The Unsatisfied Mind

Bush wanted to attack Iraq before 2000

Written by his ghost biographer:

Two years before 9/11, candidate Bush was already talking privately about attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer.

Houston: Two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.

“He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. “It was on his mind. He said to me: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.’ And he said, ‘My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.’ He said, ‘If I have a chance to invade….if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.”

Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father’s shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. “Suddenly, he’s at 91 percent in the polls, and he’d barely crawled out of the bunker.”

That President Bush and his advisers had Iraq on their minds long before weapons inspectors had finished their work – and long before alleged Iraqi ties with terrorists became a central rationale for war – has been raised elsewhere, including in a book based on recollections of former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill. However, Herskowitz was in a unique position to hear Bush’s unguarded and unfiltered views on Iraq, war and other matters – well before he became president.

Tell everyone you know. Make sure that those who support this fucking liar know. Make sure everyone knows.

Indescribable

From the Whisky Bar:

"I want you to stand, raise your right hands," and recite "the Bush Pledge," said Florida state Sen. Ken Pruitt. The assembled mass of about 2,000 in this Treasure Coast town about an hour north of West Palm Beach dutifully rose, arms aloft, and repeated after Pruitt: "I care about freedom and liberty. I care about my family. I care about my country. Because I care, I promise to work hard to re-elect, re-elect George W. Bush as president of the United States."

Slate
One Nation Under Bush
October 29, 2004

All officers of the SS were required to take the loyalty oath. Raising their right hand and their left hand placed on their officers sword, the oath went as follows: "I swear to thee, Adolph Hitler as Fuhrer and chancellor of the German Reich, my Loyalty and Bravery. I vow to thee and the superiors whom those shall appoint, obedience until death, so help me God."

Jim Harris
World War II Stories: In Their Own Words

"Sure, only here they'll call it anti-fascism."

I can't even comment.

From Dave Sirota

What Kerry should do immediately after being sworn in:

If Kerry is elected, there will be much work for him to do that will take long negotiations with Congress. But there are a number of executive orders he can issue immediately upon taking his office. All they need is his signature. He can:

- Repeal Bush's executive order reducing overtime pay protections for up to 8 million American workers.

- Overturn Bush's anti-union executive order that "effectively bars project labor agreements on all federally funded construction projects, even in situations where they have been regularly used since the 1940s."

- Revise Bush's excecutive order that "allows service contractors in federal buildings to layoff low-wage workers, who are mostly women, whenever there is a turnover of government contractors, which in effect erodes their job security."

- Reinstate "labor-management cooperation systems that serve the federal government and hundreds of thousands of federal workers" and that had "resulted in numerous productivity gains and cost-savings measures benefiting all taxpayers." When Bush repealed this, he was opposed by some in his own party.

- Terminate the requirement demanding government contractors effectively discouraging union membership (even though union jobs have higher wages/benefits), while discouraging contractors from telling workers about their union rights.

- Revoke the Bush executive order that restricts public access to historical records. This Bush order was opposed by some Republicans.

- Reform the Bush order that "requires federal agencies to give special consideration to energy interests in devising new regulation." This order "mirrored a draft proposal submitted by the American Petroleum Institute" (the oil industry's lobbying group), actually "borrowing words almost verbatim for a key section."

- Repeal the Bush order "that broadens the authority of agencies to withhold information from the public." The Bush order, signed in May of 2002, for instance "gave the EPA Administrator authority to designate documents 'Secret' or 'Confidential,' two of the three highest possible security classifications." It also allows the Administrator "to delegate classification authority to senior EPA officials." Once classified, a person can gain access to information only when an agency head or their designee reviews the request, the person signs a non-disclosure agreement, and the person can establish a "need-to-know" to the satisfaction of agency official.

Things are looking good

OBL tape be damned. We only have 3 more days, people, until we get our country back..

This will all be over soon.

Nail in the coffin of the Bush Administration

Definitive proof that the explosives were at Al Qaqaa after we invaded, and that we did nothing to protect them.

Using GPS technology and talking with members of the 101st Airborne Division, 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has determined the crew embedded with the troops may have been on the southern edge of the Al Qaqaa installation, where the ammunition disappeared. The news crew was based just south of Al Qaqaa, and drove two or three miles north of there with soldiers on April 18, 2003.

During that trip, members of the 101st Airborne Division showed the 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS news crew bunker after bunker of material labelled "explosives." Usually it took just the snap of a bolt cutter to get into the bunkers and see the material identified by the 101st as detonation cords.

"We can stick it in those and make some good bombs." a soldier told our crew.

n one bunker, there were boxes marked with the name "Al Qaqaa", the munitions plant where tons of explosives allegedly went missing.

Once the doors to the bunkers were opened, they weren't secured. They were left open when the 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew and the military went back to their base.

"We weren't quite sure what were looking at, but we saw so much of it and it didn't appear that this was being secured in any way," said photojournalist Joe Caffrey. "It was several miles away from where military people were staying in their tents".

Officers with the 101st Airborne told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS that the bunkers were within the U.S. military perimeter and protected. But Caffrey and former 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS Reporter Dean Staley, who spent three months together in Iraq, said Iraqis were coming and going freely.

As of this moment, we have proof (again, sigh) that the administration is lying to us. That Fox news (the only one still saying that the explosives were not there when the Bush Administration invaded).

It will all be over in 5 days. Im leaving to vote right now.

October suprise....

Seems to be the Rhenquist has thyroid cancer, bringing focus to the issue of who will be appointed to the SC in the next four years. This is Karl Rove's suprise?

1. Bush's support is already maxed
2. Focusing on SC issues helps to consolidate women and minorities with the democrats
3. Rhenquist will be able to go back to work, even if his thyroid is removed.

On the other hand, I don't think even Rove could have predicted the shitty news from Iraq (explosives, executions) and from the Democrats (Clinton back, Kerry leading in swing states).

They are screwed.

From a DailyKos diary:

There has been so much evidence in the news during the last few weeks about the failures of Bush, it is worthwhile to remind ourselves why Kerry is such an outstanding candidate.

In these last few days, I would like to see one special thread that avoids the negatives and concentrates exclusively on why we support the man we believe is outstandingly the right person to be the next President of the United States.

I like the closing statement of the editorial in the New Yorker which, for the first time in the eighty years of its existence, has decided that the issues facing the country demand that it endorses a candidate. In choosing John Kerry, it says:

"When his foes sought to destroy him rather than to debate him they found no scandals and no evidence of bad faith in his past. In the face of infuriating and scurrilous calumnies, he kept the sort of cool that the thin-skinned and painfully insecure incumbent cannot even feign during the unprogrammed give-and-take of an electoral debate. Kerry's mettle has been tested under fire--the fire of real bullets and the political fire that will surely not abate but, rather, intensify if he is elected--and he has shown himself to be tough, resilient, and possessed of a properly Presidential dose of dignified authority.

While Bush has pandered relentlessly to the narrowest urges of his base, Kerry has sought to appeal broadly to the American center. In a time of primitive partisanship, he has exhibited a fundamentally undogmatic temperament. In campaigning for America's mainstream restoration, Kerry has insisted that this election ought to be decided on the urgent issues of our moment, the issues that will define American life for the coming half century.

That insistence is a measure of his character. He is plainly the better choice. As observers, reporters, and commentators we will hold him to the highest standards of honesty and performance. For now, as citizens, we hope for his victory."

First time the New Yorker has endorsed anyone for the Presidency in 80 years of existence.

And they endorsed Kerry.

The final push

Well, lots to see, and honestly, I am getting a bit tired of posting here. So many other blogs are getting so much traffic, you are probably just hitting those.

If you are not sure what the good sources of information are, click the links on the right.

Anyway, we may have just seen the straw that broke the Bush back. NYTimes has a front page, above-the-fold article about the removal of 280 TONS of high explosives that are now being used to attack our troops in Iraq. Read it.

Mom, if you are reading this, write a letter to the Clallam paper. Make sure that they cover this.

Fortunately, we only have another week of this, and then the world will be right again.

Here is something pretty sick. A remarkable pattern (posted elsewhere, but I cannot find the source):

Military experience
Democrats:
* Richard Gephardt: Air National Guard, 1965-71.

• David Bonior: Staff Sgt., Air Force 1968-72.
  
• Tom Daschle: 1st Lt., Air Force SAC 1969-72.
  
• Al Gore: enlisted Aug. 1969; sent to Vietnam Jan. 1971 as an army journalist in 20th Engineer Brigade.
  
• Bob Kerrey: Lt. j.g. Navy 1966-69; Medal of Honor, Vietnam.
  
• Daniel Inouye: Army 1943-47; Medal of Honor, WWII.
  
• John Kerry: Lt., Navy 1966-70; Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V, Purple Hearts.
  
• Charles Rangel: Staff Sgt., Army 1948-52; Bronze Star, Korea.
  
• Max Cleland: Captain, Army 1965-68; Silver Star & Bronze Star, Vietnam.
  
• Ted Kennedy: Army, 1951-53.
  
• Tom Harkin: Lt., Navy, 1962-67; Naval Reserve, 1968-74.
  
• Jack Reed: Army Ranger, 1971-1979; Captain, Army Reserve 1979-91.
  
• Fritz Hollings: Army officer in WWII; Bronze Star and seven campaign ribbons.
  
• Leonard Boswell: Lt. Col., Army 1956-76; Vietnam, DFCs, Bronze Stars, and Soldier's Medal.
  
• Pete Peterson: Air Force Captain, POW. Purple Heart, Silver Star and Legion of Merit.
  
• Mike Thompson: Staff sergeant, 173rd Airborne, Purple Heart.
  
• Bill McBride: Candidate for Fla. Governor. Marine in Vietnam; Bronze Star with Combat V.
  
• Gray Davis: Army Captain in Vietnam, Bronze Star.
  
• Pete Stark: Air Force 1955-57
  
• Chuck Robb: Vietnam
  
• Howell Heflin: Silver Star
  
• George McGovern: Silver Star & DFC during WWII.
  
• Bill Clinton: Did not serve. Student deferments. Entered draft but received #311.
  
• Jimmy Carter: Seven years in the Navy.
  
• Walter Mondale: Army 1951-1953
  
• John Glenn: WWII and Korea; six DFCs and Air Medal with 18 Clusters.
  
• Tom Lantos: Served in Hungarian underground in WWII. Saved by Raoul Wallenberg.

Republicans -- and these are the guys sending people to war:
* Dick Cheney: did not serve. Several deferments, the last by marriage.

• Dennis Hastert: did not serve.
  
• Tom Delay: did not serve.
  
• Roy Blunt: did not serve.
  
• Bill Frist: did not serve.
  
• Mitch McConnell: did not serve.
  
• Rick Santorum: did not serve.
  
• Trent Lott: did not serve.
  
• John Ashcroft: did not serve. Seven deferments to teach business.
  
• Jeb Bush: did not serve.
  
• Karl Rove: did not serve.
  
• Saxby Chambliss: did not serve. "Bad knee." The man who attacked Max Cleland's patriotism.
  
• Paul Wolfowitz: did not serve.
  
• Vin Weber: did not serve.
  
• Richard Perle: did not serve.
  
• Douglas Feith: did not serve.
  
• Eliot Abrams: did not serve.
  
• Richard Shelby: did not serve.
  
• Jon! Kyl: did not serve.
  
• Tim Hutchison: did not serve.
  
• Christopher Cox: did not serve.
  
• Newt Gingrich: did not serve.
  
• Don Rumsfeld: served in Navy (1954-57) as flight instructor.
  
• George W. Bush: failed to complete his six-year National Guard; got assigned to Alabama so he could campaign for family friend running for U.S. Senate; failed to show up for required medical exam, disappeared from duty.
  
• Ronald Reagan: due to poor eyesight, served in a non-combat role making movies.
  
• B-1 Bob Dornan: Consciously enlisted after fighting was over in Korea.
  
• Phil Gramm: did not serve.
  
• John McCain: Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross.
  
• Dana Rohrabacher: did not serve.
  
• John M. McHugh: did not serve.
  
• JC Watts: did not serve.
  
• Jack Kemp: did not serve. "Knee problem," although continued in NFL for 8 years.
  
• Dan Quayle: Journalism unit of the Indiana National Guard.
  
• Rudy Giuliani: did not serve.
  
• George Pataki: did not serve.
  
• Spencer Abraham: did not serve.
  
• John Engler: did not serve.
  
• Lindsey Graham: National Guard lawyer.
  
• Arnold Schwarzenegger: AWOL from Austrian army base.

Pundits & Preachers

• Sean Hannity: did not serve.
  
• Rush Limbaugh: did not serve (4-F with a 'pilonidal cyst.')
  
• Bill O'Reilly: did not serve.
  
• Michael Savage: did not serve.
  
• George Will: did not serve.
  
• Chris Matthews: did not serve.
  
• Paul Gigot: did not serve.
  
• Bill Bennett: did not serve.
  
• Pat Buchanan: did not serve.
  
• John Wayne: did not serve.
  
• Bill Kristol: did not serve.
  
• Kenneth Starr: did not serve.
  
• Antonin Scalia: did not serve.
  
• Clarence Thomas: did not serve.
  
• Ralph Reed: did not serve.
  
• Michael Medved: did not serve.
  
• Charlie Daniels: did not serve.
  
• Ted Nugent: did not serve. (He only shoots at things that don't shootback.)

Pretty amazing. Pretty predictable.

100 Bush mistakes

Good list from a Daily Kos diary:

1. Failing to build a real international coalition prior to the Iraq invasion, forcing the US to shoulder the full cost and consequences of the war.

2. Approving the demobilization of the Iraqi Army in May, 2003 – bypassing the Joint Chiefs of Staff and reversing an earlier position, the President left hundreds of thousands of armed Iraqis disgruntled and unemployed, contributing significantly to the massive security problems American troops have faced during occupation.

3. Not equipping troops in Iraq with adequate body armor or armored HUMVEES.

4. Ignoring the advice Gen. Eric Shinseki regarding the need for more troops in Iraq – now Bush is belatedly adding troops, having allowed the security situation to deteriorate in exactly the way Shinseki said it would if there were not enough troops.

5. Ignoring plans drawn up by the Army War College and other war-planning agencies, which predicted most of the worst security and infrastructure problems America faced in the early days of the Iraq occupation.

6. Making a case for war which ignored intelligence that there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.

7. Deriding "nation-building" during the 2000 debates, then engaging American troops in one of the most explicit instances of nation building in American history.

8. Predicting along with others in his administration that US troops would be greeted as liberators in Iraq.

9. Predicting Iraq would pay for its own reconstruction.

10. Wildly underestimating the cost of the war.

These are just the first 10, read all of them.

Who says things like this?

"I caught the attention of 60,000 people, plus (the media), plus the whole world," Martinez smiled appreciatively after he yielded all three runs in the 3-1 Yankees victory. "If you reverse the time back 15 years ago, I was sitting under a mango tree without 50 cents to actually pay for a bus.

"And today, I was the center of attention of the whole city of New York. I thank God for that. I don't like to brag about myself . . . but (the fans) did make me feel important."

A crazy person, that is who.

Wow. Wierd. If you only could have seen his face when he said it....

Catching the Reshrubs lying:

Blatently stolen from Atrios, formatting and all (hey, I know who my audience is, my mom, my dad, my brother....er, um...):

(Watching CNN) Apparently Viceroy Jerry (Paul Bremer) released a statement this morning saying that when he stated that they needed more troops in Iraq, he only meant in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad in order to prevent the looting. CNN dug up a statement he made at DePauw University where he said:

Earlier, at a student forum this afternoon in Meharry Hall, the ambassador admitted, "The single most important change -- the one thing that would have improved the situation -- would have been having more troops in Iraq at the beginning and throughout... Although I raised this issue a number of times with our government, I should have been even more insistent."

And, now all the Bushies are calling him a liar, saying he never asked for more troops. I'm sure Wolf Blitzer will start talking about "weird aspects in his life" any minute now.


...From July 1, 2003:

WASHINGTON - The top American administrator in Iraq, confronting growing anti-U.S. anger and guerrilla-style attacks, is asking for more American troops and dozens of U.S. officials to help speed up the restoration of order and public services.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld was reviewing the request from L. Paul Bremer, U.S. officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Bremer's request underscores how difficult it has been for his small civilian staff and some 158,000 U.S.-led troops to meet the demands of Iraqis for security and other basic needs. It also conflicts with upbeat public statements from President Bush, Rumsfeld and Bremer himself on the progress made on Iraq's political and economic reconstruction.

Grabbing this background is important for this from Matthew Y:

Paul Bremer says he asked the administration for more troops. The administration says he's lying. It's enough to make you wonder why Bush keeps hiring so many liars -- there's Bremer, his predecessor Jay Garner, Paul O'Neill, Richard Clarke, Rand Beers -- more than enough for a good trend piece. But of course as Atrios points out, Bremer isn't lying at all; the administration is.

As I said before, though, I've got no sympathy for Bremer. As Spencer Ackerman writes, Bremer was more than willing to go on national television and say he had plenty of troops when that's what Bush asked him to do. Frankly, it only clouds the case that the force was undersized to rely on the testimony of a weasel like Bremer. The evidence was -- and always has been -- perfectly clear on this point, Bremer's lame effort to revive his reputation notwithstanding.

WHY IN THE FUCKING HELL DO 50% OF THE PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY STILL BELIVE THESE LIARS.

Oh, one last thing:

According to the most recent Gallup poll, 62% of Republicans think Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks.

I just wanted to post the official statement on ID by the AAAS:

This resolution is related to this post regarding the take-down of a recent piece of ID trash that was fraudulently published in a peer-reviewed journal (thanks Pharyngula).

The ‘peer-reviewed’ paper from Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute takes another hit. The journal that published it has strongly repudiated it.

Contrary to typical editorial practices, the paper was published without review by any associate editor; Sternberg handled the entire review process. The Council, which includes officers, elected councilors, and past presidents, and the associate editors would have deemed the paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings because the subject matter represents such a significant departure from the nearly purely systematic content for which this journal has been known throughout its 122-year history.

I think that makes something crystal clear: the only way it got published was with the assistance of a friendly editor who bypassed the normal review process.

For the same reason, the journal will not publish a rebuttal to the thesis of the paper, the superiority of intelligent design (ID) over evolution as an explanation of the emergence of Cambrian body-plan diversity.

And that is reasonable and fair enough.

Here is the official position on ID by the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science). The council that oversees the journal that the ID screed was published in, the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, has flat-out said that the article should never have been published, was terrible science, and that a former editor, ID-proponent Richard von Sternberg, deceptively shepherded the paper through without peer review.

You can read about the quality of the science here. Needless to say, once real scientists got ahold of the paper, it was destroyed.

AAAS Board Resolution
on Intelligent Design Theory

The contemporary theory of biological evolution is one of the most robust products of scientific inquiry. It is the foundation for research in many areas of biology as well as an essential element of science education. To become informed and responsible citizens in our contemporary technological world, students need to study the theories and empirical evidence central to current scientific understanding.

Over the past several years proponents of so-called "intelligent design theory," also known as ID, have challenged the accepted scientific theory of biological evolution. As part of this effort they have sought to introduce the teaching of "intelligent design theory" into the science curricula of the public schools. The movement presents "intelligent design theory" to the public as a theoretical innovation, supported by scientific evidence, that offers a more adequate explanation for the origin of the diversity of living organisms than the current scientifically accepted theory of evolution. In response to this effort, individual scientists and philosophers of science have provided substantive critiques of "intelligent design," demonstrating significant conceptual flaws in its formulation, a lack of credible scientific evidence, and misrepresentations of scientific facts.

Recognizing that the "intelligent design theory" represents a challenge to the quality of science education, the Board of Directors of the AAAS unanimously adopts the following resolution:

Whereas, ID proponents claim that contemporary evolutionary theory is incapable of explaining the origin of the diversity of living organisms;

Whereas, to date, the ID movement has failed to offer credible scientific evidence to support their claim that ID undermines the current scientifically accepted theory of evolution;

Whereas, the ID movement has not proposed a scientific means of testing its claims;

Therefore Be It Resolved, that the lack of scientific warrant for so-called "intelligent design theory" makes it improper to include as a part of science education;

Therefore Be Further It Resolved, that AAAS urges citizens across the nation to oppose the establishment of policies that would permit the teaching of "intelligent design theory" as a part of the science curricula of the public schools;

Therefore Be It Further Resolved, that AAAS calls upon its members to assist those engaged in overseeing science education policy to understand the nature of science, the content of contemporary evolutionary theory and the inappropriateness of "intelligent design theory" as subject matter for science education;

Therefore Be Further It Resolved, that AAAS encourages its affiliated societies to endorse this resolution and to communicate their support to appropriate parties at the federal, state and local levels of the government.

Approved by the AAAS Board of Directors on 10/18/02.