William Rivers Pitt's Place

[Boomer Chick]

Brain Dead, Made of Money, No Future at All
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

www.truthout.org/docs_04/081704A.shtml

Tuesday 17 August 2004

To: George W. Bush
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear George:

A pretty awful joke has been making the rounds lately. Some might say it's an awful joke because of the comparison. Most, however, think it's an awful joke because it isn't funny. It's too close to the truth to be funny.

The joke: What is the difference between President George W. Bush and President Ted Bundy?

The answer: Bush killed more people than Bundy.

See? I told you it was a terrible joke. On the one hand, it is in poor taste by commonly accepted standards to compare a sitting President to a notorious serial killer. On the other hand, though, the 943 dead American soldiers in Iraq, the more than ten thousand dead Iraqi civilians, the more than five thousand dead civilians in Afghanistan, and let's not forget the large crowd of Americans you toddled off to the Texas killing bottle while Governor, pretty much means you have left Mr. Bundy in the deep shade when it comes to the body count.

There is, of course, the nearly 3,000 dead Americans from September 11th. The 9/11 Commission broke out some buckets of whitewash, and like a group of dutiful Tom Sawyers, painted over the grim realities of that day. It couldn't be stopped, they said in their report. People like Richard Clarke, Sibel Edmonds and the families of the lost who know more about the events of that day than anyone on the planet, disagree.

"Two planes hitting the twin towers did not rise to the level of Rumsfeld's leaving his office and going to the War Room? How can that be?" asked Mindy Kleinberg, a 9/11 widow who has become a leader in the truth movement. The thing is, Mindy, Mr. Rumsfeld was probably fine-tuning the Iraq invasion plan he'd been working on for years. He is, after all, a professional.

Three more American kids got killed in Iraq today, George. That makes 30 dead American soldiers in the first 16 days of August. That's thirty more names to be added to the commemorative wall which will appear somewhere in Washington DC someday. Thirty more etchings in ebon stone, thirty more people who would not now be dead but for your decisions and your actions and your appalling dishonesty.

I'm pretty bored with those commonly accepted standards that are supposed to be applied in the treatment of a sitting President. Too many people have been playing patty-cake with you over the last three years, George. Too many journalists looking to keep their sweet seat in the press crunch at the White House, too many television news anchors who think research and context is for other people, too many media outlet owners - read: 'massive corporations' - whose profit margins are intimately wed to your suicidal policies, and, frankly, too many politicians for the 'loyal opposition' who have been tested in the forge of true crisis these last years, and been found to be sorely wanting.

So let's not have any patty-cake between us, George. Let's get down to brass tacks. Your people compared Senator Max Cleland to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein during the 2002 midterm campaign. Cleland left two legs and an arm in Vietnam, but your people did that to him anyway. A little hard talk, East Texas style, shouldn't be anything new to you.

A wiser man once wrote this:

"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure...if, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I can see it, if you don't.'"

The wiser man who wrote these words was Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to his law partner Billy Hendron. Lincoln wrote this letter in 1848 while serving in the House of Representatives, years before he himself would assume the office of the Presidency. Lincoln became, in the fullness of time, a war President who unwillingly inherited his war, and then pursued it with grim determination.

He summoned Generals like Ulysses Grant, whose essential demeanor, in the words of Civil War historian Bruce Catton, "was that of a man who had made up his mind to drive his head through a stone wall." From March of 1864 to April of 1865, Grant used the mighty Army of the Potomac as Lincoln's merciless fist, until the white flags were raised over bloodied ground at Appomattox.

Lincoln was a war President who won his war, though the fighting of it was not his choice. He fought the enemies arrayed before him, and did not invent enemies out of whole cloth. Imagine Lincoln, faced with the Confederate insurrection, deciding to undertake an invasion of Greenland. He would have been laughed out of the White House. That's basically what you've done in Iraq.

You fancy yourself a war President, right? "I'm a war President," you said on television not long ago. "I make decisions in the Oval Office with war on my mind." Your war in Iraq is a war of choice, not of necessity. It had nothing to do with September 11, weapons of mass destruction, or bringing democracy to the Iraqi people. It had nothing to do with defending the American people.

Your boys wanted to get paid. Cash money on the barrelhead for Halliburton, right? Almost twelve billion dollars they've made to this point. Hey, it's good work if you can get it. All you had to do was use September 11th against your own people for months, scare them to death, denigrate the work of the weapons inspectors you agreed to send in there, flap around some claims about weapons of mass destruction (26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX gas, per your own words from your 2003 State of the Union Address), and then fly onto an aircraft carrier and declare victory while your people were still dying.

As if that wasn't bad enough, you're also losing your war of choice.

Hard to believe, isn't it? Your daddy rolled up Iraq like a windowshade when it was his turn at the big wheel. Your daddy made it look easy, which is perhaps why you thought you could take care of business over there on the cheap. Do you have trouble looking daddy in the eyes these days?

Right now, the soldiers you sent into harm's way are fighting a running battle in the holy city of Najaf, which is home to the Shrine to Ali. Ali, in case you didn't know, is considered to be the legitimate heir to Mohammed himself by followers of the Shi'ite faith. Shi'ites all around the world - millions of them in places like Iran and India and right here in America - are reacting to this action in the same way Catholic parishioners in Boston would react if someone rolled tanks on the Vatican. If you so much as chip the paint on that shrine, you're going to unite yet another group of people in explosive rage against the United States.

The gap between you and Abraham Lincoln is so wide, George, that it cannot be measured by any scientific instruments currently known to modern science. Abe had you pegged, though, 156 years ago. You were allowed to make war at your pleasure, and the world entire is desperately wondering how you can be stopped.

You might have heard, George, about a fellow named Hugo Chavez winning the referendum on his Presidency in Venezuela. Millions of poor people flooded out of the hills to cast their votes for him, because he uses his nation's oil revenues to pay for their food and education. Quite a novel idea, yes? How many schools could we have built - schools like citadels - with the twelve billion dollars you have thrown at Halliburton? How many hungry people in your own country could have been fed? How many jobs programs could have been funded? How many catastrophically polluted Superfund sites could have been cleaned?

That apparently wasn't on your program, George. You have eviscerated OSHA regulations - those pesky things that keep workers from getting injured and killed on the job - because you want to appear 'business-friendly.' The $1.5 million you got from the chemical industry in campaign funding compelled you to lower the safety standards for chemicals used in the production of superconductors, chemicals that are believed to cause miscarriages in pregnant workers. You eliminated overtime pay for six million workers, going so far as to have tips for employers posted on your administration's Labor Department website which will help them screw employees out of the wages they earn. You have obliterated environmental protections across the board.

[Boomer Chick]

The list goes on. For a man who fashions his political persona as a "regular fella," you have delivered a large screwing to the real regular fellas who are going to have to plow through the wreckage you've left in your wake.

I worry about you, George. You live in a stark black-and-white world, and you actually think God speaks to you. There are a lot of people in padded rooms, wearing coats that button up the back, because they have had similar delusions. You see monsters everywhere. Some of them do exist, to be sure, but I am forced to remember the words of Frederich Nietzsche: "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you."

You have become a monster, George, and the abyss is staring into your eyes. I wonder what it sees there. I know what I see.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.'

-------

[Boomer Chick]

Your Children are Burning
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Tuesday 24 August 2004

Ladybug! Ladybug!
Fly away home.
Your house is on fire,
And your children all gone.

- Children's nursery rhyme, author unknown

The presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and John Kerry are at each other's throats like dogs in a fighting pit over a war that ended 29 years ago. The mainstream news media, along with the alternative news media, have enjoyed watching the show, dutifully reporting every detail and nuance of the fiery exchanges between the camps.

Somewhere in these last 24 days of August, however, while arguing over a three-decades-old war, we managed to forget that another war is happening. Here are some details that have been missed:

Army Spc. Armando Hernandez, age 22; Army Spc. Anthony J. Dixon, age 20;Marine Cpl. Dean P. Pratt, age 22; Army Spc. Justin B. Onwordi, age 28; Marine Sgt. Juan Calderon Jr., age 26; Army Pfc. Harry N. Shondee, Jr., age 19; Marine Capt. Gregory A Ratzlaff, age 36; Army Sgt. Tommy L. Gray, age 34; Marine Lance Cpl. Joseph L. Nice, age 19; Marine Gunnery Sgt. Elia P. Fontecchio, age 30; Army Spc. Donald R. McCune, age 20; Marine Sgt. Moses D. Rocha, age 33; Army Pfc. Raymond J. Faulstich Jr., age 24; Marine Sgt. Yadir G. Reynoso, age 27; Marine Lance Cpl. Larry L. Wells, age 22; Army Spc. Joshua I. Bunch, age 23; Marine Cpl. Roberto Abad, age 22; Army Pfc. David L. Potter, age 22; Marine Lance Cpl. Jonathan W. Collins, age 19; Army Capt. Andrew R. Houghton, age 25; Marine Lance Cpl. Tavon L. Hubbard, age 24; Marine Staff Sgt. John R. Howard, age 26; Army Capt. Michael Yury Tarlavsky, age 30; Marine Lance Cpl. Kane M. Funke, age 20; Marine Lance Cpl. Nicholas B. Morrison, age 23; Army 1st Lt. Neil Anthony Santoriello, age 24; Marine Corps Pfc. Geoffrey Perez, age 24; Marine Corps Pfc. Fernando B. Hannon, age 19; Army Spc. Mark Anthony Zapata, age 27; Army 2nd Lt. James Michael Goins, age 23; Army Sgt. Daniel Michael Shepherd, age 23; Army Pfc. Brandon R. Sapp, age 21; Army Sgt. David M. Heath, age 30; Army Spc. Brandon T. Titus, age 20; Marine Lance Cpl. Caleb J. Powers, age 21; Army Spc. Jacob D. Martir, age 21; Marine Sgt. Harvey E. Parkerson III, age 27; Marine Lance Cpl. Dustin R. Fitzgerald, age 22; Army Pfc. Henry C. Risner, age 26; Pfc. Kevin A. Cuming, age 22; 1st Lt. Charles L. Wilkins III, age 38; Pfc. Ryan A. Martin, age 22.

That is the list of dead American soldiers in Iraq from the last 24 days. That is August, so far. Two other American soldiers - Army Sgt. Bobby E. Beasley, age 36, and Army Staff Sgt. Craig W. Cherry, age 39 - were killed in Afghanistan by an improvised explosive device on August 7th. We don't talk about that war anymore, either. 964 dead American soldiers, 52 since August 1st.

522 days ago, the administration of George W. Bush began the 'Shock and Awe' bombing campaign in Iraq, an opening salvo that has broadened into a conflict which has left well over ten thousand innocent Iraqi civilians dead. According to the rhetoric that loosed those bombs 74 weeks ago, we went into Iraq because:

Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX gas, 30,000 munitions to deliver these agents, unmanned aerial drones to deliver these agents, mobile biological weapons labs, and uranium 'yellowcake' from Niger for use in the development of nuclear bombs.


The Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein enjoyed operational relationships with Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorists, and were involved in the attacks of September 11. Because of this relationship, Hussein would happily hand over the aforementioned weapons of mass destruction for bin Laden to use against the United States.


The Iraqi people desperately want a democratic government, and will welcome the United States as liberators.


Saddam Hussein was a bad man.

Let's take these one at a time.

No weapons of mass destruction have been found. The few 'unmanned aerial drones' were pathetic model-airplane specimens apparently made from tongue depressors and Q-tips, none of which had a prayer off getting off the ground. The 'mobile biological weapons labs' were in fact helium weather balloon launching platforms sold to Iraq by the British in the 1980s. The 'yellowcake' story was based upon fabricated evidence, and has led to a political scandal involving the exposure of a deep-cover CIA agent whose husband had the gall to call Bush a liar in the public prints.


No relationship whatsoever has been established between Hussein and bin Laden. In fact, bin Laden despised Hussein because Hussein was a self-styled Socialist, Godless to the core, who killed every Islamic fundamentalist he could get his hands on. The U.S. has, in fact, done bin Laden a great service by disposing of his Iraqi enemy. Now, the stage is set for an Islamic fundamentalist takeover of Iraq, something bin Laden would very much like to see. As for Hussein giving bin Laden weapons of mass destruction, well...you can't give what you don't have.


It is entirely possible the Iraqi people would have embraced democracy, if that is what Bush's plan actually had in mind. Unfortunately for them, the whole push for democracy was a farce to begin with; Bush wanted to establish a government-by-remote-control in Iraq, so as to maintain control of the oil fields and the development of military bases. In a nation where the Shia enjoy a 60% majority, a democratic vote would have elected a Shia government, which would have then had the temerity to act as it pleased, regardless of American desires. It was never going to happen, and it never will happen, so long as Bush's people man the stick.


Saddam Hussein was indeed a bad man, whose fortunes were created and augmented by the U.S. government over a period of 20 years. We knew he was developing and using chemical weapons. We helped him do it. We didn't care, so long as he was gassing Iranians. Beyond that, the math is pretty straightforward. If the U.S. is going to adopt an Invade Every Country Run By A Bad Man foreign policy doctrine, everyone reading these words who approves of the notion better haul ass down to their local military recruiting office. We're going to need every warm body we can get. How about you, and right now. Go.

These guys went:

[Boomer Chick]

Army Spc. Armando Hernandez, age 22; Army Spc. Anthony J. Dixon, age 20;Marine Cpl. Dean P. Pratt, age 22; Army Spc. Justin B. Onwordi, age 28; Marine Sgt. Juan Calderon Jr., age 26; Army Pfc. Harry N. Shondee, Jr., age 19; Marine Capt. Gregory A Ratzlaff, age 36; Army Sgt. Tommy L. Gray, age 34; Marine Lance Cpl. Joseph L. Nice, age 19; Marine Gunnery Sgt. Elia P. Fontecchio, age 30; Army Spc. Donald R. McCune, age 20; Marine Sgt. Moses D. Rocha, age 33; Army Pfc. Raymond J. Faulstich Jr., age 24; Marine Sgt. Yadir G. Reynoso, age 27; Marine Lance Cpl. Larry L. Wells, age 22; Army Spc. Joshua I. Bunch, age 23; Marine Cpl. Roberto Abad, age 22; Army Pfc. David L. Potter, age 22; Marine Lance Cpl. Jonathan W. Collins, age 19; Army Capt. Andrew R. Houghton, age 25; Marine Lance Cpl. Tavon L. Hubbard, age 24; Marine Staff Sgt. John R. Howard, age 26; Army Capt. Michael Yury Tarlavsky, age 30; Marine Lance Cpl. Kane M. Funke, age 20; Marine Lance Cpl. Nicholas B. Morrison, age 23; Army 1st Lt. Neil Anthony Santoriello, age 24; Marine Corps Pfc. Geoffrey Perez, age 24; Marine Corps Pfc. Fernando B. Hannon, age 19; Army Spc. Mark Anthony Zapata, age 27; Army 2nd Lt. James Michael Goins, age 23; Army Sgt. Daniel Michael Shepherd, age 23; Army Pfc. Brandon R. Sapp, age 21; Army Sgt. David M. Heath, age 30; Army Spc. Brandon T. Titus, age 20; Marine Lance Cpl. Caleb J. Powers, age 21; Army Spc. Jacob D. Martir, age 21; Marine Sgt. Harvey E. Parkerson III, age 27; Marine Lance Cpl. Dustin R. Fitzgerald, age 22; Army Pfc. Henry C. Risner, age 26; Pfc. Kevin A. Cuming, age 22; 1st Lt. Charles L. Wilkins III, age 38; Pfc. Ryan A. Martin, age 22.

Now they are dead. They never found weapons of mass destruction, they never found a connection between Saddam and 9/11, they never got the chance to create a democracy, and they were never fully informed that part of their mission was the removal from power of a former employee of the United States government.

In Iraq today, 780,000 cubic yards of human and industrial waste is dumped into the Diyala River every day by one sewage plant. The Diyala joins the Tigris seven miles downstream. There isn't anything the plant can do about it; it is shattered from the war. Power, water, road, health care and educational infrastructures are completely wrecked. The World Bank estimates that it will cost $55 billion to repair all of this damage, and it will take over four years to do it.

$24 billion in U.S. tax money has been allocated to 'rebuild' Iraq. According to Christian Parenti, who has reported from Iraq on the reconstruction process for The Nation magazine, "Only $5.3 billion had been allocated to specific reconstruction contracts as of late June 2004. According to a report from the White House Office of Management and Budget, of the $18.4 billion reconstruction honey-pot approved last fall only $366 million had been spent by late June - that is, invested in Iraq. Instead of creating 250,000 jobs for Iraqis, as was the original goal, at most 24,000 local workers have been hired."

"Most amazing of all," writes Parenti, "the OMB report showed that not a single cent of US tax money had been spent on Iraqi healthcare, water treatment or sanitation projects - though $9 million was dithered away on administrative costs of the now defunct Coalition Provisional Authority. Most of the little that has been invested in healthcare, water treatment and sanitation has come from Iraqi oil revenues, managed for most of last year by the Development Fund for Iraq, a US controlled successor to the UN-run Oil for Food program. In all, the CPA spent roughly $19 billion of Iraqi oil money - on what exactly is not quite clear."

And we wonder why there is an 'insurgency.' We wonder why a nobody named Moqtada al-Sadr has emerged as an Iraqi version of Thomas Jefferson, fighting the good fight against imperial usurpers. We wonder why so many Iraqis flock to his banner, pick up a weapon, and shoot Americans.

Sit in the dark for a year, be unemployed because all the jobs have gone to non-Iraqis, have no place to see your children schooled, have no place to bring your children if they get sick, drink water that tastes like something you squeezed into your toilet, and stand a good chance whenever you step outside of being shot by a sniper, blown up by a laser-guided bomb, or run down by a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and you might think about picking up a weapon, too.

This is how terrorists and suicide bombers are created. Desperation is the seed, time is the fertilizer, and rage is the crop reaped by American soldiers sent far from home to die because they were lied to, as were we all.

This is, perhaps, the most galling aspect of the whole Swift Boat Veterans nonsense. It has distracted us from realizing that our children still burn in Iraq, while simultaneously insulting every veteran who was given a medal for service in action. It implies that medals awarded for service in Vietnam somehow do not count, which when taken to the end of the argument, implies that medals awarded for service anywhere do not count.

In a recent and eloquent truthout essay, Vietnam veteran John Cory wrote the following words: "There are veterans of all conflicts, who fall in love with the terrible sweet beauty of war. Men who polish their armor long after the parades have faded. Their glory is not in duty, honor, and country; but in the carnival mirrors of their own warped reflections. These are veterans who march with swagger and blaring brass, like small boys struggling to be seen and heard. There are veterans who have paid passage through the heart of darkness; who dedicate their lives to eliminating the horrors that hide behind their eyes at night, when they dream. These veterans testify to the unreal and repulsive acts of war that forever wound the soul. And there are veterans who let it go and never look back again. Not that they forget, they simply choose not to dwell in those memories. They seek peace of mind and hope."

The men who have foisted this rending open of old wounds upon us are the ones who polish their armor, who revel in their own warped reflections. They insult fellow veterans everywhere. My father earned a Bronze Star in Vietnam. Should he give it back? The men and women serving and dying in Iraq have earned thousands of medals, many of them Purple Hearts to replace missing legs or faces. Should they give theirs back?

How many medals did George W. Bush earn to allow him to make this frontal assault upon those who served in his stead a generation ago, and those who serve now in the free-fire zone he placed them in with his deceptions?

When a person puts on the uniform of the United States military and swears an oath, that person is promising to sacrifice their life for their country. The only promise they expect in return is that their life not be spent for no good reason. That promise was broken.

Do not forget your dying children. They wear the uniform of your country, they live and die for all of us. Some lie still, wrapped in your flag. Some walk the land trying to remember, or trying to forget, how they got their scars so long ago. Some yet fight, in a war of choice that was not their doing. Do not forget them. Do not insult them. They are your children.



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

-------

[Boomer Chick]

Editor’s Note | The article describing Bush’s statement that the War on Terror is unwinnable can be found here. The article describing Bush’s subsequent reversal and declaration that the War on Terror is indeed winnable can be found here. The article explaining how any of this makes sense cannot be found on this plane of existence. - TO

Nausea in New York
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Wednesday 01 September 2004

"One of the interesting things people ask me, now that we are asking questions, is, 'Can you ever win the war on terror?' Of course you can."

- George W. Bush, April 13 2004

You just can’t make this stuff up.

George W. Bush, in an interview broadcast Monday by the ‘Today’ show, told host Matt Lauer that he doesn’t think his ‘War on Terror’ is winnable. "I don't think you can win it," said Bush. "But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world."

This is a dramatic departure – one might dare call it a ‘flip-flop’ – from the scores of comments he has made since the attacks of September 11. As recently as July 14, Bush said, “I have a clear vision and a strategy to win the war on terror." On April 13th, Bush said, “One of the interesting things people ask me, now that we are asking questions, is, 'Can you ever win the war on terror?' Of course you can." The list of comments like this is longer than the Avenue of the Americas.

Someone forgot to get Rudy Giuliani the memo about the Terror War now being unwinnable. "We'll see an end to global terrorism,'' he said from the convention podium on Monday night. "It may seem very difficult and a long way off. It may even seem idealistic to say that. But it may not be as far away and as idealistic as it seems.''

Never mind Rudy’s assertion that Bush “can see through time” in the same speech. Between Bush’s temporal abilities and his armchair-to-armchair relationship with the Almighty, one might have assumed that he’d have stumbled to this wisdom many moons ago. Of course a war against terror cannot be won. Terrorism is a weapon. How do you wage war against a weapon? Shall we next have a war against bazookas and slingshots?

One defeats terrorism by undermining the conditions which breed terrorists. Economic inequality, crushing poverty, shattered educational infrastructures, rampant violence and a total lack of hope are the soil in which suicide bombers germinate. Until you get rid of those, you will always have terrorism. Period.

Bush got part of the way to that conclusion with his statement, alluding to a process that will make terrorism “less acceptable in parts of the world.” His statement was bereft of details on how exactly to go about this, of course, and likewise begs the question: If we’re going to make terrorism less acceptable in “parts” of the world, what other “parts” will terrorism still be acceptable in?

It is too bad that we had to grind through three years, a catastrophic invasion of Iraq, 976 dead American soldiers, almost 7,000 grievously wounded American soldiers, more than 10,000 dead Iraqi civilians and God only knows exactly how many billions of dollars before Mr. Bush arrived at this conclusion.

It is too bad that Bush’s Iraq adventure has created economic inequality, crushing poverty, shattered educational infrastructures, rampant violence and a total lack of hope among the people of that nation. If he has suddenly come around to a new mindset on how to deal with terrorism, he will have to start by cleaning up the terrorist mass-production line he has activated there.

But, of course, he won’t. Soon after Bush’s comment to Lauer, his campaign spokespeople came boiling out of the woodwork to clarify that the President didn’t really mean to say what he said, and that despite his new vision on the matter of dealing with terrorism, there will be absolutely no policy changes in the way the Terror War is being waged. In other words, folks, ignore the Republican candidate. He’s just flapping his lips.

Indeed. The next day, at a Tuesday address to the American Legion, Bush decided to reverse field yet again and declare that we will, in fact, win the War on Terror. Presidential mouthpiece Scott McLellan said, to clarify the previous clarification of the previous clarification, "Not only are we winning it, but we will win it."

It is hard, while watching these guys flop around their own words like boated marlin, to avoid thinking about the thousands of troops deployed in Iraq today. These men and women were told they were leaving home to fight, and perhaps die, in the War on Terror. They left their families with Bush’s promise of inevitable victory ringing in their ears. Now, sitting in that scalding desert, they are being told that they are fighting a war that cannot be won. More than a few of them had already arrived at this obvious conclusion some time ago, but to hear the confused gibberish coming from their Commander-in-Chief must be like a kick below the utility belt.

Hopefully, none of the troops over there were able to watch the coverage of the Republican convention on Monday night. Salted through the audience were a number of conventioneers wearing band-aids with little purple hearts on them. This was, of course, an extension of the gutter war being waged against Democratic candidate John Kerry’s Vietnam record.

Some 3,700 Purple Heart medals have been awarded to soldiers fighting in Operation Iraqi Freedom, with more than 3,000 still wending through the process before they can be pinned to the breasts of soldiers missing a chunk of their body. The message emanating from Madison Square Garden is obvious: Not only is the President blitheringly unclear on what is supposedly the central mission of his administration, but his own supporters have nothing but disdain for anyone wounded in combat.

If you think Bush and his White House have nothing to do with that disgusting display on the convention floor on Monday night, and have nothing to do with the Swift Boat Veterans group that appears to have made insulting combat veterans the new hip style among Republicans, think again.

A GOP staffer told Newsweek reporter Elanor Clift this past week that the Swift Boat strategy “came straight from the West Wing,” specifically from Bush hatchet-man Karl Rove. “Nobody,” he said, “should be confused.” The GOP staffer called those who have done this “political terrorists,” stating, “They know what to do - it’s like sleeper cells that get activated.”

In other words, nauseating activities like the Swift Boat smears and the Purple Heart Band-Aid-wearing cretins do not bubble up from the slime of their own accord. This is standard-issue East Texas political assassination, and the smell of it trails all the way from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to the doorstep of this Republican convention. This is leadership from the top down, Bush-style.

Why?

When your war is a disaster, when your economy is a mess, when your people are out of work by the millions, when the environment is under total assault because of your policies, and when your best pals are pocketing billions of dollars in taxpayer money on the sneak, you’d do well to avoid discussing the issues. Unfortunately for Bush, the manner in which he and his campaign are attempting to change the subject is becoming an issue in and of itself.



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

-------

[Boomer Chick]

It Was a Rout
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Friday 01 October 2004

"Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!"

- Howard Cosell
There was a President on that stage in Florida on Thursday night, and his name was not George.

This was supposed to be the debate that played to the strengths of Bush and his administration. Foreign policy in general and the protection of the United States from terrorism in particular, according to all the polls and every talking head within earshot, are the areas where George supposedly commands the high ground. That illusion came crashing down on the stage in Coral Gables.


How else can one describe the demeanor and behavior of Bush, as seen by 40,000,000 television viewers and heard by millions more radio listeners? Shrill. Defensive. Muddled. Angry, very angry. Repetitive. Uninformed. Outmatched. Unprepared. Hesitant. Twenty four minutes into the debate, Bush lost his temper, and spent the remaining hour and six minutes looking for all the world as though he were sucking on a particularly bitter lemon.

This is what happens when you surround yourself with yes-men. John Kerry put the bricks to Bush and the last four years of his administration clearly, concisely, eloquently and with devastating effect. Bush reacted like a man who has never, ever had anyone tell him anything other than "Good job, sir."

That is what happens when you have to defend your record as President, something that no one in the media or elsewhere had managed to force Bush to do in the last 1,000 days. In the October 2000 debate, Bush managed to hold his own simply by making promises and telegraphing an aw-shucks charm. On Thursday night, Bush faced a reckoning at the hands of a man who cut his teeth prosecuting and imprisoning mob bosses.

This was not a Bush meltdown. It was an exposure. George W. Bush was required to speak for 90 minutes without having the questions beforehand, facing an opponent far less pliable than the national press corps. The man he has always been, stripped of the hero-worship veneer, was there for all to see.

Don't take my word for it, though.

"They need to make Americans forget what happened tonight," said ultraconservative Joe Scarborough on MSNBC, speaking on what he believed the Bush campaign needed to do post-debate. Right out of the gate, Scarborough and the other talking heads gave the debate to Kerry, hands down, turn out the lights when you leave. "I think John Kerry," said Scarborough a bit later, "looked more Presidential."

A post-debate caller to C-SPAN announced herself as one who had voted for and supported Bush, and then described the Democratic candidate as "President Kerry." Freudian slip? We report, you decide.

At FreeRepublic.com, the bastion of far-right cheerleading, the faithful were fashioning nooses. "It's really painful listening to Bush," said one Godebert. "Kerry has had him on the defensive from the beginning. Kerry sounds confident while Bush has a pleading defensive tone. Not good so far."

"Kerry looked much more experienced," said one whadizit. "He appeared to be relaxed and in control. W looked weary and worn and sounded weary and worn."

"Unfortunately," saith The Sons of Liberty, "Kerry looked more prepared. He seemed to have more facts, however questionable, at his command and he delivered his message succinctly. Even when confronted on his flip-flops, he had plausible explanations. On the other hand, The President seemed to lose his train of thought at times. He continued to repeat the same things, and he looked tired and a little haggard. He needs to do much better next time."

The comments went on and drearily on in this vein, in conversation thread after conversation thread, until a forum participant named areafiftyone threw the distraught legions a lifeline: "I had that feeling that Kerry had the questions beforehand. He seemed to have his answers right on target. Bush seemed like he was surprised by the questions. I wish they could investigate to see if the DNC got a hold of the questions beforehand."

Yeah, that's it. Never mind that one participant had total command of the facts, an understanding of the foreign policy realm, a firm grasp on the situations in Iraq, North Korea and Afghanistan, while the other participant seemed shocked that faded platitudes and repeated campaign slogans weren't getting the job done. The shattering, humiliating, obvious defeat handed to George W. Bush before a massive television audience must have come because moderator Jim Lehrer somehow conspired with debate host Fox News to telegraph the questions to Kerry beforehand.

Or something.

The two most embarrassing moments for Bush, culled from a symphony of embarrassing moments, came while discussing the situation in Iraq. After many minutes of being pummeled about the head and shoulders with the realities of the mess he had created, Bush lost his temper for the ninth or tenth time and insisted, "We're going to win this war in Iraq!" Yet it was many months and many dead American soldiers ago, on May 1st 2003 in fact, that Bush stood below a banner reading MISSION ACCOMPLISHED and proclaimed, "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."


Hm.

The second embarrassing moment came after Bush repeated his mantra about "staying the course" until the paint started to peel off the podium he was slouching over. We have to be resolute, we have to stay the course, we cannot send mixed messages to our troops and the world...and yet after an hour of bombardment from Kerry, Bush finally said, "Well, I think -- listen, I fully agree that one should shift tactics, and we will, in Iraq."

So, OK, let me get this straight: We have to stay the course and not send mixed messages, and you've been blowing voluminous amounts of sunshine up the collective American backside for weeks about how boffo the Iraq situation is, but after an hour of taking rhetorical body blows from your opponent, you suddenly claim we are going to change tactics? It seemed for all the world that John Kerry, his opponent, convinced Bush that things in Iraq are as bad as people have been saying for weeks and months now.

The most amusing aspect of the whole debate came several hours before it began, when ABCNews.com posted an Associated Press article discussing the debate in the past tense. "After a deluge of campaign speeches and hostile television ads," wrote AP, apparently putting the Way-Back Machine they've been building to use, "President Bush and challenger John Kerry got their chance to face each other directly Thursday night before an audience of tens of millions of voters in a high-stakes debate about terrorism, the Iraq war and the bloody aftermath."

"The 90-minute encounter," continued AP reporter Nostradamus from his post somewhere in the space-time continuum, "was particularly crucial for Kerry, trailing slightly in the polls and struggling for momentum less than five weeks before the election. The Democratic candidate faced the challenge of presenting himself as a credible commander in chief after a torrent of Republican criticism that he was prone to changing his positions."

The bloggers got hold of this masterpiece of gun-jumping by about 4:00pm EST, and ABC scrubbed the page. As for the 'flip-flopper' tag, you can put that particular Bush campaign talking point to bed. If this had been a boxing match, it would have been stopped. If Bush shows up for the next two debates, I will be, frankly, amazed. Watch for his campaign to reach for the chicken switch before the weekend is out, claiming perfidy on the part of the networks or some other sad folderol.

No amount of spin will be able to undo the reality of what took place in Florida on Thursday night. What happened on that stage was an absolute, immutable truth. Bush looked bad. Worse, he looked uninformed, overmatched and angry. Worst of all, he's going to have to go through it two more times.

If he shows up.

[Boomer Chick]

Still Standing, Still Fighting, Still Here
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Friday 05 November 2004

"It's a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don't quit when you're tired. You quit when the gorilla is tired."
- Robert Strauss

I've been working on digesting the results of the election. Mark Moford of the San Francisco Chronicle gave perhaps the best description of how I am feeling: "It simply boggles the mind: we've already had four years of some of the most appalling and abusive foreign and domestic policy in American history, some of the most well-documented atrocities ever wrought on the American populace and it's all combined with the biggest and most violently botched and grossly mismanaged war since Vietnam, and much of the nation still insists in living in a giant vat of utter blind faith, still insists on believing the man in the White House couldn't possibly be treating them like a dog treats a fire hydrant."

But I wound up getting some help on perspective from an unexpected quarter. I stood in the wind and the rain outside the Boston Public Library in Copley Square for eight hours on Tuesday night with tens of thousands of Kerry supporters, watching the election returns come in on giant screens, listening to speakers whip up the crowd, listening to girls scream while Jon Bon Jovi worked his way through 'Living on a Prayer.' That last bit was one of the low points. There were others.

As the night wore on and the wind got colder, the returns took a turn for the Bush. When Tom Brokaw came on the big screen and declared that NBC was putting Ohio in the Bush column, you could hear the air go out of the crowd. When the gospel singers came out and started singing 'God Bless America' for the fourth time that night, I decided enough was enough. I walked down to my favorite bar and fired down a pint of Mojo IPA, feeling the outer edges of a truly epic hate-frenzy beginning to work its way into my bones. I shrugged my coat back on, gave the disconsolate bartender a hug, and headed home. On the way, I stopped at the 7/11 and bought a can of Chef Boy-Are-Dee Beef Ravioli.

That's when the unexpected help showed up. As I was sliding my key into the back door of my apartment building, a young man emerged silently from the bushes behind me. I turned the key, and suddenly it felt like my head had exploded. The man from the bushes had thrown what was later revealed to be a large, 20 lb. cobblestone at me. It bounced off my shoulder, blasted into my jaw, and dropped heavily at my feet.

I reeled into the door but didn't fall. The fellow, assuming that anyone struck with a 20 lb. rock was ripe for the picking, started to come at me. I turned, and in a moment of truly dumb Braveheart macho testosterone rage, charged the guy. He stepped back in surprise, and then turned to flee. I pursued him down the street, brandishing the can of ravioli over my head while screaming unkind comments about his inappropriate sexual relationship with his mother, until my jaw reminded me that it might be broken.

After the cops and the EMTs and the x-rays were finished with me, the diagnosis was that nothing was broken or loose. My face is pretty torn up, but I should be able to chew solid food in a couple of days with the help of the Ibuprofen/Percocet cocktail the folks in the emergency room were kind enough to give me. As for the guy who threw the rock, I have no idea where he came from or what he was about. There are a few junkies wandering my neighborhood, so I assume this was an attempted mugging...possibly the first mugging in American history to be thwarted by a thick skull and a can of Chef Boy-Are-Dee.

Beyond the pain and the big scare, I am actually grateful for what happened. This may seem strange, but getting belted with a boulder did wonders for my perspective. If his aim had been a little better, just a couple of inches to the left, I'd probably be dead right now. I have the rock sitting on my desk in front of me, with an inscription written on it in indelible ink: 'There Are Worse Things Than Losing An Election.' A narrow perspective, to be sure, but a hard one to avoid while living inside my own bruised head.

Without a doubt, a second term for George W. Bush promises to be a debacle of generational proportions. The courts will be stacked with ideological brothers of Antonin Scalia. Roe v. Wade will be cast down. The full frontal assault on the Federal budget, on Social Security, on Medicare, on anything resembling government-subsidized assistance for people who did not get the lion's share of Bush's tax cuts, will continue unabated. The war in Iraq will grind on, and likely be expanded to include Iran and Syria. If those military adventures fare as poorly as what has happened in Iraq, a military draft will not be far off.

Sidney Blumenthal described it this way: "Now, without constraints, Bush can pursue the dreams he campaigned for - the use of U.S. military might to bring God's gift of freedom to the world, with no more 'global tests,' and at home the enactment of the imperatives of 'the right God.' The international system of collective security forged in World War II and tempered in the Cold War is a thing of the past. The Democratic Party, despite its best efforts, has failed to rein in the radicalism sweeping the country. The world is in a state of emergency but also irrelevant. The New World, with all its power and might, stepping forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old? Goodbye to all that."

Perhaps the best indicator of what a now-unfettered Bush is going to be like over the next four years came during his Thursday press conference. Associated Press reporter Terence Hunt opened the questioning with a three-part query. Bush responded to his questions by saying, "Now that I've got the will of the people at my back, I'm going to start enforcing the one-question rule. That was three." When another reporter dared to ask a multi-pronged question, Bush's response was, "Again, he violated the one-question rule right off the bat. Obviously you didn't listen to the will of the people." In other words, journalists, sit down and shut up.

There are a few bright spots to point to in the aftermath. John Ashcroft will reportedly resign his position before the inauguration. While it is certain that Bush will nominate another far-right lunatic to replace him, unless that nominee is Atilla the Hun, any new Attorney General will be an improvement. There is also the brewing fight between the conservatives and the neo-conservatives within the Republican Party. A number of old-style conservatives were secretly hoping for a Kerry victory, because it would give them an opening to purge the GOP of the neo-cons and the far-right religious fundamentalists from the party. Now that Bush has a second term, this fight will probably break wide open.

Finally, the long fight to bring the glaring problems associated with the new electronic voting machines may finally break fully into the mainstream. There are some ominous discrepancies between the pre-election polls, the exit polls, and the final results out of counties in Florida and Ohio that used the machines. While eating an electoral defeat seems an incredible price to pay for initiating this dialog and investigation, consider the long term. If an investigation into the use of these machines in this election winds up requiring voters be given a paper confirmation of their vote, this democracy will look back on Tuesday November 2, 2004 as a necessary and beneficial trauma.

[Boomer Chick]

Despite these bright spots, the inscription on my memorial rock - 'There Are Worse Things Than Losing An Election' - seems absurd in the face of all this. Maybe it's the concussion talking, but I honestly believe the rock is right. For one thing, worse than losing the election would be a collective acceptance of the reasons we are being given for why the election was lost. We hear from every mainstream media quarter that the election was lost because more people lined up with Bush on the question of 'Values.' There is a degree of truth to this. Eleven states had referendums on the ballot about gay marriage, for one example. The Republican base flooded to the polls to vote against it. This helped Bush, surely, along with some other 'Values'-oriented issues, but this does not account for the final result. He was going to get that vote anyway. There is an elephant in the room here, and ignoring it would be worse than the electoral defeat.

The result of this election is nothing more or less than the culmination of a three-year terror campaign waged by the Bush administration and his campaign crew. Every day for three years, the American people were bombarded with messages of fear from the administration. Day after day, the Bush administration used September 11 to cow any and all dissent, to bend popular will, to frighten people into thinking that voting against Bush was a vote for death and destruction.

It worked. Millions of Americans, after three years of state-sponsored fear roaring out of their televisions 24/7/365, went to the polls and solemnly voted against their best interests. Buying into the idea that 'Values' alone determined the election outcome would be a disaster, as would buying into the idea that America is now a center-right nation, as would buying into the argument that Bush now has a mandate. It isn't true. The election turned on Bush's willingness to terrify the people he is supposed to be leading, and any refusal to acknowledge this will compound the wretched result of this election by orders of magnitude.

It is amazing that this election was as close as it was. Kerry should never have come as close as he did to victory, given the campaign of fear that was waged against the American people by this administration. Worse than losing the election, therefore, would be an acceptance of the idea that all the work, all the shoeleather spent in the movement to vote Bush out was a complete failure. It wasn't. The movement did better than it had any right to, and it still has work to do. Worse than losing the election would be an abandonment of that movement. It isn't over, but has only just begun.

Howard Dean recently wrote, "There is more to politics than elections. Thousands of young people have discovered, as generations have before them, their efforts matter. Their actions matter because by getting in the game instead of staying on the sidelines, they are empowered, whether or not their candidate wins. Historically, whether through the campaign of Gene McCarthy in 1968 or John McCain in 2000, the enthusiasm and hard work waned after the election. This time we cannot let that happen. Democracy is the most highly evolved system of government ever created by human beings. And like everything else we create, it will wither and die unless we nurture it."

Now more than ever, the movement that began on December 12, 2000 must continue. Billions of people around the world woke up on Wednesday afraid, fully convinced that the United States of America has finally and completely lost its collective mind. The movement must assure them that we have their back. The soldier and civilian death toll in Iraq continues to climb unabated, and those still alive in that cauldron of violence need to be assured that we have their back. The millions of Americans who do not fit in to Bush's grand evangelical plan for the country need to know that we have their back.

If despair and despondency still color your world after the election, remember this: Every second-term President since Eisenhower has met with a blizzard of shame and disgrace before they left office. Nixon didn't get to finish his term and needed Ford to keep him out of prison, Reagan needed Bush Sr. to pardon a whole mob of cretins to kill the Iran/Contra scandal, and Clinton was impeached for lying about consensual sex.

If the first four years of this administration are any indication of what is to come, and if the movement continues to hammer him for the next four years as it has for the last four years, the name of George W. Bush will wind up echoing down the hallways of history as the single worst President the nation has ever known. The name of George W. Bush will stand as a grave warning and a strident reminder of how badly and how quickly things can go wrong in our democracy.

I'm going to stick around to see that happen. It will take more than a rock, or a lost election, to blow out my pilot light. I'll see you on the battlements.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.'

-------

[Boomer Chick]

FOCUS | William Rivers Pitt: Trapped Like a Rat

www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020906Z.shtml

William Rivers Pitt writes that on Tuesday, by his own design, George W. Bush was trapped like a rat at the funeral of Coretta Scott King. He was forced to listen to eloquent denunciations of his politics and his policies, perhaps for the first time since he took office.