Just in case you needed a real kick in the teeth to start the day out right:
A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.
The study concluded that the statements “were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.”
Read more: enews.earthlink.net
Not exactly pulling their punches, are they?
And, of course, why should they?
Read it. Remember what it was like back then, what you heard on TV, what you read in the papers. They all stayed on the company line. They all lied. They lied to all of us. They lied to the entire world.
And thousands of people are dead because of those lies.
On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration’s case for war.
It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose “Duelfer Report” established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq’s nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.
In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003.
Read more: www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard
The article below, and the survey it references, are a few years old now, but it brings the point home.
Three out of four self-described supporters of President George W. Bush still believe that pre-war Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or active programs to produce them and that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein provided “substantial support” to al Qaeda, according to a new survey released here Thursday.
Moreover, as many or more Bush supporters hold those beliefs today than they did several months ago, before the publication of a series of well-publicized official government reports that debunked both notions.
Read more: www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1022-01.ht
And now, President Bush is playing the same games in regards to Iran.
In public, President Bush has been careful to reassure Israel and other allies that he still sees Iran as a threat, while not disavowing his administration’s recent National Intelligence Estimate. That NIE, made public Dec. 3, embarrassed the administration by concluding that Tehran had halted its weapons program in 2003, which seemed to undermine years of bellicose rhetoric from Bush and other senior officials about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But in private conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week, the president all but disowned the document, said a senior administration official who accompanied Bush on his six-nation trip to the Mideast. “He told the Israelis that he can’t control what the intelligence community says, but that [the NIE’s] conclusions don’t reflect his own views” about Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, said the official, who would discuss intelligence matters only on the condition of anonymity.
Read more: www.newsweek.com
President Bush is continuing to take positions that are demonstrably false. And he and his kind respond by simply repeating the same mistruths again louder. All this and more from the fine folks that brought us the reality based community.
Hey, it worked so far, right? Can we blame the bastard? It’s like a kid that figures out how to game the system. And I bet dollars to donuts this joker figured out how to game the system when he was a young man, kept doing it with no real repercussions (weaseled into the Texas Air National Guard “champaign unit” and then fucked off– basically a no show couple of years, transferred to Alabama and fucked off on Winton Blount’s campaign dollars, bailed out of bad business deals, cut taxes and then got out of Texas before his budget hit a brick wall, etc, etc, etc…) and will continue doing it until the day he dies.
God bless the windshield cowboy.
“In the end who are you going to trust, big business or a humanitarian?”
Both want to enslave you. They just use different tactics.
Here is a big enough number to 600,000,000,000.00 that is a lot zero for nothing but a complete mess, that we can not get out of. Maybe not if you are a profitting from the private contracts that our government is paying for. I am as far as saying I believe what Rossa documented about.
At least Obama recognizes there is no easy way out of it. Hillary makes it seem as she can pull us right out.
I feel as though I’ve been dreaming for the entire Gee-dub run. Let’s not forget how he got himself elected, ie. Florida and Ohio.
It is amazing to me that the world as we know it has been so easy to lie to and get away with it. I also wonder at all the republicans, that I know, think Bush is still not a stupid goof-ball that he is. Many of them say Clinton is the reason for our current dilemmas, ie. housing and war and such.
Some time in the Reagan Eighties, the republicans worked real hard to dumb down the american public by encouraging and secretly funding the upper class into buying up the papers and tv news thus reporting only fluff bs. Now we are used to it and so many are buying into it that I find it surreal.
Imagine a world without Reagan, I have, and it makes me feel happy. Nowadays that is hard to fathom but, so is the reality that has been dumped on us.
Anybody remember the balanced budget Gee-dub inherited? Anybody remember the 100 days, or so, of vacation he took, basically sleeping through the intelligent reports detailing the plans to attack the US?
History hopefully will paint the picture as it should be painted, as a black hole that was opened by this administration that we will be trying to fill for many, many years to come.
I wonder if this study is bias.
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home
C’mon guys, ALL the studies are biased. Human’s are biased, therefore thier products will be. There is alot of fucking going on all around us. Corporate, bueracratic, local, federal, all lie cheat and steal. The way out is to work to wake up america. It is happening, because I see it here. Spread the love of calling bullshit on those who deserve it, and keep that middle finger in the air.
Just tossin’ out a thanks for the banter. …and where is Ross Pero when you need him?
So long as you cite folks like Podhoretz, and people on the other side cite their mouthpieces-with-agendas, there is no sensible dialogue possible. People must begin to ask themselves, not the “experts,” what is sensible and what sort of policy would point our country in the most agreeable direction (not the right direction, note. Democracy doesn’t do that, necessarily. unless of course your definition of right is popularly decided). Start looking into what is going on for yourself. Not what people say is going on, but the barebones reality of it. Until we as a nation take responsibility for what the talking heads do, we are no better than those same suits.
Except you need real experts to sift through all of the ‘truthiness’ that gets thrown around. It would help if we had an educated public, but Reagan did his best to take the power of critical thinking away in the 80’s. These are not the drones you are looking for… You should be scared of brown people from the middle east, but we’ll give them guns to fight the “evil empire” of the Russians. Corporate interests don’t want a public that can actually evaluate how they are getting screwed, because it gets in the way of the bottom line. They want one that thinks the current “economic stimulus package” is a good idea. Bullshit. Repugnicants claim to want smaller government, unless it’s subsidies for their business friends. Global climate change isn’t happening because Cheney’s buddies will have to change their outdated business models…. If you aren’t pissed off you haven’t been paying attention.
Face it people, the glory days of the US economy are gone. BushCo. has done more damage to this country than Nixon ever did. We may still have the biggest guns, but the Middle and Far East will be ruling the roost here before too long. The best we can hope for is to become a quaint anachronism like Great Britain (sorry guys, and I really do like the British), or we can allow BushCo. to take us down the path of cerebral hemorrhage which he seems so willing to do.
Hey dd,
Nice site until I saw that “Elementary school teacher” part under trade-offs.
Not sure about your state but here in good ol’ NJ, teachers are the best paid fucks in the state. 50k average. 2x what the average putz makes. Then add world-class bennies and they be sitting pretty on taxpayer dime.
And then “Affordable Housing Units”. Gov has proven they can’t build an affordable doghouse so that’s a royal poke in the eye.
Then “People with Health Care”. Why does Hillary Clintons name pop in my head when I hear that ?? Ack.
Iraq is just part of the problem no matter it’s cost. The gov, Federal, State and Local, is fucked from the word go.
I love where this is going… A big part of what we can bame the dumbing down of Americans on is media consolidation. It is big part fo the Republican revolution starting with Reagan as a reaction to the fear conservatives felt as America swung liberal in the 60’s. An educated public is a scary thing to big corporations and big power. Read your history. Knowledge is power. The Romans and the Egyptians ruled the masses by keeping them ignorant. Today it is done with TV and frivolity.
That’s why I’ve go to say, Durnkenbiker, that a 50k average salary for teacher shows exactly where our priorites are BTW starting in CA is about 34K. Think about it, To be a teacher you have to have an advanced degree (more than a BA or BS) and lots of specialized education. You have to do really hard work dealing with increasingly hyped-out toxified kids whose parents are working too hard to help with homeowork or discipline. My Point is it is really hard and under-appreciated work. Most folks with the level of education it takes to be a teacher can make waaaay more than that in the private sector- like running porn site.
But teachers… They are direclty representative of the investment we are making in our future.
I am not trying to change the subject to teachers pay or value… I am trying to point out just another way we are GETTING STUPIDER BY CHOICE by buying so many lines of crap as pointed out above.
sorelegs,
It’s not just teachers. Just about all Civil Service people make more than the average person. I see that as a major problem.
Civil Service used to be a duty of sorts. The pay wasn’t great but the bennies rocked and you had major job security.
Now the best paid people in this country are Government employees. And the Government is the countries largest empoyeer.
All those people want to keep it that way. So they will go along with anything to keep it status quo. Good, bad or otherwise.
Nothing stupid about noting that.
I agree with everything you said except: “the best paid people in this country are Government employees.”
In 2005 the top 1% of income earners made 20% of all income.
The top 100 hedge fund managers make over 150million a year.
Those folks pay taxes at about 15%.
Those overpaid gov. employees you speak of pay taxes at 25% to 35%.
I dont disagree that we could run things more efficiently. I am trying to point out the drastic inequity between middle class and the ube-rich. The uber rich are also the ones in power and writing the laws that get them all the love. They are in power because we the sheeple are too stupid to notice what they are doing to us. We are so stupid becasue we have been cleverly duped into wanting to be stupid.
What is more of an outrage– a govt worker making 5% more than the average Joe or a Hedge Fund manager making 150mil a year and paying 15% tax while you and I pay 35%?
…sorelegs, thank you…teachers “are directly representative of the investment we are making in our future”…halle-fucking-lujah even…to not recognize that fact is a crime…
…db, say what you will about other forms of overpaid ‘civil service’ but without young people growing up being taught to think intelligently for themselves, the future would never evolve to present worthwhile opportunities…teachers are a resource to be cherished & not as babysitters…
…the future would be bleak if we were to always be ‘led’ by gwb clones, a man who w/out being raised in privilege, would be better suited to being a toilet cleaner…& i don’t mean to disparage any toilet cleaners out there…
“What is more of an outrage– a govt worker making 5% more than the average Joe or a Hedge Fund manager making 150mil a year and paying 15% tax while you and I pay 35%?”
I made the princely sum of 26k last year. My tax rate was around 10-11%.
Granted thats minus Social Security that we all pay but I’m no where near 35%.
I’m just pissed on hearing about or meeting local/state employees that make 2-3 times as much as I do.
Yea, yea, yea I could look for a better paying job. But everyone could do that and the better paying jobs run out real quick.
Growing up in NJ has given me a major pet peeve about gov pay rates. This state sucks for that. That and politicians getting salaries/retirement packages from 3+ different agencies.
My original point was that Gov is broken from top to bottom. Bitching about Iraq is just a small part of it.
I would love to see all teachers average $50K/yr. They do a thankless job in many ways. Public schools have become defacto babysitters. Uninvolved parents get mad when their kids deservedly fail. I know the $34K doesn’t go very far in CA. It’s been 10 years since I lived there and it didn’t go very far then.
At the university where I am a graduate student and teach, it’s not uncommon for students to think that they are entitled to a passing grade just for enrolling. “What you mean I actually have to look at specimens in ANATOMY & PHYSIOLOGY?” Mind you, we don’t actually make them DO the dissections, just look at them after I have. What the fuck did you think you were signing up for?!!
Government workers may be paid slightly higher than average, but they certainly aren’t overpaid. Especially if they have an advanced degree. In biology, you can double you pay working in the private sector. I think there are certainly ways in which things could be made more efficient, but even if I pretend to be a Repugincant and decide that all of those social programs need to be cut (Which is what they are saying when they say “Fiscal Responsibility”), FAR more is spent in subsidies to oil, military-industrial contractors, auto manufacturers, etc., just to keep prices on those things artificially low. I’d far rather see those subsidies go to education and social programs than to Haliburton, Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, GM, etc. There is a complete disconnect between consumers and what the TRUE costs of their lifestyles is.
Do you think ANY of the Republican candidates are willing to be consistent? Not a chance. Hell I don’t think any of them are… from either party. You want free market? Let’s go free market all the way.
The latest indication of how BushCo. sees the world: the new AG has a portrait of George Orwell in his office. You know 1984. Big Brother. Newspeak…
That site was the first to come up when I search for the cost of the war. There is no hurry to get out of Iraq because inside officals are reaping monetary benefits from military and govt assisted contracts. Not to say Iraq isn’t messed up, but many children in the US have bad conditions. Like no air conditioning and old beat up books. Teachers are starting at less than 30k, which in most areas today, is close to the bottom. Then comes this standardized crap.
4 more beers