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Recent
Stories
June
20, 2003
Gary
Leupp
Bush on "Revisionist Historians"
June 19, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Bush Plays the Racial Profiling Card:
It's a Smokescreen
Brian
Cloughley
Punch-and-Judy in the West Wing:
The Powell-Rice Show
David Lindorff
What's Next?
Mark
Jacobs
A Serious Conversation: a Former Foreign Service Officer on Diplomacy
in the Age of Bush
Alfredo
Castro
Bloodbath in Colombia: The Army and the Death Squads
Saul
Landau
Lying, Flag Waving and Redefining
Conservative Values
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log, 6/19
June
18, 2003
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
Elaine
Cassel
Dark Star Chambers: Secret Trials,
Nameless Defendents, Veiled Threats to Defense Lawyers
Col.
Daniel Smith
Iraq's WMDs: Integrity, Ethics and
Intelligence
Chris
Fagen
Ignoring the World's Bloodiest War
Rick
Fantasia and Kim Voss
Bush's Low Intensity War on Labor
Sam
Hamod
Theater of Deception: Bush, Sharon,
Abbas
M.
Shahid Alam
Illuminating Tom Friedman
Jon
Brown
Greens & Dems: a Reply to Publius
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log, 6/18
June
17, 2003
Dr.
Susan Block
Sex, Lies and WMDs
Elaine
Cassel
Scalia, the Rumsfeld of the Supremes
Roger Burbach
Brazil Under Lula
Dan
Bacher
The WTO's War on Salmon
Peter
Phillips and Jason Spencer
Entertainment Media 2003
Nuclear
Age Peace Foundation
The Challenge of Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century
Wayne Madsen
Outting Ashcroft's Latest Hypocrisy
Larry
Kearney
Starlight
Steve
Perry
The Bush Administration
Lies Marathon, Day 3
June
16, 2003
Frida
Berrigan
Death in Aceh: US Weapon Aid the
Repression
Publius
Candidate Dem and Citizen Green
Tarif
Abboushi
Roadmap or Roadkill?
Rep. John
Conyers
Bush's Deceptions about Iraq Threaten Democracy at Home
Julian
Samuel
A Review of Pilger's The New Rulers of the World
Uri
Avnery
The Children of Death
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies,
Part 2
June
14 / 15, 2003
Edward
Said
A Roadmap to What and Where?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pryor Unrestraint: Killer Bill Pryor's
Mad Quest for the Federal Bench
David Lindorff
Rumsfeld v. Belgium
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Suicide's Most Willing Accomplice
Lee Sustar
US Tax System: Rigged for the Rich
Ben
Tripp
Of Dissidents and Dissonance
William
S. Lind
Lies, Damned Lies and Military Intelligence
Joanne
Mariner
Rebellious Judges
Gila Svirsky
A Macabre Alliance
Mickey
Z.
Where We Are
Chris Floyd
Metaphysics as a Guide to Murder
Noah
Leavitt
Peru as Our Crystal Ball?
Yves Engler
and Bianca Mugyenyi
The G8 and Africa
Dr.
Gerry Lower
Dear Rudy, Let's Get Those Damned Liberals
Ted Dace
A Review of Kovel's The Enemy of Nature
Adam
Engel
Midnight at the Apocalyptic Pancake
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Greeder, Albert, and O'Hayer
Website
of the Weekend
AEI: Starts Wars; Creates
Poverty
June
13, 2003
David
Vest
Bush
Roadmap to What?
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?
John
Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There
Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence
Michael
Leon
Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media
Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America
Saul
Landau
Shiite Happens
Hammond
Guthrie
Then and Now
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/13
June
12, 2003
Gary
Leupp
The Intel-gate Row in Britain: a Chronology
Ahmad Faruqui
The Tragic Legacy of the Six Day
War
Wayne
Madsen
Unfit for Office: Time for Rumsfeld to Resign
Laura Carlsen
Hunger and Security
Tarif
Abboushi
Warm and Fuzzy in Aqaba
Ray
McGovern
Deceived into War: Reflections of
a Former CIA Analyst
Steve
Perry
Counting Bush's
Lies, part 2
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A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
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Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
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Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
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Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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June
20, 2003
Down on Our Knees
An American
Tale
By WALTER BRASCH
Standing before more than 1,400 loyalists and
lobbyists who threw him more than $3.5 million, President Bush
claimed he "got the economy going again . . . laid the foundation
for greater prosperity" and defended the country against
terrorism.
Assuming he was neither drunk or stoned,
he may have believed what he was spinning.
But, let's look at the record. First
up, the economy.
--More than 2.7 million jobs have been
lost during the past two years. More than 10 million are unemployed,
the highest unemployment rate since the Bush I era.
--The Republican-controlled Congress
failed to pass any significant legislation to raise the minimum
wage or to provide health coverage for 60 million Americans.
--although the Administration says it
wants to extend universal health coverage to all Iraqis.
--President Bush declared that leading
economists said if the $350 million tax cut was approved, the
economy would grow by 3.3 percent. As Gordon Livingston, writing
in the Baltimore Sun, correctly noted, "no such report exists."
--What does exist is a welfare package
for the rich. The top one percent, many of whom live on dividends
and stock sales, benefit far more than most Americans who are
paid hourly. Among their benefits are reduced income taxes, dividend
exclusions and capital gains benefits, and a special deduction
of up to $100,000 for any vehicle over three tons. About 50 million
lower- and middle-class families get nothing; about 20 million
get less than $100. In his original proposal, eventually modified
by Congress, President Bush allocated nothing for military pay
increases, nor any provisions to cover military families.
--The package includes a "child
tax credit." Those with incomes below $26,625 a year get
nothing. In killing the credit for low-income families, House
Majority Leader Tom Delay coldly set the Republican priority.
"There are other things that are more important," he
told more than 12 million families.
--Among the "more important"
items was a $1 million expense to turn around the U.S.S. Lincoln
as it neared San Diego so the flight-suited President Bush could
jet out and pose for several hundred cameras.
--Although President Bush declared he
wanted corporate reforms, the actions of the administration proved
otherwise. Halliburton, the company that Vice-President Cheney
once ran, got a no-bid contract to help clean up Iraq--after
American-led forces tried to destroy and are now trying to "Americanize"
one of the world's oldest civilizations. There have yet to be
any prosecutions for Enron or WorldCom, among dozens of other
corporations, which gave multi-million dollar benefits and bonuses
to its executives while the workers lost their savings and retirements.
Let's now look at the President's claims
that he is responsible for reducing the levels of terror.
--What the Administration has reduced
is the number of airport security screeners, delayed implementation
of port security vulnerability assessments, and given the Coast
Guard even more responsibilities with severe budget constraints.
Nevertheless, we now have a color scheme.
--In his January 28 State of the Union
message to justify his planned war, the President strongly implied
that Saddam Hussein had ties to al-Qaeda, and claimed that Iraq
already had and was continuing to develop substantial quantities
of biological and chemical weapons. He even cited documents that
he said proved Iraq was buying supplies from African countries.
Even as the President spoke, intelligence agencies had called
these documents suspicious; the documents later proved to be
forgeries. Those who argued there was no justification to go
to war with Iraq, no matter how evil its leader was, were banded
by the President's followers to be unpatriotic and un-American.
No intelligence agency claimed there was any connection between
Iraq and the 9/11 attacks. In Poland after the war, the President
declared "We found weapons of mass destruction." But,
two months after the war was officially over, but with American
troops still dying in Iraq, Marine Lt. Gen. James Conway, said
that extensive searching showed no weapons of mass destruction
exists.
--At the same time the Bush administration
is de-arming Iraqi civilians--claiming that guns are too dangerous
for the average citizen--the NRA-controlled administration is
doing nothing to influence the NRA-controlled Congress to continue
the temporary ban on assault weapons when it expires in September,
thus raising Americans' own terror levels.
--And then there's John Ashcroft. The
attorney general, with complete approval and encouragement from
the White House, launched a massive attack upon the Constitution
and civil liberties. Patriot Act I, with its sequel in development
stages, has provisions that make even Saddam Hussein's disregard
for human rights look rather mild. In a scathing report, the
Justice Department's own inspector general blasted the FBI and
Justice for massive violation of citizen rights.
When Bill Clinton came into office, after
George H. W. Bush had led the nation into a series of domestic
crises, there were 10 million unemployed, a federal debt that
was four times greater than under Reagan/Bush, higher welfare
and crime cases than ever before, massive environmental and MediCare
cuts, and a $290 billion deficit. When Mr. Clinton left office
eight years later, the nation had experienced the biggest economic
expansion in history. More than 22 million new jobs were created,
unemployment dropped to the lowest rate in 30 years, and welfare
cases were down by almost half. He also stopped massive Medicare
and environmental cuts imposed by the previous Republican administration,
and set aside more land for environment than anyone since Teddy
Roosevelt a century earlier. He put 150,000 Americans into AmeriCorps
to aid the impoverished, added the family medical leave policy,
special tax credits for families whose children were in college,
provided federal funding for more than 100,000 teachers and 10,000
police, and allowed two million more impoverished children to
benefit from health coverage. He created stronger ties to other
nations, directed the biggest expansion of the GI Bill of Rights
since World War II, and gave America a $230 billion surplus.
A political witch hunt by conservatives led to several million
taxpayer dollars to investigate Travelgate and Whitewatergate,
neither of which had any substance. A politically-motivated investigation
by the incoming Bushians of theft and malicious violence in the
White House and Air Force One fizzled among massive government
documents that proved otherwise.
However, because Intern Monica got down
on her knees before Mr. Clinton who then lied about it, he was
disgraced and impeached, though not convicted.
When George W. Bush gets down on his
knees before corporations and a phalanx of special interest lobbyists
who tuck wads of dollar bills into his elastic campaign fund,
then lies about the economy, innumerable domestic issues, and
reasons to send American youth into war, we just nod our heads
and tell him to keep sucking and spinning.
Go figure.
Walt Brasch's
latest book is "The Joy of Sax: America During the Bill
Clinton Era." You may reach him at brasch@bloomu.edu.
Assisting was Rosemary R. Brasch.
Today's Features
Elaine
Cassel
Bush Plays the Racial Profiling Card:
It's a Smokescreen
Brian
Cloughley
Punch-and-Judy in the West Wing:
The Powell-Rice Show
David Lindorff
What's Next?
Mark
Jacobs
A Serious Conversation: a Former Foreign Service Officer on Diplomacy
in the Age of Bush
Alfredo
Castro
Bloodbath in Colombia: The Army and the Death Squads
Saul
Landau
Lying, Flag Waving and Redefining
Conservative Values
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log, 6/19
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