Dan Lyons
~ Thursday, September 30, 2004
 
SUNLIGHT THRU THE CLOUDS: The respectable ZOGBY poll just said that if the election were held today, Kerry would have 264 electoral votes (needing only SIX MORE to win!)with Bush getting only 241.
Bad News: an earlier poll showed Kerry ahead by 51 electoral votes!

(The average of the main polls shows Bush ahead by 6 points in popular vote.) GUARDIAN
 
BUSH MISSTATES NUMBER OF TRAINED IRAQI FORCES: In the Thursday debate, Bush said that we had 100,000 Iraqis trained to help in the fight against insurgents. ABC/NEWS 'fact-checker' promptly said Pentagon claims only 50,000 'trained' troops--and that critics questioned how well-trained these 'troops' were. (Recently a major and a general in these forces were exposed as guerilla infiltrators.)

We read that U.S. forces 'and Iraqi allies' recently invaded insurgent-controlled Samarrah. Until our 'allies' can attack alone, or hold onto conquered territory alone, we can assume they are more like mascots than allies.
==========================
BUSH MISSTATES SPENDING PLANS: One reason so many Iraqis support the guerillas is their rage over U.S. failing to restore clean water, sewage,etc. after the invasion.

Months ago, Congress appropriated $18 thousands of millions for reconstruction (as distinct from military expenses). But then the Bushies have actually spent on reconstruction only about one billion dollars. (Their hesitation is not over caution about fraud; several large frauds have already been uncovered.)

Legislators roared with anger when this was brought out--whereupon Bush blithely said they would be spending $9 billion on reconstruction in the next few months. Now it turns out that $7 billions were already 'obligated'; only $2 billions were added to the 'obligation'; that money won't be actually SPENT in less than 15 months. REUTERS
Apparently Bush's henchmen don't want to worry his pretty little head with details of his fiasco-war in Iraq.

The Bushies have announced that $3 billion of the $18 billion will be devoted to 'security', NOT reconstruction. This is besides the $136 billion already spent for (nonexistent) security--with tens of thousands of millions more budgeted.

'INCOMPETENCE' is the word that leaps to mind.
 
HELPING IRAN: Iran is our oldest enemy, now that the Soviet is disbanded.
They're the only nation that has dared kidnap all the personnel in our embassy ,holding them hostage for months! They were named by Bush as a member of the Axis of Evil.

That makes even more poignant the statement yesterday by an Iranian honcho, thanking the U.S. for destroying Iran's two top regional foes: the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Saddamites in Iraq! He also reminded the world that U.S. had earlier backed both the Taliban & Saddam! USATODAY

Daddy Bush in 1980 conquered Saddam's army, but stopped short of entering Baghdad and destroying Saddam. He was criticized for this, but he probably didn't want to remove this top foe of hated Iran!

Unfortunately his good sense was not inherited by 'W'. While the Bushies were scouring Iraq for non-existent WMDs, Iran and North Korea were busy developing nuclear weapons.

Iranian leaders have recently seemed to dare us and Israel to bomb them.
(Thanks to our rush into Iraq, our troops are entangled hopelessly--there's no chance we could invade Iran!)
The rest of the world would not enjoy having us interfere with Iran's huge oil-exports--not when oil is in such shortage that it sells for $50 a barrel!

What a bunch of blundering clowns the Bushies are!



~ Wednesday, September 29, 2004
 
Bush told Amish, "I trust that God speaks through me; otherwise I couldn't do my job." LANCASTER (PA) ONLINE16jULY

Gee, he has the same certainty that bin Laden has of Divine Guidance.

You know, it's possible that God IS using Bush and binLaden as His instruments, to destroy America (just as God destroyed the Philistines.)
 
PESSIMISTS GALORE: So far, these notables have weighed in to say our campaign in Iraq is 'worse than ever', or hopeless, or useless: UN Honcho Annan, the Vatican, Jordan's King Hussein (a neighbor who ought to know), Pakistan's dictator Musharraf (hailed by Bushies as a key ally), several Republican legislators, Bush's own top intelligence people, and Bush's own Secretary of State Powell. And I myself.

Meanwhile, Bush keeps telling Americans that the campaign is going well, is making progress. (Democrats were astounded when in the first debate, Bush wouldn't admit any problems in his Iraq campaign!)

Don't worry, 'W': your true believers don't even know who these gloomy people are, or what they've said--because they don't want to know. Your election-chances are not harmed by these expert opinions.
 
ATTACKS WIDESPREAD: A favorite dodge from Bushies and their puppet Allawi is this: "Although insurgent attacks are many (80 a day) and fierce, most of Iraq is pacified." But a report cited in NYTIMES29Sept says that insurgents are attacking in MOST areas! This last month there were 1000 attacks just in the capital city of Baghdad! [On 29Sept, 50 were killed and 150 wounded in Baghdad attacks.]

Yank generals brag: "We have never lost a battle with insurgents!" Well, no--the world's most over-armed troops are not likely to lose such a pitched battle--nor are the lightly-armed insurgents dumb enough to play that game! But they're winning their hit-and-run game.
 
"NO-GO CITIES TO BE RETAKEN IN OCTOBER!" says our puppet DefenseMinister. REUTERS Nobody else expects this. U.S. says they'll wait until they have competent Iraqi force to front for them--i.e., until Hell freezes over.

If this October attack is launched, it will show that the Bushies are desperate about our elections in November (no matter what the polls show). Normal election tactics would demand that they try to get Americans to forget Iraq (which Bush-backers want to do!)

High U.S. casualties, high civilian casualties, and the likelihood that we can't install viable puppet regimes in these cities--all these stories wouldn't help Bush's chances.

Most likely, this little guy has been smoking something. But then, maybe Rummy & his Pentagon buddies are smoking something.
-------------
It turns out that we ARE now launching an offensive against the insurgent-dominated city of Samarrah. Perhaps the Bushies recognize that Americans will NOT forget Iraq, so they better look active there.

In following this story, pay no attention to U.S. claims of how many insurgents they have killed. The issue is whether they can plant our puppet administrators in Samarrah, in real control of the city. (Maybe they figure this failure won't be obvious by 2 November.)
 
TWO DESPERATELY SILLY WAR-DEFENSES:
1) Tony Blair just defended his part in this war by repeating the oft-heard slogan: "The world is better off with Saddam in jail instead of in power."

Well, yes, if you ignore all the side-effects of his removal. Analogously, I'd be better off if someone gave me a Porsche (I'd sell it)--but IF I had to pay the full cost, then I'd be WORSE-OFF in the net.

When you consider the war's side-effects,then the world is clearly WORSE-OFF for Saddam's removal:
--Tens of thousands of Iraqis slaughtered, maimed or wounded. Forget the morality here: Muslims all over the world have seen photos of degraded prisoners and dismembered children. As several experts have noted, Bush has served as a great recruiting officer for the terrorists.

--over half the Iraqi population (the women) were more or less protected under Saddam; they will now be handed over to savagely anti-woman 'Sharia'. Similarly, Saddam protected over one million Iraqi Christians; they are now rushing to get out of Iraq (they are part of the educated elite who are now fleeing from Iraq.)


--Terrrorists from around the world are flocking to Iraq to get training in urban guerilla warfare.

--Bush will spend over $200 billion (200 thousands of millions of dollars) on the silly Iraq campaign before U.S. finally has to bug out, as it certainly will.
Forget all the schools and other good works at home that this money could have paid for; think of the anti-terrorist precautions which are NOW NOT BEING FUNDED: for instance, inspecting the thousands of huge ship-containers entering our harbors each day--any one of them could contain a nuclear bomb. (There are many other ways we might mitigate Homeland attacks if the Bushies would fund expensive precautions.)

--The Bushies arrogance in 'going-it-alone' in Iraq has alienated almost every country on earth. Suppose some country's intelligence service hears of a possible terrorist attack on America--do you think they would share information with the incompetent and corrupt U.S. intelligence agencies?

Also, though Americans at home seem able to ignore this aspect, 2 GIs are killed every day this war continues, and 25 are maimed or wounded.

And so on--once again, the world is worse off--especially America!--because we removed Saddam by our invasion!
---------------------------------
ANOTHER OFT-HEARD SLOGAN: "We do better to fight THEM over there than to have to fight THEM here."

But it's NOT THE SAME 'THEM'! If only 1 in 10,000 world Muslims (numbering 1 billion) are now enraged enough at the U.S. to support terrorists, or to volunteer as actual suicidal killers--that comes to 100,000 terrorists or supporters! It's estimated that the Iraq active insurgents number about 20,000. That leaves over 50,000 OTHER terrorists--some already in our country--waiting their chance to attack U.S.

(Nobody knows why our Homeland hasn't been attacked since 9/11. No expert thinks it's because the Bushies have made us safe!)

People who mouth this slogan: "Better there than here!" might think that our continued presence in Iraq shows how tough we are, and thus lowers terrorist morale around the world. On the contrary, every week we stay there, we display further our MILITARY INCOMPETENCE: our inability to protect the oil-pipelines, our puppet leaders, or even our own personnel ! The roads into Baghdad are nowhere near safe. One Arab observer says that our puppets (Allawi and his crew) hardly dare to leave the 'Green Zone', our central fortress in Baghdad..and rockets regularly strike INSIDE that zone!

The longer we keep our troops in Iraq, the more world-terrorists' hatred for us is reinforced by their contempt. Their morale rises each month.
~ Tuesday, September 28, 2004
 
JORDAN KING CONTRADICTS BUSHIE OPTIMISM: He says the situation in Iraq is chaos, and he sees no chance of improvement. Real elections in January are impossible; the extremists would win.
Internatl Herald Tribune
Presumably the king fears an electoral victory by the fanatic Shia followers of SADR. (Shiites outnumber Sunnis 3 to 1; they outnumber Sunnis +Kurds by 2 to 1 !)
One thing sure--the new elected govt. will be hostile to U.S. And eventually they'll be very rich--with oil likely to stay around $50 a barrel! if the country doesn't break into 3 parts.In any case, the Shiite parts of Iraq will be allied to Shiite Iran, our main foe in the mideast.
Of course, our stooges may set up crooked election rules to elect phony Shiites to be our future stooges. But this will not fool anyone: the UN will not certify the elections as legit, and the real Shiites (led by Sadr or Sistani) will not accept the new regime as legit.
---------------
Of course Bush would respond to the king's gloomy prognosis as he did to the one from his own top Intelligence people: "That's only a guess!"
 
OVER 100,000 'INTERCEPTS' NOT TRANSLATED ! Our nifty eavesdropping devices pick up all kinds of conversation from terrorist suspects around the world. BUT WE CAN'T TRANSLATE THE DAMN MESSAGES. And this is three years after we supposedly 'woke up' on 9/11 !

When an FBI agent 'blew the whistle' on this scandal, she was promptly fired, of course.

The FBI hired 400 new transators--but they don't check to see if the translators are competent! NYTIMES

Besides the foreign-language messages not translated, nearly FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND suspect messages have not even been reviewed.
This in spite of the fact that the FBI budget for this operation was raised from $20 million in '01 to $70 million in '04. [USATODAY,28Sept]

The terrorists could be sending explicit instructions for attack,
and we wouldn't know it!
----------------
What the hell were the Bushies thinking of, invading Iraq when we couldn't spy on them at all? How could we competently occupy a country when hardly any of our forces SPEAK THE LANGUAGE?!

Why are the 'D.C.imperialists' dreaming of our dominating the world, when young people here are so UNINTERESTED in the outside world that hardly any of them study foreign languages?
~ Monday, September 27, 2004
 
PAKI HONCHO FLATLY CONTRADICTS BUSHIES: Musharraf says (a) that U.S. effort in Afghanistan has all along been crippled by a shortage there ofU.S. troops. In other words, as all astute observers already knew, the Afghan campaign has been drained by the Bushies' determination--from the moment they took power, long before 9/11!--to invade Iraq.

(b) What to do now? M. says the main thing is to pull hated U.S. troops out of Iraq quickly, or at least reduce their visibility. DAILY TIMES

Our generals' strategy: use airpower, not troops, to blast insurgents...as if that would lessen Iraqi hatred of America, and the recruitment of enraged Iraqis (and other Muslims) to enlist as terrorist supporters or even as suicide-terrorists!

[ A Fallujah father was offered money by Americans after their bombs killed his wife and five children. He turned it down: "How can money compensate? I count on God to compensate, killing them all in Iraq!" REUTERS

The Bushies are trying to cut down U.S. casualties until our Nov. elections. But insurgents managed to kill 5 U.S. troops in 24 hours this last weekend.
~ Wednesday, September 22, 2004
 
ATROCITIES? OF COURSE! Alleged veterans have flooded the media with their indignation that Kerry alleges that atrocities by U.S. GIs were not uncommon during the Viet War. But everyone who understands the nature of guerilla war sees that such atrocities are inevitable when conventionally-trained troops face enemies who don't wear uniforms, who might be women or even children. In such dreadful circumstances, many soldiers are bound to run amok--indeed, whole groups of soldiers can turn sadistic.

A researcher has gone over U.S. military records from the Viet war--recently declassified--and has found many horrific tales. VillageVoice

Viet veterans may know that Kerry's stories are plausible--but they may resent --as 'disloyal--the awful truth being publicized. But they should understand that the main blame should fall on the Lyndon Johnson administration who put them, needlessly and pointlessly, in that impossible situation.

Later on, similar stories will come out about our troops in Iraq--and not just in prisons, for the same reasons. And similarly, the blame should fall on BUSH and his henchmen who have--needlessly and pointlessly--put our badly-trained GIs in that impossible situation.

Both leadership-groups should be counted as war-criminals--and perhaps as traitors (for continuing an unwinnable war.) Johnson had the minimal decency to withdraw from the Presidency. Bush & his henchmen may well be reelected by foolish voters. Then our GIs will continue, not just to be maimed or wounded or shell-shocked from fear, but also to be corrupted.
 
WHY NOT BUG OUT? (Letter to USATODAY)
Your editorial (17Sept) rightly points out the hopelessness of our Iraq campaign. But then you say vaguely, "The stakes are too high; we can't just pull out." Like many others uttering this cliche, you don't say excactly what ARE these 'high stakes" requiring us to slog on, with 25 GIs maimed or wounded every day.

Earlier, we bugged out of Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, etc..with no visible damage to our nation, except for the humiliation of our leaders. ( To 'bug out' is to pull our troops out of combat without defeating the foe. )

After MacArthur foolishly dragged China into our Korean war, we bugged out, leaving intact a wounded and enraged North Korea which has now developed nuclear weapons. We've had to keep 40,000 troops there 'protecting South Korea' for the last FIFTY YEARS! But even that's better than to go on fighting hordes of Chinese--for nothing!

Most Iraqis (polled by our own agencies) WANT OUR TROOPS OUT! Our badly-trained troops are so hated there that observers say their presence is doing more harm than good. Our generals have let large sections of Iraq slip under the insurgents' control.

Our military can't protect the oil pipelines, our puppet leaders, or even our own personnel! Our stupid bombing tactics (photos of dismembered children) have 'drawn in' enraged foreign Muslims from around the world to fight hated America--in Iraq, they get valuable training for terrorizing us later.

Civil war may follow our leaving--but that's also true if we stay on for years, with awful GI casualties continuing. (We've been 'keeping the peace' in parts of Yugoslavia for years and years; nobody doubts that when we finally leave, the ethnic factions will be back at each other's throats.)

The shameful thing is NOT our bugging out of these hopeless campaigns. What's shameful is the way we keep blundering into these unnecessary and unwinnable conflicts.

Bush has learned nothing from these previous fiascos; he rushed us once again into a bloody and pointless war.
------------------------
A shortened version of this letter was printed in USATODAY on 22Sept.
~ Tuesday, September 21, 2004
 
A U.S.state dept. document in'01, listing places where alQaeda is operating---
does NOT mention Iraq ! US Info
 
VOTE WITH THEIR FEET? In a country of fewer than 30 million, one-half million people have secured passports which would enable them to get out of Iraq. Most of these are the educated, progressive Iraqis.

200 University Professors have been assassinated (who knows why?) and so 2000 have left. ChristSciMonitor
 
POLL NOT QUITE SO BAD: A poll just released today shows Bush 49%, Kerry 45%. Fin.Times That's not good, but that's not as bad as the eleven-point-lead some polls showed earlier.
 
'VETERANS' ISSUE: The COLORADOAN printed my letter on the disgraceful underfunding by Bush of Veterans programs, just when thousands of maimed GIs from Iraq are going to be spending months or years--or the rest of their lives !--under the care of the 'Bureau of Veterans Affairs.'

For more on this issue, see the letters to Congress from several Vet organizations protesting this underfunding in IndependentBudget
 
GLOOMY WARNINGS: 3 top Republicans expressed severe worries about Bush's handling of the Iraq war--one actually spoke the forbidden words: 'losing the war'. At once, Colin Powell--unsurprisingly--accused critics of being 'defeatist' and 'rattled'. (Later, even Powell admitted that the Iraq situation is getting 'worse.'

Well, yes..sensible Republicans would get rattled at seeing the incompetence with which the Bushies are responding to the disastrous turn the war is taking.
----------
Condoleeza Rice showed how flustered she was when she denied their own intelligence briefing, which predicted a possible civil war in Iraq. She said the insurgents are 'anarchists', with no political program of their own.
Then she said they wanted to restore the Saddamites in power--or to turn over Iraq to Taliban-types.
REUTERS

Obviously, people who want to restore Saddamites DO have a political program of their own. Also, the Saddamites would want to restore TYRANNY, which is the opposite of Anarchy! And the Taliban, also, were accused of tyranny--but they cured the anarchy of the regions they controlled--they even controlled the production of opium!

The Bushies destroyed the police-force in Iraq, and thus laid the country open to anarchy. Similarly the Bushies returned anarchy to Afghanistan.

The Bushies are coming unglued in public.
~ Monday, September 20, 2004
 
WHAT KIND OF ELECTIONS? Our puppet Allawi has announced a big publicity campaign about the supposed election coming up in January. And the Bushies keep claiming that date will hold. So let's suppose some kind of election does take place. What will it mean?

Actually, the election doesn't matter. It's the illusory PROSPECT of the Iraq election that is supposed to fool U.S. voters before November.

The rules for the election are set up by a bunch of U.S. puppets, themselves unelected. UN honcho Annan says he doubts that a real election can take place in January (and UN endorsement of the results will be necessary to make the results seem legitimate).

How can people vote freely in the huge number of areas controlled by the insurgents? Bushies say they'll 'take back' these areas before the election, in a military offensive--it would amount to a new invasion!--AFTER NOV. U.S. ELECTIONS; what's most likely is that we'll bomb the hell out of the contested areas, but will not be able to install our administrators securely to run and guarantee the integrity of the elections.

Allawi's team has offered this solution: people will be able to vote 'anywhere they want'--not just where they live! [ FinancialTimes ]Never mind the problem of honest identification. Suppose a minority of the people sneak out of the 'no-go' areas to vote elsewhere--will their votes represent the opinions of the majority who don't dare go elsewhere to vote?

In fact, without enormous frauds taking place, the Shiites would outvote the Sunnis THREE TO ONE! But frauds in the rules might put in 'Shiite' pols--like Allawi and the infamous Chalabi (!) who do NOT represent the Shiite community! We mustn't forget that after we installed phony Shiites in Baghdad, the Shiite rebellions in Najaf, Baghdad, etc., took place, and crippling attacks on oil-pipelines occurred in Shiite territory.

In any case, the Sunni insurgents--their exile from society now confirmed by 'elections'--will see no reason to stop their attacks on the government and the Americans. In fact the coming 'extermination-bombings' by the Americans will confirm them in their 'fight-to-the-death' attitude.

But none of that will matter in America; with our elections over, our people will have no say in our Iraq policy.
 
"FOREIGN TERRORISTS ARE POURING INTO IRAQ!" warned our puppet Allawi. A Brit observer responded, "There were no alQuaeda terrorists operating there until we invaded, destroyed their police force.."

Blair said that Iraq is the central front for terrorism, that if we fail there disasters would happen in London, NewYork,Cairo,etc. CNN

Yes, and we ARE visibly failing in Iraq--due to Bushie blunders, which, by Blair's view are endangering all the great cities of the world.

Calm down. Whether we succeed or fail in Iraq will NOT affect the safety of world capitals. If only 1 in 10,000 of world Muslims turn terrorist, that would be 100,000 terrorists ready to attack us. If we wiped out all Iraqi terrorists, that would leave plenty around to attack us, enraged by photos of the children our bombs have blown up.

When the insurgents drive out our troops, as they will--because we have nothing to gain by keepinthththe GIsrth-- ]is would raise terrorist morale somewhat around the world--but this is already high, as Iraqi insurgents humiliate our generals, who can't protect the oil-pipelines or our puppet leaders OR OUR GIs.

[Sorry--the blogspot editor has gone screwy.]

However, Iraq is proving a good training-ground for foreign terrorists; they're learning techniques of fighting in cities against conventional armies.--thanks again to Bushie stupidity.

But they're also learning these techniques in Chechnya..as they did in Afghanistan, when the Afghans threw out the Soviet.

Iraq is a sideshow in the worldwide war with terrorists..an ugly, heartbreaking sideshow for 'our side'.

~ Sunday, September 19, 2004
 
LONG-TIME WORRIES ABOUT DEMOCRACY: Some may think that my present depressed opinions about 'democracy' (which I often refer to as Slobocracy) may be caused just by the fact that I NOW see that at least half of registered voters here intend to vote for a man any intelligent observer can see is the worst enemy of unrich Americans.

However, readers of my book DEMOCRACY,RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS (if there were any such readers) would know that before the year 2000 I wrote that
"All the likely alternatives are worse, but DEMOCRACY IS A TERRIBLE FORM OF GOVERNMENT."

Well,never mind; if Bushies get re-elected, even the pretence of democracy may become a moot issue, a mythical creature.
 
HAWKS ADMIT BUSH'S BLUNDERS: the NewYorkPost is of course the right-wing's answer to NYTIMES..they have always defended the invasion and Pres. Bush. But now they say "he has shown courage in setting goals and steadfastness in sticking to them...but extraordinary recklessness AND INCOMPETENCE in execution." [ quoted in Editor & Publisher. ]

Or in other words: Bush is a pig-headed blunderer who is costing our GIs horribly in deaths and wounds. While Bush & his crew talk cheerfully about 'progress' in Iraq, Rep.Senator Hagel says we are in very deep trouble there, with no end in sight to our terrible casualties.

Sen.McCain, who has shamelessly campaigned for Bush (everyone wonders what pressures or rewards they used to get his help)--McCain now says, "We've made some very serious mistakes."

What's this 'WE-shit'? The blunders were all made by the Bushies!
 
BIG IRAQ OFFENSIVE planned, say Bushies, before January elections--AND AFTER NOVEMBER ELECTIONS HERE! NYTIMES

Insurgents now control 36 towns in Iraq, and by Nov. will control even more.
We'll bomb the hell out of these sectors of Iraq--and then try to install administrators from our puppet regime. It will have to be a second invasion.

Our elections will then be over, so nobody will care about the long-range success of this 'offensive'. (Already, UN honcho Annan is saying that UN won't legitimate Jan.election unless 'security' is improved.) The ASSOC. OF SUNNI MUSLIM SCHOLARS (which controls 3000 MOSQUES!) has announced that it will not participate in this election, since an election held under an occupying army (of infidels) cannot be a fair one.

Also, nobody will care then how many GIs are slaughtered or maimed in this desperate caper.

Both Bush & Kerry say they'll keep our troops in Iraq for years. We can hope they're both lying; it's more likely that Kerry is sanely lying.
==========
Bush's polls jump suddenly...but in our slobocracy, the kidults here who have changed so suddenly can change back just as suddenly. Anyway, our reason to keep working has little to do with the degree of hope; rather, the motivation should be our self-respect.
=============
SENATORS FROM BOTH PARTIES DENOUNCE BUSH POLICIES:
USATODAY
Both Republican and Democratic Senators have mentioned Bushies' 'incompetence' as reason for the present fiasco.

McCain, after selling out to Bush in the campaign, obviously thinks Bush's reelection is sure enough that he can go back to honest criticism. He notes that the planned 'offensive' is scheduled for after Nov. elections, and thinks that's waiting too long. "Bush", says McCain, " is not being straight with the people."

Wow. What an insight.
 
BRITS TO PULL SOME TROOPS OUT? In the middle of the worst security crisis ever in Iraq, the Brit paper OBSERVER claims that one-third of the 5000 Brit troops there will be pulled out soon!

Of course the Blairites are saying that MORE Brits will be involved.
--------------
A U.S. legislator put it very well about the number of GIs in Iraq:
"If they're there to fight, then there are absurdly too few; if they're there just to die, then there are already too many there." (Far fewer GIs die in Aghanistan--because there are far, far fewer GIs IN Afghanistan!)

U.S. & Brit troops are not fighting the insurgents..our generals are as usual stupidly relying on bombs, not troops. But the GIs remain in Iraq, more vulnerable than ever--25 wounded every day for the last 5 months!

Perhaps while Tony Blair is chattering about solidarity in staying the course, his generals are insisting that they start a pullout.

That would show the Brits, as usual, smarter than the Yanks.
~ Saturday, September 18, 2004
 
BLAIR WAS WARNED, a year BEFORE the invasion, that chaos might follow, that the situation might not be any better for the invasion--that only years of 'nation-building' (i.e., occupation) would be needed..years that neither the Brits nor the Americans were warned about. REUTERS

Blair should not have needed such a warning. Looking at the fate of Yugoslavia should have warned him--rival ethnic groups held together only by a dictator, erupting into chaos when that dictator was removed.

They should have foreseen that, if Iraq were to turn into a majoritarian democracy, then the Shiites would rule, the Kurds would secede, and the Sunnis (who had ruled the area for centuries) would fight to the death to prevent such a fall for themselves.

They should have known that the Bushies were completely ignorant of MiddleEastern languages and culture, that U.S. intelligence was wildly ignorant--and corrupt.

However, nobody could predict what a dog's breakfast the Bushies would make of the occupation--so that even the Shiites, who should come out on top, would rise up in revolt against the Americans and the British.
 
SMARTER BRITS: Tony Blair lied Britain into the Iraq invasion. The other leaders of his Party stuck by him--so the membership of his Party has shrunk to ONE-HALF its former strength. [cited in GUARDIAN WEEKLY, 6-12 Aug.issue].

Too bad the U.S. Republicans don't have the perception of British Laborites.
 
'PRO-LIFE' CATHOLICS ARE CAFETERIA CATHOLICS: they pick & choose what bits of Papal edicts they will obey.
------------------
They say that the faithful are bound to obey and believe, not just the (tiny number of ) INFALLIBLE proclamations of the Popes--but also, every encyclical from every Pope, which constitute the 'ordinary magisterium' of the Church. (After all, the obsession that the sin of abortion must count as a crime is found only in encyclicals, not in infallible dogmas.)

Most Catholics don't realize (because it is never told to them) that they must, therefore, believe all the contents of the SYLLABUS OF ERRORS from Pius IX in the 19th-century--especially because a) the encyclicals demanding that abortion be punished legally date only from the nineteenth century (I believe) and (b) because Pius IX has recently been beatified by a recent Pope.

So let us heed some of the 'ERRORS' condemned strongly by the encyclical QUANTA CURA by Pius IX, in his appended SYLLABUS OF ERRORS: (remember that, however respectable these ideas seem nowadays, they were all condemned by the 'Ordinary Magisterium' of the Church. [In case I seem to be misquoting, you can check up by clicking on SYLLABUS. That translation is seemingly authorized by the Vatican.]

SOME OF THE CONDEMNED ERRORS:
15) "Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true."

17)"Good hope at least is to be entertained of the..salvation of those who are not at all in the True Church of Christ."

38) "Roman pontiffs have, by their too arbitrary conduct, contributed to the division of the Church into East and West." (Lyons: think this out: a criticism of the prudence of some decisions of the pontiffs, and a hypothesis about the historical consequences of this conduct--this is solemnly condemned as an error every Catholic must reject.)

45) "The entire government of public schools (in a Christian state) ought to pertain only to the civil powers..no other authority [has] any power to interfere." [Lyons: note that this error refers not to Church schools, but to PUBLIC schools; it does not say the Church may not CRITICIZE the schools, only that she may not INTERFERE..]

47) "Public schools [should be] open to children of every class." [Lyons: wow.] All public institutions should be freed from all ecclesiastical authority."

48) "Catholics may approve of a system of educating youth unconnected with the Catholic Faith and the power of the Church [regarding] the knowledge of merely natural things and pertaining to the ends of earthly social life."

55) "Church and state should be separate." [Lyons: wow.]

63) "It is lawful to refuse obedience to legitimate princes and even to rebel against them."
[Lyons: Hitler was the 'legitimate prince' of Germany, at least for the first few years.
No acknowledgement is made that a 'legitimate prince' might behave horribly.]

67) "Divorce properly so-called may be decreed by the secular authority."

76) "Abolition of the temporal power of the Apostolic See would contribute to the liberty and prosperity of the Church." [Lyons: note that this error is a mere historical prediction; in other words, says this document of the 'ordinary Magisterium', the Pope must continue as the King of Rome.]

78)"It has wisely been decreed by law, in some Catholic countries, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own peculiar worship." [Lyons: wow.]
---------------------------
Remember--all the above 'errors' have been condemned by the Ordinary Magisterium of the Church.
---------------
Then Blessed Pius goes on: "from these sects [called Masonic or otherwise] the Synagogue of Satan takes its strength. " [Lyons: note that Christ has a Church, but Satan has a Synagogue.]
------------------------
Again, if Catholics are bound to accept the 19th-century encyclicals calling for legal punishment of abortion, then they must also reject these errors condemned by this encyclical, with similar authority.
 
AFRAID OF THE FLAG?
Today, 18Sept, Woodward Governor Corp. ordered the U.S. flag, "Old Glory', removed from their fence.

True, it was being waved by some peace-protesters; apparently the W-G person objected to their pretending to be patriots. He said all signs must be removed from the fence; "Even the flag?!" /"The flag too!"

Who would dream that a big strong war-corporation like Woodward Governor would fear a half-dozen doddering old peaceniks?
 
CIA DISSENTER IDENTIFIED: A CIA honcho, before this anonymous, wrote an astonishing book IMPERIAL HUBRIS:WHY THE WEST IS LOSING THE WAR ON TERROR. Now he has come out in the open, in order to speak out on the fact that Bush's CIA is STILL falling short against alQuaeda. [ GUARDIAN ]

It's grimly astonishing to hear that over half of Americans trust the Bushies to counter terrorism!

If these Americans had any brains, they'd think this way: Bush says the war in Iraq is CENTRAL FRONT in our 'war' on terrorism...but that Iraq campaign is obviously FAILING..so Bush's war on terrorism is obviously failing!

Be afraid, be very afraid--not just of alQuaeda, but of American ignorance.
 
NATO WON'T BE TRAINING IRAQIS: NATO earlier agreed 'in principle' to train Iraqi officers. But the devil is in the details. France & Belgium are blocking any move to send NATO trainers into Iraq.
FinancialTimes

It remains ever true: We broke it, we bought it.
----------
ELITE U.S. CADRE will be sent to Iraq to train our native recruits (those who survive the bombings.) These elite have never been sent into a combat zone in 45 years.. [GUARDIAN]

This is an indication of the Pentagon's desperation in Iraq. Some have said it's like 'eating the seed-corn'. These elite soldiers are needed to train OUR troops!
 
KERRY: BUSH WILL CALL UP MORE RESERVISTS, AFTER NOVEMBER:
USATODAY
One could know this without being told--but Bushies denounced this story as completely fraudulent. However, a Democratic Congressman said that Pentagon people had told him this is the secret plan.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi may be the first official to raise the question of bugging out from Iraq: "Staying the course is not now an option."
 
BUSHIES WENT TO WAR OVER IRAQ'S NON-EXISTENT NUKES--MEANWHILE, THEY LET NORTH KOREA DEVELOP REAL NUKES!

Now N.K. says, sensibly, that they will never get rid of their nukes. REUTERS

But don't worry--the nukes will never be used in a first-strike against America--our retaliation would remove the country from world maps.

N.K's nukes were developed as a 'Second-strike deterrent' vs. the Petagon's passionate desire to bomb N.K. "You can destroy our cities as you did 50 years ago..but this time, our survivors will come out of our caves to make you regret it." The nukes could be fired at our coasts from freighters far away in the Pacific Ocean, invulnerable to our silly 'anti-missile missiles' !
 
DADDY BUSH'S LETTER: REUTERS Congressman Geo.Herbert Bush wrote to Sonny W's commanding general, thanking him for taking a personal interest in a mere new recruit. How charming.

Daddy said he was sure Sonny would make a gung-ho AirForce man. Sure he would. Soon after, Sonny defied a direct order to take a physical exam (for whatever reason)--thus he lost his flying credential, and wasted about one million dollars the N.Guard paid to train him for flight.

One wonders why the Bush-supporting macho yahoos are not depressed by his dismal service-record compared to Kerry's heroic record. But we should remembered that most of these yahoos are themselves 'chicken-hawks' just like the Bush-Cheney crowd they admire. They love to WATCH war as cheerleaders, not to participate.

Unfortunately, the present military disaster in Iraq is not much fun to watch.
 
GASOLINE UP AGAIN: NYTIMES Thanks to the hurricanes, gasoline prices are jumping up again. One could hope that the Bushie yahoos in their SUVs would dramatically feel economic pressures and be disillusioned--rationally or not--with Bush.

But it seems that most of them don't care about the slaughter and maiming of GIs in Iraq--nor about their own economic self-interest...they cuddle up to Bush, their worst enemy.

There are at least 150 million sane Americans--more sane people than in any country in Europe..too bad about the 150 million OTHER Americans.
~ Friday, September 17, 2004
 
TIME MAGAZINE joins the pessimists on Iraq.

Bushies say they'll train & organize Iraqis to fight the insurgents for us.
(30 years ago that trick was called 'Vietnamization', and it failed totally.)
The problem is motivation: how do you get young recruits to fight their countrymen on behalf of a hated infidel invader? Desertions are high, and insurgents are infiltrating 'our' forces.

Even a poll by U.S. showed that most Iraqis want us OUT !

One sad note: TIME says that many Americans believe that 'if these bombs don't explode in Iraq, they'll explode here'. No expert thinks that the war there lowers our danger here!

USATODAY (17Sept.)just summed up the hopelessness of our campaign. And Colin Powell tried to defend the Bushie position; his argument had almost no content.

One problem: USATODAY says vaguely, "With so much at stake, pulling out is not an option." No one lays out exactly WHAT is at stake. Earlier, when we bugged out of Cuba, Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, etc., no visible damage was done to our nation (except the humiliation of our leaders). Most Iraqis WANT us to pull out; many observers say that our military does more harm there than good.

Once again, it is the possible humiliation of our leaders that is supposed to justify the continuing high GI casualties: 25 wounded each day since April!
Kerry doesn't dare, for some reason, make the obvious call for our troops to get out!
 
WILD POLLS: A USATODAY/GALLUP poll shows Bush far ahead! But two other respectable polls show Kerry even..(Sadly no polls show Kerry far ahead!) MSNBC

A Colorado poll shows them here running even. Salazar is ELEVEN POINTS AHEAD of his nincompoop opponent. Let's hope his 'coat-tails' help Kerry in Colorado. I'm donating to Salazar, not directly to Kerry--any Hispanics who turn out to vote for Salazar will also vote for Kerry.

Well, we won't lean on polls. Democratic activists, I trust, will be motivated by good news or bad to devote all the time & money they can spare to support Kerry. The stakes are incredibly high.

The big trick is for us to get young women, working women, less educated women to register and vote. I'm going to flash my signs at cars pulling in and out of Walmart on the North side. That's where these women shop--and work.
~ Thursday, September 16, 2004
 
HOW MANY WOUNDED? UnitedPressInternatl. is the only U.S. press-agency really tracking down the number of wounded GIs from Iraq.

The official U.S. definition of 'casualty' is "anyone lost to service for over a day for any reason." Yet U.S. media regularly give only the number of the dead as the number of casualties.

Pentagon admits that nearly SEVENTEEN THOUSAND have been medically evacuated from Iraq & Afghanistan--most from Iraq, of course.
Pentagon defends its low figure of 7000 wounded by saying that of those evacuated , most were for non-combat ailments--like diarrhea.
Editor&Publisher

Remembering that slight ailments are treated in Iraq, not evacuated--one wonders what severe non-combat epidemics have struck our GIs so that 17,000 have had to be flown out--one in twenty of those sent to Iraq!

Something's fishy.
 
RUNNING SHORT OF RESERVE TROOPS: Pentagon now calls up reserve, Natl.Guard troops only for a total of 24 months--but legally they could call them up again and again (for 24 months at a time) ! If they don't, says Congressional agency, they may run out of available troops. (One in three GIs in Iraq now are from reserve/natl.guard).

But if they do, enlistments might plummet even further than they have now.
AgenceFrancePresse
 
"BUSH'S WAR ILLEGAL!" Kofi Annan, UN honcho, said again that Bush's invasion violated the UN Charter, and was therefore illegal.(The Vatican also said beforehand that it would be 'unjust, illegal & disastrous.')

Since we ratified the UN charter, that would mean Bush's war is illegal under U.S. law also! But don't expect the GOP Supreme Court to say so.
------------------------------------
More important, Annan said that if present turmoil continues in Iraq, a January election will be impossible. He said that this will be a decision for the Allawi regime--but ultimately the UN will have to make an independent finding.
FINANCIAL TIMES

Bushies hoped to have UN validate the Jan. election as legitimate; now that hope is fading.
 
2 YANKS & A BRIT KIDNAPPED: REUTERS For some reason, kidnapped individuals get on TV easier than a dozen GIs killed or wounded. The guerillas watch TV too, and they've caught on to this, kidnapping dozens (e.g., forcing foreign companies to quit working in Iraq). Today's snatch was in broad daylight, in a prosperous section of Baghadad. Our generals can't protect the pipelines, or our puppets, or our police, or even our citizens.

Militants say they'll kill these 2 Yanks unless we release all of our FEMALE prisoners. [ USATODAY ]That's very clever. Iraqis are horrified at the thought of our imprisoning WOMEN...they assume that such women will be defiled; upon release, they will never be accepted back by their families--they'll have to turn to whoredom. So beheading a couple of infidels will seem a trivial atrocity to MiddleEastern peoples, by comparison.

U.S. spokesmen said we have almost no female prisoners at the two prisons in question. But who would believe them?

 
BUSH BOUNCE SAGS: REUTERS /Bush was ahead, but now in Pew poll, even among LIKELY voters (not just registered voters) it's a tie! Another poll also shows a tie. Dems have 2 more weeks to register young women, blacks, and Hispanics..that could make the difference.
=============
In 1972, even though everyone knew the Viet war couldn't be won, American voters gave a landslide victory to Nixon (a liar, a crook, and a war-monger) over McGovern (an intelligent war-hero).

Will their children and grandchildren be equally stupid?
 
UPCHEERING:
A teacher can't change history, but he can enlighten a few.

Today a young guy came up to me, with US ARMY written across his chest: "When I was a freshman, you were out here yelling, and I thought you were crazy. I come back as a Senior, and I hear you still yelling." (finger jabbed toward me) "And by God, you were right all along!"
 
INTELL.ESTIMATE IS MORE PESSIMIST THAN KERRY! NYTIMES
A still-classified estimate OK'd by our top intelligence officials says that the most optimistic prediction for Iraq is tenuous survival,constantly threatened;

--the middle scenario sees little improvement from present chaos [2GIS dead each day, with 25 wounded!] ;

the worst scenario is Iraq splitting into 3 nations by civil war. (Our troops are helpless to influence this outcome.)

This estimate has been seen by Bush, but he is still spouting his optimistic nonsense in public. It has also been seen by many other honchos in D.C., who are willing to describe it ANONYMOUSLY.

And this gloomy estimate was completed BEFORE the recent upsurge of guerilla attacks, showing ever-stronger insurgents!

Bush says, "Freedom is on the March!" Maybe Freedom is marching, somewhere--but Americans are reeling in Iraq.
-----------
Bush rejects this bad news--from the top intelligence officials of his own team!
No surprise there.

 
USATODAY BLOWS THE WHISTLE: (our widest-circulation paper).

Earlier, NEWSWEEK admitted Bush is losing his war in Iraq. Then CBS admitted that 800 GIs are getting wounded each month. Now USATODAY admits that we're losing--the terrorists get stronger each week.

Our invasion 'opened the gates of hell' in Iraq--just as outside Arab leaders predicted. The Pope predicted before the war that our invasion would be 'disastrous'. (That prediction did not undermine his claim of infallibility!)
Trouble was,Bush was getting directions right from God.

The chief optimist quoted in USATODAY says it took England 10 years to put down the guerillas in Malaysia, so why should we be in such a hurry? He says cheerfully that insurgencies take up to THIRTY YEARS to quell.
The question is, WHAT WOULD WE GAIN by bleeding our GIs for 8 more years? [2 dead each day, plus 2 dozen wounded.] Also, can we get enough volunteers willing to bleed for 8 more years? Or will we have to resort to a draft?

(Of course, if we could mass-produce infantry robots...but then the Pentagon could conquer U.S. just as easily as any other country. American soldiers wouldn't shoot Americans; American robots wouldn't hesitate.)

Up to 36 Iraq cities are under rebel control. We can't protect the oil pipelines, to fund our new puppet government. We can't protect our puppet administrators, nor our new policemen (700 dead so far).

Bushies say 'It'll get worse until the January elections." And then? The elections will not appear legitimate. Earlier, they said it would get worse until our 'power handover' last June.. It did, and then it kept on getting worse.

"There is now no grand illusion that we're winning", said GOP Senator Hagel. Right now 'we're losing' said another expert; "and neither Allawi's people nor our generals have any plausible idea of how to turn this around."
"It's difficult to say that Iraq is better off now than under Saddam',says another expert.

Just as the terrorists (including binLaden) got training when the Afghans threw out the Russians, so terrorists from all over the world will flock to Iraq to get trained in combat.
Iraqis blame us for slaughtering them from the air; they also blame us when the guerillas blow them up; they say the bombs are U.S. or Israeli.

In Vietnam we weren't outfought, we were outbled. There are 30 million Iraqis, plus terrorists from outside. We'll get outbled again.
----------
Rumsfeld has the best comment: "Sooner or later Iraqis will get tired of being killed."
In WWI, generals on both sides said, "Sooner or later they'll get tired of being killed."That's why that silly slaughter went on pointlessly for years. The Viets never tired of being killed.

These people are even less likely to tire of dying, since they think Allah will reward them if they die killing Americans.

~ Wednesday, September 15, 2004
 
AT LAST, MEDIA TALK ABOUT THE WOUNDED: CBS/NEWS just cited Pentagon admission that 219 GIs were wounded last WEEK (138 were NOT immediately returned to duty). FOUR THOUSAND were wounded in last five months--that's TWENTY-FIVE EACH DAY!
The rate of U.S. casualties keeps rising.

Bush has admitted that he made a 'miscalculation', underestimating Iraq resistance to our occupation. This was NOT a SMALL miscalculation;
GI blood is shed every week over this 'miscalculation'. Every week the guerilla attacks grow in number & sophistication.

The truth is that our troops are so hated in Iraq that they do more harm than good in getting Iraq pacified and stabilized. They should be brought home.

But Bush doesn't dare 'bug out'--not before Nov. elections.
 
CIVIL WAR? Some observers worry about incipient Iraq civil war.GUARDIAN

However, a real civil war would be between Shiites and Sunnis; and this does not seem to be developing. Indeed, both groups may be cooperating to drive out the Americans. (..cooperating for now...they may go to war with each other after the Yanks are driven out.)

The conflict now is between the guerillas and the 'apolitical' people who want to collaborate with the Americans and their puppets, to earn a living.
It's hardly a civil WAR, when the victims aren't capable of fighting back, and the Americans can't or won't defend them.
=============
Juan Cole is a respected expert on the Iraq conflict. You might want to click on his website : JuanCole

 
HI-TECH WORKERS IN TROUBLE: RockyMtnNews (15Sept,p.7b)notes bleak news for U.S. hi-tech workers. Right-wing journalists constantly tell us that outsourcing is no big problem; but it turns out that nearly half a million info-tech jobs have been lost in the last year. This job market shrank by 19%.

Colorado lost 27,000 techie jobs in'02.

Under Bush, there are at least 3 tax provisions that reward corporations which replace U.S. workers with computers, robots or foreign workers.

When current hi-tech students can't pay their education loans, their younger siblings or cousins will prudently decide not to major in such difficult subjects as computer science, but to choose comfortable majors like 'Communications'... they won't be any more unemployable!
 
AMERICAN CORPORATIONS? (letter to RockyMtnNews):
You say (15Sept,p.1b) that 'U.S.companies' took $149 billion in profits from tax-haven countries, up 70% from 1999 (so they didn't have to payU.S. taxes). You can bet the remaining 'U.S. corporations' didn't pay much in taxes here--that's why they didn't bother to move operations overseas.

Two things to note:--the huge jump in taxes lost here happened during the Bush administration, partly accounting for the huge and dangerous jump during his reign in our national deficit.

--actually there ARE no American corporations. Money has no national loyalty.
~ Tuesday, September 14, 2004
 
'THINGS ARE WORSE THAN YOU THINK!' says NEWSWEEK .

Iraq insurgents are getting stronger.
"U.S. military is not trained to handle insurgencies."

phase 1 of an insurgency: recruiting & sabotage.
phase 2: sudden ambushes.
phase 3: (now) They stand and fight. A broad daylight raid, with no masks!

Insurgents may number 20,000.

"Little or no chance of January elections."/"Americans invent these fictional dates, to delude themselves." (No, to delude the voters!)

'Of course we shouldn't bug out--but we must rethink our objectives.
Iraqis waver between bare tolerance of us and hostility.
The idea of a functioning democracy here is crazy."
[This sounds like a call for a new dictatorship:
Saddam Lite!]

Attacks on GIs reached a peak of 87 per day in August. [1100 wounded!]
Disturbing: attacks spread over much greater area.

There are more and more towns we just avoid, handing over power to insurgents. GIs aren't even safe just OUTSIDE Fallujah: 7 GIs killed by a suicide car.

Sammarans asked Allawi's govt for help vs. local insurgents. No such luck.

Iraqis blame us for getting them into this mess.

Educated Iraqis are trying to get out. Such a crowd at passport office that shots had to be fired into the air.
---------------
An Arabic observer said that 9/10ths of Iraq is outside Allawi's control.
"They don't dare drive outside of their Headquarters!" /BBC NEWS
--------------
Outside companies quit in Iraq, after their workers are kidnapped.
A Jordanian company just pulled out. VoiceOfAmerica
 
ISRAEL A 'SWING-STATE'? Millions of expatriate Americans can vote in November, including 250,000 living now in Israel. Traditionally, Jews have voted Democratic--but these Americans will likely be influenced by Bush's fawning subservience to Sharon. REUTERS
 
PUTIN & BUSH: Most Russians disapprove of the super-tough Putin approach to the Chechnya problem. It has NOT worked..again and again, enraged Chechnyans--often WIDOWS of Putin-slain Chechnyans--they have launched bloody retaliation against Russ civilians. But Putin forges on.

Now Putin uses Russian fear and rage to subvert the Russ constitution and grab extra powers for himself. It's a win-win situation: if no attacks occurred, he could say he protected Russ; when attacks do occur, he can use them to grab unconstitutional powers. TheAge

Bush is in the same 'catbird' position: many Americans trust him to protect our Homeland (though he has constantly refused to fund Homeland Security adequately). After all, there have been no big attacks since 9/11.

If and when the next attack comes, many, many Americans--from fear and rage--will snuggle closer to Bush, allowing him to grab extra power.
For Putin & Bush, it's 'win-win'.
-----------------------------------------------------
NOTE THIS ALSO: Fans of Ronnie Regan celebrate him because (they think) he toppled the Stalinist regime in Russia.

But now it looks as if Putin (an Stalinist from away back) is RESTORING Stalinism, with himself as the new Stalin. He controls Russian TV and newspapers; he's now grabbing control of all the provincial governments;
and it looks like he's going to take State control of the (now super-lucrative) Russian oil industry. After that, he can pick up the remaining loose pieces of 'free' Russia at his leisure.

This new Stalin will have THOUSANDS OF H-BOMBS under his control.

Everyone can see this--but the Bushies (entangled in their Iraq swamp) are silent on this danger!

What would Ronnie Regan think? He'd whirl in his grave!
 
BLAMING AMERICA: When we bomb guerilllas, we get blamed for civilian deaths. When guerillas blow up civilians, we also get blamed. That doesn't seem fair.

However, it is our responsibility to enforce law-'n-order in Iraq (there is as yet no other force available to to do that, since we dissolved the previous police-force).And we're not succeeding.

Yesterday a junction of overlapping pipelines (which had been attacked before) was blown up, cutting off electric power to the whole country--and halting the small exports of oil from the North through Turkey. "[The junction] is a chokepoint; it's so easy to attack", said a U.S. spokesman. You'd think we could protect such an obvious target. Also a police station in a pro-guerilla part of Baghdad blew up--you'd think we'd have seen that place needed extra protection! BostonGlobe

It looks like the main thing our troops are being killed or maimed for is to protect Bush's reelection. (3 killed & 8 wounded yesterday).
~ Monday, September 13, 2004
 
WHY IS BUSH SO BRAZEN?
---The Pentagon's bombs & missiles are USELESS to ward off individual terrorists from attacking our Homeland;
--but Bush shovels $1100 MILLIONS each DAY to Pentagon.

--We are in real danger of Homeland attack.
--There are many--EXPENSIVE--precautions we could take to ward off some of these forms of attack--[e.g., inspecting thousands of huge ShipContainers entering our ports daily, any one of them perhaps carrying a nuclear bomb!]

Or we could patch & heal after attacks that get through--[e.g., by quickly diagnosing a germ-war attack and using drugs & quarantines to counter it.]

--but Bush WILL NOT PROPERLY FUND HOMELAND DEFENSE!
------------------
How does he expect to get away with this? See 'Putin' piece above: no attack means Bush protected us; after the next attack, voters will snuggle closer to Bush.

A 'still-in-good-graces' CIA official in his book HUBRIS suggests that binLaden has reason to launch a big attack on us before November--precisely to guarantee Bush's reelection..because Bush's bungling is so helpful for recruiting new terrorists!
 
THE GALL OF ED STEIN! (12Sept/ letter to NYTIMES Business Section):

He goes on about rises in average U.S. income, but never mentions that median income here has dropped (the figure that 50% of us make less than.)

Suppose (absurdly) that 90% of income were taken from ordinary Americans and given to the super-wealthy: still, if the total income increased slightly, while the number of people stayed the same, then the AVERAGE income (total income/number of people) would have risen!

Total spending has increased, but that might be because the newly-richer rich have proved astonishingly greedy, buying stuff even when any sane person would have thought they had enough.

And of course if they buy imports (e.g., by travel abroad) or if they buy from companies which have increased 'productivity', or have outsourced, then their hysterical buying would help the ordinary worker very little.
-----------
The downside..the polls seem to indicate that the ordinary workers will not vote their pocketbook, but will rather vote for Bush on the foolish belief that he will make them safer from terrorists.

The tragedy of politics: almost nobody cares for the real, long-run interests of the ordinary person--INCLUDING THE ORDINARY PERSON! He votes more from his spite and bigotry and ignorance--he doesn't really care much for his long-run welfare. (That's why he doesn't save enough for retirement.)
-------------
A bright spot among the clouds: a TIME writer said recently that 90% of the people called by pollers insult the caller and slam down the phone.
We can hope that the recent surge in Bush-supporters represents an untypical sample of voters.
~ Sunday, September 12, 2004
 
CONTEMPT FOR REPUBLICANS: At the GOP convention, steroid-stuffed Schwarzenegger labelled as 'girly-men' the backers of war-hero Kerry over deserter Bush.

Nobody shows more contempt for typical Republicans than do the GOP bosses!
 
SAUDIS & BUSHIES: Craig Unger(in GUARDIAN ) reminds us of facts we should know already:
--Saudies have poured $1.4 billion into Bush-connected companies.
Smoothie Saudi ambassador to U.S. is old friend of Bush family.

--17 of 19 killers on 9/11 were Saudis; bin Laden is Saudi; Osama belongs to the fanatic sect of Wahabis, centered in SaudiArabia.

--At least 2 of the 19 killers on 9/11 were supported by a paid functionary of Saudi govt.

--right after 9/11, 11 chartered flights permitted by Bush administration flew out 164 Saudis from U.S., before most of them could be interviewed by FBI.
-------------
Elsewhere, Osama's sister-in-law doubts that his huge, wealthy family, still prominent in SaudiArabia, have really abandoned him.
--------------
So of course, after 9/11, Bush attacked SaudiArabia! No, he didn't. He attacked irrelevant Iraq--where our hopeless entanglement still kills 2 GIs a day and maims or wounds dozens more.

Americans' support for this stupid move is not surprising, when we hear that about 40% STILL THINK SADDAM WAS TIED CLOSELY TO 9/11!
Even after Bush himself denied this (quietly). --And Powell just repeated the denial.

These yahoos must be 'thinking' like this: "Iraq was the country our noble President attacked in response..So Iraq (Saddam) must have been responsible for 9/11 !"
 
POWELL SENSIBLE, BUT COWARDLY. A new Brit book says that before the Iraq war, Colin Powell, talking to Jack Straw (Blair's aide), referred to Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz as 'Fucking Crazies'. GUARDIAN

Elsewhere it's alleged that Powell warned Bush beforehand that we'd get no help from other countries in pacifying Iraq, after plunging in alone. "It's like the Pottery Barn," said Powell, "You break it, you bought it."

And it's said that Powell surely will not serve in a second Bush administration.
Even now he's totally ignored, except when they want a spokesman with more credibility than Rummy or Cheney or Rice.

He knew better; he knows better now. He's being treated with contempt.
Why isn't he speaking out against his colleagues? The most likely explanation, when a public figure stays surprisingly silent, is that they've got some blackmail on him.


~ Saturday, September 11, 2004
 
ADULT RIGHT TO WATCH PORN TRUMPS DANGER OF CORRUPTING CHILDREN:

When J.S. Mill wrote ON LIBERTY, his attack on paternalistic coercion , he just assumed that parents could and would control what their children experienced. If he had foreseen today's America, where parents abdicate such responsibility--where they allow their children to have unsupervised TV and internet in their bedrooms!--he would have written a different book.

But American judges have actually said that child access to internet porn sites must be left open so that adults can watch porn.
Washington Post

"Well, if children are damaged it's their parents' fault!" Yes, it's their fault--but it may be everyone's problem. The big problem is VIOLENCE-PORN..there is evidence that children exposed to this stuff do get more violent.
-----------
The abuse of the First Amendment turns out to be as dangerous as abuse of the Second Amendment. The universal 'right to watch anything' first turns many kids into violent savages; then the 'right to bear arms' sets them up with assault weapons. Americans don't need terrorists; we slaughter each other eagerly.
 
"BIN LADEN, NOT BUSH!" Egypt has received huge amounts of money from America. It's dictatorial regime is nominally allied with U.S.A. But polls of ordinary Egyptians show that Osama binLaden is far more popular in Egypt than George Bush !

In SaudiArabia, even upper-class people, people trained at American universities, are against Bush. AlJazeera (the station just closed in Iraq by our new puppets) is far more trusted and watched than is our Arabic station.

American neocons wanted to spread 'democracy' (i.e., free trade) among Middle-Eastern countries. But IF these nations switched to majoritarian rule, the governments would be fiercely anti-American.
UnitedPressInternatl

(When Turkey went for real majoritarian democracy, their cooperation in our invasion in '02 was blocked, interfering gravely with our plans.)
 
DOUBTS FADING ON MEMOS EXPOSING BUSH: CBS says it found old memos saying that officers were pressured back in 72 to 'sugar-coat' Bush's natl.guard record--also that Bush defied a direct order in refusing to take physical exam to keep his pilot certification (wasting the $1million his flight training cost taxpayers!)

Then a chorus of scoffers said that the typography in these memos was incompatible with typewriters then available--'the memos were forged'.

But then, experts said that in fact, IBM selectric typewriters used by the military at that time DID feature typography like that in the memos.
SanFranciscoChronicleOnLine

But by now the controversy over the authenticity of the memos has 'defanged' the effect of their disturbing content. Once again the Bushies have showed themselves experts on the political use of distraction.
 
HOME SECURITY: (letter to RMtnNews):
Linda Seebach (11Sept)says 1) we don't know who the terrorists are.
We have reason to think they are individuals or groups--not national governments--scattered all over the world. (If only one in 10,000 World Muslims are terrorists or supporters, that makes 100,000 dangerous people.)
Terrorists in Indonesia and Saudi Arabia are attacking their own governments.

2) The Pentagon's bombs and missiles can intimidate governments, but are worse than useless against these terrorists. We're still bombing Iraq, recruiting more terrorists around the world as photos circulate of innocent children being blown to bits.

3) Seebach says that Bush's annual budget for Homeland Security is $30 billion a year. That's equal to 30 days of money shovelled to the useless Pentagon.

All this raises the question of why so many people trust Bush to defend us from terrorists.
~ Friday, September 10, 2004
 
COURAGE OR COWARDICE? Republicans praise Bush for being 'resolute' (for staying on in Iraq even when it's obvious we can't win).

Lyndon Johnson stayed on in Vietnam, as he admitted later, even when he knew we couldn't win. But not because he was resolute--rather, he said later that once he had the People roused to war-fever, he was afraid that he'd be impeached if he suddenly bugged out.

Nixon was planning to SLIDE out--if Watergate hadn't come up. Ford was dumb enough to preside over the actual disgraceful bug-out with photos of our poor doomed allies holding on to our fleeing helicopters.

'W' himself may be too dumb to realize our Iraq effort is doomed; but his handlers are for staying in because they FEAR the wrath of the U.S. yahoos (on election day!) when they finally see it was all a fiasco. Even Kerry has to SAY he'll take 4 more years to leave (with 2 GIs dying each day?!)

Let's hope Kerry is lying through his teeth.

A war often goes on and on because the loser is AFRAID to quit.
 
'CASUALTIES' SHOULD INCLUDE THE WOUNDED! (letter to USATODAY):
USATODAY online purports to list 'U.S. casualties' for August and September. But only the dead are counted.The official army definition of 'casualties' includes the wounded!

Washington Post (and Financial Times) reported that 1100 GIs were wounded just in August. Estimates of the GIs medically evacuated from Iraq (presumably for serious maladies--since slight problems would be treated in Iraq) have ranged from 10,000 to 20,000. If that last figure is correct, and if 300,000 GIs have been sent to Iraq (the first half already rotated), that means that 1 in every 15 sent there has been medically evacuated!

Americans don't count the wounded, and the Pentagon uses this foible to conceal the awful rates of woundings and maimings from us.

U.S. media help the Pentagon in this deception.
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Forget about the wounded; let's just think about the dead GIs:

Hearty hawks have sneered at us 'girly-men' for grieving over 1000 corpses returning (unseen) from Iraq in 17 months (not counting the 60 or so corpses returning from Afghanistan). They note that "An American city, in peacetime, will generate 600 murdered corpses a year!"

In the first place, these 1000 GI corpses are ADDED to the city toll, not substituted.
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In the second place, what should count is WHAT PROPORTION of IRAQ GIs get killed. If 300,000 GIs have been sent there, and 1000 corpses have been returned, that's one corpse for every 300 GIs, over 18 months.

If a city of 5 million generates 600 violently-killed corpses a year (900 each 18 months), that's only 1 corpse for every 5500 people. So a GI's chance to be killed in Iraq is 18 times one's chance to be killed at home. Don't go there.

One similarity between GI deaths and homeland murder-deaths--
THEYRE ALL POINTLESS--FOR NOTHING!
 
BOMBING IN IRAQ: [ USATODAY ]
U.S. bombed city of Tal Afar--as usual, indiscrimately.
A Shiite top pol protested this bombing of the Sunni city , and TURKEY also complained, (!) because of the killing of Turkomen citizens of Tal Afar.

Has all this bombing (4 days in FAllujah) helped?
Last week, TWENTY GIs were killed.

How many wounded? Who cares?
 
BUSH & VETERANS (letter to COLORADOAN):
The letter from M.T. Orlawski (10Sept.) uncovers a nest of worms.
Bush has underfunded care for veterans, incredibly, just when many more wounded, maimed and shell-shocked vets are likely to need care. His Vet budget has been denounced by leaders of the American Legion, the Veterans for ForeignWars, and the Disabled Veterans of America.

One father of a GI in Iraq put it succinctly: "Bush cares for our troops the way Col.Sanders cared for chickens."
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(One interesting note: when you search on News.Google.com for stories about the federal veterans budget, you find many articles about LOCAL budgets for vets, but ALMOST NONE about Federal budget!)
~ Thursday, September 09, 2004
 
BODY COUNT: U.S.spokesmen in Iraq each day tell us that they have killed a satisfying number of insurgents.

YET the number of attacks on GIs continues to rise, reaching 80 per day in August--killing 66 GIs in August & wounding ELEVEN HUNDRED GIs. (An even larger number of attacks have been launched at our puppet 'collaborators'.) [TIME says the August attacks numbered Eighty-Seven per day.]

Perhaps there are many, many thousands of insurgents, so the ones we kill are not missed. More likely, our attacks--which regularly kill women & children--enrage more Iraqis to turn terrorist.

In either case, we're making no real progress in suppressing the insurgents!
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On Sunday12Sept, ONE HUNDRED AND TEN Iraqis were killed.
FinancialTimes
On the one hand, they don't count--since only Americans are real--others are creatures you see on TV.

On the other hand, they signify the growing strength of the insurgents--who could turn on real Americans again, as they did in August.
 
STRANGE BUSH BEHAVIOR! Bushies installed a new set of rules about overtime pay that would help low-pay workers a little--and screw better-off workers a lot!

In spite of Bush's threat to veto a large bill, The House voted to block these new rules. 20 Republicans were sensible enough to know this change wouldn't go over well among their well-off core constituents. AlbanyTimesUnion

Why in the world would the Bushies antagonize THEIR core constituents (the well-off) by cutting their overtime pay, just before the big election?!
The Bushies must be relying on the dumb loyalty of their well-to-do fans, who will ignore damage to their own interests just to back their man...

Also, there must have been a big payoff from the corporations who would benefit from this rule!
 
OUTSIDERS FAVOR KERRY: A poll of 35 nations shows that non-Americans overwhelmingly support Kerry over Bush..that is, they want Anyone But Bush. However, 74% of Americans unsurprisingly don't care what 'unAmerican' outsiders think. FinancialTimes

One sign of foolishness is not to care what others think, not to feel any doubt when everyone else disagrees with you.
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GOOD NEWS: another poll showed that 7 in 10 Americans were 'somewhat' or 'very' worried about our worsening image in the world, though 70% said such worries would not change their vote. INDEPENDENT

At least we know that Americans are aware of the way Bush has turned the whole world against us.
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Recently, despite our cheapening dollar, our exports dropped. If foreigners come to despise Americans for being conned by the shabby crew of Bushies, then the glamour of U.S. name-brands may get tarnished.
~ Wednesday, September 08, 2004
 
MILITARY STRONGER NOW?
Twenty years ago, after Gorbachev backed down from confronting us, we were top dogs in the world. Since then, we have gone right on shovelling hundreds of billions of dollars each year to the Pentagon.

Defense: Our homeland faced no real threat in 1990. So our offensive powers made us top dogs.

But now, after 9/11, we have started realizing in how may ways our homeland is VULNERABLE to individual terrorists. For instance, trains criss-cross our country daily, with tank-cars filled with noxious gases and chemicals--it would be child's-play to blow up some of these trains near population centers.

We should realize that Pentagon bombs and missiles are useless against this new, unique kind of threat.

Paradoxically, this homeland vulnerability has undermined our OFFENSIVE capability. More and more countries have reason to turn to SECOND-STRIKE DETERRENTS against America, saying "You can destroy our cities, but our survivors can make you regret it...we can aid worldwide terrorists in attacking your wide-open homeland with explosives, gas, radioactivity and germs."

Do we dare call their bluff and bomb nations that defy us--knowing that they could respond by wrecking our Homeland, or at least driving our people into irrational panic?

Our ever-worsening fiasco in Iraq shows that our troops are pretty helpless against fanatic nationalists..we are worse off than we were in Vietnam--there we didn't face people who think God will reward them if they die killing Americans.

The former head of the CIA admitted to Congress that we won't have a competent intelligence service for at least five more years.

After the trillions of dollars shovelled to the Pentagon in the last twenty years, we are now weaker in almost every dimension of military capability.

Bush's America is a muscle-bound weakling.
 
VOTE IS RISKY?
V.P.Cheney may speak truly:(NYT8Sept)
we'll risk an enemy attack if we make the wrong choice in November.

A functionary still in good graces in Bush's CIA wrote a book HUBRIS.
There he claims that bin Laden is so pleased with the way that Bush bungles have recruited new terrorists for him, that he'd have reason to attack us before November--figuring that many voters would foolishly turn to Bush as 'the war President'.

Bin Laden, in other words, wants the useful Bush fools reelected.
With enemies like goofy Bush, alQaeda needs no friends!

After the election, we could probably expect an attack at any time, no matter who is elected. We could hope though that Kerry would not shamelessly underfund Homeland Security precautions the way Bush has.
--------------
AsiaTimes has a perceptive analysis of how Bushie bungles have turned binLaden's primitive outfit into a world-famous 'name-brand', which can issue 'franchises' to all kinds of anti-imperialist guerillas all over the world.
 
GRAHAM'S BOMBSHELL: Dem.Senator Graham of Florida, in his new book INTELLIGENCE MATTERS, levels 2 explosive charges at Bushies:

--From the report of the Congressional Investigation of 9/11, White House blocked staff's conclusion that 2 of the 19 attackers of Twin Towers had been aided by 2 men paid by the Saudi Govt!

--Gen.Tommy Franks told Graham just 4 months into Afghan campaign in '02, that the Pentagon had diverted vital resources from the Afghan war to the coming war in Iraq, which they had already decided on.

Sen.Graham was one of the few Senators who voted AGAINST the awful Bushie resolution approving of 'W's authority to invade Iraq.
MiamiHerald
 
U.S.CAN'T PROTECT ITS PUPPETS: Our deputy governor of guerilla-controlled Anwar province was just kidnapped. The son of Mosul's governor was killed. An assassination attempt failed, aimed at our mayor of Baghdad.
[Reuters,8Sept.]

Earlier, the kidnapping of the sons of our governor of Anwar reduced him to resign (with televised tears of repentance for having sided with the infidel Americans). Nobody has volunteered to replace him.

Pretending to hand over power to our puppet Allawi has not helped to cut guerilla attacks. Capturing Saddam earlier didn't help either. Handing Fallujah over to Baathists has backfired. Bombing hell out of people in the Fallujah area has also backfired.

Eleven hundred GIs (one in every 150 of our troops) were wounded JUST IN AUGUST. (Except for Wash.Post, Fin.Times, & Newsday, U.S. media have ignored this spectacular story. Even REUTERS just said vaguely that casualties 'climbed' in August ! )

We're not winning. Indeed, as several U.S. generals have admitted, we CAN'T WIN this guerilla war in which Bush's loonies have got us entangled. The Bushies are not just ruthless; they're also incompetent losers.
~ Monday, September 06, 2004
 
FALSE POSITIVES PROVE NOTHING: (letter to NYTIMES):
Tom Kunz (5Sept) satirizes the Democrats saying that the '04 election is the most important in our history. He does this by citing previous similar remarks over the years that are now seen as hyperbole.

But his satire proves nothing. He's like the guy who says, "I feared death when I was 60--feared it more at 70. Then the prospect at age 80 terrified me. Now, at 97, seeing that all these earlier fears were false, I have no worries about death at all!"

There are many reasons to think this election really is the most gravely dangerous in our history.
 
MEN THINK THEY'RE PAID FAIRLY! CNN
7 in 10 U.S.workers think they're paid fairly! (MORE MEN THAN WOMEN THINK THIS; the gap leaving women behind is growing. )

Why do men think this, when median salaries and benefits are sinking (as profits surge)? Because it's humiliating to get angry at those vastly more powerful than you are: the corporations . This anger makes you feel helpless.

So when you're oppressed by the powerful, you turn your anger against someone weaker :e.g., minorities and uppity women.
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Democrats have to get young, lower-paid women to register & vote!
 
GOOD NEWS ABOUT CATHOLICS: Even among those who go to Mass weekly, IRAQ & the economy was rated as more important than abortion!
ZogbyPoll

This may make no difference in the election, but it is cheering, to show that Catholic laypeople are not hypnotized by the bishops' crusade to get Bush re-elected.
~ Sunday, September 05, 2004
 
BLOODY AUGUST: It's said that last April was the bloodiest month for GIs in Iraq, with 135 dead. Now our army has withdrawn from many contested cities, turning them over to the guerillas! [NYTIMES ]--with the Bushies hoping to keep down casualty numbers until the election.

Still, 66 GIs were killed in August. More appalling--ELEVEN HUNDRED were WOUNDED in August. And these were often serious, awful wounds.
WashingtonPost

But the Bushies can count on Americans not counting the wounded.
News.google.com, incredibly, didn't even list this spectacular story in its main index!

Searching under 'wounded' showed several stories by non-American sources--
but in America, only the Post and Newsday.

Even the usually-objective British FinancialTimes buried this big story about the wounded halfway down in an Iraq article!

Bush-fans might note the 7 GIs killed, on 6 Sept. VoiceOfAmerica
16 were wounded, but who cares?
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A U.S. helicopter was downed on 4 Sept--[ BIGNEWSNETWORK.COM]-- but once again our media was pretty silent on this. What all this shows is that there is little sign that we have any chance of 'winning' this guerilla war. (as several U.S. generals have admitted.)
~ Saturday, September 04, 2004
 
IRAQ 'TURNOVER' HASN'T HELPED: U.S. hoped that the guerilla movement would be weakened when we turned over 'power' to a new puppet group:
--they hoped that with Iraqis nominally in 'power', the guerillas would be pacified. However, it was obvious to all that this new group were puppets: Allawi spent $300,000 in WASHINGTON(!) lobbying for the top post.
Nobody was pacified.

--they hoped that the new regime could better locate the guerillas, to destroy them--after all, they speak the language, while Americans don't! And they can torture suspects for information, while Americans don't dare right now.
(The question is, how much reliable info is picked up by torture?)

However, the attacks continue unabated. 66 GIs were killed in August, and Reuters lists horrific attacks on 'collaborators' in 2004.REUTERS
 
GUERILLA WAR BREEDS ATROCITIES: (letter to RockyMountainNews):

Tim Drago (4Sept) cites vets who see Kerry as a "renegade veteran who betrayed them by giving false credence to war atrocities they never committed." Is Drago saying NO U.S. atrocities were committed in Vietnam? That's just false.

When regular troops face guerillas without uniforms, when any old lady might be ready to lob a grenade at them, it's inevitable that some soldiers would start attacking innocent civilians.

Democrat Lyndon Johnson got our GIs into such a grisly situation. And Republican George Bush got us into this similar situation. When 20% of the native population is willing to hide and support the guerillas, the case of the invaders is hopeless.

In both cases, it should have been obvious that we couldn't win such a guerilla war, that all the native bloodshed and the psychological damage to our troops was for nothing.

It's very likely that Kerry was telling the truth when he said hewitnessed GI atrocities in Vietnam. And the prison tortures in Iraq are just a sample of the GI atrocities likely committed in Iraq.
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During the Viet conflict, a young man made an impressive speech: "A friend writes to me as a platoon commander in Vietnam: 'At first I told my men to be very careful to spare civilians. But an officer's first duty is to his men. When we were attacked by little old ladies, I told them to shoot everything that moves.'

This stalwart young man added, "If I was in his position, I'd do the same thing. That's why I'm not going!"
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The moral: when you see that a sizeable minority of the natives are against you, get the hell out.
~ Friday, September 03, 2004
 
MEDICARE COSTS UP 17%--after the election, of course. Bushies lied to the Congress about the costs of their new 'prescription help'--[ CNN ]a program that most oldies don't understand, and don't want.

When asked why this important news was released on Friday afternoon, just before a holiday, when it would most likely not be noticed--Bushie spokesman said, "I won't touch that one!"
 
SIXTY-SIX GIs killed in August. Pentagon spokesman said their deaths made us safer... REUTERS this is a flat lie. Over one thousand GIs dead SO FAR in Bush's 2 wars..thousands wounded...and all for nothing!

In August, a new high of 2500 attacks were launched vs. GIs, wounding ELEVEN HUNDRED GIs !

Rumsfeld said all this shows the Progress we're making; the guerillas are DESPERATE. Once again I'm reminded of Mark Twain's sunny memory of a fight he was once in: "I thrust my nose firmly between his teeth, and threw him to the ground on top of me!"

 
BUSH 'WILL HOLD NOTHING BACK'? in fighting Terror.(Financial Times)
The top role in 'fighting terror' should be protecting our Homeland. There Bush is simply telling another lie. He has GROSSLY UNDERFUNDED ('held back') necessary precautions against terrorist attacks on our Homeland.

FOR INSTANCE: Three years after 9/11:

--thousands of huge ship-containers enter our ports UNINSPECTED each day; each one could contain a nuclear bomb.

--104 of our nuclear waste-ponds could be blown up by small planes loaded with explosives. Thousands of such planes--easy to steal--fill our airspace, unregulated.(The Bushies have recommended that people living near such plants should keep in stock drugs which would minimize damage from radioactivity!)
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Bush says that in his second term he will install medical clinics in every town.
Why has he waited? Germ-war attacks are a very real possibility. As things are, our Poor get little medical attention..a plague could be started among our poor, undiagnosed--then spread to our well-to-do; (Republicans,one might say, deserve it).

Even now, we face an urgent shortage of nurses. (Hospitals sometimes pay $20,000 to lure a nurse from another hospital.) There is a severe shortage of nurses qualified to teach nurses. Bushies have had three years to start remedying this shortage. They have DONE NOTHING.

The Bushies just set up a 'BIOSHIELD' operation to develop drugs and vaccines against germ-war plagues. This is THREE YEARS after 9/11.
They've devoted six billion dollars to this enterprise--the equivalent of 6 days of Pentagon money--but this $6 billion is to be spread out over TEN YEARS!
--Terrorists could board our planes loaded with explosives--this just happened in Russia--explosives which could be detected by new devices that are NOT YET INSTALLED.

--However, terrorists need not even board our planes. Cheap shoulder-fired missiles are available everywhere--many have undoubtedly been smuggled in here already. Israelis have installed protective devices on their military planes;
we could install them on our airliners--but the Bushies consider them too expensive.

--and so on.
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We can destroy any other nation in a day. But we can't defend our own Homeland.

(In fact, many other nations are developing '2d-strike deterrents' against our reckless aggression; they will say "You can destroy our cities; but our survivors can make you regret it!--by launching terrorist attacks against your absurdly-vulnerable Homeland!")

Bush's America is a muscle-bound weakling.

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