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Thursday, October 28, 2004
>A week ago, we sent you an email asking for help debunking anti-Bush
> documents. After receiving hundreds of responses, it become clear that
> all the documents were actually real: the Bush/Cheney DUIs, the Ken Lay
> letters, and even the bin Laden memo. For more information visit the
> documents page:
> http://www.yesbushcan.com/falsedocs.shtml
>
> We also received hundreds of emails from concerned bloggers that
> eloquently expressed the problems with the Bush administration. And as
> we traveled across America campaigning for Bush, we learned more than
> we wanted to know about Bush's policies. We came to see that this
> administration is a catastrophe for most people.
>
> As a result, we are abandoning our support of Bush and officially
> endorsing John Kerry for President. You can read more at the Yes Bush Can
> web site:
> http://www.yesbushcan.com/
> We deeply regret our misguided support and apologize for our previous
> email. This will be the last email we will send directly to bloggers.
> If you want to join us in supporting Kerry, you can find out more here:
> http://www.yesbushcan.com/act.shtml
>
> Thank you for your understanding,
>
> Yes Bush Can
>
>
>
3:08:39 PM 
http://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/la-oe-scheer26oct26,1,4080703.column?coll=la-news-columns
ROBERT SCHEER
The Man Behind the Oval Office Curtain
It's Cheney's administration, and it's a shame.
Robert ScheerOctober 26, 2004
Can this nation survive four more years of Dick Cheney running the show? Probably, but it is a risk that few thoughtful Americans, conservatives included, should want to take.
Whatever one thinks of George W. Bush do you see a smile or a smirk? it is now patently obvious that the most powerful vice president in U.S. history is in charge of the White House. Cheney's ultra-secretive, anti-democratic and crony-capitalist instincts have defined this administration.
Perhaps we should have expected all this from a man who, as head of the Bush vice presidential search team, selected himself. It was a forewarning of the Machiavellian arrogance that has made him the leading individual in an administration that has consistently believed that self-serving ends such as helping Enron at the expense of California's energy needs or boosting Halliburton's profits at the expense of American troops justify lying, secrecy and preemptive war.
In the hours after the 9/11 massacres, some Americans may have been reassured to have the older Cheney around at a time when the "real" president was confusedly sitting in a classroom listening to a story about a pet goat. However, in hindsight, this was clearly misguided faith in a man who presents himself as a stern father figure but is just an irresponsible ideologue whose disrespect and disregard for the U.S. Constitution are manifest in all his actions.
It was the vice president who served as the power behind a tiny group of fringe right-wing lawyers that secretly created a system of unaccountable White House-controlled military tribunals. Despite indelibly staining America's reputation as a leader in democratic principles and endangering the lives of American prisoners of war in current and future conflicts, these proceedings have proved totally useless in the war on terror, with zero terror convictions to date.
Never mind: After the tribunals decree was signed by Bush, Cheney was off leading a new misguided crusade, deploying a slew of manipulated and misrepresented intelligence factoids, clever innuendoes and outright lies to fool Congress and the public into supporting the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
As the Washington Post's Bob Woodward reports in "Plan of Action," his insider account of the Bush White House, Secretary of State Colin Powell "detected a kind of fever in Cheney . Cheney was beyond hellbent for action against Saddam. It was as if nothing else existed."
And through the reports of the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee and 9/11 commission, and an exhaustive compilation released last week by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) of the Senate Armed Services Committee, it is now possible to read in excruciating detail about Cheney's role in convincing a majority of Americans that strong evidence to the contrary Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, was moving toward the production of nuclear bombs and was an ally of Al Qaeda.
As recently as June and contrary to the 9/11 commission's final report, to give but one of many examples, Cheney was still insisting that lead hijacker Mohamed Atta had a meeting in Prague with a high-ranking Iraqi intelligence agent before the 9/11 attacks. This is an unconscionable and obviously knowing use of the Big Lie technique, given that the CIA and FBI repudiated that baseless yet titillating claim in 2002.
Lately, as the war has become an unmitigated disaster for the United States and Iraq, Cheney and the president have been on the defensive against charges by numerous terrorism experts and presidential candidate John F. Kerry that the invasion of Iraq was a dangerous distraction from the fight against Al Qaeda and its affiliates.
Undaunted, Cheney tells us the Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi, who has been blamed for many anti-American attacks in Iraq, originally entered Iraq with Hussein's permission; thus Cheney tries to post facto justify the invasion as a legitimate pillar of the war on terror. But it's just another lie, with the CIA stating the opposite: The fundamentalist Zarqawi first sneaked into Hussein's secular and nationalist dictatorship using a false identity.
That Cheney clearly has a huge personal interest in the war makes all of this that much more sickening.
The latest report in a never-ending stream of conflict-of- interest revelations about this administration appears in the current issue of Time magazine. It detailed how the Pentagon favored Halliburton which Cheney headed from 1995 until 2000 with long-term, no-bid contracts. No problem. In Cheney's world, messianic ambition and personal greed can happily co-exist.
Next Tuesday, voters should retire this malevolent force.
Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times
9:31:44 AM
Politics of FearSubject: Politics of Fear
ROCHESTER, Minn. - Terrorists lying in wait to attack. Planes falling from the sky. Ships blowing up. The candidates in the race for president are painting some scary scenarios to motivate voters.
In the first presidential campaign in a new age of terrorist threats, President Bush (news - web sites) and Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites) are speaking to the public's worst collective nightmares, making the case that the next occupant of the White House will make the difference in whether the country is safe or at greater risk.
Kerry's new vision of doomsday is based on reports that the Bush administration failed to secure nearly 400 tons of explosives missing from a military installation in Iraq (news - web sites). He accuses the Bush campaign of playing on people's fears while saying he speaks to their hopes, but in the same speech he'll raise the dangers of the missing explosives.
"Folks, these are the kind of explosives that took down Pan Am 103 (news - web sites)," Kerry said this week in Las Vegas, a reference to the 1988 plane bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. "These are the kind of explosives that blew up the USS Cole (news - web sites). And there are enough explosives there to harm America."
Bush says his opponent doesn't know what he's talking about on the missing weapons cache, then paints his own frightening picture of a world with Kerry as the U.S. president.
"I want to remind the American people if Senator Kerry had his way, we would still be taking our global test, Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) would still be in power, he would control all those weapons and explosives, and could have shared them with our terrorist enemies," Bush said Wednesday.
The central theme of Bush's re-election campaign long has been to make it seem dangerous to elect Kerry. But he's sharpened his attacks since a speech Oct. 18 in which he accused Kerry of having a dangerous mind-set that would permit a response to terrorism "only after America is hit."
Bush touts himself as a steady leader and better protector while reminding audiences of the horror of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
"The terrorists who killed thousands are still dangerous and they are determined to strike again," Bush said Wednesday in Lititz, Pa. "And the outcome of this election will set the direction of the war against the terrorists. ... If America shows uncertainty or weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy."
Kerry says his combat experience during the Vietnam War shows he is not the weakling Bush portrays him to be. Kerry said he will fight the terrorists "with all of the intensity with which I went at it, and I went at it, and the guys who were on my boats will tell you how we went at it. We fought."
Not all the warnings are about death and destruction, but they are still meant to frighten. Bush says Kerry's proposals cost so much that he would have to raise taxes on the middle class. Kerry says Bush could reinstate the military draft and plans to privatize Social Security (news - web sites).
Bush has said he would not do either, although he does favor allowing younger workers to invest some of their payroll taxes in personal retirement accounts. Kerry recently pledged not to raise taxes on people earning $200,000 or less.
Perhaps the scariest visions have come from Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) who, while campaigning, frequently raises the possibility of terrorists unleashing weapons of mass destruction in urban areas.
"The biggest threat we face now as a nation is the possibility of terrorists ending up in the middle of one of our cities with deadlier weapons than have ever been used against us, with a biological agent, or a nuclear weapon, or a chemical weapon of some kind, able to threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans, not just 3,000," he said in Carroll, Ohio, last week.
Cheney has said he suspects terrorists will try to disrupt Tuesday's election. He also has said that if Kerry were in charge the Soviet Union might still exist and Saddam might not just control Iraq, but the entire Persian Gulf.
Cheney's wife also stoked fear Wednesday when she introduced the vice president in Washington, Pa.
"The terrorists will try to come after us again," Lynne Cheney said. "They'll try. You know it. And I ask, 'Who do I want to have standing in the doorway ... protecting us?' It is not John Kerry."
9:22:40 AM
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