The Bush Gang

Richard Cheney (L) & George W. Bush (R)

I am most assuredly not a fan of George W. Bush. In my opinion, he is a lying, hypocritical, untrustworthy weasel. From his illegal war on Iraq - where weapons of mass destruction have yet to be found - to his administration's trampling of civil liberties here in the U. S., to his questioning anyone's patriotism who disagrees with his policies, etc., I feel he should be impeached. Someone is quoted as having said, "A people get the government they deserve". Are we this bad!?! Are we so pathetic we deserve Bush and the other criminals in his administration, from John Ashcroft to Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Tom Ridge, etc.? This page will include a few musings about the "character" and "integrity" of Bush and others in his admininistration. You be the judge whether we deserve this lying scoundrel. I vote a resounding "NO!".

PAGE CONTENTS:

Torturing Mr. Bush

A White House "Adept at Revenge"

Bush/Cheney Political Bumper Stickers - 2004

The Bushes

George Bush and the Texas Rangers

George W. Bush and Theodore Roosevelt

Prescott Bush

Our Vice-President

Dick Cheney and Anderson

Curriculum Vita

And Now, The Counterfeit News

What They Really Mean....

Bush Flunked His Test on Iraq

UNDERSTANDING GEORGE BUSH'S STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH - 2003

Bush Is No Nixon

Bush Sends John Bolton to the United Nations

Things Fall Apart: Bush's Second Term

Remote Control

Expensive Blunder

Torturing Mr. Bush
By Steve Weissman

Should George W. Bush lose his bid for re-election this November, historians will find a major cause in the flood of pornographic photographs that show American soldiers torturing and sexually humiliating naked Iraqis. How will publishers of sanitized schoolbooks ever tell the story to future generations?

Nor will serious historians stop there. How will they deal with those of us who knew, or should have known, the way American forces have used - and taught other nations to use - the same degrading torture techniques at least as far back as President John F. Kennedy? Will our grandchildren and theirs see us as we see "the Good Germans" who callously turned their eyes away from what Hitler did to the Jews?

As bad as the torture was and continues to be in America's global gulag, it is not the Holocaust. But it is bad enough, and the moral dilemma it poses feels painfully similar.

Consider the role - no, the criminal complicity - of President Bush. For a Harvard MBA who usually delegates details, he played a remarkably hands-on role pushing his torture package through Washington's bureaucratic maze. Not only did he know what his underlings planned to do, he told them to do it. His fingerprints show up all over the smoking documents.

When after 9/11 the CIA and Special Forces began quietly "lifting" suspected al-Qaeda operatives and "disappearing" them into secret torture centers around the world, the American spooks acted on direct orders from their commander- in-chief.

When Justice Department lawyers rationalized the president's right to order abuse of enemy non-combatants, they sent their reading of the law to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, the President's consigliore. Gonzales coordinated the CYA, argued back and forth, especially with Secretary of State Colin Powell, and summed up the case for Mr. Bush, who gave it his go-ahead. Everyone in the loop knew that POTUS, the President of the United States, wanted harsh interrogations.

Publicly, Mr. Bush took the lead in arguing that he would not grant POW status to suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda captives, either in Afghanistan or at Guantanamo Bay, leaving them subject to what insiders called "torture lite." America would follow "the spirit" of the Geneva Conventions, the president promised, adding hypocrisy to the crimes that followed.

Bush also took the lead in walking away from the International Criminal Court, which - he argued - would charge American soldiers and political leaders with war crimes, not to do justice, but to satisfy political motivations. Now the world knows what that was all about.

Given the mounting evidence, no one can escape the question: Did Mr. Bush commit war crimes, for which he should face prosecution?

If, as Americans, we truly lived under the rule of law, we would have no need to ask. Nor would Mr. Bush stand in the dock alone. Unlike the U.S. Army in its legal pursuit of Pvt. Lynndie England and her fellow prison guards, any serious prosecutor, investigator, or historian would not ask how high up the crimes go, but how far down from the president it seemed worthwhile to pursue them.

One obvious thread starts with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who joined Mr. Bush in demanding, justifying, and publicly delighting in harsh interrogations. How he loved to tell reporters that America's latest captive would not have a good time.

Next comes Dr. Stephen A. Cambone. Rumsfeld's protégé, Dr. Cambone now serves as Deputy Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and publicly takes credit for sending Major General Geoffrey Miller, the Guantanamo Bay camp commander, to Iraq to "Gitmoize" interrogations at Abu Ghraib and other American prisons.

"At Guantanamo Bay we learned that the prisoners have to earn every single thing that they have," Miller told Brig. General Janis Karpinski, as she recalled on BBC's Radio 4 this week.

"He said they are like dogs and if you allow them to believe at any point that they are more than a dog then you've lost control of them."

A reserve officer, Karpinski ran Abu Ghraib until the Army relieved her of command following earlier investigations of misconduct at the facility. Gen. Miller now runs Abu Ghraib, where the scandal has forced him to eliminate many of the abuses he had earlier recommended.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, supported Miller's efforts to toughen the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in hopes of producing better information during interrogations. According to secret documents leaked to the Washinton Post, Gen. Sanchez specifically approved the use of dogs, extreme temperatures, sleep interruption, sensory deprivation, enforced stress positions, and longterm solitary confinement.

Apparently, Miller's techniques also had the support of Maj. Gen. Barbara Fast, the Army intelligence chief in Iraq.

From Dr. Cambone and Gen. Miller, the thread also extends to "civilian contractors," who likely worked as undercover agents for Military Intelligence.

These are just a handful of the people who ran - and still run - Washington's worldwide network of mostly secret detention facilities, which reportedly engage in even worse forms of torture. As the scandal snowballs in the coming weeks, we will likely hear new names and learn more about human depravity than we ever wanted to know. But it will
all trace back through the CIA and Dr. Cambone's Pentagon office to George W. Bush.

For those who oppose his presidency, this might seem a great stick with which to beat him. I hope we take it more seriously.

When the Abu Ghraib story first broke, I wrote that the abuse and humiliation looked exactly like the "stress and duress" that the CIA pioneered in their KUBARK Counter-intelligence Interrogation Manual, published in 1963, and their updated Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual, published in 1983.

Just this week, the Washington Post described the 1963 manual in great detail, confirming that the current torture techniques date back to CIA efforts during the Vietnam War. Did President Kennedy know? I would bet he did, but historians will now ask.

No one in my lifetime or his will bring George W. Bush to account in a war crimes trial, while John F. Kennedy has moved beyond the province of human law. There's nothing we can do about either. But, if enough people got mad enough, we could create a bi-partisan Truth Commission to open the books on American torture and close a dreadful chapter in our nation's history.

If we want to remove the scourge from our midst, dismantle our global gulag, and regain our moral standing in the world, we can do no less.

A White House "Adept at Revenge"
The Associated Press

President Bush is playing supercharged hardball in going after his own former anti-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke. It's a risky strategy that shows the single-mindedness of Bush and his re-election team in trying to deflect politically damaging criticism.

Loyalty is a hallmark of Bush's administration, with the president and his top lieutenants quick to turn on those who stray from the fold.

A week after a broadside that questioned Democratic rival John Kerry's commitment to U.S. troops and fitness to be president -- standard operating procedure for the general election campaign -- Bush's re-election machine unleashed a shock and awe campaign designed to discredit Clarke.

Bush's leadership after the Sept. 11 attacks is the guiding theme of his re-election campaign, intended to suggest the nation is safer with him as president. Clarke's claim that Bush ignored the threat from Osama bin Laden and waged a pointless war against Iraq's Saddam Hussein directly challenges that argument.

In his book "Against All Enemies," Clarke predicted retribution from a White House "adept at revenge."

But Bush and his chief political adviser, Karl Rove, are essentially following the same game plan that the late Lee Atwater -- an early political mentor of Rove's -- used to get the first President Bush elected in 1988: define and undercut an opponent early with a fusillade of negative attacks.

"This team is tough. You cross them and they go after you and raise questions about you and your credibility rather than what you have to say," said Thomas Mann, a scholar with the Brookings Institution.

Others who have fallen out of favor over Iraq include former economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey, retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni and former Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki. All voiced concerns about either the expense or number of troops needed to occupy Iraq. All were treated dismissively by the White House. All are gone, but their
estimates proved accurate. Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV drew the administration's wrath by suggesting Bush exaggerated Saddam's nuclear capabilities. A federal grand jury is investigating whether a White House official illegally disclosed that Wilson's wife was a CIA officer to get back at him.

On the domestic front, Paul O'Neill was fired as Treasury secretary in December 2002 after publicly questioning the need for additional Bush tax cuts -- another core campaign issue for Bush.

Administration officials now are waging a behind-the-scenes campaign to discredit Richard Foster, a Medicare accountant who publicly said he was forbidden by his superiors from sharing with Congress a higher -- and more accurate -- cost estimate for the administration's Medicare program.

John DiIulio quit as director of Bush's office of faith-based initiatives in 2002, telling Esquire magazine that "Mayberry Machiavellis" led by Rove were basing policy only on re-election concerns. He later apologized for making what he said were rude remarks.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., stood on the Senate floor last week to urge Bush to stop the "character attacks" on Clarke, saying they recalled scorched-earth tactics that Bush and his allies used to defeat Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona in the GOP presidential primary in 2000, and Democratic Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia in the 2002 midterm elections.

The risk for Bush in aggressively challenging a former member of his own administration is that it could backfire. Clarke's book instantly became a best seller, and the White House counterattack is helping to give the allegations even wider circulation.

But administration defenders said it was important to rebut the charges quickly to ensure that they wouldn't linger unanswered.

"I think the American people do not believe that the president of the United States is pursuing a folly in the war on terror," and it is important to drive that home, said Bush National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Not every White House attempt at damage-control works. Last summer, White House officials tried to pin the blame on CIA Director George Tenet for not waving Bush off his State of the Union claim that Saddam was seeking uranium in Africa for nuclear weapons.

Political analysts rushed to proclaim Tenet a goner, but those obituaries proved premature. CIA memos suddenly surfaced showing that Rice and her top advisers had, in fact, been given just such a warning by the CIA -- months before Bush's speech.

Tenet, a politically wily Clinton administration holdover, remains on the job.

Bush/Cheney Political Bumper Stickers - 2004

Four More Wars!

Because the truth just isn't good enough.

Compassionate Colonialism

Over a billion Whoppers served.

Putting the "con" in conservatism

Thanks for not paying attention.

The economy's stupid!

This time, elect us!

Bush/Cheney '04: We're Gooder!

Don't think. Vote Bush!

George W. Bush: The buck stops Over There

Vote Bush in '04: "Because every vote counts -- for me!"

Vote Bush in '04: It's a no-brainer!

Vote for Bush & You Get Dick!

(Thanks to Rhonda, for sending me this little tidbit)

The Bushes

By Denis Mueller

George W. Bush is our first MBA president. He has made a point saying throughout his career in politics that government should be run like a business but when you look at the history of him and his brother Neil one’s only reply is "Lord help us." The point that is being raised about his reporting lapses is, for the most part irrelevant, but the way that Bush and his business pals did business is not.

Recently, Joshua Green wrote in The Washington Monthly that: "The 'New tone' that George W. Bush brought to Washington isn't one of integrity, but of permissiveness. In this administration, enriching one's self while one's business goes bust isn't necessarily frowned upon." I would add to that by saying if you looked at his brother Neil’s business practices in the Savings and Loan Scandal and brother George’s practices at Harkin Energy you come away with a feeling that they view rest of us as chumps.

George Bush has presided over one financial disaster after another. If you looked at Bush’s record in 1986, you would have described him as a failed businessman. While there is nothing wrong with that, because many of us have made bad decisions in business, there is something sleazy about the way Bush has gone about it.

Bush was saved from his first failure when Harkin Energy bought his company. His connections played a strong role in Harkin reasons for buying the Bush Company. Again nothing wrong with that in itself but the company did badly and its failure was concealed from its stockholders. But Bush cashed in and made an enormous profit which allowed him to buy the Texas Rangers, where he traded Sammy Sosa, and cash in on the sale.

Here's how the shell game at Harkin worked. You get a group of insiders, like Bush, to borrow money from the company itself. Then you buy another company, in this case Aloha Petroleum which then creates a phantom profit. Then you cash in before the bottom falls out and leave the stockholders holding the bag. Vice President Dick Cheney used a similar method in his company Halliburton that is now being sued by both liberal and conservative groups.

Bush knew very well that this was all a scam but made his millions anyways. My point is this. We are on the verge of the worst depression since the "Great depression" and it is because of stock schemes like the one used by the court appointed President. What we see now is just the tip of the iceberg. That is why they refuse to release the discussions between Cheney and Enron. When you couple that with the financial disaster he left the state of Texas in a picture emerges of a corporate raider who cares little or nothing of the public. To them we are all chumps.

Sources: Joshua Green, The Washington Monthly

Bush and the Texas Rangers

By Denis Mueller

President Bush broke no laws while owner of the Texas Rangers, and the city of Arlington passed a stadium bond proposal, but it is painfully clear that what went down was not right. It is another example of his insider capitalism. Bush and his partners bullied and lied their way to huge profits at the expense of the citizens of Arlington. Jim Runzheimer, an anti-tax proponent of Arlington, called it "a 200 million dollar transfer to Bush and Ranger owners."

William Eastland, a Republican, described it as using public money for private gain. This is the same man who, when it comes to the environment, wants government to get off the backs of business. What happened was the Bush group went around and looked at land they wanted and then took it. One Bush operative saw a nice piece of land and said: "We plan to condemn this land."

This happened over and over. They would go around and have the city condemn land and then seize it. Poor Horace Kelton had some land that the Bush people wanted and they got the city to steal it and pay Mr. Kelton 10% of what it was worth. He had to go to court and sue to get what his land was worth. The Bush people fought him tooth and nail for seven years before he got justice. In the end the city had to raise taxes because of the sweetheart deal that the Bush had concocted.

All in the entire city spent 150 million dollars in subsidies for a team that languished at the bottom of the American League. Finally, the team was sold to Tom Hicks for triple the price. By the way, the team still stinks. But if you do business with Dubya you are rewarded, and Bush went to great lengths to make sure Hicks was rewarded even if it meant that the University of Texas would suffer.

The University of Texas, like many large universities, has a huge endowment. So when Dubya became governor he made sure the rules were changed so his greedy little friends could get their hands on public money. What did he do? Governor Bush changed the rules eliminating the rules that required "all details concerning the investments made and income realized are made public." He also removed the rules that required a public assessment that made sure all of this was done on the up and up.

The money, from the University of Texas, was put under the control of Tom Hicks and other Bush donors. These investments were kept out of the public eye. Guess what? The investments did badly. This is how they work. You maintain secrecy, reward your friends, and screw the public. It all stinks. Now we see that Cheney’s former company Halliburton will make millions under Dubya’s security proposals.

Are you surprised? I’m not.

Source: New York Times, Paul Krugman and Nicholas Kristof

George W. Bush and Theodore Roosevelt
By Denis Mueller

President Bush seems fond of comparing himself with President Theodore Roosevelt, but it seems to me that when one looks at the record, it becomes clear that Dubya has no understanding at all of what Teddy Roosevelt was all about. While Dubya has proposed relatively minor reforms Teddy, when taken by today’s standards, is more radical than anyone existing in today's bought and sold for Washington.

T.R. often criticized the "malefactors of great wealth." In contrast to the environmentally sound Teddy, Dubya proposed that the taxpayers pay for clean-ups of land that was de- stroyed by corporations. This "Polluters Bill of Rights" is in sharp contrast to the former President Theodore Roosevelt.

Both were rich men but the difference stops there. T.R. was disgusted with the excesses of the Gilded Age and sought radical change from the trusts, another name for corporations, which raped the land, screwed the public and pushed competitors out of business. Roosevelt saw government as a referee who protected the public while the Bush administration seeks to privatize virtually everything.

During his presidency Roosevelt was at odds with Congress who remained in the hip pocket of the "Robber Barons." T.R. felt that corporation who consistently violated the law should be punished, if we used those standards today Jack Welch would be in prison, and called for strict regulation of the stock market. He also felt that corporations must open their books to the public. Somehow I don't see Dubya doing that.

As a progressive candidate in 1912 T.R. spoke of "distribu- tive justice" and wanted taxes to be used to reduce the "swollen fortunes" of the CEO's of his time. He felt that a progressive tax would cut the millionaires down to size. Compare this to the Bush tax cut which has done nothing to stimulate the economy. It does not take an economist to see that since the Bush tax cut the economy has gotten worse.

To T.R. the highest form of patriotism was the fight for "social justice." Instead we have a President, and Vice- President, who are part of the problem rather than part of the solution. It seems to me that Dubya knows little or nothing about the man he professes to emulate. Maybe he should read a book about the famous trustbuster.

I'd like to close with an excerpt from a speech made by our former President. "Patriotism means to stand by the country, it does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official..."

Sources: Kathleen Dalton: Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life

Prescott Bush
By Denis Mueller

Ten months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States was preparing for its first strike against Nazi forces in North Africa while a young George Bush, who had defied his father Prescott, joined the navy and was training to be a pilot. The Union Banking Corporation was being raided by the federal government for trading with the enemy. The firm was handling the banking operations of the Nazis in New York and the director of these operations was Prescott Bush.

How important was the Union Banking Corporation? It provided funds and credit to Fritz Thyssen, one of Hitler's earliest supporters, whose company produced: 50% of Nazi pig iron, 41% of Germany's plate, 45% of Nazi pipes and tubes and 35% of Nazi Germany's explosives. So, as you can see, they played a huge role in developing the German war machine and Prescott Bush was right there with them.

W. A. Harriman & Company had merged with the British investment house Brown Brothers, who were sympathetic to the Nazis, and formed the Union Banking Corporation, of which Prescott Bush was the director. Among their activities were loans paid to the Germans which were then funneled into the activities of Nazi storm troopers. These criminals were at the time killing Jews, socialists, liberals and anyone else who got in their way. The operation which provided funds, run by German industrialist Friedrich Flick, was under the supervision of Prescott Bush.

It gets worse! Once in power, the Nazis set out to build the German war machine and Union Banking was right there with them again. Herbert Walker, yes, another member of the Bush family, arranged for the credits that allowed Harriman to take control of the Hamburg-Amerika line. This was of particular significance in 1930-1932 when the German government tried to defend its national freedom by ordering the Nazi armies disbanded. The United States embassy reported at the time that the Hamburg-Amerika Line was distributing propaganda attacks against the German government. They also help distribute the guns for Remington arms who supplied these terrorists.

Throughout the 1930s the firm worked hand-in-hand with the Nazis. When the war broke out in Europe, they continued doing business with the German government and, when the United States joined the fight against the Nazis, the firm continued its trade with the enemy. The Roosevelt administration could have arrested the heads of business but the administration viewed that their trial and imprisonment would cause problems for the American war effort. But recent disclosures illustrate that they should have been tried as war criminals.

What has come to surface, due to the disclosures of a Dutch Intelligence agent, are documents that reveal how Prescott Bush and the UBC profited from the Holocaust. This is a startling development but the failure of the press to report this throughout the years is disgusting. During the many decades of public life, the mainstream press has chosen to ignore these facts. It prefers to print stories about JFK's affairs and things like that. The reasons they refuse to publish anything like this should be self-evident. The truth is an example of corporate duplicity and how the press works for corporations. The news services of the United States are not capable of reporting the truth. It has come to that.

Sources: Charles Higham, Trading With the Enemy
John Loftus and Mark Aarons, The Secret War Against the Jews.

Our Vice-President

By Denis Mueller

I don't mean to be cruel to the Vice-President, or for that matter the Washington press corps. I don't want you readers to be mad at me but sometimes a little knowledge about history can be a dangerous thing. Almost daily we hear something new about why we should go to war with Iraq and that Saddam Hussen is a monster, but they never explain why, when Dick Cheney was a CEO at Halliburtan Oil, did the company do 23 million dollars worth of business with Saddam?

Yes, that's right. In 1998, the United Nations passed a resolution allowing Iraq to buy spare parts for their oil works. Nothing wrong with that you say? But why at the same time have we opposed the sale of medicine? No reason other than money. When Halliburton was using subsidiaries to re-build the damaged oil fields of Iraq, it was doing more business with the evil one than any other American company.

All this is in the public record. It was reported on over two years ago by that radical publication the Financial Times of London. Why has the mainstream press refused to report on this? That is a good question that remains unanswered. Is it impossible for them to analyze anything? Why is it that today's press coverage has no connection with anything that has happened in the past. It was like everyday is the first day of the rest of your life.

When Dick Cheney was running across the country and touting about how he had been creating jobs, where was the press? Did they look into the Cheney allegations about how he had worked to create jobs? No they did not. The truth is that one of the first things that Cheney did upon becoming a CEO was to lay off 10,000 people. Way to go press! A quick look at Halliburtan during Cheney's time there would include a long list of dealings with some of the world's worst governments.

What has happened is that the economic and corporate interests of big oil now equate their interests with the interests of the American people. That is what makes this administration so corrupt. Why are we about to go to war with Iraq? Well how about this for a reason, money. Big oil has bought off both parties and a couple networks so it is virtually impossible to have an honest debate about this.

This war is such a disaster that it will look like the Bay of Pigs meets Vietnam. I know I'm not supposed to harp about petty things like hypocrisy but they make it so hard.

Sources: Financial Times of London

Dick Cheney and Anderson

By Denis Mueller

President George W. Bush moved to relax the capacity of the corporate fraud investigation. How do you do that? Well, by simply taking away its funds, thereby ensuring that nothing will happen. I mean, you have to do this when your Vice-President is one of the chief corporate crooks in America.. Just what did Cheney do, some of you might ask.

Well, how about this. There is a lawsuit going through the courts and it says he overstated the profits of Halliburton Oil by about 445 million and this led to the overvaluation of the stock. So what? You say. If you think this is all some political satire you might be right because it gets juicer.

It seems that Cheney once made a promotional video for the now disgraced accounting firm Arthur Anderson. In the video he explains how Anderson had given him advice over and over again. Mt Cheney states: "I get good advice, if you will, from their people, based upon how we are doing business and how we are operating, over and above the normal, by the books auditing arrangement." Yeah! But whose books?

The mainstream press gave Cheney a pass on his voting record during the last election. I think, considering the stakes in the up coming election, we should look the voting record of a man who just might cast the deciding vote on future legislation. It is not a pretty sight.

He is one of only eight House Members to Oppose Renewing the Older Americans Act Providing Nutrition and Support Services for Elderly People in 1987. Dick Cheney voted against the Re- authorization of Head Start Plan in 1986, and was one of 27 House Members to Oppose Funding for Head Start that same year. He also voted against College Student Aid in 1986. To those of families who have lost members of their family through service to the community he opposed Death Benefits for firefights and police widows. Nice guy this fellow. Cheney even fought against Nutrition programs and Hunger relief programs. This is his voting record of the 1980s. It is fair and necessary to examine this man.

Dick Cheney has always stood on the side of those with power and against working people. It is right there in the record. But the question for those who study history is how he was able to get away with this with nary a question from the press. Why does the press let him off the hook?

We all can understand what went on with those meetings with Enron. They were setting policy according to their insider world. Some day history will record what went on and the "Robber Barons" of today will look much worse than the Carnegies of the late 19th century. At least they built something.

Sources: BBC Television

Curriculum Vita
GEORGE W. BUSH
ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT:

I shattered the record for the biggest annual deficit in history (not easy!).

I set an economic record for the most personal bankruptcies filed in any 12 month period.

I set all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the stock market.

I am the first president in US history to enter office with a criminal record.

After taking the entire month of August off for vacation, I presided over the worst security failure in US history.

I set the record for most campaign fund raising trips by any president in US history.

I cut unemployment benefits for more out-of-work Americans than any other president in US history.

I set the record for the fewest press conferences of any president, since the advent of TV.

I presided over the biggest energy crises in US history and refused to intervene when corruption was revealed.

I cut health care benefits for war veterans.

I set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously take to the streets to protest me (15 million people), shattering the record for protest against any person in the history of mankind.

I dissolved more international treaties than any president in US history.

I've made my presidency the most secretive and unaccountable of any in US history.

Members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in US history. (The poorest multimillionaire, Condoleeza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her).

I presided over the biggest corporate stock market fraud in any market in any country in the history of the world.

I am the first president in US history to order a US attack and military occupation of a sovereign nation, and I did so against the will of the United Nations and the vast majority of the international community.

I have created the largest government department bureaucracy in the history of the United States, called the "Bureau of Homeland Security"(only one letter away from BS).

I set the all-time record for biggest annual budget spending increases, more than any other president in US history (Ronnie was tough to beat, but I did it!!).

I am the first president in US history to compel the United Nations to remove the US from the Human Rights Commission.

I am the first president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the Elections Monitoring Board.

I removed more checks and balances, and have the least amount of congressional oversight than any presidential administration in US history.

I rendered the entire United Nations irrelevant.

I withdrew the United States from the World Court of Law.

I refused to allow inspectors access to US prisoners of war and by default no longer abide by the Geneva Conventions.

I am the first president in US history to refuse United Nations election inspectors access during the 2002 US elections.

I am the all-time US (and world) record holder for most corporate campaign donations.

The biggest lifetime contributor to my campaign, who is also one of my best friends, presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history (Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation).

I am the first president to run and hide when the US came under attack (and then lied,saying the enemy had the code to Air Force 1)

I took the world's sympathy for the US after 9/11, and in less than a year made the US the most resented country in the world (possibly the biggest diplomatic failure in US and world history).

I am the first US president in history to have a majority of the people of Europe (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and stability.

I set the all-time record for the number of administration appointees who violated US law by not selling their huge investments in corporations bidding for gov't contracts.

I have removed more freedoms and civil liberties for Americans than any other president in US history. In a little over two years. I have created the most divided country in decades, possibly the most divided that the US has been since the Civil War.

I entered office with the strongest economy in US history and in less than two years turned every single economic category heading straight down.

RECORDS AND REFERENCES:
I have at least one conviction for drunk driving in Maine (Texas driving record has been erased and is not available).

I was AWOL from the National Guard and deserted the military during time of war.

All records of any SEC investigations into my insider trading or bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

All minutes of meetings of any public corporation for which I served on the board are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

Any records or minutes from meetings I (or my VP)attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review.

PERSONAL REFERENCES:
For personal references, please speak to my dad or Uncle James Baker (They can be reached in their offices at the Carlyle Group where they are helping to divide up the spoils of the US-Iraq war and plan for the next one).

(Thanks to Rhonda, for submitting this item)

And Now, the Counterfeit News
The New York Times Editorial

The Bush administration has come under a lot of criticism for its attempts to fob off government propaganda as genuine news reports. Whether federal agencies are purchasing the services of supposedly independent columnists or making videos extolling White House initiatives and then disguising them as TV news reports, that's wrong. But it is time to acknowledge that the nation's news organizations have played a large and unappetizing role in deceiving the public.

As documented this week in an article in The Times by David Barstow and Robin Stein, more than 20 federal agencies, including the State Department and the Defense Department, now create fake news clips. The Bush administration spent $254 million in its first four years on contracts with public relations firms, more than double the amount spent by the Clinton administration.

Most of these tapes are very skillfully done, including "interviews" that seem genuine and "reporters" who look much like the real thing. Only sophisticated viewers would easily recognize that these videos are actually unpaid commercial announcements for the White House or some other part of the government. Some of the videos clearly cross the line into the proscribed territory of propaganda, and the Government Accountability Office says at least two were illegally distributed.

But too many television stations run government videos anyway, without any hint of where they came from. And while some claim they somehow stumbled accidentally into this trap, it seems obvious that in most cases, television stations that are short on reporters, long on air time to fill and unwilling to spend the money needed for real news gathering are abdicating their editorial responsibilities to the government's publicity teams. Bush administration officials now insist that they carefully label any domestic releases as government handouts.

However disingenuous those assurances may be, in at least some cases the stations are the main culprits in the deception - as at the Fox affiliate in Memphis, where a station reporter narrated a State Department video, using the text that came with it. The Times also reported on a small central Illinois station that was so eager to snap up this low-cost filler that it asked the Agriculture Department to have its "reporter" refer to its morning show in his closing lines. The Times tracked station malpractice into bigger markets, like San Diego (the ABC affiliate) and Louisville, Ky. (the Fox affiliate).

If using pretend news is one of the ways these stations have chosen to save money, it's a false economy. If it represents a political decision to support President Bush, it will eventually backfire. This kind of practice cheapens the real commodity that television stations have to sell during their news hours: their credibility.

What They Really Mean...
By Norman Solomon

Since the 1950s, many young Americans have first encountered critiques of mass media in the pages of Mad. With its intricate cartoons and satirical sendups, the monthly magazine gained a reputation for skewering politicians, advertisers, TV shows and a variety of print outlets.

One of Mad's recurrent shticks has involved making fun of gaps between words and meaning -- an especially welcome form of humor because mainstream news so often amplifies the words of public figures with scarcely a hint of irony, much less deprecation. Notwithstanding the zany image of Alfred E. Newman, the magazine's grinning icon of absurdity has overseen plenty of sobering antidotes to the phony self-importance of major media.

One-third of the way through February, looking at a few of the day's top news stories, I tried to imagine the properly Mad way to annotate them. Here's what I came up with:

*Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said to an audience at a university in Paris: "It is time to turn away from the disagreements of the past. It is time to open a new chapter in our relationship and a new chapter in our alliance."

What she actually meant: "Stop complaining! We pulled off the invasion of Iraq, our troops are staying, and there's nothing you wimpy French people can do to stop us, so get over it already!"

*Rice said: "America stands ready to work with Europe on our common agenda, and Europe must stand ready to work with America."

What she meant: "Don't forget how France and Germany lost out on Iraqi oil deals and other booty after the invasion. Uncle Sam has plenty of big trains leaving stations all over the world. You want to ride or eat our dust?"

*President George W. Bush said in a statement about the promotion of his favorite political strategist to deputy chief of staff at the White House: "Karl Rove is a longtime adviser and trusted member of my team. His hard work and dedication have been invaluable."

What he meant: "If it wasn't for Karl, I'd never have been a governor, let alone president. This guy is so smart and mean he makes Lee Atwater and Roger Ailes seem like dumb saints. I haven't had this much fun since I was a kid blowing up frogs with firecrackers."

*Bush said: "I appreciate Karl's willingness to continue to serve my administration in this new position."

What Bush meant: "I owe Karl big time. Thanks to him, my opportunism has triumphed with my administration's policies. No way do I want to lose him."

*President Bush marked Black History Month by welcoming some African-American leaders to the East Room of the White House. He declared: "Success of freedom on the home front is critical to its success in foreign lands. As I said in my inaugural address, we cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the same time."

What he meant: "Republicans need a better image on racial issues. If we can make our percentage of the black vote a little less pitiful, we'll have a better chance of keeping
the Democrats out of power in Washington."

*Bush said: "Americans were still barred by law from hotels and restaurants, made to drink from separate water fountains, forced to sit in the back of a bus -- all because of the color of their skin. We need to teach them about the heroes of the civil rights movement, who by their courage and dignity forced America to confront the central defect of our founding."

What he meant: "Back in the '50s and '60s, a lot of the mentors of the right-wing politicians I'm now tight with were fighting against desegregation and vilifying the civil rights movement as a sinister force for judicial activism that threatened to undermine the sacred covenant of states' rights. Well, times have changed. Fortunately, the old power base of the Dixiecrats in Congress has been transformed into the country's most solid bedrock of Republican power. Blacks can use those water fountains, but we'll keep slashing social programs and skewing the tax structures so my rich pals can get richer while lots of people will stay near the bottom of the economic ladder. And I'm not just whistling Dixie."

Bush Flunked His Test on Iraq
By Thomas Oliphant

The very best that can be said on President George W. Bush's behalf is that he used the Cliffs Notes version of intelligence information about Iraq as the basis for a poorly planned and rushed invasion of Iraq in March of last year. The problem with this charitable approach to Bush is that it's unfair to Cliffs Notes.

The lazy student's version of anything is at least an accurate summary. But the intelligence information about Iraq was wrong. In terms that Bush can perhaps recall from his days at Yale as a budding intellectual of limited achievement, it's as if he went forth to his final exam on Dickens and wrote confidently that David Copperfield murdered Uriah Heep with a fireplace poker.

The policy sophisticates and intelligence insiders are having a field day with the U.S. Senate intelligence committee's limited and highly censored report on prewar information. However, the sophisticates are missing the truly jarring truth. In plain English, the Central Intelligence Agency was serving Bush large helpings of baloney in the form of summaries of analyses and conclusions that were directly contradicted by the detailed information on which these analyses and conclusions were supposedly based.

For those seeking to blame the summaries, including Bush's own campaign and policy big shots, the desperate finger-pointing works only on the basis of an assumption that is grounds for tossing Bush out of office.

To try to escape accountability by blaming CIA summaries, the president would have to ask the country to believe that he led it to war after reading a few cover pages without once glancing at the backup material that was sent to him and his top advisers. This view of the Bush style - big picture and full of alleged moral clarity - is grounds all by itself for electing a new president.

But it gets worse. The major finding in the material released so far is not so much that the CIA's hard-liner-serving conclusions were uniformly false or wildly over-stated. The major finding is that the conclusions and declarative statements were in every significant instance found to be undermined or even contradicted by the intelligence data that was sent along with them.

To absolve Bush of disqualifying responsibility for this true scandal, this is what you have to believe. The most glaring example involves one of the CIA's major National Intelligence Estimates about Iraq's unconventional weapons "programs" about six months before the invasion. Like any of these estimates, sent to the top security officials of the government, there is a brief summary and then gobs of more detailed material.

You have to believe that in processing all of this, Bush never bothered to look beyond the summary or to inquire in depth whether it was supported. You then have to believe that Condoleezza Rice never had her large national security staff in the White House take a long look at the backup material on Bush's behalf.

You have to believe that in getting ready for a war, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his huge operation never snuck a peek, either.

You have to believe that Vice President Dick Cheney - he of the long résumé and rich experience, not to mention his status as prime mover behind the idea of hasty, nearly unilateral invasion - never bothered to see if his extreme statements about the "threat" from Iraq were supportable. You have to believe that his many personal visits to the CIA were simply to ask questions, not influence answers.

And you have to believe that before he went to the United Nations to make Bush's "case" just before the war - with George Tenet, the director of central intelligence - Secretary of State Colin Powell's own visits to the CIA never once turned up the hedging, contradictory information that the Senate committee found by the bucketful.

Much more is coming - about the prison torture scandal and from the 9/11 Commission about the intelligence dots that were ignored or never connected by Bush and his top advisers. Nothing can top the discovery, however, that the wild statements about Iraq's actions, capabilities and intentions before the war are belied by the data.

To return to my point about Cliffs Notes, imagine you were Bush's instructor at Yale. He has turned in his exam, and you have noted that his assertion that David Copperfield dispatched Uriah Heep with the fireplace poker is contradicted by Dickens's novel itself. To save his skin, Bush comes to you and claims with a straight face that he used the Cliffs Notes version to study and that the fact he got it wrong should be ascribed to the cheat sheet, not to him.

What would you do? I'd flunk him in a heartbeat.

UNDERSTANDING GEORGE BUSH'S STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH - 2003

(All He Left Unsaid By William Rivers Pitt)

On Tuesday night, the wretched specter of September 11th returned to Logan airport, departure point for the planes that took down the Twin Towers. Hours before George W. Bush delivered his State of the Union speech, a commercial aircraft had to be emptied, and its passengers re-screened, after a box cutter was discovered in a seat pocket.

During his speech, Bush attempted to tout the actions he has taken to secure the nation against terrorism. He spoke of the Homeland Security Department, increased border patrols, and 50,000 new airport security screeners in place across the country. He failed, of course, to mention the devious Total Information Awareness database that came along with Homeland Security, and he failed to mention how bitterly he fought to keep those 50,000 screeners out of the airports, because they would be Federalized workers and thus able to unionize.

So much went unsaid during his speech. That box cutter at Logan, however, spoke volumes.

The first twenty-five minutes of the Bush speech was dedicated to domestic and economic issues. These are proving to be the Achilles heel of this administration, just as they were the last time a Bush occupied the Oval Office. Bush began by touting the education reform bill passed several months ago with the help of Senator Ted Kennedy, but failed to mention the degree to which Kennedy has since distanced himself from that bill and the added flaws he never agreed to. He spoke of holding corporate criminals to account, failing to mention the incredible number of Enron executives - including his beloved Kenny-Boy - who still walk free and clear across the nation they defiled with their fraud and deceit.

Bush had words of great praise for the trillion-dollar tax cut he foisted during his first year in office, and rattled off a number of demands for Congress to make those cuts permanent. Don't wait one year or three years or five years, he said, but cement those cuts today. He failed to mention the soaring deficits these tax cuts have caused, and likewise failed to mention that the cuts did not one single solitary thing to help this flagging economy.

Bush went on to roll out his new tax cut, aimed at stock dividends, which will once again benefit the wealthiest Americans. He failed to mention how the budget will handle this added stress; likewise, he failed to mention the fact that a number of prominent Republicans, along with virtually every Democrat and a mob of economists, saw this new tax cut concept as essentially flawed and dead on arrival. Every man and woman who wants a job must have one, said Bush. He failed to mention the millions of jobs that have been lost by Americans since he took office.

After an inordinate amount of praise for his tax cuts, and no mention of how the budget can survive them, Bush went on to rhetorically spend billions and billions of dollars he does not have on hand. He proposed an end to the 'marriage penalty', and went on to propose $1.2 billion in spending to develop hydrogen-powered automobiles. He failed to explain how he can afford any of this, and likewise failed to parse the hypocrisy of touting hydrogen cars while his new tax plan provides tens of thousands of dollars worth of write-offs for owners of gas-guzzling SUVs.

Another $450 million will go to a mentor program for children whose parents are in prison. $600 million will go to another drug treatment program. A whopping $15 billion will go to the noble cause of assisting the catastrophic AIDS crisis in Africa, but not a word was spared to explain where this money will be found. The mother of all financial boondoggles, the Ballistic Missile Shield, got it's due to no one's great surprise.

At one point during the reading of this fiduciary laundry list, Bush demanded fiscal responsibility from the government. A roving camera caught House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi bursting into laughter when that line came across.

Using a raft of semantics, Bush proposed that Medicare be moved into the HMO system, with newly minted Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist smiling from the crowd. He failed to mention how much HMOs loathe caring for senior citizens. He proposed the development of cleaner energy technology while increasing energy reliance at home, but failed to explain that this was code for the despoiling of the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge.

The faith-based initiative earned a return appearance in the Bush speech, with much talk of compassion and service. He failed to describe the degree to which such a program will annihilate the sacred and absolutely necessary separation between church and state. The Federal government will be offering services to those Americans who "deserve" attention, and the rest will be left to the whims of religious institutions.

To be sure, this was a generalized list, filled with hyper- bole and great praise for the failed economic plans of the last two years. Upon arriving at the subject of foreign policy and war, however, Mr. Bush shifted gears. In every way, his delivery became more dynamic, his voice more like a man standing before a congregation of the faithful. Nearly every line was met with crashing applause from his Republican allies arrayed before him.

Bush spoke of liberating Afghanistan, but failed to mention that this was done with the overwhelming approval and support of the international community. He spoke again of chasing terrorists across the globe. "The war goes on," said Bush, "and we are winning." He listed a number of al Qaeda agents who had been detained without providing much in the way of specifics, and stated that some 3,000 suspected terrorists were under arrest. Many more have been dealt with; "Put it this way," said Bush. "They are no longer a problem." He failed to describe the premises upon which those 3,000 were detained, and likewise failed to mention that in the process of rendering those others 'non-problematic,' his war in Afghanistan sent more civilians to death than were lost on September 11th.

The last twenty minutes of Bush's speech were dedicated almost exclusively to the looming conflict in Iraq. He leveled a damning finger at Saddam Hussein, accusing him of hiding anthrax, VX, botulinin toxin and other terrible weapons. He failed to provide an iota of evidence to back up these assertions, and on a number of occasions trotted out 'evidence' that had been debunked by the UN inspectors and the CIA. Bush raised the dire threat of a nuclear- capable Iraq, but failed to note that the nuclear inspectors in Iraq have given that nation a totally clean bill of health. He likewise failed to mention that his administration and the Pentagon have approved the use of nuclear weapons in Iraq as mainstream tactical battlefield tools.

Bush on several occasions linked Hussein directly to al Qaeda, painting at one point a picture of nineteen hijackers directed by Hussein commandeering aircraft and loading them with chemical or biological weapons. He offered no proof of this. He failed to mention that Hussein is a secular dictator who has spent the last thirty years crushing Islamic fundamentalism in Iraq, failed to mention the death threats levied against him by al Qaeda, and failed to mention the absolute fact that Hussein would never be so stupid as to give weapons or aid to blood enemies. Were he to do so, he would find those weapons immediately turned against him.

Bush failed to mention how the American economy could handle the billions of dollars needed to support the war, the inevitable oil shock that would come as a result of the war, the billions more needed for his missile shield, the billions needed to push his new tax cut through, the billions needed to make his old tax cut permanent, and the billions needed to pay for the new programs he proposed.

Bush failed to explain why so many Admirals and Generals, including Generals Zinni and Schwartzkopf, have spoken about the recklessness of this war plan. He f