted to give Clinton the power to use force if necessary." (Sen. John Kerry, Second Presidential Debate, St. Louis, MO, 10/8/04)

THE REAL RECORD: KERRY'S ELEVEN POSITIONS ON THE WAR IN IRAQ

1. October 2002: Kerry Voted For Use Of Force Resolution Against Iraq.
2. April 2003: Kerry Promised Not To Attack President When War Began, But Weeks Later, With Troops Just Miles From Baghdad, Kerry Broke His Pledge And Called For "Regime Change In The United States."
3. May 2003: In First Dem Debate, Kerry Strongly Supported President's Action In Iraq.
4. September 2003: Kerry Said Voting Against The $87 Billion Supplemental Would Be "Irresponsible."
5. October 2003: Kerry Voted Against The $87 Billion Supplemental Supporting Our Troops.
6. January 2004: After Voting For War And Trailing Candidate Howard Dean In The Democrat Primaries, Kerry Says He Is Anti-War Candidate.
7. August 2004: In Response To President's Question About How He Would Have Voted If He Knew Then What He Knows Now, Kerry Confirmed That He Would Still Have Voted For Use Of Force Resolution.
8. September 2004: Kerry: Iraq Is "The Wrong War In The Wrong Place At The Wrong Time."
9. September 2004: Kerry Says There Were No Circumstances Under Which We Should Have Gone To War, But He Was Still Right To Vote For It.
10. Kerry Said That The Removal Of Saddam Hussein Has Left America "Less Secure."
11. Kerry On Whether The Iraq War Was Worth It: "It Depends On The Outcome."

Kerry's Flip-Flop On Diplomacy

Tonight's Flip:

In Response To Question Four John Kerry Said, "But The President Just Arbitrarily Brought The Hammer Down And Said Nope, Sorry, Time For Diplomacy Is Over, We're Going." (Sen. John Kerry, Second Presidential Debate, St. Louis, MO, 10/8/04)

Yesterday's Flop:

March 2003: As War Began, Kerry Said Saddam Choose "To Make Military Force The Ultimate Weapons Inspections Enforcement Mechanism." "Senator John F. Kerry … had lambasted Bush's diplomatic efforts, despite voting last fall in support of a congressional resolution authorizing military action to disarm Iraq of any weapons of mass destruction. 'It appears that with the deadline for exile come and gone, Saddam Hussein has chosen to make military force the ultimate weapons inspections enforcement mechanism,' Kerry said." (Glen Johnson, "Critics Of Bush Voice Support For The Troops," The Boston Globe, 3/20/03)

Setting the Record Straight on Education

In Response To Question One John Kerry Said, "No Child Left Behind Act. I Voted For It. I Support It. I Support The Goals. But The President Has Under Funded It By $28 Billion." (Sen. John Kerry, Second Presidential Debate, St. Louis, MO, 10/8/04)

The Real Record:

President Bush Has Provided The Highest Education Funding Percentage Increase Since President Johnson And Increased Education Funding More In Four Years Than Bill Clinton Did In Eight Years. Elementary and Secondary education funding has increased $12.2 billion (49 percent) from $24.7 billion in 2001 to $36.9 billion in 2005. ("Not Since LBJ," Investor's Business Daily, 7/1/04; "2005 Budget Summary For Education," U.S. Department Of Education, 2/04)

"States Collectively Have $16.8 Billion In Unspent Federal Education Funds, All Of Which Has Been Available To Them For At Least A Year." (U.S. House Committee On Education And The Workforce, "New Government Data Confirms Federal Education Funding Is Increasing More Quickly Than States Can Spend It," Press Release, 6/29/2004)

Washington Post Editorial: "Funding For Education Has Increased Under The Bush Administration, And In Any Case Money Isn't The Main Obstacle To The Law's Success." (Editorial, "The Choice of Schooling," The Washington Post, 9/23/04)

Elementary And Secondary Education Funding Has Increased 130 Percent Since 2000. "Contrary to the repeated falsehoods by the teachers unions and left-wing activists, spending on primary and secondary education is soaring. In 2005, it will be up 130% — not a misprint — from President Clinton's last year in office." ("School Daze," Investors Business Daily, 9/23/04)

Kerry's Flip-Flop On Intelligence

Tonight's Flip:

In Response To Question Seven John Kerry Talked About The Importance Of Intelligence. Kerry: "Because the most important weapon in doing that is intelligence. You got to have the best intelligence in the world, and in order to have the best intelligence in the world, to know who the terrorists are, and where they are, and what they're plotting, you've got to have the best cooperation you've ever had in the world." (Sen. John Kerry, Second Presidential Debate, St. Louis, MO, 10/8/04)

Yesterday's Flop:

While On The Senate Intelligence Committee, Kerry Missed 76 Percent Of Public Hearings. During John Kerry's eight years of service on the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence, there were 49 open, public hearings. Of these 49, John Kerry attended just 11 (22.4 percent). (Factcheck.org, "Bush Nails Kerry's Poor Attendance at Intelligence Committee Hearings," 8/17/04, Available At http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=241)

* In 1994, Not Long After First World Trade Center Attack, Kerry Proposed An Amendment To Cut Intelligence Budget By $6 Billion Across The Board Over Six Years.

Kerry's Flip-Flop On Medical Liability Reform

Tonight's Flip:

In Response To Question Nine John Kerry Claimed To Support Tort Reform. "John Edwards and I support tort reform. We both believe that as lawyers -- I'm a lawyer too – and I believe that we will be able to get a fix that has eluded everybody else because we know how to do it." (Sen. John Kerry, Second Presidential Debate, St. Louis, MO, 10/8/04)

Yesterday's Flop:

Kerry Opposed Or Voted To Block Medical Liability Reform At Least Ten Times.

Kerry Missed Both 2004 Votes On Medical Liability Reform.

* Medical Liability Reform Could Save Between $60 Billion And $108 Billion In Health Care Costs Annually, Making Health Insurance More Affordable For Millions. ("Confronting The New Health Care Crisis: Improving Health Care Quality And Lowering Costs By Fixing Our Medical Liability System," U.S. Department Of Health And Human Services, 7/25/02, http://www.aspe.hhs.gov/daltcp/reports/litrefm.htm)

Since 1989, Kerry Has Received $15,217,154 From Lawyers, Most Of Any Senator In That Time Period. (Center For Responsive Politics Website, www.opensecrets.org, Accessed 8/16/04)

Kerry's Flip-Flop On Middle Class Tax Cuts

Tonight's Flip:

Kerry Claims "I Am Not Going To Raise Taxes" On The Middle Class. QUESTION: "Thank you. Senator Kerry, would you be willing to look directly into the camera and using simple and unequivocal language, give the American people your solemn pledge not to sign any legislation that will increase the tax burden on families earning less than $200,000 a year during your first term?" SENATOR JOHN KERRY: "Absolutely. Yes. Right into the camera. Yes. I am not going to raise taxes." (Sen. John Kerry, Second Presidential Debate, St. Louis, MO, 10/8/04)

Yesterday's Flop:

In 1995, Kerry Voted For A Resolution That Said Middle Class Tax Cuts Were Not Wise. The sense of the Senate amendment, killed on a motion by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), said, "reducing the deficit should be one of the nation's highest priorities, and that a middle-class tax cut would undermine and be inconsistent with the goal of achieving a balanced budget." (H.J. Res. 1, CQ Vote #67: Motion Agreed To 66-32: R 49-3; D 17-29, 2/14/95, Kerry Voted Nay)

* Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), Sponsor Of Resolution, Said Senators Need "Will" To Resist Middle Class Tax Cut. (Sen. Russ Feingold, Congressional Record, 2/14/95, p. S2617)

Kerry Voted Against Amendment To FY 2004 Budget Resolution That Would Extend $1,000 Child Tax Credit Until 2013.

Kerry Sponsored And Voted For Motion To Kill Marriage Penalty Relief For Couples Earning Less Than $50,000 Per Year. "Kerry, D-Mass., motion to table (kill) the Gramm, R-Texas, amendment … The Gramm amendment would allow couples with combined incomes under $50,000 a year to claim an additional $3,300 income tax deduction, thus eliminating the so-called marriage penalty for those in that income bracket." Sen. Gramm's marriage penalty relief would have saved taxpayers $46 billion over 10 years. The amendment also would allowed self-employed individuals to deduct health insurance costs on their income taxes. (S. 1415, CQ Vote #154: Rejected 48-50: R 5-49; D 43-1, 6/10/98, Kerry Voted Yea)

Kerry Voted Three Times Against Repealing The 1993 Clinton Tax Increase On Social Security Benefits.

Kerry Voted Against The 2001 And 2003 Tax Cuts.

Kerry Voted Against Eliminating Clinton-Instituted 4.3-Cent Tax On Transportation Fuels.

posted by Dante Claracuzio at 10/9/2004 04:10:41 AM

14 Comments:
NixEclips said...
Will anyone make an issue out of the length of this post?

Nix says: Freedom!!!

10/9/2004 04:31:09 AM
Dante Claracuzio said...
probably but I wanted to get a point across.

10/9/2004 04:48:59 AM
Shark said...
That was informative and backed with sources that can be checked out for authinticity,rather than the "Bush Bashing"in other posts.

10/9/2004 06:30:53 AM
Phoenix said...
ok, dante... really long.. please summerize. I can't read this much politics....

10/9/2004 06:29:29 PM
NixEclips said...
This post has been removed by the author.

10/10/2004 05:28:46 AM
NixEclips said...
Ya gotta love the Phoenix. (Because I say so.)
But, come on. If we're talking about backing up statements with facts, read anything by M. Moore. Yeah, he must be a "liberal" nutcase. Isn't that whole "liberal" "right wing" "left wing" thing just name calling? Might as well say "red diaper doper babies" for f's sake. Even Al Franken used extensive research in his books. Screw all the talk and pictures.
I'm sick of Satan running this country and that's all I care about. I belong to no group. I want what is best for all of us. And we're all gonna die alone.

Nix says: Oooohhhh....Babble spews from the lips as liquid feces from the anus.

10/10/2004 05:39:06 AM
Steve aka Quill said...
Interesting post, Pasta-boy. But all that doesn't change the fact that we have currently in office a war-mongering liar with the brain capacity of a turnip. Kerry MAY in fact be flip-floppy on certain issues, but his changes of mind come when he needs to adapt his view in light of new evidence. He's not die-hard on backing up his mistakes and saying he made the right decision even though it was clearly wrong like Bush. You and the rest of the Bush supporters in the world can deny that all you want, it doesn't change it.

And I watched the St. Louis debate, too. Wanna know what I saw? I saw Bush lose the debate, because of his continued imcompetence.

10/10/2004 12:17:27 PM
Steve aka Quill said...
Just to clear the record, Jay (Dante); what valid information did you bring to the table other than that John Kerry is a man that adapts in light of new information? Oh wait, I forgot, that's called 'flip-flopping' in your eyes, ins't it? Tell me, do you believe that Bush did the right thing in all instances of this war? Do you even think he would admit it if he believed he made a mistake? I don't think he would. I think he'd defend this war if GOD himself came down and told him it was a bad call. And, being a republican, you would do the same, obviously. It's real easy for you to say this war is a good idea; you aren't the one having to go away to fight it. You aren't the one affected by it. All you see is numbers in the stock exchange.

I'd be willing to bet solid money on the fact that you'd change your mind if it was YOU going to war, or better yet, your kids, or your family. Especially if it's a war that is unnecessary. If Bush institutes a draft (and it's highly possible), and you get called to go to Iraq, I'll be right there to document and note YOUR 'flip-flopping' on that issue...

10/10/2004 04:19:02 PM
Dante Claracuzio said...
Ohhhhhh there is wayyyyyy more info that I have on Kerry then this. I could go on for hours about those "purple hearts" he stole! He supports comunism (bad idea!). My Ex-wife's family could tell you some of the horror stories liveing under Gorbachov on why comunism is a bad idea. Hell ask her grandfather about Stallen's execuetion squads! As far as the whole war thing. If I am drafted fine... I'll go fight! Its that simple. Dont ever seccond guess me on my loyalty to the USA. The reason I fear the flip-floping is the fact that I cannot vote for someone who changes just because its popular. For the record, Bush did admit that their were no WMD's he can admit when he is wrong. It was the right choice to topple Sadam. As I said before would you rather he be back in power? Harboring Terrorist, killing his people, and shooting children? Hell while were at it why not put the Soviet union back in power, let Pole Pot out of prison along with his buddy Slobadon Melosavitch.

10/11/2004 12:27:00 AM
Dante Claracuzio said...
I just thout of something... someone will call BS on the purple hearts thing. So you can find that all at www.swiftboatsvetsforthetruth.org I love the fact that you can't find anything on Kerry except for some stuff I wrote for the young republicans 2 months back look at this:

Unlike McCain, Bush, and Gore; Kerry has adamantly refused to authorize the release of his military records. Most think it's because of his phony battle medals. I think the real reason is below. He was not granted an Honorable Discharge until March 2001, almost 30 years after his ostensible service term had ended! This is very much out of the ordinary, and highly suspect.

There are 5 classes of Discharge: Honorable, General, Other Than Honorable, Bad Conduct, and Dishonorable.
My guess is that he was Discharged in the '70s, but not Honorably. He appealed this sometime while Clinton was doing trouser-tricks in the Oval Office. Political pressure was applied, and the Honorable Discharge was then granted.

His file is probably rife with reports of this, submissions and hearings on the appeal, reports of his "giving aid and comfort" to the enemy, along with protests that were filed with respect to his alleged valor under fire.

On 18 Feb. 1966 John Kerry signed a 6 year enlistment contract with the Navy (plus a 6-month extension during wartime).

On 18 Feb. 1966 John Kerry also signed an Officer Candidate contract for 6 years -- 5 years of ACTIVE duty & ACTIVE Naval Reserves, and 1 year of inactive standby reserves (See items #4 & 5).

Because John Kerry was discharged from TOTAL ACTIVE DUTY of only 3 years and 18 days on 3 Jan. 1970, he was then required to attend 48 drills per year, and not more than 17 days active duty for training. Kerry was also
subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Additionally, Kerry, as a commissioned officer, was prohibited from making adverse statements against his chain of command or statements against his country, especially during time of war.

It is also interesting to note that Kerry did not obtain an honorable discharge until Mar. 12, 2001 even though his service obligation should have ended July 1, 1972.

Lt. John Kerry's letter of 21 Nov. 1969 asking for an early release from active US Navy duty falsely states "My current regular period of obligated service would be completed in December of this year."

On Jan. 3, 1970 Lt. John Kerry was transferred to the Naval Reserve Manpower Center in Bainridge, Maryland.

Where are Kerry's Performance Records for 2 years of obligated Ready Reserve, the 48 drills per year required and his 17 days of active duty per year training while Kerry was in the Ready Reserves? Have these records been released?

Has anyone ever talked to Kerry's Commanding Officer at the Naval Reserve Center where Kerry drilled?

On 1 July 1972 Lt. John Kerry was transferred to Standby Reserve - Inactive.

On 16 February 1978 Lt. John Kerry was discharged from US Naval Reserve.

Below are some of the crimes Lt. Kerry USNR committed as a Ready Reservist, while he was acting as a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War:

1. Lt. Kerry attended many rallies where the Vietcong flag was displayed while our flag was desecrated, defiled, and mocked, thereby giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
2. Lt. Kerry was involved in a meeting that voted on assassinating members of the US Senate.
3. Lt. Kerry lied under oath against fellow soldiers before the US Senate about crimes committed in Vietnam.
4. Lt. Kerry professed to being a war criminal on national television, and condemned the military and the USA.5. Lt. Kerry met with NVA and Vietcong communist leaders in Paris, in direct violation of the UCMJ and the U.S. Constitution.

Lt. Kerry by his own words & actions violated the UCMJ and the US Code while serving as a Navy officer. Lt. Kerry stands in violation of Article 3, Section 3 of the US Constitution. Lt. Kerry's 1970 meeting with NVA Communists in Paris is in direct violation of the UCMJ's Article 104 part 904, and US Code 18 U. S. C. 953. That meeting, and Kerry's subsequent support of the communists while leading mass protests against our military in the year that followed, also place him in direct violation of our Constitution's Article 3, Section 3, which defines
treason as "giving aid and comfort" to the enemy in time of warfare.

The Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3, states, "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-president, having previously taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, [who has] engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to
the enemies thereof.""

10/11/2004 12:34:57 AM
Steve aka Quill said...
Oh that's right...now you start in bashing Kerry's service record. Let me tell you something, Jason - John Kerry actually WENT to war. Bush got out of it. Kerry defended the USA in Vietnam, and then came back to the US afterwards and slandered the war; and that was right of him to do, because the entire Vietnam war was BULLSHIT. We shouldn't have been over there. He, like Shark, went because he had signed up. Bush didn't do that. Bush wouldn't go to war if you paid him. Bush has led a silver-spoon life.

I never said Saddam should be back in power; that's you putting words in my mouth. Kerry never said that either; again, you (and Bush) putting words in his mouth. I suggest you get some better arguments.

10/11/2004 07:59:44 AM
The Voice said...
Where the hell do you boys FIND all this junk anyway? I'm pretty sure that all of this information is available to the general public--but where do you find the time to look it all up? I mean, really, the posts are SOOOOO long in the first place, but now the comments are getting just as long...

And I'm on Quill's side on the military record issue...it looks better to be running for Pres with an honorable discharge, but who cares if it was "honorable" or "less than honorable?" He went to war for his country, and that's more than we can say for the guy who sent our friends and family to war.

10/11/2004 10:27:01 PM
Shark said...
NEVER AGAIN COMPARE THAT DIRTY MOTHERFUCKER TO ME AGAIN!!!
I joined the Army becuase it was the right thing to do out of love for my country!And while I do not agree with everything that has happened here I still support the Commander in Cheif in his decision to engage the insurrgents and dictators in Iraq!My only problem with the war now is that it should have been finished off the first time we were here!

10/12/2004 07:09:27 AM
Steve aka Quill said...
BTW...Shark, check my 'truth about Bush' post for a slew of facts you can check for authenticity.

10/14/2004 12:12:13 PM

...information abounds...

2004-10-20T13:34:00.000-07:00

Check out George Soros book excerpt here:

GeorgeSoros Chapter 4 Iraqi War

(Found @ http://www.georgesoros.com/)

Kerry wins prophetic kids poll - CNN.com

2004-10-20T13:17:00.000-07:00

(I thought this was funny...and it's true what they say at the end.)

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- The kids have spoken, and it's Sen. John Kerry with a convincing victory over President Bush on Nov. 2.

An unusual opinion poll that has correctly predicted the winner of the last four presidential elections has given Democratic challenger Kerry 57 percent against 43 percent for Bush, according to results released Wednesday.

The Nickelodeon cable channel, better known for programs "SpongeBob Squarepants" and "Jimmy Neutron," conducted "Kids Vote," an online survey of almost 400,000 children Tuesday.

The latest Reuters/Zogby poll showed Bush and Kerry in a dead heat two weeks before the Nov. 2 election. Other polls also showed them in a statistical tie or Bush holding a slim lead.

Nickelodeon, a unit of Viacom Inc., has organized its poll every election since 1988, and has a 100 percent record of picking the winner.

"The 'Kids' Vote' seems to work as a good barometer of the actual presidential vote because, developmentally, kids between the ages of two and 11 share the same opinions and outlooks as their parents," said Cyma Zarghami, president of Nickelodeon Television.

The survey was the final step in a yearlong political awareness campaign on Nickelodeon.

(Found @ www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/20/campaign.kids.reut/index.html)

...Bush Admin Cover Up - Iraqi War Mistakes...

2004-10-20T13:07:00.000-07:00

In memo, Iraq war general noted readiness problems

Kerry: Sanchez's complaints prove Bush mishandled war

Monday, October 18, 2004 Posted: 8:26 PM EDT (0026 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The war in Iraq again became a focus of the presidential race Monday with the leak of a document from a former top U.S. commander who questioned the Army's preparedness.

Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez wrote a memo in December 2003 in which he complained to top Army officials about a shortage of spare parts, lack of protective gear and poor readiness rates for Army weapons in Iraq.

The memo was leaked to the Washington Post, which first reported it in Monday's editions. CNN has since seen a copy of the memo, dated December 4, and also obtained a December 13 response from Gen. George Casey, then vice chief of the Army.

Casey has since replaced Sanchez in Iraq.

The leaked Pentagon document brought fresh accusations from Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry. He complained in Florida that President Bush's "mismanagement" of the Iraq war has left the United States less secure than it should be.

In a later speech in New Jersey, Bush largely ignored the Iraq war and instead reminded voters of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

The Sanchez memo said, in part, "I cannot continue to support sustained combat operations with rates this low." He was referring to the Army's readiness rates, which measure unit strength and how well equipment has been maintained.

The rate had fallen to 84 percent for Abrams main battle tanks, 85 percent for Bradley armored fighting vehicles and between 63 and 72 percent for Army helicopters.

At the time, Sanchez noted that the Army was struggling to maintain even those relatively low readiness rates and warned he could not ensure sustained combat operations could continue if the problem was not fixed.

Army officials have acknowledged that there were challenges in getting adequate supplies to troops in Iraq but say the problem was quickly solved.

"I share your concern about our Army's operational readiness and force protection posture," Casey said in his reply to Sanchez.

Monday, an Army official with direct knowledge of the situation said, "Any concerns raised by the general have been addressed."

However, last week a group of 18 soldiers refused orders to take part in a fuel convoy in Iraq because they feared their equipment was not properly maintained and did not have adequate safety equipment.

The Army called that an isolated incident and initiated an investigation. (Full story)
Vehicle readiness rates are now better than 90 percent, thanks to improvements in the delivery of spare parts. The helicopter readiness rate is 75 percent, an Army official said. Both numbers are within the Army's required level.

At a rally in West Palm Beach, Kerry said that after the Sanchez memo was sent, "George Bush went out and told the American people" that the troops were properly equipped.
"Despite the president's arrogant boasting that he's done everything right in Iraq and that he's made no mistakes, the truth is beginning to come out, and it's beginning to catch up with him," Kerry said.

Bush did argue in December, and has argued since, that the troops were properly equipped. It was not immediately clear whether the president knew about the Sanchez memo.
Bush campaign officials have criticized Kerry for voting against an $87 billion supplemental spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan, saying it was a vote against important equipment for troops.

Kerry disputes the characterization, saying he never opposed support for troops but did disagree with the final version of the bill because of how it would be funded.

He had previously voted for an $87 billion spending bill that would have paid the cost, in part, through a roll-back of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. That measure was defeated.

Kerry said at the rally that Bush continues to "mislead America."
"Let me tell you something that I learned when I fought in Vietnam: Listen to the troops and give the troops the equipment that they need," Kerry said.

Bush spoke to supporters in Marlton, New Jersey, saying the United States needs "a president who defends America and fights for the middle class."

Bush turned around an argument Kerry frequently uses. Kerry often says Bush has alienated allies and entered Iraq without a broad coalition, noting that 90 percent of the coalition casualties have been Americans.

But Bush said Kerry has alienated allies because "he never shows respect for some of the 30 nations that are serving courageously in Iraq today."
Kerry said Bush must acknowledge his mistakes.

"Mr. President, when it comes to the war in Iraq, it is time to come clean and acknowledge what your military leaders have told you privately," he said. "The bottom line, Mr. President, is that your mismanagement of the war has, in fact, made Iraq and America less safe and less secure than they could have been and that they should have been today."

The Bush Record: Every Child Left Behind

2004-10-20T13:05:00.000-07:00

No child left behind? Don't believe it! The Bush administration is leaving America's children farther and farther behind by slashing the budget for key educational programs and not even fully funding its much-touted "No Child Left Behind" program (not to mention other educational initiatives). The result: Schools are in crisis, programs are being cut, teachers are quitting in frustration, and our children are not getting the educations they deserve. So much for the "education president."

Bush Target: Early Education
Even the youngest children aren't safe from President Bush's polices, as tries to downgrade Head Start. Bush wants to shift cut federal Head Start funding and move it to state programs with lower quality standards and less accountability. His 2005 budget freezes enrollment in Head Start programs, meaning the 40 percent of children eligible for Head Start and 97 percent eligible for Early Head Start who aren't currently enrolled won't ever be.1,2

Bush says literacy is his top priority -- so why is he eliminating a family literacy program? Bush's budget eliminates the $247 million Even Start program that encourages young children and parents to read together at home. Laura Bush herself has promoted these programs, stating, "Family literacy programs... work on the front lines of the battle against illiteracy." What does she think of her husband's budget?1,3

Bush Target: K-12 Education
Bush leaves his own "No Child Left Behind" reforms behind. Bush's proposed budgets have broken his promise to fully fund No Child Left Behind, falling short by $33.2 billion, including $22.4 billion less for Title I programs for low-income children.4

The nation's governors and state legislatures -- Republicans and Democrats -- have condemned Bush for failing to fund education. The National Governors Association has voted unanimously to label No Child Left Behind an unfunded mandate. Twenty-two states are considering challenging portions of the legislation, including the GOP-controlled legislatures in Arizona, Minnesota, Ohio, Utah and Virginia.5

Even the children of military families face cuts under Bush. As he was sending troops to Iraq, Bush proposed cutting $200 million in Impact Aid educational assistance to children in military families. During the 2000 campaign, Bush has promised to increase this funding by $310 million, saying, "Our men and women in service put their lives on the line to defend our freedom. We have a special obligation to rebuild the schools that educate their children." An obligation that Bush isn't interested in meeting when the cameras are off.6,7,8

Bush Target: Higher Education
As tuitions skyrocket, Bush cuts financial aid. Since Bush took office, tuition and fees at public colleges have increased by an average of 35 percent, thanks to the failed economic policies that are bankrupting state governments. In fact, 49 out of 50 states saw college tuitions go up last year. And Bush isn't doing anything to ease that burden. He broke a campaign promise to increase the maximum Pell Grant to $5,100, is proposing to eliminate the LEAP program that provided more than a billion dollars in federal and state assistance to students in 2000, and is cutting $100 million in Perkins Loans.1,9,10,11

Bush Target: Job Training
Done with school? Bush isn't done with you. It isn't just traditional student who are bearing the burdens of Bush's attacks on education. The new Bush budget cuts overall employment training funding by $151 million and lumps four employment-training programs into a single block grant. Bush also is cutting overall vocational education by $316 million.1

Sources: 1House Budget Committee Democratic Caucus, 2/6/04; 2Children's Defense Fund, Feb. 2003; 3Texas Center for the Advancement of Literacy and Learning; 4President's FY 02-05 Budgets; 5National Conference State Legislatures; 6House Appropriations Committee, Minority Staff, 6/17/03; 7Washington Post, 6/17/03; 8New York Times, 8/22/00; 9College Board, College Costs 2003; 10Bush Speech in Hampton, New Hampshire, 8/30/00; 11National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs, Mar. 2003

The Bush Record: Top 10 Bush Flip Flops

2004-10-20T11:57:00.000-07:00

1. Bush Flip-Flops on Independent 9/11 Commission
Bush Flip: Initially Opposed to Independent 9/11 Commission
Bush opposed an independent inquiry into 9/11, arguing it would duplicate a probe conducted by Congress. In July 2002, his administration issued a "statement of policy" that read "...the Administration would oppose an amendment that would create a new commission to conduct a similar review [to Congress's investigation]." [Statement of Administration Policy, Executive Office of the President, 7/24/02; LA Times, 11/28/02]

Bush Flop: Bush Relented and Appointed Independent Commission
President Bush finally agreed to support an independent investigation into the 9/11 attacks after "the congressional committees unearthed more and more examples of intelligence lapses, the administration reversed its stance." [Los Angeles Times, 11/28/02]

2. Bush Flip-Flops on Independent WMD Commission
Bush Flip: Refuses to Call for Independent Bipartisan Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction
"President Bush said on January 30, 2004, 'I want to know the facts' about any intelligence failures concerning Saddam Hussein's alleged cache of forbidden weapons but he declined to endorse calls for an independent investigation." [AP, 1/30/04]

Bush Flop: Bush Appoints WMD Investigation Commission
President Bush named a nine-member bipartisan commission to investigate U.S. intelligence-gathering capabilities in February 2004. The AP noted, "Bush had initially opposed a commission, but agreed to do so as calls grew from Republican lawmakers as well as Democrats." The Los Angeles Times reported, "The White House opposed that panel initially, then backed down under pressure, and some say administration officials now regret doing so because the administration has become locked in a series of embarrassing battles with the Sept. 11 commission." The New York Times noted Bush "gave the panel until March 2005, well after the November elections, to submit its conclusions." [NY Times, 2/7/04; LA Times, 2/1/04; AP, 2/6/04]

3. Bush Flip-Flops on Time He'll Spend With 9/11 Commission
Bush Flip: Would Meet For Only One Hour With 9/11 Commission
McClellan: Obviously, as part of this, the President will be meeting with the chairman and vice chairman at some point in the near future. We are still working on the exact time of that meeting. We have discussed with the commission what we believe is a reasonable period of time to provide the chairman and vice chairman with answers to all of their questions.
Q: Is that the one-hour time frame?
McClellan: That's what I'm referring to. [WH Press Briefing, 3/9/04]

Bush Flop: White House Says No Time Limit on President's Testimony
"President George W. Bush will privately answer all questions raised by the federal commission investigating the September 11 attacks, the White House said, suggesting that Bush might allow the interview to extend beyond the one-hour limit originally offered to the panel by the White House. 'He's going to answer all the questions they want to raise,' said the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, whose remarks suggested that the White House was softening its negotiating stance toward the bipartisan commission. 'Nobody's watching the clock.'" [WH Press Briefing, 3/9/04; International Herald Tribune, 3/11/04]

4. Bush Flip-Flops On Calling For A U.N. Vote On Iraq War
Bush Flip: U.S. Will Seek U.N. Vote For War With Iraq
Bush: ...yes, we'll call for a vote.
Question: No matter what?
Bush: No matter what the whip count is, we're calling for the vote. We want to see people stand up and say what their opinion is about Saddam Hussein and the utility of the United Nations Security Council. And so, you bet. It's time for people to show their cards, let the world know where they stand when it comes to Saddam. [Bush News Conference, 3/6/03, emphasis added]

Bush Flop: Bush Attacked Iraq Without U.N. Vote
Bush "failed to win explicit [security] council approval for the use of force" in Iraq. Two days before bombs began to fall in Iraq, the Bush administration withdrew its resolution from the UN Security Council that would have authorized military force. Bush abandoned his call for a vote after it became clear that the US could muster only four votes in support of force. [Washington Post, 3/21/03; Los Angeles Times, 3/18/03]

5. Bush Flip-Flops on Department Of Homeland Security
Bush Flip: Bush Thought Homeland Security Cabinet Position Was "Just Not Necessary"
In October 2001, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said Bush opposed creating Office of Homeland Security position for Ridge. "[T]he president has suggested to members of Congress that they do not need to make this a statutory post, that he [Ridge] does not need Cabinet rank, for example, there does not need to be a Cabinet-level Office of Homeland Security is because there is such overlap among the various agencies, because every agency of the government has security concerns," Fleischer said. [White House Press Briefing, 10/24/01]

Bush Flop: Bush Decides to Support Homeland Security
The New York Times reported, "Bush initially resisted Democratic proposals for a Cabinet-level agency. But once he endorsed it, the president pushed Congress for fast action as it debated such issues as whistle-blower protections, concerns over civil liberties and collective bargaining for department employees."

In remarks to Homeland Security Department employees, Bush claimed credit for supporting the Department: "In just 12 months, under the leadership of your President...you faced the challenges standing up this new Department and you get a -- and a gold star for a job well done." [New York Times, 2/28/03; Bush Remarks at One-Year Anniversary of DHS, 3/2/04]

6. Bush Flip-Flops on Gay Marriage
Bush Flip: It's Up to the States to Decide
In a 2000 presidential primary debate, candidate George W. Bush said gay marriage was a state's issue, saying, "The state can do what they want to do. Don't try to trap me in this state's issue like you're trying to get me into." [Presidential Primary Debate, 2/15/00]

Bush Flop: Bush Supports Constitutional Amendment That Restricts States' Rights
Bush: "If we are to prevent the meaning of marriage from being changed forever, our nation must enact a constitutional amendment to protect marriage in America. Decisive and democratic action is needed, because attempts to redefine marriage in a single state or city could have serious consequences throughout the country." [Bush, 2/24/04]

7. Bush Flip-Flops on Using Military For Nation Building
Bush Flip: Bush Promised Not to Use Military for Nation Building
In a campaign rally in Tennessee, then-Presidential candidate Bush criticized the Clinton administration for using the military in nation-building missions. Bush said, "I'm worried about an opponent who uses nation-building and the military in the same sentence. See, our view of the military is for our military to be properly prepared to fight and win war and, therefore, prevent war from happening in the first place." [Governor George W. Bush, 11/6/00]

Bush Flop: President Used Military for Nation Building in Afghanistan and Iraq
After the removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Bush met with soldiers stationed in Afghanistan at the White House and thanked them for their nation building efforts. A senior administration official said, "The administration, with its international partners, is doing something akin to nation-building." The plans for a post war Iraq also included nation building measures and, according to the Baltimore Sun, "Secretary of State Colin L. Powell confirmed...that Bush was considering, among other options, installing a U.S.-led occupation government if Hussein's regime is removed." [Baltimore Sun, 10/19/02]

8. Bush Flip-Flops on Hybrid Automobiles
Bush Flip: Bush Mocked Gore's Tax Credit for Hybrid Cars
"'How many of you own hybrid electric gasoline engine vehicles? If you look under there, you'll see that's one of the criteria necessary to receive tax relief. So when he talks about targeted tax relief that's pretty darn targeted,' Bush told the Arlington Heights rally, drawing laughs." [Chicago Sun-Times, 10/29/00]

Bush Flop: Bush Supported Investing in Hybrid Cars
In his State of the Union speech, Bush said, "Tonight I am proposing $1.2 billion in research funding so that America can lead the world in developing clean, hydrogen-powered automobiles. ... Join me in this important innovation, to make our air significantly cleaner, and our country much less dependent on foreign sources of energy." [White House, "President Delivers 'State of the Union,'" 1/28/03]

9. Bush Flip-Flops on Assault Weapons Ban
Bush Flip: Bush Supports Extending Assault Weapons Ban
Ashcroft: "It is my understanding that the president-elect of the United States has indicated his clear support for extending the assault weapons ban, and I will be pleased to move forward with that position." [Confirmation Hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee, 1/17/01]

Bush Flop: Bush Opposes Extension of Assault Weapons Ban
"The White House is opposing addition of gun show and assault weapons restrictions to a bill shielding firearms makers and dealers from lawsuits, prompting angry complaints from Democrats that President Bush is reneging on earlier support for the two proposals...In a statement [on February 24, 2004], the White House urged passage of the lawsuits measure without amendments that might delay its enactment. 'Any amendment that would delay enactment of the bill beyond this year is unacceptable,' the statement said. Democrats interpreted this as an effort to undermine support for the gun-control measures. 'For the president to say he is for the assault weapons ban but then act against it is a flip-flop if there ever was one,' said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), one of several sponsors of the assault weapons proposal in the Senate." [Washington Post, 2/26/04]

10. Bush Flip-Flops on Steel Tariffs
Bush Flip: Bush Imposes Steel Tariffs
"President Bush on [March 5, 2002] slapped punishing tariffs of 8% to 30% on several types of imported steel in an effort to help the ailing U.S. industry, drawing criticism from American allies and mixed reviews at home. 'An integral part of our commitment to free trade is our commitment to enforcing trade laws to make sure that America's industries and workers compete on a level playing field,' Bush said in a statement issued by the White House." [USA Today, 3/5/02]

Bush Flop: Bush Rescinds Steel Tariffs
"Facing a potential global trade war, President Bush on [December 4, 2003] lifted tariffs he imposed on foreign steel 21 months ago, declaring the U.S. steel industry healthy and ready to compete despite the industry's claim that it needs more time to recover." [Chicago Tribune, 12/5/03]

...no plans for a draft? we'll see about that...

2004-10-20T11:54:00.000-07:00

Revealed: Bush Administration Looking Into Possibly Drafting Medical Workers

WASHINGTON, DC – The New York Times reports today that the U.S. Selective Service has contingency plans for calling up doctors, nurses and medical workers in the case that the medical corps is overwhelmed.

Excerpts [New York Times 10/19/04]

"In a confidential report this summer, a contractor hired by the agency described how such a draft might work, how to secure compliance and how to mold public opinion and communicate with health care professionals, whose lives could be disrupted.

"On the one hand, the report said, the Selective Service System should establish contacts in advance with medical societies, hospitals, schools of medicine and nursing, managed care organizations, rural health care providers and the editors of medical journals and trade publications.

"On the other hand, it said, such contacts must be limited, low key and discreet because 'overtures from Selective Service to the medical community will be seen as precursors to a draft,' and that could alarm the public."

"Under the plan, Mr. Flahavan said, about 3.4 million male and female health care workers ages 18 to 44 would be expected to register with the Selective Service. From this pool, he said, the agency could select tens of thousands of health care professionals practicing in 62 health care specialties."

"'The Selective Service System plans on delivering about 36,000 health care specialists to the Defense Department if and when a special skills draft were activated,'Mr. Flahavan said."

"But the contractor said: 'There is no getting around the fact that a medical draft would disrupt lives. Many familial, business and community responsibilities will be impacted.'"

"In a recent article in The Wisconsin Medical Journal, published by the state medical society, Col. Roger A. Lalich, a senior physician in the Army National Guard, said: 'It appears that a general draft is not likely to occur. A physician draft is the most likely conscription into the military in the near future.'"

"Since 2003, the Selective Service has said it is shifting its preparations for a draft in a national crisis toward narrow sectors of specialists, including medical personnel."

...further example of no WMDs in Iraq...

2004-10-20T10:24:00.000-07:00

Report: Saddam Not in Pursuit of Weapons

October 6, 2004 11:42 AM EDT

WASHINGTON - Undercutting the Bush's administration's rationale for invading Iraq, the final report of the chief U.S. arms inspector concludes that Saddam Hussein did not vigorously pursue a program to develop weapons of mass destruction after international inspectors left Baghdad in 1998, according to lawmakers and others briefed on the report.

In drafts, weapons hunter Charles Duelfer concluded that Saddam's Iraq had no stockpiles of the banned weapons but said he found signs of idle programs that Saddam could have revived if international attention had waned.

"It appears that he did not vigorously pursue those programs after the inspectors left," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity in advance of the report's release.

Duelfer was providing his findings Wednesday to the Senate Armed Services Committee. His team compiled a 1,500-page report after his predecessor, David Kay, who quit last December, also found no evidence of weapons stockpiles.

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., briefed on the report earlier Wednesday, said Duelfer found Iraq's capability to produce and develop weapons of mass destruction had degraded since 1998.

The report was "inconclusive" about what ultimately happened to Saddam's supposed weapons stockpiles from earlier in the 1990s, which might have been destroyed or transferred to Syria, said Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Pointing to apparent prewar confusion inside the country itself, the report suggests that Saddam's senior advisers, and perhaps Saddam himself, actually believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction even when it did not, Roberts said.

A Democratic senator briefed on the report, Dick Durbin of Illinois, said the Bush administration, in justifying war, "created a worse-case scenario on virtually no evidence."

"There were no weapons of mass destruction," Durbin said. "At most, there was an intention or desire to create them."

The White House continued to maintain that the findings support the view that Saddam was a threat.

"We knew the dictator had a history of using weapons of mass destruction, a long record of aggression and hatred for America," President Bush said in a speech Wednesday in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. "There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks. In the world after Sept. 11, that was a risk we could not afford to take."

Saddam was importing banned materials, working on unmanned aerial vehicles in violation of U.N. agreements and maintaining industrial capability that could be converted to produce weapons, officials have said. Duelfer also describes Saddam's Iraq as having had limited research efforts into chemical and biological weapons.

Duelfer's report will come on a week that the White House has been put on the defensive in a number of Iraq issues.

Remarks this week by L. Paul Bremer, former U.S. administrator in occupied Iraq, suggested he argued for more troops in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, when looting was rampant. A spokesman for Bush's re-election campaign said Bremer indeed differed with military commanders.

Bush's election rival, Democrat John Kerry, pounced on Bremer's statements that the United States "paid a big price" for having insufficient troop levels. On weapons, however, the Massachusetts senator has said he still would have voted to authorize the invasion even if he had known none would be found.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the Duelfer report "will continue to show that he was a gathering threat that needed to be taken seriously, that it was a matter of time before he was going to begin pursuing those weapons of mass destruction."

Compare that to the words of Vice President Dick Cheney, in a speech on Aug. 26, 2002, 6 1/2 months before the invasion:

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," Cheney said then. "There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us."

On Wednesday, the White House also continued to assert that there were clear ties between Saddam before the invasion and the al-Qaida linked terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. But a CIA report recently given to the White House found no conclusive evidence that Saddam harbored al-Zarqawi before the war, two U.S. government officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity

They stressed, though, that the report did not make a final conclusion and the question of the al-Zaraqwi-Saddam ties is still being pursued. One of the officials said it is clear that al-Zarqawi had been planning terrorist attacks while operating out of Baghdad.

The CIA report was first revealed by Knight-Ridder.

During Tuesday night's debate, Cheney said "there is still debate over this question." But he added: "At one point, some of Zarqawi's people were arrested. Saddam personally intervened to have them released."

In a speech on Oct. 7, 2002, Bush laid out what he described then as Iraq's threat:

-"It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons."

-"We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas."

-"Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles - far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and other nations - in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service members live and work. "

(Found @ http://start.earthlink.net/newsarticle?cat=6&aid=D85I20P80_story)

...some truths about our so-called "great" President Bush...

2004-10-20T09:05:00.000-07:00

(WARNING: This post is LONG. Seriously. However, I took the time to review all of this material posted, and I felt I owed it the Council to post it because we all seem to have big emphasis on 'truth'. Please, if you do not wish to read, don't. It's your option.)

(From the Council Chambers blog, linked at your left:)

It seems a certain republican drone *cough Dante cough* is determined to, like the Bush camp, put a negative spin on John Kerry. Mostly focused on the 'flip-flop' angle. Folks, Kerry doesn't flip-flop; he alters his plans and views in light of new information. Of course, Bush would LOVE for everyone to see Kerry as wishy-washy; why? Because it's one of the only things he can harp on John Kerry about, putting a semi-negative light on him. Instead of 'Bush basing' I thought I'd take the time to talk about the truth about Bush. Let's talk a little about some of BUSH'S flaws during his presidency, hm?

Bush has, so far in his Presidency:

1) Removed a key anti-terrorist program that was proven to work (Clinton's anti-terrorism task force that stopped the millenium bombing)
2) Replaced the above with a worthless Homeland Security Department that is bloted and ineffective (I mean, who cares about our color-coding system... oh, no, its "Orange" now, better go buy some duct tape). The government has issued so many warnings to keep people fearful that no one truly believes any of the "terror alerts"... none have come true. Additionally, Bush has used this as a premise to remove civil liberties: for example, USA-PATRIOT gives the Attorney General the power to detain any person for up to a six month period without bail, attorney, or any other rights given in the Constitution; moreover, Congress is allowed to declare any chairty or organization to be terrorist or terrorist-related, and, as such, illegal (this violates the Constitution, but it never went through Congress, so it can't be challenged by the Supreme Court... it was "agreed upon" by a special "terrorism task force" filled with Bush-backers, and no dissent). Also, the FBI can now search computer records for ANYONE without a warrant or any evidence (sounds 1984ish, doesn't it). And today, Ashcroft announced that the government can now detain ANY immigrant without evidence (even if the court deems him "not a threat or flight risk"), just because his country of origin has harbored a terrorist (thats a bullsh!t argument, considering that every country, including the US and UK, has harbored terrorists: these are all ploys to gain control over the voters, and cause people to live in fear of dissent (totally Orwellian)
3) Bombed the living **** out of Afghanistan, killing over 5000 innocent civilians, in order to oust a fundamentalist government; that government was removed, and we promptly lost interest. Guess what, the oppressive Muslim law codes are back into place in Afghanistan, but Bush doesnt care, because there is no political gain in it for him (Afghanistan was targeted because everyone hated the Taliban, and it was a popular move; same with Iraq, not as popular internationally though)
4) Ignored the biggest threat to world peace: North Korea. This country has already declared its nuclear program several times, and today, it declared that it possessed nuclear weapons. Yet Bush will do nothing to counter this threat. Because he knows that North Korea will fight back, and will kill thousands of Americans before it goes down (unlike Iraq); since this costly war would be unpopular, Bush has shied away from it.
5) Attacked a sovereign nation that had done nothing to any of its neighbors in the last 12 years, without provocation, thus breaking a 225 year old American tradition of never attacking first. Not only did we miss our biggest target, we showed our hypocrisy, and got most of the world to despise us. At first, we said that we WOULD call a UN vote; then, when defeat was ensured (not by veto, but because we couldn't get 9 votes... if we could have gotten the 9, we would have let France veto, and claimed moral victory), we backed down, saying the UN was irrelevent (its only relevent when it suits our agenda). Then we maintianed that killing or capturing Saddam was VITAL; now we are saying that it doesnt matter about Saddam
6) Turned a $300 billion a year surplus into a $700 billion a year defecit (How the heck can someone waste a trillion dollars in a year... how? I just don't get where all the money went). Bush has claimed to be following Keynesian economics when he proposed his tax cuts; however, what Bush doesn't undestand about Keynesian economics is that there must be a surplus to rely on. The economy is NOT going to easily come out of recession if we are trillions of dollars in debt (that is why the Great Depression lasted as long as it did... even if we got out, there was no hope of a debt-free nation)
7) Frittered away his first executive action; when he banned US governmental aid to international chairities that even suggest abortion as an option for a woman to consider while pregnant, he actually thought that he was banning US governmental money sent directly to abortion-providers, point A to point B style
8) Pushed us closer towards being totally uncredible in the international community
9) One step closer to a Big Brother/Nazi system (IAO, Freedom youth, Das Büro von Vaterla- er, the Office of Homeland Security, etc.)
10) Stopping terrorism, and here's how: Bush told us after 9/11 that we were attacked because the terrorists hate our freedom! He's preventing terrorism, naturally, by removing those freedoms.

Wrong on Iraq

FAILURE TO PLAN

Secret Joint Chiefs Report: Pentagon Planners Were Not Given Enough Time. In August 2003, the Joint Chiefs of Staff prepared a secret report assessing the post-war planning for Iraq. The report blamed "setbacks in Iraq on a flawed and rushed war-planning process." It also said "planners were not given enough time" to plan for reconstruction. [Washington Times, 9/3/03]

Officials Admit Bush Administration Never Had Concrete Plan for Post-War Iraq. Bush administration officials and military personnel admitted that there was never a real plan for post-war Iraq operations. Knight Ridder reported, "The disenchanted U.S. officials today think the failure of the Pentagon civilians to develop such detailed plans contributed to the chaos in post-Saddam Iraq. 'We could have done so much better,' lamented a former senior Pentagon official, who is still a Defense Department adviser." [Newsweek, 7/21/03; Knight Ridder, 7/12/03]

FAILURE TO CALCULATE NUMBER OF TROOPS AND EQUIP THEM

Prior to the War in Iraq, Wolfowitz Rebuked Shinseki's Estimates as "Wildly Off the Mark." Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz criticized the Army's Chief of Staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, after Shinseki told Congress in February 2003 that the occupation could require "several hundred thousand troops." Wolfowitz called Shinseki's estimate "wildly off the mark." [USA Today, 6/2/03]

McCain: "Painfully Clear" More Troops Needed. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.): "It is painfully clear that we need more troops. Before the war, the U.S. Army Chief of Staff said that several hundred thousand troops would be necessary to keep the peace. While criticized at the time, General Shinseki now looks prescient." [McCain Speech To the Council on Foreign Relations, 4/26/04]

Army Study Suggests One-Fourth of Deaths in Iraq Could Have Been Prevented If Troops Were Properly-Equipped at Beginning of War. Newsweek reported that an internal Army study said one in four of those killed in combat in Iraq might be alive if they had had stronger armor around them. Thousands more who were unprotected have suffered grievous wounds, such as the loss of limbs. [Newsweek, 5/3/04]

Bush Was Slow To Address Troops' Need For Body Armor. Though Bush signed the Emergency Supplemental funding bill in November 2003 promising to use the money to "acquire new equipment, such as armored humvees and communications gear," he has been slow to deliver on that pledge. The Bush administration first promised all the troops they would have body armor at the end of November. They extended and missed deadlines for December, January, and February, until the Army Secretary told Congress in March 2004 that there were finally sufficient stocks of body armor to equip all soldiers by the end of the month. [Bush Remarks, 11/6/03; House Approps Cmte, Subcmte on For. Ops, 9/24/03; UPI, 12/3/03; Hartford Courant, 1/11/04; House Approps Cmte, Defense Subcmte, 2/12/04; Senate Armed Services Cmte hearing, 3/2/04]

FAILURE TO ANTICIPATE IRAQI INSURGENCY

Bush Admitted Miscalculating Iraqi Insurgency. "Mr. Bush also acknowledged for the first time that he made a 'miscalculation of what the conditions would be' in postwar Iraq." [New York Times, 8/27/04]
Rumsfeld Admitted Bush Administration Was Not Prepared for Iraqi Resistance. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that "I am saying that -- if you had said to me a year ago, 'describe the situation you'll be in today, one year later,' I don't know many people who would have described it -- I would not have described it -- the way it happens to be today. … I certainly would not have estimated that we would have had the number of individuals lost that we have had lost in the last week." [Rumsfeld News Conference, 4/15/04]

Powell Says The U.S. Miscalculated The Postwar Insurgency. In an interview with Panama's TVN Channel 2, Powell admitted that the U.S. "miscalculated the strength of insurgents in Iraq" and "it is clear we did not expect an insurgency that would be this strong." [Associated Press, 9/2/04]

Allawi Says Disbanding Of The Army Led To An Increase In Violence. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi wrote, "The postwar wholesale disbanding of the security forces has seen a rise in murder, kidnapping, armed robbery and drug trafficking, often in a vicious cycle that funds violence." [Wall Street Journal, Allawi Op-ed, 8/25/04]

FAILURE TO USE RECONSTRUCTION FUNDS TO REBUILD IRAQ

Reconstruction Money Is Going Unspent. According to U.S. officials, only $1.1 billion of the $18 billion reconstruction package authorized by Congress has been spent and half of that was for security costs. [U.S. News & World Report, 9/20/04]

Bush Administration Seeks To Shift Reconstruction Funds To Security. In an indication of the Bush administration's failure to plan for the increasing violence in post-war Iraq, the Bush administration asked Congress to shift $3.4 from the reconstruction to the security of Iraq. The shift of funds "is a de facto recognition that [the occupation authority's] ambitious plans to restructure Iraq's entire economy have failed," said Anthony H. Cordesman, a security analyst at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies. [Washington Post, 9/15/04; Associated Press, 8/30/04]

FAILURE TO PROPERLY MANAGE RECONSTRUCTION MONEY

CPA Cannot Account For $8.8 Billion. "At least $8.8 billion in Iraqi funds that was given to Iraqi ministries by the former U.S.-led authority there cannot be accounted for, according to a draft U.S. audit set for release soon. The audit by the Coalition Provisional Authority's own Inspector General blasts the CPA for 'not providing adequate stewardship' of at least $8.8 billion from the Development Fund for Iraq that was given to Iraqi ministries." [Reuters, 8/19/04]

Halliburton Hasn't Accounted for Almost Half Its Work in Iraq and Kuwait. According to a report by Pentagon auditors, Halliburton has not adequately accounted for more than $1.8 billion of work in Iraq and Kuwait, representing 43% of the $4.18 billion that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root has billed the Pentagon so far." [Wall Street Journal, 8/11/04]

Bush Administration Underfunded Effort To "Win The Heart and Minds" of Iraqis. According to an International Crisis Group report, "U.S. reconstruction has created some employment. Notably, the U.S. initiated a number of quick, small-scale projects -- minor repairs of sewage systems, rubbish collection, refurbishing youth centres and mosques -- that relied principally on local labour and were designed to 'win the hearts and minds' of ordinary Iraqis. However, these activities were largely under-funded -- a mere $140 million was budgeted -- and commanders struggled to uncover additional resources." [International Crisis Group, 9/2/04]

FAILURE TO TRAIN IRAQI FORCES AND BUILD COALITION

Nearly 90 Percent Of Coalition Troops and Casualties Are American. There are 162,000 coalition troops in Iraq. 140,000 of those troops are American - nearly 90 percent. There have been 1023 American casualties and 127 non-American casualties in Iraq since the beginning of the war. American troops have borne nearly 90 percent of the total number of casualties. [Brookings Institution, "Iraq Index," Updated 9/16/04; LAT, 9/17/04]

"Insufficiently Trained and Equipped." "According to senior DoD officials and multinational force documents, these security forces, especially the Iraqi Police Service and Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, were insufficiently trained and equipped for these duties. During the escalation of violence that occured during April 2004, some of these security forces collapsed." ["Rebuilding Iraq," GAO Report, June 2004]

Iraqi Police Force Has a Long Way to Go. Only 6,000 police recruits have received training in a police academy, according to British Brig. Gen. Andrew Mackay. Another 21,000 have undergone a three-week training course, he said. At least 60,000 are untrained. In addition, "though the police force...is paying about 120,000 people, only 87,000 are accounted for." British Brig. Gen. Andrew Mackay admits that "the Iraqi Police Service has some way to go before you can really consider them...effective." [Washington Post, 8/1/04]
GAO Reported High Desertion Rates. According to a GAO report released in July, thousands of Iraqi National Guard deserted their posts. Among the Iraqi National Guard, desertions ranged from 30 percent in northeastern and central Iraq to 82 percent around the western city of Fallujah, where insurgents battled besieging U.S. Marines. "In all, 12,000 soldiers did not show up for duty." The GAO concluded that "given the poor performance of the Iraqi security forces during April 2004, it is unclear what level of security they will be able to provide during the period leading up to Iraq's national elections." [Washington Post, 8/1/04]
Delay in Training Army. "For the Iraqi army, only about 3,000 soldiers have been trained and deployed in the field, according to Brig. Gen. James Schwitters, commander of the coalition training team assisting the army. One source of delays has been the lack of adequate training sites for recruits," he said. [Washington Post, 8/1/04]

BUSH'S TOTAL DISREGARD OF REALITY.

Regions Of Iraq Are Still Under The Control Of Insurgents. Major Iraqi cities including Ramadi, Fallujah, Samarra, and Bukhara remain under the control of insurgents. Retaking the cities depends on having adequately trained and equipped Iraqi soldiers, which Rumsfeld and Myers admit may not happen until December - one month before Iraq's scheduled elections. [NBC, "Meet The Press," 9/12/04; Rumsfeld/Myers New Briefing, 9/7/04; NYT, 9/19/04]

Attacks On U.S. Forces Have Been Increasing Since The Transfer Of Sovereignty. "Violence against American forces surged last month to its highest level since the war began last year, with an average of 87 attacks per day." [NYT, 9/19/04]

More Troops Died In August Than In July; More In July Than June. In August, 66 U.S. service personnel were killed in Iraq. American forces suffered 54 casualties in July as compared to 42 in the month of June. Halfway through September, 52 U.S. troops have already been killed in Iraq. The toll for September already exceeds that of 10 of the 18 months since the war started. [Washington Post, 9/5/04; LAT, 9/17/04]

August Was Month of Highest Injury Toll In Iraq. "About 1,100 U.S. soldiers and Marines were wounded in Iraq during August, by far the highest combat injury toll for any month since the war began..." [Washington Post, 9/5/04]

Number Of Soldiers Wounded Has Doubled Since April. The total number of American soldiers wounded since the invasion was launched in March 2003 is 7,245. There were more wounded over the past five months - about 4,000 - than in the first 13 months of the war, when there were about 3,300. [Associated Press, 9/1/04, 9/15/04; Time, 9/20/04 issue]

BUSH HAS FAILED TO ADDRESS OTHER TRUE NATIONAL SECURITY THREATS

North Korean Nuclear Threat Has Increased Under Bush. The Bush administration admits that the North Korea may now have fuel for as many as eight nuclear weapons, yet Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs James A. Kelly told Congress that "it is clear [the U.S. and North Korea] are still far from agreement." [Washington Post, 4/28/04; USA Today, 7/16/04]

Iranian Nuclear Threat Has Increased Under Bush. Iran has now announced its intentions to process raw uranium, restart its nuclear centrifuges and begin extracting uranium from its central desert in less than two years. Yet the Bush administration "has still not formally signed off on a strategy for Iran since a review of policy was begun in 2001, U.S. officials say." [Associated Press, 9/1/04, 9/4/04; Washington Post, 7/19/04]

Al Qaeda Is Regenerating. "For the past several months, the president has claimed that much of Al Qaeda's leadership has been killed or captured; the new evidence suggests that the organization is regenerating and bringing in new blood." [New York Times, 8/10/04]

Wrong for the Economy

Bush Faces the Worst Jobs Record of Any President Running for Reelection. George Bush has presided over the loss of 1.6 million private-sector jobs. He will face re-election as the first job-loss president since Herbert Hoover in the Great Depression. Manufacturing has been very hard hit, losing 2.7 million jobs. [Bureau of Labor Statistics]

More than 7 Million Jobs Short Of President Bush's Prediction. Annual projections in the 2002 Economic Report of the President implied that over 6 million new jobs would be created between January 2001 and July 2004. [Bureau of Labor Statistics; Economic Report of the President, 2002]

Bush First President on Record to Oversee a Decline in Business Investment. Business investment has fallen 2.2 percent under George Bush. This makes him the first president on record to oversee a decline in investment - a dramatic turnaround from the 102 percent increase in investment under President Clinton. [BEA]

Bush's Tax Cuts Shifted Burden Onto the Middle Class. The Washington Post reported, "Since 2001, President Bush's tax cuts have shifted federal tax payments from the richest Americans to a wide swath of middle-class families, the Congressional Budget Office has found." [Washington Post, 8/13/04]

Bush Turned Record Surpluses into Record Deficits. George Bush inherited a $236 billion surplus in 2000. He has replaced this with a deficit of $422 billion in 2004. Now he is proposing more of the same: "The expansive agenda President Bush laid out at the Republican National Convention was missing a price tag, but administration figures show the total is likely to be well in excess of $3 trillion over a decade." [CBO and Washington Post, "$3 Trillion Price Tag Left Out as Bush Details His Agenda," 9/14/2004]

Bush Fiscal Policy Has Been "especially ineffective as a stimulative measure." The Congressional Budget Office described some of Bush's tax plans as the "least likely to generate significant stimulus" and Goldman Sachs described them "especially ineffective as a stimulative measure." [Congressional Budget Office, "Economic Stimulus: Evaluating Proposed Changes in Tax Policy," January 2002; and Goldman Sachs U.S. Economics Analyst. "Fiscal Policy - In Search of Balance, Creativity, and Grit," May 2, 2003]

Bush Wants to Expand Tax Breaks that Encourage Companies that Outsource Jobs. Bush economic officials consistently defend tax breaks for companies that outsource jobs. And they have even pushed for more tax breaks for companies that export our jobs - to be paid for by raising taxes on companies that export our products and create American jobs.

Bush's Administration Celebrates Outsourcing Key to Economic Success. George Bush's Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers N. Gregory Mankiw said, "Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade… And that's a good thing." Treasury Secretary John Snow and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao both agree. [Los Angeles Times, 2/10/04; Associated Press, 9/1/2004]

Bush Failed to Enforce our Trade Agreements and Trade Laws. George Bush has rebuffed efforts to end China's illegal manipulation of its currency. He has filed only one World Trade Organization (WTO) case for every three that Bill Clinton filed. And he has proposed to gut funding for U.S. efforts to support workers' rights and combat abusive child labor around the world.

Bush Guts Worker Training. George Bush has proposed more than $1 billion in cuts to worker training over the last three years.

Bush Proposes Cutting the Small Business Administration by 10.4 percent. George Bush's 2005 budget proposes a 10.4 percent cut in the SBA. These cuts would raise the cost of small business loans and cut funding for business information centers, women's business centers, and technical assistance to help entrepreneurs. The budget includes a $29 million cut in funding for Minority Enterprise Development programs that help disadvantaged and minority small businesses secure loans and contracts. [Office of Management and Budget, 2005 Budget Appendix]

Bush Proposes Cuts in Rural Development Assistance. George Bush's budget proposes $549 million in reductions in rural assistance. This includes cuts for rural electricity, water, broadband, and development. [Office of Management and Budget, "Major Reductions and Terminations in the 2005 Budget"]

Wrong for Health Care

Health Care Premiums Up $3,512. Since George W. Bush took office, family health care premiums have skyrocketed by $3,512. Families now pay 64 percent more than they did four years ago for health care. [Kaiser Family Foundation]

Medicare Premiums Have Increased 56 Percent Under Bush. Under Medicare Part B, which pays for doctors visits and outpatient hospital services, Medicare beneficiaries will be forced to pay 17% more on their monthly premiums, representing "the largest increase in the program's 40-year history." According to CMS calculations, 15% of the premium increase will go directly from Medicare beneficiaries' pocketbooks to HMOs every year. [New York Times, 9/4/04; AdvancePCS, 8/25/03; Medicare Rights Center, 11/14/03]

Wrong for Women

Bush Weakened Equal Pay Efforts. The Bush Administration ended The Equal Pay Initiative and removed fact sheets about equal pay for women workers from federal government websites.

Bush Recommendations Detrimental to Equal Opportunity. Title IX dramatically increased athletic opportunities for women and girls by outlawing gender discrimination. In June 2002, Bush's Department of Education offered a series of recommendations to weaken its regulations. If the Bush administration had had its way, 30 years of progress for women's athletics would have been dealt a potentially fatal blow.

Bush Attempted to Cut Support for Family and Work. George Bush's FY 2004 budget tried to cut the funding for after-school programs that benefit one-half million children and their parents. These programs allow working parents to know that their children are safe and well cared for after school.

Bush Wants to Cut Child Care. The Child Care and Development Block Grant is used to improve the quality of child care and assist low and moderate income families who struggle to afford childcare. George Bush's FY 2005 Budget would eliminate child care assistance for 365,000 children over the next five years.

Bush Worsens Health Care Crisis. The latest Bush budget freezes funding for Maternal and Child Health, cutting access to vital services such as screenings for newborns and paternal care.

Bush Guts Violence Against Women Services. George Bush's FY 2004 budget cut back funding for emergency shelters, crisis hotlines and other desperately needed services to protect women from violence.

Bush Vehemently Opposes Reproductive Rights. George Bush has consistently used his power to undermine the right to choose, selecting extreme anti-choice judicial nominees.

Bush Weakening Social Security for Women. According to a new study released on September 29th, the president has wrongly chosen a Social Security privatization plan that will provide a $940 billion windfall to the financial industry while cutting benefits up to 45 percent for seniors. It's a choice that is particularly devastating for women, who make up 60 percent of all Social Security recipients.

Bush proposed a $16 billion cut in Medicaid over 10 years. The President's 2005 budget proposes to cut Medicaid by $16 billion over 10 years. This proposal at a time when 45 million Americans are uninsured - 5 million more than when George Bush took office. [Office of Management and Budget, 2005 Budget, Table S-8; Census]

Bush Failed to Protect Seniors. Despite the fact that drug costs are skyrocketing, George Bush prohibited Medicare from negotiating lower drug prices on behalf of America's seniors and opposed allowing the importation of affordable, safe prescription drugs from Canada. The drug industry spent over $150 million lobbying on this issue.

Bush Proposed Doubling Cost of Prescription Drugs for Veterans. George Bush proposed doubling the co-pay for middle-income veterans from $7 to $15.

Wrong for Education

Bush Underfunded No Child Left Behind by $27 Billion. Over the last four years, George Bush has underfunded NCLB by almost $27 billion, including $9.4 billion in his most recent budget. This denies nearly 5 million children additional help in math and reading, 15,000 teachers high quality professional development, and 1.4 million children the opportunity to attend after-school programs. [Comparing authorization level with appropriation levels for fiscal years 2002 to 2004 and President's request for 2005, edworkforce.house.gov/democrats/nclbapril2004update.pdf]

Bush Proposed Cutting After-School Programs by 40 Percent. George Bush proposed slashing after-school funding by 40 percent, denying after-school programs to 570,000 children. [Office of Management and Budget, 2004 Budget Appendix and 2005 Budget Appendix; Office of Management and Budget, "Major Reductions and Terminations in the 2005 Budget"]

Bush Proposed Eliminating Continuing Education Programs. George Bush proposed to eliminate funding for dropout prevention and also cutting successful programs to expand college opportunity like GEAR UP. [Office of Management and Budget, 2004 Budget Appendix and 2005 Budget Appendix; Office of Management and Budget, "Major Reductions and Terminations in the 2005 Budget"]

$1,207 Increase in College Tuition. Since Bush has taken office, tuition in the United States has increased by $1,207 at four-year public universities - a 35 percent increase. [College Board]

Bush Fails to Meet Promise to Increase Maximum Pell Grant Award. Candidate Bush promised to increase the maximum Pell Grant award, a critical source of educational support for low-income and minority students, to $5,100. But his 2005 budget is the third in a row that has refused to increase the value above the current $4,050. In fact, the Bush administration sought to apply changes in the Pell Grant formula that would have completely eliminated grants for 84,000 young people. [Bush Speech in Hampton, New Hampshire, 8/30/00; Associated Press, 5/2/02; Chronicle for Higher Education, 4/4/03; House Budget Committee Democratic Caucus, 2/6/04, www.house.gov/budget_democrats; Institute for Higher Education Policy, Reauthorizing the Higher Education Act: Issues and Options, March 2003, www.ihep.com]

Bush Proposed Higher Rates on Student Loans. The Bush Administration tried to increase interest rates on student loans, raising the costs of borrowing by thousands of dollars for thousands of students.
Bush Eliminated the Youth Opportunities Grant Program. George Bush cut this successful program designed to help youth prepare for work and receive on-the-job skills.

Wrong on Homeland Security

From the Beginning, Bush Opposed Creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Former press secretary Ari Fleischer said Bush told Congress "there does not need to be a Cabinet-level Office of Homeland Security." Bush opposed its creation until it appeared Congressional Democrats were going to do it anyway. Bush sent the legislation to create DHS to Congress in June 2002 - on the day that Coleen Rowley was testifying to Senate Judiciary. [White House Press Briefing, 10/24/01; National Journal, 6/5/02; George W. Bush, 11/19/02]

Bush Ignores his own "Strategy." "Even though the most tempting targets for terrorists are those that can produce widespresd economic and social disruption, the White House has declared that safeguarding the nation's critical infrastructure is not a federal responsibility." The President's Homeland Security Strategy said, "The government should only address those activities that the market does not adequately provide-for example, national defense or border security…. For other aspects of homeland security, sufficient incentives exist in the private market to supply protection." Unfortunately, this sort of faith has not born out. [Stephen Flynn, "The Vulnerable Home Front." Foreign Affairs. September/October 2004. Vol. 33, No. 5. P24.]

While Terrorism Was Increasing In The World, Bush And Republicans Proposed To Cut America's Homeland Security Funding. "On the very day that terrorists attacked Madrid, killing 200 and injuring more than 1,000 people, congressional Republicans delivered a budget that proposed to cut $155 million in homeland security spending next year, and $857 million over the next five years from the president's own underfunded budget request." What's more, in a 2006 budget memo it was revealed that Bush seeks to cut DHS funding by $1 billion. [Editorial, Sun Sentinel, 4/05/04; Washington Post, 5/27/04]

INTELLIGENCE SHARING LACKING

Republican Chairman of Homeland Security Committee Said That Nearly Three Years After 9/11, Government Agencies Are Still Not Sharing Information. "Almost three years later, all must acknowledge that, despite serious and sustained efforts by responsible government agencies, we still do not have the level of timely, routine and unfettered information sharing we know we need to prevent terrorism and respond to it as effectively as we must," said Republican Christopher Cox, the House Homeland Security Committee Chairman. [National Journal, 6/24/04]

POROUS BORDERS

Bush Has Failed to Adequately Secure America's Borders. The vast majority of America's front-line border protection personnel don't believe they have the proper tools, training and support to effectively deter potential terrorists from entering the country. Additionally, DHS has been forced to release thousands of illegal alien detainees into the nation's heartland due to a lack of detention resources. The southern border continues to show huge gaps in security, continually allowing for the free flow of hundreds of thousands of undocumented illegal aliens to enter the country each year. What's more, the Bush administration has failed to develop databases and communications that allow for timely communication of terrorist threats along our nation's borders. [National Journal, 8/20/04; National Journal, 7/02/04; www.gao.gov, 7/04]

Bush Administration Has Failed To Adopt Ability To Recognize Terrorist Suspects At U.S. Borders. Federal auditors concluded that delays still exist in matching the names of suspected terrorists with names of visa holders and in forwarding necessary information to the Departments of State and Homeland Security. In some cases, it took the Department of State 6 months or more to revoke visas after receiving a recommendation to do so. Tom Ridge has admitted that along the Mexican border, the Administration has found a "couple hundred" individuals from "special-interest countries" as of January. [www.gao.gov, 7/04; Tom Ridge interview, Morning Edition, NPR, September 15, 2004]

Border Patrol Not Equipped Properly. "However, border inspectors today still do not have basic intelligence and operational training to aid them in detecting and preventing terrorist entry, or adequate access to databases important to determining admissibility, or even viable options to prevent documents known to be fraudulent from being returned to travelers denied entry into the United States." [9/11 Commission Staff Report p. 164 as cited by Los Angeles Times, "Immigration Laws Might Have Stopped Sept. 11 Plot: New commission report backs recommendation that suspected terrorists travel be closely tracked. Los Angeles Times, 8/4/04.]

INADEQUATE PORT SECURITY

Bush Has Failed to Secure America's Ports. The CIA says, "[t]he United States is more likely to be attacked with a weapon of mass destruction smuggled into the country aboard a ship than one delivered by a ballistic missile." Yet fifty-eight percent of all U.S. cities with ports eligible to receive port security grants reported to the U.S. Conference of Mayors that they had not received funding under the program. [Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 7/10/03; Portland Press Herald, 7/5/03; usmayors.org; www.omb.gov; Journal of Commerce, 3/24/03; Boston Globe, 6/21/03]

Bush Forgos Port Security to pay for the War in Iraq: "Since Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. has spent more than $500 million to make America's seaports more secure. Sound like a lot? It isn't. That's about what the U.S. spends in Iraq in four days." [Time Magazine 7/18/04; "America the Vulnerable," by Stephen Flynn.]

Bush Shortchanges U.S. Port Security. Nearly seven million cargo containers arrive in America's 361 ports each year and only 5 percent of those containers are physically inspected. Consequently, even a minor attack on America's ports could shut down major commerce for a month. Yet Bush's 2005 budget calls for a 75 percent reduction in port security grant funding over what was proposed for 2004; from $200 million in 2004 to only $46 million in 2005. What's more, 69 percent of eligible port cities have yet to receive requested port security grant funds. [Boston Globe, 6/21/03; Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 8/01/04; www.omb.gov; usmayors.org, 6/25/04]

Even Cargo Classified as High Risk is Not Sufficiently Screened for Radiation. High-risk cargo at many ports is not screened using radiation detection portals since few US ports have had the technology deployed. Instead, officials screen containers using hand held detectors and other equipment that was not designed to detect radiological weapons in cargo containers. [Democratic Members of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security "America at Risk," 1/04]

The $46 Million for Port Security Requested by the President for 2005 is Actually a 63% Reduction From the $125 Million Allocated by Congress in 2004 and Represents a Mere 4 Percent of What is Required. [American Association of Port Authorities Press Release, 12/10/03]

FAILING TO SECURE CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE

No Plans to Protect Our Critical Infrastructure. Despite the obvious threats to our critical infrastructure there is no national plan for critical infrastructure protection and information sharing. DHS's list of critical infrastructure includes places that closed years ago. [GAO, 01-3233, 2/03]

Critical Infrastructure Vulnerable. "This tepid, piecemeal approach to container security is not exceptional. The situation is little better in the other vital sectors that support our daily lives, such as energy pipelines, power generation and distribution, information technology infrastructure, food and water supplies, public health, and toxic production and transport. In all these areas, no single government entity has an uncontested charter to call all the security shorts. Nor is there a standard by which to measure progress." [Stephen Flynn, America the Vulnerable," pg. 86]

Federal Auditors: Security Oversight of Chemical Facilities Lacking. A Government Accounting Office report released in March 2003 noted that even though U.S. chemical facilities were "attractive targets for terrorists," the ability of any facility to respond to an attack was "unknown." GAO found that the chemical industry was not required by law to assess vulnerabilities or take action to secure its facilities, and that "the federal government has not comprehensively assessed the chemical industry's vulnerabilities to terrorist attacks." [GAO-03-439 March 2003; "America at Risk," 1/04]

Administration Hides Danger that Chemical Plants Pose: According to the EPA, there are 7,728 U.S. chemical plants where an accident -- or act of sabotage -- could endanger 1,000 or more nearby residents. Of those, 123 facilities could threaten more than one million people. . . . The problem is that the efforts are ultimately dependent on the willingness of plant owners and managers to work with Homeland Security officials and spend the money and time on the efforts. The department has no ability to force security measures on the industry. [Wall Street Journal. 8/20/04]

Bush Abandons Security Measures - Philadelphia endangered. "On the East Coast, the Philadelphia region has the highest concentration of facilities that could endanger more than a million people. Four are in Gloucester County. There is one each in Salem and Delaware Counties. Two are in Philadelphia." [Philadelphia Inquirer, 4/20/03] The Washington Post reported Bush "abandoned… tough new security regulations" on the chemical industry, calling it, "a victory for major chemical manufacturers…" [Washington Post, 10/3/02]

Bush Bowed to Special Interests Rather than Secure America's Chemical Plants. The Department of Justice characterizes the threat of terrorism at one of the nation's chemical facilities as "both real and credible," Yet Bush's decision in 2002 to drop chemical plant security regulations marked a major victory for chemical manufacturers who have contributed at least $1.5 million to his campaigns, and directly undermines efforts to secure America's chemical plants. [America at Risk, 1/04; Washington Post, 10/3/02; www.commoncause.org]

INADEQUATE RAIL SECURITY

Bush Has Failed to Improve America's Rail Security. The Bush administration opposed a 2001 bill that would have created a $1.77 billion security program for the nation's passenger and cargo railways. More than 90 percent of the Homeland Security transportation budget is devoted to aviation, leaving other forms of transportation grossly underfunded. Furthermore, on the very day that terrorists attacked the rail system in Madrid (Spain), killing 200 and injuring more than 1,000 people, Congressional Republicans delivered a budget that proposed to cut $155 million in homeland security spending next year, and $857 million over the next five years from the president's own underfunded budget request. [The News Journal, 8/20/04; United Press International, 11/1/01, 10/17/01; Editorial, Sun Sentinel, 4/05/04; www.house.gov/hsc]

No Plan. And No Funding. There is no plan to secure our public transit networks. Bush has earmarked no money in his FY03,04, or 05 budgets for rail security though Congress has tried to pass specific legislation for that purpose - or has added money over his objections. About $6 billion is needed for closed circuit cameras in stations, upgraded radio systems, more officers and employee training, but President Bush did not include any money for transit security in his proposed 2005 budget, association president William Millar said at the group's annual rail transit conference. [Palm Beach Post. "Billions Sought from U.S. for Transit Security," 6/8/04]

INADEQUATE AVIATION SECURITY

DHS Investigators snuck guns and explosives through checkpoints. "Undercover investigators were able to sneak explosives and weapons past security screeners at 15 airports nationwide, according to a government report on aviation security." [USA Today, 9/23/04.]

Cargo on Passenger Airlines Remains Unscreened. On average, half of America's planes carry cargo, and 23 percent of the nation's air cargo travels on passenger flights. 2.8 million tons of cargo is transported by passenger planes annually. The TSA continues to not screen air cargo for explosives even though they know of the threat, "cargo is likely to become - and may already be - the primary threat vector in the short term." Intelligence reports suggest a 35-65% chance that terrorist are planning to exploit this weakness. [GAO-04-285T 11/20/03; Closing the Aviation Security Gap. May 2004. Washington Post. 6/10/02.]

DHS Leadership know of Vulnerabilities and Bush Doesn't Fund the Solutions. Former TSA Administrator and current Deputy Secretary, Admiral James Loy testified in 2002 "it was absolutely an imperative that we spend focused attention on getting better approach to cargo. We must reach to secure cargo better." [US Senate, committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, 9/10/02]

"Passengers are not screened for explosives, for example, and there is no comprehensive explosives screening for the 2.8 million tons of cargo shipped annually on airlines. Although the government permits only accredited shippers to move cargo by air, less than 5 percent of cargo is physically screened." [Dallas Morning News, 9/9/04]

LETTING OUR FIRST RESPONDERS DOWN

Bush Cuts First Responders. George Bush's 2005 budget proposes a $805 million cut for the First Responders program - an 18 percent cut. [Office of Management and Budget, "Major Reductions and Terminations in the 2005 Budget"]

Bush Proposed Slashing Community Oriented Policing Program (COPS) by 94 percent. George Bush's 2005 budget proposes slashing COPS funding from $742 million in 2004 to $44 million in 2005 - a 94 percent cut that would require taking 88,000 cops off the street. This is on top of the 28 percent cut enacted between 2001 and 2004. [Office of Management and Budget, Public Budget Database 2005]

First Responders Still Lack Interoperable Communications Systems That Might Have Saved Thousand of Lives on 9-11. The GAO blames this on a "lack of effective, collaborative, interdisciplinary, and intergovernmental planning" that begins at the federal level. [GAO-04-740, 7/04]

Bush Cut State and Local First Responder Training by Nearly Half. Bush cut state and local grant funding for first responder training, exercise, and technical assistance by nearly half, from $320 million in 2004 to $178 million in 2005. According to the House Democrats on the Homeland Security Committee, analysts estimate that funding for "critical needs" of emergency responders will fall $98.4 billion short over the next five years. [www.omb.gov; "America at Risk," 1/04]

Bush and Ashcroft Have Consistently Cut COPS Program. Bush proposed cuts in the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program in 2002, 2003, and 2004. Bush's 2005 budget cuts the program by 87 percent. And, according to a secret OMB memo, Bush and Ashcroft plan to cut the COPS program by $43 million in 2006 and freezes funding at that level through 2009. The International Association of Chiefs of Police said: "Targeting law enforcement assistance programs for reductions of this magnitude [in the Bush 2005 budget] has the potential to significantly weaken the ability of state and local law enforcement agencies to protect our communities from both traditional acts of crime and the new specter of terrorism. This is unacceptable." [House Budget Committee Democratic Caucus, 2/6/04; www.theiacp.org]

Bush Cut Resources for Firefighters. George Bush cut grants for equipment and personnel to local fire departments by $246 million in his 2005 budget. According to the International Association of Firefighters, "The FIRE Act grant program has received $5 billion worth of requests," and "has awarded grants totaling just 10% of that need." Kevin O'Connor of the International Association of Firefighters said, "This [2005] budget is profoundly disappointing to first responders ... It's a continuation of the president's lack of commitment to first responders in general and firefighters in particular." [www.dhs.gov; www.iaff.org; UPI, 2/2/04; www.cfr.org]

Bush Cuts Funding for State and Local Homeland Security Grants by $800 Million. Bush cut funding to the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Domestic Preparedness, which supplies a variety of first-responder grants to state and local governments, by $800 million, to $3.6 billion in 2005 from $4.4 billion in 2004. [Department of Homeland Security, 2005 Budget in Brief, www.dhs.gov; Congressional Quarterly, www.CQ.com]

NO COMMITMENT TO BIOPREPAREDNESS

States Unprepared For Biological Attack. "With so many of our homeland security efforts, they come with too few resources to address the need. Surveillance systems should be up an running in all our major metropolitan areas….If a biological weapon is released in an urban area that is not being monitored, a contagious disease could spread into multiple states before the first alarm is sounded." ["America the Vulnerable." p.125

Local Hospitals Unprepared for Potential Outbreak Of Contagious Disease. "An August 2003 report on hospital preparedness, put out by the US General Accounting Office, found that most urban hospitals had a shortage of equipment, medical stockpiles, and quarantine and isolation facilities for even a small-scale response to a contagious disease outbreak….The American Hospital Association estimates that it would take an investment of $8 billion to bring all metropolitan hospitals up to a point where they could provide acute care in the event of a nuclear, biological, or chemical attack…. Our fire and police departments would almost certainly be overwhelmed as well." ["America the Vulnerable" 126-127]

INADEQUATE EFFORTS TO KEEP TERRORISTS OUT OF THIS NATION

Terrorists may be Able to Stay in the Country. The Bush administration still lacks a clear and comprehensive policy on visa revocation. A GAO study concluded that of just 240 visa revocations examined, "30 individuals whose visas were revoked on terrorism grounds entered the United States and may still remain in the country." [GAO-03-798, 6/03; GAO-04-795, 7/04]

No-Fly List and Terrorist Watch List not Integrated. "Now, in a report obtained by NBC News, a government watchdog warns the problem is still not fixed. The "No-fly" list still includes only suspected terrorists "who pose threats to civil aviation" - not all suspected terrorists. "It's just plain wrong," says 9/11 commissioner Slade Gorton. "The potential consequences are that terrorists can still get on aircraft in the United States," says Gorton…On 9/11, only a dozen names were on the "No-fly" list. Now there are about 3,500. But that's only a fraction of more than 300,000 names on the government's main list of suspected terrorists and associates [MSNBC, 'No-fly' list still lacking, 9/23/04; Department of Homeland Security - Office of Inspector General. "DHS Challenges in Consolidating Terrorist Watch List Information." OIG-04-31. August 2004.]

Wrong on Energy

George Bush Broke His Promise to "jawbone" Saudi Oil Producers. On February 10, 2004, OPEC announced an agreement to cut its output quotas by 1 million barrels per day, starting in March. By March 17, crude oil prices in New York reached a 13-year high of $38.18 per barrel. George Bush's silence on OPEC decisions has sent the signal that prices are not a concern. [Source: "Oil prices rise to 13-year high, threaten economy," Washington Times, March 18, 2004]

America Has Become More Dependent on Foreign Oil. Over the past four years, America has become increasingly dependent on foreign oil. In 2000, 58.2 percent of the oil consumed in the United States was imported. That has increased to 61.7 percent today. [EIA, "Overview of US Petroleum Trade"]

Record Profits for Big Oil Companies While Consumers Are Gouged at the Pump: The higher overall gasoline prices have cost the American consumer a net of over $25 billion since George Bush took office. This money has gone directly from consumers pocketbooks into the hands of oil companies and oil producers, including OPEC. The big three oil companies in America have profited $33.6 billion over the past three years. [Based on EIA Monthly Energy Review; ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips Company Financial Reports]
Bush's Own Energy Information Administration Found the Bush Plan Wouldn't Impact Prices. Bush's own Energy Information Administration found that the effect of the proposal would be "negligible" with respect to production, consumption, imports, and energy prices. Just last week, the EIA reported that imported gasoline hit an all time high of 1.3 million barrels per day the week of April 16. [EIA, http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip.asp]

Wrong on Civil Rights

Nominated Judges That Want to Roll Back Civil Rights in America. George Bush has nominated some of the most radical, right-wing judges that our country has ever seen. Judges like Charles Pickering and Priscilla Owen have long records of opposition to Roe v. Wade, have sought to restrict laws barring sexual discrimination, have supported a ban on interracial marriage, and have worked to narrow laws on gender discrimination. Bush said, "We've got to get good, conservative judges appointed to the bench and approved by the United States Senate." [JK speech, 3/8/04]

Opposed Affirmative Action; Wrongly Called University of Michigan System a "Quota." On Martin Luther King, Jr's birthday, Bush announced his opposition to the University of Michigan admissions process filing two amicus briefs in the Supreme Court, minutes before the midnight deadline. When Bush announced his opposition, he called the admissions system a "quota." The Supreme Court explicitly rejected that position. [New York Times, 1/17/03; New York Times, 1/16/03; 6/23/03; United States Supreme Court www.supremecourtus.gov]

Placed the Civil Rights Division at a Standstill and Starved the EEOC. Under Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Justice Department's civil rights division has been effectively closed and anti-domestic violence efforts have been eliminated. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has received only token increases, and Bush proposes that the Commission on Civil Rights operate through 2005 at $1 million below 2002 funding levels. [Knight-Ridder, 11/21/03; Bush Budget: Truth & Consequences; House Democratic Budget Committee, 2/7/03, Summary and Analysis of the President's 2004 Budget; House Democratic Budget Committee, 3/1/04, Summary and Analysis of the President's 2005 Budget]

Failed to Provide Health Care to Legal Immigrant Children and Pregnant Women. George Bush has stood in the way of providing medical care to legal immigrant children and pregnant women. According to the National Council for La Raza (NCLR), President Bush's FY 05 budget "does nothing to improve access to and the quality of health care for Latinos. The President's budget proposal fails to lift the current ban on health care for legal immigrant children and pregnant women, does not provide funding to enhance access to health services to limited-English-proficient individuals." [National Council of La Raza, "Statement Of Raul Yzaguirre On Latino Unemployment And The President's Budget, National Council of La Raza," 2/10/04]

The Minority Housing Gap Has Grown Under Bush. Despite Bush's claims that he is focusing on the minority housing gap, the ownership gaps for Blacks, Hispanic, and Native Americans have all grown under Bush. The gap between Native American and White homeownership has grown 19%; the Hispanic ownership gap has grown 4.3%; and the black homeownership gap has grown by 2.6%.

Wrong for the Environment

Bush Compiled the Worst Environmental Record in the History of Our Nation. He earned the first ever "F" on the League of Conservation Voters' (LCV) 2003 Presidential Report Card.

Bush Rolled Back Mercury Regulations. George Bush's plan to reduce toxic mercury emissions from power plants would utterly fail to protect public health for the next 20 years. Unveiled in January, the Bush proposal would put off even modest reductions until 2025, even though the Clean Air Act calls for maximum possible reductions by 2008. Known to cause learning disabilities and attention disorders, mercury is one of the most dangerous substances still in common use.

Bush Administration Rolled Back Sewage Treatment Rules. The Bush administration rolled back regulations of sewage treatment to allow more untreated sewage to enter into our water.

Bush Rolled Back the Clean Air Act to allow old, dirty power plants, oil refineries, and other industrial facilities to continue to emit large amounts of dangerous pollutants. George Bush's "Clear Skies" initiative would allow these facilities to emit more pollution than allowed under current law.

Bush Eliminated Clean Water Act Protections for thousands of acres of wetlands and streams. George Bush also has attempted to roll back important drinking water safeguards, and he slashed funding for the State Revolving Funds that finance sanitation and other public water infrastructure projects.

Bush Refused to Make Chemical Companies Clean Up Toxic Sites in Neighborhoods. Instead of renewing the "Superfund" tax on companies who pollute our communities, George Bush forced taxpayers to bear the cost of cleanups, and slowed the rate of site cleanups.

Bush Administration Rolled Back Protections for Wetlands. George Bush lifted protections for 20 million acres of wetlands. The New York Times reported, "The Bush administration opened the way today for a redefinition of federal rules that could remove obstacles to development on millions of acres of isolated wetlands historically protected under the Clean Water Act. [New York Times, 1/11/03]

Bush Administration Rolled Back Protections of Our Public Lands. The New York Times reported, "For broad impact, though, nothing quite matches the decision to scuttle the roadless rule. Nearly three years in the making, that rule essentially gave blanket protection to some of the last truly wild places in America, critical watersheds for fish and wildlife and important sources of drinking water for metropolitan areas in the West. The Bush administration offers instead a less protective and more uncertain system." [New York Times, 7/18/04]

Bush Broke Promise to "restore and renew" our National Parks. Instead, our parks are sliding into disrepair - visitors encounter closed ranger stations and visitor centers, degraded trails, and significant staff shortages. The Bush administration has also pursued policies that threaten visibility and public health and promote logging, roadbuilding, and other development in parks.

Thank you to all members and visitors that took the time to read the truth.

...WMD's - a 'never happened' situation...(and some back & forth comments)

2004-10-20T09:03:00.000-07:00

U.S. Report Finds Iraqis Eliminated Illicit Arms in 90's
By Douglas Jehl
The New York Times

Thursday 07 October 2004

Washington - Iraq had destroyed its illicit weapons stockpiles within months after the Persian Gulf war of 1991, and its ability to produce such weapons had significantly eroded by the time of the American invasion in 2003, the top American inspector for Iraq said in a report made public Wednesday.

The report by the inspector, Charles A. Duelfer, intended to offer a near-final judgment about Iraq and its weapons, said Iraq, while under pressure from the United Nations, had "essentially destroyed" its illicit weapons ability by the end of 1991, with its last secret factory, a biological weapons plant, eliminated in 1996.

Mr. Duelfer said that even during those years, Saddam Hussein had aimed at "preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction when sanctions were lifted." But he said he had found no evidence of any concerted effort by Iraq to restart the programs.

The findings uphold Iraq's prewar insistence that it did not possess chemical or biological weapons. They also show the enormous distance between the Bush administration's own prewar assertions, based on reports by American intelligence agencies, and what a 15-month inquiry by American investigators found since the war.

Mr. Duelfer said he had concluded that between 1991 and 2003, Mr. Hussein had in effect sacrificed Iraq's illicit weapons to the larger goal of winning an end to United Nations sanctions. But he also argued that Mr. Hussein had used the period to try to exploit avenues opened by the sanctions, especially the oil-for-food program, to lay the groundwork for a plan to resume weapons production if sanctions were lifted.

In addition, the report concluded that Mr. Hussein had deliberately sought to maintain ambiguity about whether it had illicit weapons, mainly as a deterrent to Iran, its rival.

The American inspector presented his conclusions to Congress on Wednesday, including highly charged public testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

With Iraq figuring prominently in the last dash toward the presidential election, Democrats argued that the report had undermined the administration's case for war, while the White House and its Republican allies called attention to elements in the report that highlighted potential dangers posed by Mr. Hussein's government.

"There is no doubt that Saddam was a threat to our nation, and there is no doubt that he had W.M.D. capability, and the Duelfer report is very clear on these points," said James Wilkinson, a White House deputy national security adviser, using the abbreviation for weapons of mass destruction.

The three-volume report, totaling 918 pages, represented the most authoritative attempt so far to unravel the mystery posed by Iraq between 1991 and 2003, beginning with the point after the Persian Gulf war when Iraq still possessed chemical and biological weapons and an active nuclear-weapons program. The conclusions suggest that the main war aim cited by the White House in March 2003 - to disarm Iraq, which American intelligence agencies said possessed chemical and biological weapons and was reconstituting its nuclear program - was based on an outdated view of Iraq's weapons stockpiles.

At the time of the American invasion, Mr. Duelfer said in the report, Iraq did not possess chemical and biological weapons, was not seeking to reconstitute its nuclear program, and was not making any active effort to gain those abilities. Even if Iraq had sought to restart its weapons programs in 2003, the report said, it could not have produced militarily significant quantities of chemical weapons for at least a year, and it would have required years to produce a nuclear weapon.

"Saddam Hussein ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the gulf war," Mr. Duelfer said in the report. It said American inspectors in Iraq had "found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program."

After a closed briefing by Mr. Duelfer to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the committee, described the report as "a devastating account."

"The administration would like the American public to believe that Saddam's intention to build a weapons program, regardless of actual weapons or the capability to produce weapons, justified invading Iraq," Mr. Rockefeller said in a statement. "In fact, we invaded a country, thousands of people have died, and Iraq never posed a grave or growing danger."

In accounting for what happened beginning in 1991, Mr. Duelfer said Mr. Hussein made a fundamental decision after the Persian Gulf war to get rid of Iraq's illicit weapons and accept the destruction of its weapons-producing facilities as part of an effort to win an end to sanctions imposed by the United Nations to achieve those ends.

Although Mr. Duelfer concluded that Mr. Hussein had intended to restart his programs, the report acknowledged that that conclusion was based more on inference than solid evidence. "The regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of W.M.D. after sanctions," it said.

The report notes that its conclusions were drawn in part from interrogation of Mr. Hussein in his prison cell outside Baghdad. Mr. Duelfer, a special adviser to the director of central intelligence, said he had concluded that Mr. Hussein had deliberately sought to maintain ambiguity about whether Iraq possessed illicit weapons, primarily as a deterrent to Iran, Iraq's adversary in an eight-year war in the 1980's.

It was not until a series of meetings in late 2002, just months before the American invasion, that Mr. Hussein finally acknowledged to senior officers and officials of his government that Iraq did not possess illicit weapons, Mr. Duelfer said.

The report said American investigators had found clandestine laboratories in the Baghdad area used by the Iraqi Intelligence Service between 1991 and 2003 to conduct research and to test various chemicals and poisons, including ricin. As previously reported, it said those efforts appeared to be intended primarily for use in assassinations, not to inflict mass casualties.

Mr. Duelfer said in his report that Mr. Hussein never acknowledged in the course of the interrogations what had become of Iraq's illicit weapons. He said that American investigators had appealed to the former Iraqi leader to be candid in order to shape his legacy, but that Mr. Hussein had not been forthcoming.

The report said interviews with other former top Iraqi leaders had made clear that Mr. Hussein had left many of his top deputies uncertain until the eve of war about whether Iraq possessed illicit weapons. It said he seemed to be most concerned about a possible new attack by Iran, whose incursions into Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 were fended off by Baghdad partly with the use of chemical munitions.

Mr. Duelfer said Iraq had tried to maintain the knowledge base necessary to restart an illicit weapons program. He said Iraq had essentially put its biological program "on the shelf," after its last production facility, Al Hakam, was destroyed by United Nations inspectors in 1996, and could have begun to produce biological questions in as little as a month if it had restarted its weapons program in 2003.

But the report said there were "no indications" that Iraq was pursuing such a course, and it reported "a complete absence of discussion or even interest in biological weapons" at the level of Mr. Hussein and his aides after the mid-1990's.

The report will almost certainly be the last complete assessment by the team led by Mr. Duelfer, which is known as the Iraq Survey Group. But he said he and the 1,200-member team would continue their work in Iraq for the time being. He said the team had not completely ruled out the possibility that some Iraqi weapons might have been smuggled out of Iraq to a neighboring country, like Syria.

The report did revise several earlier judgments, including a report by the Central Intelligence Agency in May 2003 that said mysterious trailers found in Iraq after the American invasion in 2003 were intended for use in a biological warfare program. Mr. Duelfer said that the trailers could not have been used for that purpose, and that their manufacturers "almost certainly designed and built the equipment exclusively for the generation of hydrogen," upholding claims by Iraqi officials that linked the trailers to weather balloons used for artillery practice.

posted by Steve aka Quill at 10/11/2004 10:29:26 AM

9 Comments:
The Voice said...
We're not in Iraq because of weapons. Period. I do support our troops there because they have gone for the right reasons. I don't support our president there because he is doing it all for the wrong reasons. In Vietnam, it was about drugs. In Iraq, it's about oil. In both cases, it's about money. Period. But if you think Kerry's above that sort of motive, you're as much a fool as those who support Bush. What concerns me in the presidential race has little to do with the war itself. I don't like the "Homeland Security" initiatives and their fallout...it's McCarthyism all over again. We need to get this moron out of office and fast. Kerry's a good step, but what this country really needs is an independent that can actually win.

10/11/2004 09:28:54 PM
Dante Claracuzio said...
We're not in Iraq because of weapons. Period. -agree

I do support our troops there because they have gone for the right reasons. -agree

I don't support our president there because he is doing it all for the wrong reasons. -disagree... we are liberateing

In Vietnam, it was about drugs. - no it was about comunism, and the containment polocy.

In Iraq, it's about oil. -Well where the hell is the oil? And why is gas so high????

In both cases, it's about money. Period. But if you think Kerry's above that sort of motive, you're as much a fool as those who support Bush. -agree

What concerns me in the presidential race has little to do with the war itself. I don't like the "Homeland Security" initiatives and their fallout...it's McCarthyism all over again. - if thats how you see it

We need to get this moron out of office and fast. -bad idea

Kerry's a good step, -disagree

but what this country really needs is an independent that can actually win. -agree

This was probably one of the smartist things I have read yet in this Blog.

10/12/2004 12:30:34 AM
Steve aka Quill said...
1) I don't think Kerry is above the motive of money. I support him under no false assumptions that he's some kind of perfect person.

2) I believe in supporting the troops. After all, Bush was the one that put them there, and now we're committed, like it or not. My motto for THAT is this: "Support our troops; NOT our President."

3) Bush got us into this war for oil reasons, for "picking up where my dad left off" reasons; but it wasn't for 'liberation' reasons. The reasons Bush gave for going to war in Iraq were: a) because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and b) because Iraq was connected to the terrorists responsible for 9-11 and they were harboring terrorists. Neither of these reasons held any validity or water. Yes, true, as it so happens there IS good that is coming from this war; but that doesn't change the fact that Bush did and said everything to get us into this war just as fast as he could. Bush claimed that he would get us allies, that it would be the greatest coalition in the history of the world; yeah, THAT sure happened, didn't it? No, it did not.

4) Kerry seems flip-floppy in the eyes of Bush, who has a very simplistic and unrealistic view of the way things are. To Bush, things are largely black and white in a world full of a lot of gray. Kerry adapts his position in light of new developments and information; Bush has shown that he does not do this. Bush's standpoint on this war is: "Ok, ok...he didn't have the weapons, there was no connection to the 9-11 terrorists who attacked us...BUT it was still something that needed to be done. Even with all this new information, I would do things the exact same way, MY way, the BUSH way, and I stand firm on that." I don't know about you, but I'd rather have a president in office who can be a MAN and admit when he's made a mistake.

5) I'm glad that this post is the most intelligent thing that you've seen on this forum. To his credit, Voice is an extremely intelligent person, there's a lot of worth in what he says. However, I find it funny that you speak of intelligence in posts. So far, my posts about Bush have shown the issues and what he's done, with sprinklings of my personal animosity towards our president. You're posts, on the other hand Jay, have basically said, "Kerry is a wishy-washy flip-flopper." and "Kerry has a bad military service record; he stole purple hearts." - something that reminds me of the Bush campaign's quest to place all emphasis on these two 'key' points. Thus far, you've yet to demonstrate to any of us exactly WHY Kerry would be a far worse president than Bush; for all your talk against 'Bush-bashing', you've done primarily nothing but bash Senator Kerry. You've said nothing on why Kerry would fail in his promises, nor have you elaborated against most of the examples of Bush's flaws in office. I've done a substantial job posting information that shows why Bush shouldn't be in office; true, I've bashed Bush, but I've also had more to say other than, "Bush sucks." I've even stated several times, for the sake of argument, that Kerry might not be the "best" choice, but I HAVE said that if we stick with Bush, it's like committing 'nation suicide'. Kerry is a man of conviction, which he has shown; he's a man who can admit when he's wrong and is adaptable; he has the kind of views on legislation that takes into account the positions of the nation of diverse people he would lead, instead of applying and systematicly forcing his PERSONAL beliefs and values to what he passes as legislation (i.e. the abortion issue especially).

On top of that, he's a president we can depend on to speak and act with intelligence. You quoted President Bush saying the following: President George W. Bush: "In Response To Question 18 President Bush Criticized Kerry's Vote Against The $87 Billion. “He complains about the fact our troops don't have adequate equipment, yet he voted against the $87 billion supplemental I sent to the Congress and then issued one of the most amazing quotes in political history: "I actually did vote for $87 billion before I voted against it.” (President George W. Bush, Second Presidential Debate, St. Louis, MO, 10/8/04)"

...that's a direct quote from YOUR post, and from Bush himself (I watched the debate, too).

Do you realize just how many "amazing quotes" Bush has made over the course of his ENTIRE presidency?! It's because of his 'skill' (and I SO use that term sarcastically) in public speaking that is solely responsible for the wide-spread opinion that he's missing a few cans from his 24-pack. He's rather an embarrassment to our country in that aspect.

Just because what I have to say is seen as 'liberal dreck' to YOU, doesn't discount the amount of insight and intelligence of my posts and comments. I happen to know of a slew of people (who I shant name because frankly, this 'political banter' is mainly between you and I) who would say the same.

6) It's funny how you and Bush trash on Kerry's war record. Kerry got a purple heart for saving lives. He was wounded in the face of battle. Cheney even had the balls to actually say the 'bullet didn't go in far enough' for Kerry to deserve purple hearts. I guess Bush's purple hearts are more important or something--oh WAIT! That's right; Bush doesn't have any purple hearts because he NEVER WENT TO WAR. I feel that Bush has no right to criticize a man who actually FOUGHT for his country when he himself never went to war. His family connections got him out of it. And if Bush gets re-elected, his daughters won't go to war; deny that all you want, but the fact is, Bush doesn't have the BALLS to go to war or have his kids to go war, but he is all for sending others to fight.

7) Recently, Kerry's statement about 'reducing terrorism to a nuisance, like gambling or prostitution' is being used in the Bush campaign. News flash for you: terrorism is everywhere. It always has been, before AND after 9-11. As long as there are people willing to die for a cause while taking innocent lives in the process, terrorism lives. Kerry recognizes the fact that, like roaches, terrorism is something that will always be around. But Bush would like everyone to take that statement as, "Oh, he doesn't have an understanding of how serious terrorism is; he regards it as being the same as prostitution and gambling!!" Please. This is yet another example of Bush doing the 'politics game', which is a really retarded way.

Bush did the same things to John McCain, attacked his war record, slung mud. Bush actually told McCain later, "John, it's just politics." Of course, McCain said, "It's NOT just politics, George - you can't DO that when it's not true." Bush's tactics are all about making the other guy look bad, attacking service records, putting negative spins on EVERY verbal slip-up or quote that can be misconstrued. Kerry only emphasizes the truth about Bush; he's NEVER smeared Bush on anything that isn't the truth. And believe me, there are thousands of things that Bush has said that Kerry could easily harp on. Kerry could attack Bush's so-called "service record" all day long. All Kerry ever said was, "He attacks my record, yet did he go to war? Did he even really SERVE his country, or did he get out of it?", which is the TRUTH, documented and plain for all to see.

In my eyes, my vote goes for the man with honor, conviction, and true understanding of the 'gray area' world we live in. That man is NOT George W. Bush. End of story.

10/12/2004 10:53:33 AM
Steve aka Quill said...
Addition: We also need a president in office who isn't so hasty in sending our troops into a situation where they could die; those are other people's children and parents being sent over there. You cannot tell me that this was a last resort situation. Saddam hasn't had the means to attack us for over a DECADE; even IF he magically got rid of the sanctions and started that day, we would have had a year to get the coalition we needed, to get the funding and equipment we needed, before it became a desperate, last resort situation. We need a president who has the kind of JUDGMENT to make those kinds of decisions; and I DARE you to prove to me that Bush is that kind of president. Prove it. You can't, because he doesn't have that kind of judgment.

10/12/2004 11:32:04 AM
Steve aka Quill said...
"On top of that, he's a president we can depend on to speak and act with intelligence."

When I said this, I re-read it and realized the potential for confusion. I was referring to KERRY, not Bush.

10/12/2004 01:31:50 PM
Deadpool said...
Ok, The Quilled One makes some very good points about military track records here. I think it should be pointed out that since we know that Bush dodged war when he would have been at risk, and that Kerry was actually in danger. I find that really funny that Bush is so quick to send others to do what he himself would not. Not funny like lol or lmao, funny like I want to get really Medieval on his ass. Reason; he sent my best friend where he would refuse to go, ever!

10/12/2004 01:44:44 PM
triponXTC said...
OK the two of you are a bunch of RE RE's!!!!! Dante... Quit frontin like you know what the hell ur talking about. I dont like Bush. Your truning alot of people off to him and gotta be costing him votes! Quil if ur gonna debate someone, you might wanna reply to their posts and not tip toe around the question. Also if u look at previous posts by Dante he already shot down this arguement and your missing the point! So knock it the hell off!!!! I'm voteing for Nader. Bush is a tard, Kerry is a tard. Bush keeps giveing cash to rich people (yes you Dante!)and Kerry has pulled his campaign for Missouri. I refuse to vote for anyone who abandons a place just because they are loseing. He's such a fucking quitter!!!!! Like I said KNOCK IT THE HELL OFF! DAMN! Bunch of kids!

10/13/2004 02:04:12 AM
Steve aka Quill said...
Oh, but I HAVE read Dante's posts, triponXTC...show me which part of Dante's main content wasn't bashing Kerry's service record or calling Kerry a flip-flopper. Sure, he talked a bit good about Bush, but for the most part, that's all he had to say.

And it's real funny that you're brand new to this Council and already are calling other posters "kids" that don't know of what we speak. Just because you're for Nader, as is your right, doesn't make OTHER people 're-res' as you so eloquently put it.

10/13/2004 07:30:45 AM

Steve aka Quill said...
BTW, X...your boy Nader isn't going to be listed on the Missouri ballot. Hope you're registered to vote in a state where he is on there. Or have legible handwriting. He he

...George W. Bush: 'Flip-Flops'!! (a.k.a. kettle calling the pot black)...

2004-10-20T09:01:00.000-07:00

VERY interesting!! It seems our so-called "great" president that likes to call 'flip-flop' on John Kerry is no stranger to flip-flopping himself!!! (I find it really funny how Bush can call flip-flop on someone and then do it himself!!) Read on! Oh, and as you read it, remember:

HE SAID IT!!!

President Bush: Flip-Flopper-In-Chief

September 2, 2004, Updated

From the beginning, George W. Bush has made his own credibility a central issue. On 10/11/00, then-Gov. Bush said: "I think credibility is important.It is going to be important for the president to be credible with Congress, important for the president to be credible with foreign nations." But President Bush's serial flip-flopping raises serious questions about whether Congress and foreign leaders can rely on what he says.

1. Social Security Surplus

BUSH PLEDGES NOT TO TOUCH SOCIAL SECURITY SURPLUS... "We're going to keep the promise of Social Security and keep the government from raiding the Social Security surplus." [President Bush, 3/3/01]

...BUSH SPENDS SOCIAL SECURITY SURPLUS The New York Times reported that "the president's new budget uses Social Security surpluses to pay for other programs every year through 2013, ultimately diverting more than $1.4 trillion in Social Security funds to other purposes." [The New York Times, 2/6/02]

2. Patient's Right to Sue

GOVERNOR BUSH VETOES PATIENTS' RIGHT TO SUE... "Despite his campaign rhetoric in favor of a patients' bill of rights, Bush fought such a bill tooth and nail as Texas governor, vetoing a bill coauthored by Republican state Rep. John Smithee in 1995. He... constantly opposed a patient's right to sue an HMO over coverage denied that resulted in adverse health effects." [Salon, 2/7/01]

...CANDIDATE BUSH PRAISES TEXAS PATIENTS' RIGHT TO SUE... "We're one of the first states that said you can sue an HMO for denying you proper coverage... It's time for our nation to come together and do what's right for the people. And I think this is right for the people. You know, I support a national patients' bill of rights, Mr. Vice President. And I want all people covered. I don't want the law to supersede good law like we've got in Texas." [Governor Bush, 10/17/00]

...PRESIDENT BUSH'S ADMINISTRATION ARGUES AGAINST RIGHT TO SUE "To let two Texas consumers, Juan Davila and Ruby R. Calad, sue their managed-care companies for wrongful denials of medical benefits ‘would be to completely undermine' federal law regulating employee benefits, Assistant Solicitor General James A. Feldman said at oral argument March 23. Moreover, the administration's brief attacked the policy rationale for Texas's law, which is similar to statutes on the books in nine other states." [Washington Post, 4/5/04]

3. Tobacco Buyout

BUSH SUPPORTS CURRENT TOBACCO FARMERS' QUOTA SYSTEM... "They've got the quota system in place -- the allotment system -- and I don't think that needs to be changed." [President Bush, 5/04]

...BUSH ADMINISTRATION WILL SUPPORT FEDERAL BUYOUT OF TOBACCO QUOTAS "The administration is open to a buyout." [White House spokeswoman Jeanie Mamo, 6/18/04]

4. North Korea

BUSH WILL NOT OFFER NUCLEAR NORTH KOREA INCENTIVES TO DISARM... "We developed a bold approach under which, if the North addressed our long-standing concerns, the United States was prepared to take important steps that would have significantly improved the lives of the North Korean people. Now that North Korea's covert nuclear weapons program has come to light, we are unable to pursue this approach." [President's Statement, 11/15/02]

...BUSH ADMINISTRATION OFFERS NORTH KOREA INCENTIVES TO DISARM"Well, we will work to take steps to ease their political and economic isolation. So there would be -- what you would see would be some provisional or temporary proposals that would only lead to lasting benefit after North Korea dismantles its nuclear programs. So there would be some provisional or temporary efforts of that nature." [White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, 6/23/04]

5. Abortion

BUSH SUPPORTS A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE... "Bush said he...favors leaving up to a woman and her doctor the abortion question." [The Nation, 6/15/00, quoting the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, 5/78]

...BUSH OPPOSES A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE "I am pro-life." [Governor Bush, 10/3/00]

6. OPEC

BUSH PROMISES TO FORCE OPEC TO LOWER PRICES... "What I think the president ought to do [when gas prices spike] is he ought to get on the phone with the OPEC cartel and say we expect you to open your spigots...And the president of the United States must jawbone OPEC members to lower the price." [President Bush, 1/26/00]

...BUSH REFUSES TO LOBBY OPEC LEADERS With gas prices soaring in the United States at the beginning of 2004, the Miami Herald reported the president refused to "personally lobby oil cartel leaders to change their minds." [Miami Herald, 4/1/04]

7. Iraq Funding

BUSH SPOKESMAN DENIES NEED FOR ADDITIONAL FUNDS FOR THE REST OF 2004... "We do not anticipate requesting supplemental funding for '04" [White House Budget Director Joshua Bolton, 2/2/04]

...BUSH REQUESTS ADDITIONAL FUNDS FOR IRAQ FOR 2004 "I am requesting that Congress establish a $25 billion contingency reserve fund for the coming fiscal year to meet all commitments to our troops." [President Bush, Statement by President, 5/5/04]

8. Condoleeza Rice Testimony

BUSH SPOKESMAN SAYS RICE WON'T TESTIFY AS 'A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE'... "Again, this is not her personal preference; this goes back to a matter of principle. There is a separation of powers issue involved here. Historically, White House staffers do not testify before legislative bodies. So it's a matter of principle, not a matter of preference." [White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, 3/9/04]

...BUSH ORDERS RICE TO TESTIFY: "Today I have informed the Commission on Terrorist Attacks Against the United States that my National Security Advisor, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, will provide public testimony." [President Bush, 3/30/04]

9. Science

BUSH PLEDGES TO ISSUE REGULATIONS BASED ON SCIENCE..."I think we ought to have high standards set by agencies that rely upon science, not by what may feel good or what sounds good." [then-Governor George W. Bush, 1/15/00]

...BUSH ADMINISTRATION REGULATIONS IGNORE SCIENCE "60 leading scientists—including Nobel laureates, leading medical experts, former federal agency directors and university chairs and presidents—issued a statement calling for regulatory and legislative action to restore scientific integrity to federal policymaking. According to the scientists, the Bush administration has, among other abuses, suppressed and distorted scientific analysis from federal agencies, and taken actions that have undermined the quality of scientific advisory panels." [Union of Concerned Scientists, 2/18/04]

10. Ahmed Chalabi

BUSH INVITES CHALABI TO STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS...President Bush also met with Chalabi during his brief trip to Iraq last Thanksgiving [White House Documents 1/20/04, 11/27/03]

...BUSH MILITARY ASSISTS IN RAID OF CHALABI'S HOUSE "U.S. soldiers raided the home of America's one-time ally Ahmad Chalabi on Thursday and seized documents and computers." [Washington Post, 5/20/04]

11. Department of Homeland Security

BUSH OPPOSES THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY..."So, creating a Cabinet office doesn't solve the problem. You still will have agencies within the federal government that have to be coordinated. So the answer is that creating a Cabinet post doesn't solve anything." [White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, 3/19/02]

...BUSH SUPPORTS THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY "So tonight, I ask the Congress to join me in creating a single, permanent department with an overriding and urgent mission: securing the homeland of America and protecting the American people." [President Bush, Address to the Nation, 6/6/02]

12. Weapons of Mass Destruction

BUSH SAYS WE FOUND THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION..."We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories...for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them." [President Bush, Interview in Poland, 5/29/03]

...BUSH SAYS WE HAVEN'T FOUND WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION "David Kay has found the capacity to produce weapons.And when David Kay goes in and says we haven't found stockpiles yet, and there's theories as to where the weapons went. They could have been destroyed during the war. Saddam and his henchmen could have destroyed them as we entered into Iraq. They could be hidden. They could have been transported to another country, and we'll find out." [President Bush, Meet the Press, 2/7/04]

13. Free Trade

BUSH SUPPORTS FREE TRADE... "I believe strongly that if we promote trade, and when we promote trade, it will help workers on both sides of this issue." [President Bush in Peru, 3/23/02]

...BUSH SUPPORTS RESTRICTIONS ON TRADE "In a decision largely driven by his political advisers, President Bush set aside his free-trade principles last year and imposed heavy tariffs on imported steel to help out struggling mills in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, two states crucial for his reelection." [Washington Post, 9/19/03]

14. Osama Bin Laden

BUSH WANTS OSAMA DEAD OR ALIVE... "I want justice. And there's an old poster out West, I recall, that says, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.'" [President Bush, on Osama Bin Laden, 09/17/01]

...BUSH DOESN'T CARE ABOUT OSAMA "I don't know where he is.You know, I just don't spend that much time on him... I truly am not that concerned about him."[President Bush, Press Conference, 3/13/02]

15. The Environment

BUSH SUPPORTS MANDATORY CAPS ON CARBON DIOXIDE... "[If elected], Governor Bush will work to...establish mandatory reduction targets for emissions of four main pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide." [Bush Environmental Plan, 9/29/00]

...BUSH OPPOSES MANDATORY CAPS ON CARBON DIOXIDE "I do not believe, however, that the government should impose on power plants mandatory emissions reductions for carbon dioxide, which is not a 'pollutant' under the Clean Air Act." [President Bush, Letter to Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), 3/13/03]

16. WMD Commission

BUSH RESISTS AN OUTSIDE INVESTIGATION ON WMD INTELLIGENCE FAILURE... "The White House immediately turned aside the calls from Kay and many Democrats for an immediate outside investigation, seeking to head off any new wide-ranging election-year inquiry that might go beyond reports already being assembled by congressional committees and the Central Intelligence Agency." [NY Times, 1/29/04]

...BUSH SUPPORTS AN OUTSIDE INVESTIGATION ON WMD INTELLIGENCE FAILURE "Today, by executive order, I am creating an independent commission, chaired by Governor and former Senator Chuck Robb, Judge Laurence Silberman, to look at American intelligence capabilities, especially our intelligence about weapons of mass destruction." [President Bush, 2/6/04]

17. Creation of the 9/11 Commission

BUSH OPPOSES CREATION OF INDEPENDENT 9/11 COMMISSION... "President Bush took a few minutes during his trip to Europe Thursday to voice his opposition to establishing a special commission to probe how the government dealt with terror warnings before Sept. 11." [CBS News, 5/23/02]

...BUSH SUPPORTS CREATION OF INDEPENDENT 9/11 COMMISSION "President Bush said today he now supports establishing an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks." [ABC News, 09/20/02]

18. Time Extension for 9/11 Commission

BUSH OPPOSES TIME EXTENSION FOR 9/11 COMMISSION... "President Bush and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) have decided to oppose granting more time to an independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks." [Washington Post, 1/19/04]

...BUSH SUPPORTS TIME EXTENSION FOR 9/11 COMMISSION "The White House announced Wednesday its support for a request from the commission investigating the September 11, 2001 attacks for more time to complete its work." [CNN, 2/4/04]

19. One Hour Limit for 9/11 Commission Testimony

BUSH LIMITS TESTIMONY IN FRONT OF 9/11 COMMISSION TO ONE HOUR... "President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have placed strict limits on the private interviews they will grant to the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, saying that they will meet only with the panel's top two officials and that Mr. Bush will submit to only a single hour of questioning, commission members said Wednesday." [NY Times, 2/26/04]

...BUSH SETS NO TIMELIMIT FOR TESTIMONY "The president's going to answer all of the questions they want to raise. Nobody's watching the clock." [White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 3/10/04]

20. Gay Marriage

BUSH SAYS GAY MARRIAGE IS A STATE ISSUE... "The state can do what they want to do. Don't try to trap me in this state's issue like you're trying to get me into." [Gov. George W. Bush on Gay Marriage, Larry King Live, 2/15/00]

...BUSH SUPPORTS CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT BANNING GAY MARRIAGE "Today I call upon the Congress to promptly pass, and to send to the states for ratification, an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of man and woman as husband and wife." [President Bush, 2/24/04]

21. Nation Building

BUSH OPPOSES NATION BUILDING... "If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road." [Gov. George W. Bush, 10/3/00]

...BUSH SUPPORTS NATION BUILDING "We will be changing the regime of Iraq, for the good of the Iraqi people." [President Bush, 3/6/03]

22. Saddam/al Qaeda Link

BUSH SAYS IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEEN AL QAEDA AND SADDAM... "You can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror." [President Bush, 9/25/02]

...BUSH SAYS SADDAM HAD NO ROLE IN AL QAEDA PLOT "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in Sept. 11." [President Bush, 9/17/03]

23. U.N. Resolution

BUSH VOWS TO HAVE A UN VOTE NO MATTER WHAT... "No matter what the whip count is, we're calling for the vote. We want to see people stand up and say what their opinion is about Saddam Hussein and the utility of the United Nations Security Council. And so, you bet. It's time for people to show their cards, to let the world know where they stand when it comes to Saddam." [President Bush 3/6/03]

...BUSH WITHDRAWS REQUEST FOR VOTE "At a National Security Council meeting convened at the White House at 8:55 a.m., Bush finalized the decision to withdraw the resolution from consideration and prepared to deliver an address to the nation that had already been written." [Washington Post, 3/18/03]

24. Involvement in the Palestinian Conflict

BUSH OPPOSES SUMMITS... "Well, we've tried summits in the past, as you may remember. It wasn't all that long ago where a summit was called and nothing happened, and as a result we had significant intifada in the area." [President Bush, 04/05/02]

...BUSH SUPPORTS SUMMITS "If a meeting advances progress toward two states living side by side in peace, I will strongly consider such a meeting. I'm committed to working toward peace in the Middle East." [President Bush, 5/23/03]

25. Campaign Finance

BUSH OPPOSES MCCAIN-FEINGOLD... "George W. Bush opposes McCain-Feingold...as an infringement on free expression." [Washington Post, 3/28/2000]

...BUSH SIGNS MCCAIN-FEINGOLD INTO LAW "[T]his bill improves the current system of financing for Federal campaigns, and therefore I have signed it into law." [President Bush, at the McCain-Feingold signing ceremony, 03/27/02]

26. 527s

Bush opposes restrictions on 527s: "I also have reservations about the constitutionality of the broad ban on issue advertising [in McCain Feingold], which restrains the speech of a wide variety of groups on issues of public import." [President Bush, 3/27/02]

…Bush says 527s bad for system: "I don't think we ought to have 527s. I can't be more plain about it…I think they're bad for the system. That's why I signed the bill, McCain-Feingold." [President Bush, 8/23/04]

27. Medical Records

Bush says medical records must remain private: "I believe that we must protect…the right of every American to have confidence that his or her personal medical records will remain private." [President Bush, 4/12/01]

…Bush says patients' histories are not confidntial: The Justice Department…asserts that patients "no longer possess a reasonable expectation that their histories will remain completely confidential." [BusinessWeek, 4/30/04]

28. Timelines For Dictators

Bush sets timeline for Saddam: "If Iraq does not accept the terms within a week of passage or fails to disclose required information within 30 days, the resolution authorizes 'all necessary means' to force compliance--in other words, a military attack." [LA Times, 10/3/02]

…Bush says he's against timelines: "I don't think you give timelines to dictators." [President Bush, 8/27/04]

29. The Great Lakes

Bush wants to divert great lakes: "Even though experts say 'diverting any water from the Great Lakes region sets a bad precedent' Bush 'said he wants to talk to Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien about piping water to parched states in the west and southwest.'– [AP, 7/19/01]

Bush says he'll never divert Great Lakes: "We've got to use our resources wisely, like water. It starts with keeping the Great Lakes water in the Great Lakes Basin...My position is clear: We're never going to allow diversion of Great Lakes water." [President Bush, 8/16/04]

30. Winning The War On Terror

Bush claims he can win the war on terror: "One of the interesting things people ask me, now that we're asking questions, is, can you ever win the war on terror? Of course, you can." [President Bush, 4/13/04]

…Bush says war on terror is unwinnable: "I don't think you can win [the war on terror]." [President Bush, 8/30/04]

…Bush says he will win the war on terror: "Make no mistake about it, we are winning and we will win [the war on terror]." [President Bush, 8/31/04]

...GOP: At It Again...

2004-10-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

GOP Ramps Up Voter Suppression Efforts

October 19, 2004

The GOP's transparent efforts to suppress voters reached new heights in the last two weeks. A "voter registration" front group—funded by the Republican National Committee—is under criminal investigation in Nevada and Oregon for allegedly destroying Democratic registration forms. Republican operatives working on behalf of the president's reelection campaign attempted to move 63 polling precincts in Philadelphia last Friday, 53 of which had white populations less than 10 percent. With more of the same likely to come between now and Election Day, voters should remain vigilant.

Vote early and be sure to bring identification. Voters should take advantage of early voting opportunities (offered in 31 states) to avoid any last minute pitfalls or problems. And although many states do not require id to vote, citizens should bring valid identification just to be safe and protect their vote.

Don't let right wing suppression efforts keep you from voting. The best way for citizens to fight back against organized efforts to block the right to vote is to turn out in droves. Millions of voters can overwhelm even the worst "dirty tricks."

Report any problems at the polling place to the Election Protection hotline at (866) OUR-VOTE. Election Protection is a nationwide program run by civil rights and voting rights groups to safeguard your right to cast a ballot on or before Election Day. Don't hesitate to call this number if you experience any difficulties at the polls.

Daily Talking Points is a product of the American Progress Action Fund.

Hmmm...I gotta tell you guys...I think that's absolute bullshit. What do you guys think?

...Anti-Kerry Film Denied Punch (Thank God They Have Sense)...

2004-10-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

Sinclair: Stations won't run entire anti-Kerry film

Wednesday, October 20, 2004 Posted: 5:41 AM EDT (0941 GMT)

(CNN) -- Sinclair Broadcast Group announced Tuesday its television stations won't run in its entirety a documentary attacking Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry and said reports that it had planned to do so were incorrect.

The announcement from the Maryland-based company followed two weeks of intense criticism from Democrats and from its own Washington bureau chief, who was fired Monday after he told The Baltimore Sun the decision to air the 45-minute film as a news program was "biased political propaganda."

The film, "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal," features former American prisoners of war blasting Kerry's Vietnam-era antiwar activism, particularly his 1971 testimony before a Senate committee in which the decorated Navy officer recounted allegations of atrocities by U.S. troops.

Sinclair said Tuesday it will air a special news program, called "A POW Story," that will include the documentary's allegations against Kerry in a "broader discussion." The company said 40 of its 62 stations will air the program, including stations in the presidential swing states of Ohio, Florida, Iowa and Wisconsin.

"Contrary to numerous inaccurate political and press accounts, the Sinclair stations will not be airing the documentary 'Stolen Honor' in its entirety," the company said in a written statement. "At no time did Sinclair ever publicly announce that it intended to do so."

The film, by journalist Carlton Sherwood, is backed by the anti-Kerry veterans group Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth. The group has accused Kerry of lying about his Vietnam combat record and harming U.S. prisoners as an antiwar activist by recounting allegations of war crimes by U.S. troops to a Senate committee.

Sinclair had ordered its television stations to pre-empt regular programming to air the program based on "Stolen Honor." But it said Tuesday that it had prominently noted throughout the controversy that "the exact format of this unscripted event has not been finalized."

"The news special will focus in part on the use of documentaries and other media to influence voting, which emerged during the 2004 political campaigns, as well as on the content of certain of these documentaries," a corporate statement said. "The program will also examine the role of the media in filtering the information contained in these documentaries, allegations of media bias by media organizations that ignore or filter legitimate news and the attempts by candidates and other organizations to influence media coverage."

Jon Leiberman, the Sinclair reporter fired for publicly criticizing the company's handling of the documentary, said Sinclair executives told its news staff Sunday that they planned to run a "significant chunk" of the film, "but they refused to put a time on it." He said he objected when the company told reporters to develop news stories around the film.

"They were going to have the news department take an active role in framing this documentary as a news item," Leiberman said.

Leiberman, who said he has seen "Stolen Honor," called the film "very inflammatory."

"It's a presentation of some of what a number of POWs have to say about how they were tortured because of what John Kerry said in 1971, and they make a direct link between the treatment and torture they received and John Kerry's statements. It wouldn't be considered objective by any means."

He said his objections stemmed from Sinclair's efforts to build a news program around the movie, which he warned would damage the company's journalistic credibility.

"It seems like they're backing off, but we won't know until we see what's on the air on Friday," Leiberman said. "If they do back off, I honestly believe it's because of all the pressure."

Sinclair's stations reach about a quarter of U.S. households. Its top executives have donated at least $58,000 to President Bush's re-election campaign or the Republican National Committee for the 2004 election. Democrats said Sinclair would have been making an illegal campaign contribution to Bush's re-election effort by airing the film. Some stockholders have raised questions about the decision as well, and some Wall Street analysts have blamed the controversy for recent declines in the company's stock value.

Leiberman was dismissed for violating company policy when he repeated his complaints to The Sun. Company spokesman Mark Hyman, whose conservative commentaries are included in news programming Sinclair produces for its stations, said Leiberman was breaking silence because of his "political views."

"We have no further comment on the actions of a disgruntled employee or an ongoing personnel matter," Hyman said in a statement to CNN Monday night. "Viewers can grade Leiberman's opinion versus the reality when the finished product is aired."

...Election Issues: Where Both Bush & Kerry Stand...

2004-10-20T08:48:00.000-07:00

I thought I’d take a moment to compare where the candidates stand on the issues revolving around this election. Once again, I have taken the time to gather this information so YOU don’t have to do it. And, many think Kerry doesn’t have a solid stance on several issues. Read on for the low-down. I didn’t include Nader, because seriously, he has no chance of winning (as is the case with all third parties); and the best part, I kept it short and sweet for you:

CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUES

Affirmative Action:
Kerry: Supports affirmative action policies
Bush: Has both opposed and supported affirmative action

Gay Marriage:
Kerry: Against gay marriage, backs benefits, rights for gay couples
Bush: Backs constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage

Gays In The Military:
Kerry: Favors allowing gay men and women to serve openly in military
Bush: Supports "don't ask, don't tell" policy

Gay Adoption:
Kerry: Supports adoption by gay men and lesbians
Bush: Opposes gay adoptions

Hate Crime Legislation:
Kerry: Expand federal hate crimes legislation, assure equal justice
Bush: Opposes expanding federal law to cover sexual orientation

DEFENSE ISSUES

National Missile Defense:
Kerry: Opposes NMD, supports nonproliferation and arms control
Bush: Has ordered limited NMD system deployed by 2004

Increase Size Of Army
Kerry: Recruit more service members; start Community Defense Svc.
Bush: Has not proposed increasing the Army's size

Program Budgets
Kerry: Invest in new equipment, technology; offer better pay, benefits
Bush: Would increase military spending 4.2 percent to $380 billion

ENVIRONMENT & ENERGY ISSUES

Drilling In ANWR:
Kerry: Opposes oil exploration in Arctic refuge
Bush: Favors opening refuge for gas and oil exploration, drilling

Alternative Fuels:
Kerry: Promotes clean, renewable fuel sources, especially ethanol
Bush: Proposed $1.7 billion to develop hydrogen-powered fuel cells

Energy Policy:
Kerry: Set goals, incentives to reduce dependence on fossil fuels
Bush: Supports market-based solution to improve air quality

Gas Mileage Requirements:
Kerry: Push new gas requirements, hybrid cars, hydrogen fuel
Bush: Supports 1.5 mpg increase for SUVs, light trucks by 2007

HEALTHCARE ISSUES

Drug Costs:
Kerry: Close loopholes; financial incentives to lower drug costs
Bush: Supports reducing drug costs for low-income patients

Medicare Solvency:
Kerry: Fund all health care by rescinding tax cuts, cutting waste
Bush: Introduce private sector competition to reduce costs

Prescription Drugs Benefit:
Kerry: Tighten rules on drug companies; focus on seniors, vets
Bush: Supports adding drug benefit to Medicare

Nationalized Health Care:
Kerry: Let people buy into govt. system, fund by reversing Tax cuts
Bush: Favors improving current system over government-based system

Sue HMOs:
Kerry: Allow patients to sue HMOs, collect money for damages
Bush: Would place limits on patient lawsuits against HMOs

HOMELAND SECURITY ISSUES

Enemy Combatants:
Kerry: Against labeling U.S. citizens "enemy combatants"
Bush: Supports labeling of U.S. citizens as "enemy combatants"

Patriot Act:
Kerry: Backs letting act expire without congressional approval
Bush: Supports Patriot Act

Immigration:
Kerry: Speed immigration process; unite families; patrol borders
Bush: Proposed increasing budget to enforce immigration laws

Intelligence Agencies:
Kerry: Reform domestic intelligence; start targeted alert system
Bush: Homeland Security Dept. primary conduit of threat information

INTERNATIONAL POLICY ISSUES

War In Iraq:
Kerry: Supported the war; later said Bush misled nation
Bush: Authorized war to oust Saddam Hussein regime

Iraqi Reconstruction:
Kerry: Involve other nations more in Iraqi rebuilding, security
Bush: Initially opposed U.N. involvement; now warming to idea

Pre-Emption Policy:
Kerry: Denounces threat of pre-emption; would seek global consensus
Bush: Announced new policy of pre-emption in June 2002

Afghanistan:
Kerry: Boost international efforts to secure peace, beat al Qaeda
Bush: More than $1 billion proposed for reconstruction

Middle East:
Kerry: Improve social, economic, political conditions in region
Bush: Co-sponsored "Road map" plan for peace process

SOCIAL ISSUES

Abortion:
Kerry: Supports a woman's right to an abortion; planning resources
Bush: Opposes except cases of rape, incest or to save woman's life

Death Penalty:
Kerry: Opposes death penalty
Bush: Supports death penalty

Drug Policy:
Kerry: More police; aggressively target traffickers; fund treatment
Bush: Reduce illegal drug usage by 10 percent over two years

Gun Control:
Kerry: Close gun show loophole; require child safety locks
Bush: Protect gunmakers from lawsuits

Education Reform:
Kerry: Bar vouchers; fully fund NCLB, special ed., school building
Bush: Signed NCLB; federal budget has not fully funded legislation

Supreme Court:
Kerry: Appoint judges committed to law, civil and abortion rights
Bush: Has cited Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia as model justices

TAXES & SPENDING

Social Security:
Kerry: Opposes privatizing Social Security
Bush: Supports investing some Social Security taxes in stocks

State Fiscal Crisis:
Kerry: Give priority to giving states fiscal aid to resolve crises
Bush: Allocated funds to help states pay increased security costs

Tax Cuts:
Kerry: Repeal tax cuts for wealthy; increase child tax credit
Bush: Signed two tax cut bills so far; more tax cuts unlikely

Budget Deficits:
Kerry: Undo deficit trend with eye on corporate loopholes, spending
Bush: Reduce deficit by holding spending increases to 4 percent

Job Creation:
Kerry: Assist small businesses; train workers; infrastructure jobs
Bush: Says 2001, 2003 tax cuts have helped keep economy going