By Bernard Weiner

January 26, 2006

OK, let's try to puzzle out together some recent political events. The unifying thread will appear; it always does because it's always there, even if sometimes out of conscious reach.

1. Why would the Bush Administration deliberately break the law by engaging in electronic surveillance of Americans without getting the required court warrants?

Since the rubber-stamp FISA court had turned down only five applications for domestic spying warrants out of about 15,000 since its inception in 1979, why wouldn't the Bush Administration automatically go to it for the required warrants? One implication, certainly, is that even the amenable FISA court might rebel when it found out the true motives and scope of the ongoing domestic spying, for, you see, Bush's order to NSA to engage in massive communication surveillance preceded 9/11. See "Bush Authorized Domestic Spying Before 9/11" and "How Cheney Used the NSA for Domestic Spying Prior to 9/11.

The Busheviks say they decided not to use FISA because the government needs the speed and flexibility to move quickly, and agents can't keep running to the secret court each time. But the law has a built-in proviso that permits NSA to move quickly in an emergency and fill out the required paperwork later, within three days.

The technology is now much more advanced that it was in the old "wire-tapping" days, when police agencies wanted to listen in on someone's bedroom or office phone. Now humongous computer banks do data-mining of millions of phone calls (land-line, cell, satellite) and email messages to and from Americans; they sweep up, and government agents check out, masses of "suspects," based on words or patterns unearthed by the data-mining programs. Of course, the vast majority of those "clues" turn out to be worthless; see "Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends". Yet, regardless of that reality and the invasion of ordinary citizens' privacy, the Bush Administration continues the massive intercepts, and apparently will be proudly citing this "national-security" program for the coming midterm elections.

Rather than stay within the law by going to Congress and saying "Look, the technology now requires blanket court warrants, so please amend the FISA bill," the Bush Administration simply chose to ignore all attempts to remain legal. They deliberately did not go to go to FISA court for permission, or to Congress for rewriting the authorization bill -- and they did (and are still doing) everything possible to keep the issue from going into the federal courts. In deepest secrecy, they made themselves the law and simply carried on, all the while trying to get into place their Federalist Society-type judges, who would rule in favor of the President, always.

The Bush Bunker crew wants the freedom desired by all authoritarian leaders: to act on their own, free of restraints, especially those coming from the courts or legislature. Arrogant and insecure, they need to know what everyone is thinking and doing, as a means of enhancing and protecting their political power. If they accidentally wind up getting some actionable intelligence about foreign terrorists, all the better.

So the short answer to the question as to why they Bush Administration broke the law is that they felt they could get away with this top-secret snooping on American citizens without anyone ever finding out. Once the word leaked about what they actually were doing, they hauled out the cockamamie "unitary executive" theory that asserts the President can violate whatever laws he wants, whenever he wants to, because he's "commander-in-chief" during "wartime." (The "war," never declared by Congress, is Bush's "war on terrorism," which, we're told, will last forever. Dictatorship for perpetuity.)

The Bush Administration utilized the same theory to justify Bush's authorization of torture of prisoners in U.S. care. And, as political insurance, it added one more rationale for the NSA spying: With a major leap in interpretation, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, for decades a Bush toady, claims that the post-9/11 resolution authorizing Bush to use "force" against al Qaida provides even more justification to monitor U.S. citizens' communications. Even if this interpretation were correct -- and most legal scholars think the opposite -- this war-authorization rationale does not explain away the pre-9/11 surveillance of American citizens.

If I'm correct here, the reason the Bushies are fighting so hard to keep anyone, including the FISA judges, from learning more about the real reason for their massive domestic surveillance is that outsiders might discover that it has less to do with foreign terrorists and more to do with collecting info on their political enemies and thus creating conditions for more firm control of the American populace in general.


THE NEW BIN LADEN AUDIOTAPE

2. Why the "new" Bin Laden audiotape now, warning of a coming attack on the U.S.?

The CIA, rather than independent experts (as was the case in years past), announced that this audiotape was indeed made by bin Laden. Most of the CIA's "recalcitrant" analysts and agents were purged last year by Bush's hand-picked new director, Porter Goss, another malleable Bush loyalist. Should one automatically trust the CIA's claim that this is an authentic bin Laden tape?

The timing of its release is unusually convenient for the Administration, when Bush's favorable numbers are plummeting and so many scandals are exploding into public consciousness that impeachment possibilities are being mentioned -- even by Republicans! Let us not forget that just before the 2004 election, another such audiotape alleged to be from bin Laden appeared, and was believed to have helped Bush in the balloting.

If the Bush Administration takes seriously this Osama bin Laden threat to attack America again, why has the color-coded threat-level not been raised? Remember Tom Ridge admitting, after he left the directorship of the Homeland Security Department, that his White House superiors sent him out to issue "terror-threat" warnings, with little or no evidence to back them up; the clear implication is that political reasons were at play whenever Bush's numbers started to tank or a new scandal erupted.

But even if the new "bin Laden tape" is genuine, it would merely demonstrate that both religious/political extremists require each other, for their own ends. In this theory, Bush needs bin Laden as the terrorist boogeyman, to increase the fear quotient in the American citizenry and thus permit his Administration to bend and twist the Constititution to aid his own political agenda. And bin Laden needs Bush as the Western imperialist boogeyman, for recruitment purposes and for solidifying the growing anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world and his leading role in that revolt.


THE "DISAPPEARING" OF AL GORE

3. Why the virtual absence of mainstream-media coverage of Al Gore's amazingly tough speech last week?

Whether or not one finds merit in Gore's toughest charges in his incendiary speech, the former Vice President of the United States (who, don't forget, received more votes nationwide than Bush in the 2000 election) practically called the sitting President a lying crook whose policies approach police-state status. He urged a Special Counsel to investigate this Administration's alleged high crimes and misdemeanors, especially those having to do with the destruction of the checks-and-balances system in our governmental system, as evidenced by Bush's illegal behavior in the NSA spying scandal.

By any definition, a former Vice President saying that a sitting President is violating the Constitution is news. But one would be hard-pressed to find any significant coverage, or even a mention, of it in the mainstream media. It was as if it never happened.

In the so-called "liberal" media, PBS's The News Hour had no mention Monday evening, even though the speech had been delivered around noontime, and then no coverage Tuesday as well. The New York Times, the "newspaper of record," buried a mention of Gore's speech in the final three paragraphs of a long story about something else. ABC News had a quick mention toward the end of its Monday broadcast, but no excerpts from the speech. Nothing on CBS or NBC newscasts. (The entire speech was covered verbatim on CSPAN, but not a lot of Americans watch that channel.)

One can only speculate why the mainstream media would freeze-out news of such major import. It's easy enough to understand why the rightwing cable networks and commentators would try to ignore or play down Gore's hard-hitting charges against Bush, but the more serious journalists at CBS? NBC? ABC? True, these are giant conglomerate-owned corporations, but they've covered big anti-Bush stories before. (PBS was somewhat declawed by its right-wing then-overseer, Ken Tomlinson, but usually the News Hour With Jim Lehrer is more even-handed.)

No, it's clear that Gore's frontal attack on Bush Administration mendacity and police-state tactics hit a raw nerve and network execs decided, either after having been warned by Bush officials or by self-censoring their own newscasts, that discretion was the better part of valor.

The result, of course, reminds one of the old koan: If a huge tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, was there a sound? Millions of American citizens were deprived of hearing that loud sound, and thus having more information available to make intelligent choices in a democracy. Precisely what the Rove/Bush/Cheney forces were hoping for.


FISHING IN THE SEARCH-ENGINE PONDS

4. Why the Bush Administration's demand that Google, Yahoo, AOL and other search-engines provide them with a week's worth of data about search requests by their users?

The Bush Administration says the aim is not to collect personal information, only generic patterns that will help convince the courts to keep certain anti-pornography laws in place. It's hard to imagine that any court would authorize such wide-sweeping fishing expeditions on an unrelated matter with no reasonable criminal reason for the search -- but, with Bush-appointed judges in place throughout the appellate court system, who knows? (Note: Google says it will go to court to resist the government's request for these archived, private records.)

The additional dangers of permitting such immense data searches are three-fold:

1) The government's massive computer system may be capable of back-tracking the data to email addresses of those seeking illegal porn on the 'net, with harassment and arrests to follow.

The Busheviks assert that they have no such intent. But who supervises what the government will do with this raw information? In short, who polices the police? Would you trust the Bush Administration to do the right thing? They've shown no evidence of that before, and have displayed a willingness to hide the truth, distort and lie, to keep the public from ever learning their dirty little secrets. In general, it's not wise to trust ANY government with too much information about what you're up to, but especially this government.

2) On the surface, the government's demanding to see all those millions of searches focus on a subject designed to elicit support from the American people -- stopping kiddie-porn. But feed that search-engine data into NSA's massive computers and, voila, out comes whatever other info you want to look for. In short, it's data-mining from another angle -- not through phone calls and emails but through internet search-engines' databases. Once the precedent is established with pornography, other "topics of interest" might not be far behind.

3) One aim of the Bush Administration is to make citizens suspicious of information sources other than the government and its far-right media cohorts. The Busheviks already have made many people doubt the so-called "liberal" mainstream media; now the target is the internet, a free-flowing, difficult-to-control information-delivery system. How to remove some of the respectability of that source of non-official (and often anti-Bush) information? One way would be to let folks know that everything they do on the internet -- even logging onto a search-engine and surfing the web for information -- may well be observed by the thought-police. More citizens might then choose to retire into their individual data shells, and get their informational fixes through more "official" channels.


THE ARROGANCE OF UNCHECKED POWER

So, we've done the news-analysis dance. Can you spot the unstated throughline in all the items discussed above? Yes, of course, it's the reckless dangers associated with the arrogance and abuse of power, be it corporate or governmental. "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

We are living through one of America's darkest periods in its history, when mendacity, the lust for power, and greed have corrupted even the best of our institutions. There must be some way out of here, and right now the exits can be found in stopping the worst actors from doing more damage (see: Alito, Sam), starting impeachment hearings to learn the whole rotten truth, and re-establishing electoral integrity by eschewing easily-manipulated computer-voting systems and returning to paper ballots hand-counted. A fair and honest election system certainly would help bring more light into this dark time.

So, friends, there are ways out of here, but it will take lots of hard work, money, energy and extreme courage. Get ready: It's going to get even nastier.

Let the rumpus begin.

Copyright 2006 by Bernard Weiner
 

---

"Shallow Throat":
Do Dems Have a Death-Wish?

By Bernard Weiner

Posted January 18, 2006

"Shallow Throat" joined me at a mostly-deserted park in Virginia, bursting with anger. I didn't even have to ask a question before the rage exploded out:

"I can't believe your Democrat friends are blowing it once again! The Bushies are imploding in one scandal after another, it's dictator-time, the Republicans are tarred by the Abramoff corruption brush, more attacks on Mideast countries are coming soon, Bush ordered spying on Americans with no court permission, impeachment momentum is in the air -- and the Dems have let the President off the hook once again! How many times are you going to push that boulder up the steep hill to the top and then let it roll back down again? Do you liberals really have a death-wish?"

Normally, I have to contact the secretive GOP mole high up in the Bush Administration, but this time Shallow Throat came looking for me. To vent, to explode, to dish.

"Whoa there," I said, as we walked double-time down a tree-lined path. "Slow down and tell me what's wrong. And, by the way, I'm not a Democratic consultant, I just play one on the internet. I presume you're talking about Alito escaping the Judiciary Committee noose in his hearing?"

"No, no, you're missing the point. Your Dem friends -- MoveOn.org, Democrat pols, liberal pundits -- always miss the point. They're great when they finally decide to hone in on something, usually minor, but they don't constantly see the big picture, and rarely have a world-view, a philosophy, even a sense of what their political enemies are trying to do to them. No wonder you guys lose elections -- wait, before you call me on that last one, I'll admit: balloting fraud helps, too."

"So what is the 'big picture' here? What did the Democrats ignore?"

THE UNITARY DICTATORSHIP

"The reality they're missing is that Bush&Co. long ago declared war on our democratic institutions, and the liberals pretend that it never really happened. Bush&Co. have set themselves up as a dictatorship, where, under an extreme interpretation of 'the unitary executive' theory, the president can violate whatever laws he wishes whenever he wishes, totally negating the Legislative Branch's lawmaking and oversight powers, and the Judiciary's right to interpret what they're doing in light of the Constitution. Bush&Co. have been doing this in secret for years -- using the 'national security' dodge when carrying out and condoning torture, domestic spying on citizens' emails and phone calls and so on -- and now, thanks only to some whistleblower friends of mine inside the Administration, the whole rotten, stinking pile is out in the open.

"The issue is joined, and yet the Dems simply can't face that they're going to have to really fight for freedom and power, not just mouth the words. The Alito hearings were the perfect platform to make their points openly, and they dropped the ball."

"But they did ask Alito plenty of questions about presidential overreach," I responded. "It's not like they ignored the issue."

"Yeah, they asked some questions, a well-rehearsed Alito bobbed and weaved with platitudes, and then the Dems moved on to another line of questioning, as if each issue were equal and a perfectly normal difference of opinion.

"What you and your friends are failing to grasp is that this is THE issue of our time -- the amassing of total political and military power in the hands of a few dangerous, power-crazed officials down in a fantasy bunker. The result of this liberal denial has led to a withering away of other countervailing powers in our society, in the Judiciary, the Press, the Legislative branch. It happened in Germany in the '30s, and it is starting to happen here. If we don't stop them now, we may never have another good opportunity to do so."

"But you still haven't told me what the Dems -- who are the minority party, remember, with little or no power -- could have done in the Alito hearings other than to press the issue with the nominee," I said.

TAKE DISSENT TO THE NEXT LEVEL

"Think creatively!" shouted Shallow Throat. "If the Democrats truly and sincerely believe America and the Constitution are in imminent danger from this wild, power-hungry crew in the White House, they can't keep behaving in a normal manner. Al Gore in his great speech demonstrated that he realizes there is no 'normal' anymore in this desperate struggle for freedom, but, believe me, you guys have seen only the tip of the iceberg for how bad it really is.

"For the Alito hearings, the Senate Democrats could have reined in their individual egos, organized themselves and, in effect, held an educational sit-in, using their media face-time to lay out the facts of Bush's cockamamie theory underlying his assumption of total power. They could have met elsewhere in the Capitol and held their own hearings, a la John Conyers in the House, about what Bush has done. They could have said they would be unable to vote for Alito as long as he avoided telling the country his philosophical views -- not how he might rule on particular cases -- on the key issues. As a united body of senators, they could have indicated their support for an impeachment inquiry based on the usurpation of total authority (tieing Alito to this RightWing power-grab), domestic spying, torture, corruption, massive lies, etc.

"Instead, they just lobbed a few easy-to-deflect questions at Alito and moved on. If Alito is confirmed to the Supreme Court (joining Roberts, also a supporter of expanded 'unitary' executive power during 'wartime'), the likelihood of more police-state tactics and shredding of more Constitutional protections and more spying on ordinary citizens will move us further along toward an authoritarian, one-party state. Although the Dems' questions seemed to recognize this, their disorganized, noncholant approach suggested that they don't really care to try to stop this movement toward an American type of fascism."

"You, a traditional Republican conservative, think America is heading into fascism?" I asked, somewhat shocked.

MANY IN G.O.P. FEAR BIG-BROTHER GOVT.

"It's not just me. There are so many distressed traditional Republican conservatives out there, always opposed to Big-Brother government, who think likewise. Even Barron's, that establishment business magazine, is of a similar mind, along with lots of military and intelligence types still inside the administration, but scared to death of saying anything. I'm nervous just being here with you, Bernie. God help me if anybody sees me."

"I think this place is far enough from the D.C. beltway, and you're wearing a wig and dark glasses," I replied. "But what I'm interested in finding out is: Do you think it's too late, is it all a lost cause?"

"Almost, but maybe there still are ways to stop this reckless bunch of ideologues. First of all, the Democrats have to stay united, push off the vote a week or so, and filibuster the hell out of the Alito nomination. And they have to work on prying a few of the Republican moderates to pledge to support the filibuster, based on the clear indication by Alito that he's willing to re-open the Roe decision, and that he'd judicially support Bush's assumption of sweeping powers over citizens' privacy.

"The hearings may have been a predictable dance, but they did get Alito to reveal several things: First, that he's willing to lie to get what he wants. He lied to somebody about being a member of the bigoted Concerned Alumni of Princeton; either he lied to Reagan officials to get a job when he asserted that he had been a member, or he lied to the Senators to get a job when he claimed he couldn't remember if he was a member. (Akin to: I wracked my brain and I just can't remember if I was a member of the Klan. Yeah, sure.)

ROE A GONER, BUSH POWER-GRAB OKd

"Second, Alito believes many other key issues are 'settled law' precedents, but on executive power and abortion, clearly he's ready to vote to tear away at Roe and to support Bush in his assumption of more and more power, with little oversight. Some of the moderate GOP senators are greatly concerned about the Legislative Branch being stripped of its power, throwing the checks-and-balances system totally out of whack, so they might be peeled away here. Folks like Collins and Snowe and Chafee and maybe even Warner and McCain (who is pissed at the way Bush humiliated him on his torture amendment, saying he wouldn't necessarily honor it).

"Third, key Democratic Senators and House members should be willing to risk arrest for civil disobedience by joining a sit-in outside the White House gates, along with tens of thousands of ordinary citizens, protesting Bush's breaking of laws passed by Congress and claiming he can and will do it again and again, whenever he wants.

"We need men and women of courage to drive this issue into the mainstream media's front page and TV screens, day after day; imagine the impact if, say, Senators Boxer, Byrd and Leahy were to put their bodies where their mouths are on the war in Iraq and on Bush's in-your-face executive power-grabbing. If the Dems are serious about confronting Bush where he's weakest, on breaking laws with impunity, then they've got to up the ante and take some calculated risks. Doing so automatically will move the impeachment ball forward.

"Fourth, it's not too late for the Dem senators to start holding hearings on their own -- or talking about Alito and over-reaching executive power during a filibuster on his nomination -- even if the GOP won't initiate official probes on Bush's having violated the law. (By the way, it was easy for Alito to say that even a President has to remain within the law, because, if he gets onto the Supreme Court, he'll help redefine 'the law' so that Bush always will be seen to be 'inside' it.) Witnesses could be called at such hearings, from inside and outside the government, to explain how Bush is a serial lawbreaker and needs to be reined in, either electorally at the mid-term balloting later this year or through the impeachment process.

"Finally, don't forget that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald may drop a Rove-indictment bomb any day now on the White House. Bush and Cheney might be forced to testify in such a case -- or Bush might feel constrained to issue a pardon in advance of Rove going to court, which obvious coverup ploy would add another charge to the impeachment list."

DEMS MUST STEP OUT COURAGEOUSLY

I had to ask the next question: "Do you really believe the Democrats have enough sense, and courage, to do at least some of what you're suggesting?"

"No," ST said, "but they're slowly coming to realize that unless they do something dramatic to save the republic from the worst of Bush&Co.'s recklessness and power-amassment, their own days and their authority to get things done are numbered, and with more wars of choice in the offing. The Dems can see that they might never get back in power again unless Bush&Co. are brought down politically, through impeachment.

"We can't count on Bush & Cheney resigning on their own volition, on Fitzgerald doing it for them, on unsupervised voting-machine tallies (by the Republican-supporting computer-voting companies who control the counting of ballot) giving them earned victories. In short, the Dems and their moderate GOP allies are going to have to force the issue themselves.

"The Dem base -- and a lot of angry traditional Republican conservatives and military officers at the Pentagon and intelligence officers at the CIA and elsewhere -- are ready for courageous action from their elected officials. But those leaders have to be willing to step out, take a deep breath and make the moves that need to be made to get rid of this corrupt, incompetent, vicious, power-mad crew. If they don't, we're all liable to go down with them. There are no more chances. This is it."

Shallow Throat turned off my tape-recorder and, before jogging out of the park, said: "Get this conversation published!" Since I also love my country, I'm happy to oblige.

---

Fear, the Future & the Other F-Word

By Bernard Weiner

January 13, 2006

WASHINGTON (Associated Press) -- President George W. Bush today applauded the decision by the House of Representatives and the Senate to disband.

"Everything changed on 9/11," said the President. "The American people join me in thanking Congress for finally having the wisdom and patriotism to recognize this changed situation in the country and the world. Although these legislators have served our nation well over the years, now all that bickering, partisan sniping, and obstructionism blocking my programs are gone.

"In a word, I know what needs to be done. And now we can reach those goals with aggressive speed and determination, knowing that all our citizens are united under one leader. Those seeking to throw the American government into chaos and anarchy with their talk of impeachment and cutting-and-running from our battles abroad have been silenced."

A joint statement from Republican and Democratic leaders in both branches of Congress was issued late last night: "It appears that the Executive Branch has made the Legislative branch redundant, by outsourcing our law-making functions to itself. They are deciding which laws to obey, and have the Justice Department and the courts under their control. So, rather than waste taxpayers money in spinning our wheels, we're simply going out of business."

Most members said they have been offered lucrative contracts by lobbying organizations, to use their access to contacts in the White House and the military services. Others said they would be going to work for the expanded Pentagon and Homeland Security Department, which today announced that they would be taking over the functions of the Department of State and all the intelligence agencies.

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said one of his first priorities will be to re-organize Amtrak as a "national security asset" and "make sure that the trains run on time."

The Departments of Labor and Housing & Urban Development will be disbanded, said new White House Press Secretary Ann Coulter, as will the various regulatory bodies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Communications Commission, Securities & Exchange Commission, OSHA, Mine Safety Administration, and the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.

The new Secretary of Education, Rev. Pat Robertson, announced that a national history and civics curriculum would be written by Under Secretaries Bill Bennett and Lynn Cheney, and the Biology Curriculum by Rev. Jerry Falwell and James Dobson.


ALWAYS "WITHIN THE LAW"

As for the Judicial Branch, Coulter said: "Now that the Congress is no longer an impediment in getting patriotic judges onto the Supreme Court, we would anticipate that the Judiciary will remain in business to validate the decisions taken by President Bush. Citizens should feel comforted that therefore our Administration will always be seen as working 'within the law.' But should the Judiciary attempt to interfere with the orderly workings of this administration, we will re-evaluate its role and function."

Not all members of the House and Senate went quietly into new establishment jobs or retirement. Several Senators and Representatives, mainly Democrats and a few moderate Republicans, said they would move to the Western Coastal states (California, Oregon and Washington), or to the Northeast region (Massachusetts, New York, Maine, Vermont), where they will work for referenda on the possibility of joint secession.

Reportedly, the Bush Administration, which has nullified the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, thus permitting President Bush to continue to serve in perpetuity, has said it has no problem with the attempts of the "traitorous regions" to sever themselves from the "patriotic mainstream" of America.

"They are doing this to gain attention for their demands for more inclusion in policy-making. But surely they realize that if they do leave the United States, that would make them foreign countries, and thus potential recipients of our shock & awe policies," said Vice President Dick Cheney. "I don't think they're going anywhere. They'll come around -- or will devoutly wish that they had."


SEND THESE KIDS TO CAMP

We attempted for this story to contact various anti-Bush activists and progressive website editors, to get their reactions to the extraordinary political events of the past few days, but all our inquiries were forwarded to the Department of Homeland Security. Robert Novak, press secretary for the Department's newly-created Security Services, which was set up to deal with "recalcitrants" and "malcontents," said all those we inquired about were "unavailable for comment."

Other sources, who have chosen to remain anonymous, report that under the leadership of Richard Perle thousands have been moved to "re-education" camps in the Nevada desert, Northern Alaska oil refuge and other undisclosed locations, or were "rendered" to special camps in allied countries. (Note: Novak said the S.S. wants to make clear that these "malcontents" will not be sent to the "relocation centers reserved for homosexuals, winners of National Endowment for the Arts grants, and other deviants.")

The offending websites have been taken over or shut down, said Deputy S.S. spokesman Bill O'Reilly, "because they have been spreading slanderous lies and unsubstantiated charges against our Leader and his policies. Anger and rebellion have no place in our new order; when those troublemakers return from the re-education centers, we expect they will have new, positive attitudes about the value of Bush Administration initiatives."

O'Reilly said that no action would be taken against the editors and publishers of the country's major newspapers, networks and cable TV and radio news outlets. "They established their patriotic credentials long ago, and are either supportive of the Bush agenda or know when to keep their traps shut," said O'Reilly.

Rush Limbaugh has been appointed director of the National Institutes of Health's pharmacy, and Jeff Gannon is now Protocol Chief in charge of entertainment and overnight stays at the White House.

President Bush announced today that he would fill the seats of three retiring Supreme Court justices -- John Paul Stevens, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginzburg -- with Michael Brown, Alberto Gonzales and Harriet Miers.

"These new appointees are three of our finest public servants, who have demonstrated great loyalty to my person and policies," said President Bush. "They know that everything changed on 9/11 and that me and my Administration are working hard for the American people. They will serve the nation well in making sure that our Administration's actions always will remain 'within the law' -- by validating with their unanimous opinions those decisions I take in the service of protecting the American people from threats to our national security. Everything changed on 9/11; the terrorists hate us for our freedoms, you know."


THE PRESIDENT'S MERCY

Finally, President Bush today issued a full amnesty and/or pardon for those felons from his Administration and Congress currently serving time in prison or those under federal indictment or grand jury investigation. Included among those hundreds are the Cabinet, Karl Rove, I. Lewis Libby, Tom DeLay, John Ashcroft, Bill Frist, Duke Cunningham, and such stalwart Administration backers as Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed and Kenneth Lay.

"These are loyal Americans all, who have worked tirelessly for me and thus for the good of our nation, and were hounded by over-zealous prosecutors with hidden agendas," said President Bush. "These pardons and amnesties will ensure that they return to their good work in the public and private sectors, and will continue advising me well."

Switching places with the pardoned felons are such "over-zealous prosecutors" as Patrick Fitzgerald, James Comey, Ronnie Earle, and Elliot Spitzer. Among notables known to have been rounded up and sent for re-education, based on their harsh critiques of Bush policy: Lawrence Tribe, Anthony Lewis, Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill, Lawrence Wilkerson, Paul Krugman, Molly Ivins, Noam Chomsky, Frank Rich and Seymour Hersh. Numerous other notables reportedly have fled to France.

President Bush said he issued the amnesties now to "have our full and best team in place as we prepare for whatever foreign and domestic actions may come in the immediate future." It is believed he is referring to the impending military action against Syria, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia.

More secret prisons are being built to accommodate the expected thousands of detainees from those conflicts. But, said Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, "there will be fewer prisoners than in past wars because we fully intend to exercise our dominance in the nuclear-weaponry field. The advantage in using such WMDs is that it reduces the number of prisoners to care for and also keeps other foreign countries from even thinking about criticizing our policies. In short, it's a win-win for America and for the expansion of freedom around the globe."

---

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., a playwright-poet, has written numerous satires and parodies. He has taught at numerous universities, worked as a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently co-edits The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org). For comments: >> crisispapers@comcast.net <<.
 

Copyright 2006, by Bernard Weiner

---

12 Political Insights: A 2006 Starter-Kit

By Bernard Weiner

January 9, 2005

Bush&Co.'s scandals are coming so rapidly and getting so huge that it's hard to lay off talking about them at length, but in this new year, let's step back a bit for some longer-range perspectives.

In no particular order, here from decades of politics-watching are a dozen bits of insight, most of which were reinforced by events in year 2005. Below each is some discussion of how those truisms flowered in the Bush era.


1. If you have a sturdy dam that develops a crack, fix it quickly before the seeping water enlarges the opening and a flood pours down on the populace.

Given their history and first year in office, the Bush Administration should have been seen early for what they were -- a pack of rapacious, power-hungry incompetents. But, after 9/11 and the anthrax attacks, a frightened citizenry and Congress trusted them to do the right thing. The nominal opposition party caved early and often. The Patriot Act, rushed through Congress right after 9/11, opened the floodgates to shredding Constitutional protections of civil liberties, which then led to the accumulation of more and more police powers in the Executive Branch. (Let us never forget Lord Acton's warning: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.") Now, four-plus years later, because the governmental breech wasn't repaired quickly enough, it probably will take impeachment and conviction to even begin to restore Constitutional rule in this country.


2. If you persist in trying to force a square peg into a round opening, you will cause great damage to the peg, to the opening, and frustration for yourself, because it simply won't go. Corollary: If you're in a deep hole, first thing to do: stop digging.

The Iraq War was worked out years before the invasion by neo-con intellectuals who thought their goals would be met quickly once Saddam was toppled. They did what was necessary to convince Congress and the American people to support the war -- lied, deceived, swore falsely -- and then ran headlong into a reality for which they were totally unprepared. As occupiers, they did everything late, wrong or backasswards, including bringing Iraq full-scale corruption, massive torture and constant humiliation, and likely civil war and disintegration of its unitary state. The end result will be a religiously-dominated state of some sort opposed to U.S. interests, heavily influenced by Iran. The U.S. eventually will have to leave Iraq, but even though the handwriting long has been on the wall, Bush refuses to find a quick, face-saving way out and will "stay the course" until "victory." Translated: many more thousands of Americans and Iraqis will have to die because Bush cannot, will not, admit the gross political miscalculation that led to that war and the need to drastically change his goals. In all things Iraq, Bush turns out to be extremist Islam's top recruiting agent. Yet another brief for the impeachment of Bush/Cheney.


3. Secrets eventually surface, especially the worst ones you're trying to hide.

The Bush Administration is the most secretive in U.S. history -- for a good reason: They have much to hide, a lot of it criminal in nature. The latest secret is an outgrowth of the false reasoning that grew out of the Iraq War and the official policy permitting torture. According to this twisted logic, Bush can do whatever he wants, including violate laws passed by Congress, whenever he asserts that he's acting as "commander-in-chief" during "wartime." Yes, of course, there is no official declaration of war, but Bush says we're at "wartime," and that war will last forever -- ergo, shut up, lie back and don't resist your fate. The latest secret to leak involves his illegal orders to the National Security Administration to "monitor" (data-mine) phone calls and emails of millions of American citizens, without first obtaining court warrants, as required by law. Breaking that law is an impeachable offense. (Note: These classified secrets are being leaked, by and large, by Bush Administration military and security officials, conservatives, anxious to get this reckless crew out of the White House before they sail our country into even more dangerous waters and crash us on rocks and icebergs.)


4. It's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes. -- J. Stalin

We have a long way to go to restore integrity and transparency to the touchscreen and vote-tabulation system in this country -- right now it's the major political scandal of our time. Secret software controlled by Republican-supporting corporations can easily be manipulated and vote-tallies altered without leaving any evidence of the fraud. But a goodly number of states and localities are raising serious questions about the legitimacy of the process. Several states have threatened to decertify touch-screen machines, and some have done so. It is anticipated that class-action and private lawsuits will be filed shortly against Diebold, and that the Securities & Exchange Commission may begin a fraud probe of this leading e-voting company. One can almost spot a growing trend questioning the viability of e-voting. But, as I say, we're still in for manipulated tallies in 2006 and 2008 unless major reforms are demanded and implemented nationwide by the citizenry. Ironically, when manipulated elections are held in foreign countries, and hundreds of thousands of aggrieved citizens pour into the streets to demand an overturning of the tampered-with vote results, the American media and Bush Administration officials celebrate this example of democracy in action. Notice any difference when it comes even to raising the question of whether our elections are honest?


5. Most people passively accept a lot, but when a lot becomes way too much, they get very angry and usually look to exact revenge on those doing them dirt.

There is a "tipping point" in all major social upheavals; one day, things go on as normal and then the next day, when critical mass is just right, citizens move in a forthright manner. Examples: the American and French revolutions, the overthrow of Soviet communism, the '60s civil rights, anti-war and feminist movements. It's taken a while, but the American people -- including an increasing number of conservative Republicans -- more and more are indicating that they've lost trust and faith in the Bush Administration's officials and policies. Keys to this eye-opening have been the Administration's bumbling Iraq policy, its utter incompetence in dealing with the Katrina disaster, and its lies and deceits with regard to running roughshod over citizens' privacy rights by a Chief Executive who is acting more like a banana-republic dictator than the leader of a democratic republic. In addition, half a trillion dollars are being spent on Bush's never-ending Iraq adventure, while the upkeep of streets and infrastructure, and popular social programs, are being cut way back. The middle-class is being pushed more toward the lower end of the economic and cultural spectrum while the wealthy get virtually all the goodies. The economy remains in the doldrums. The citizenry are getting fed up and increasingly indicate their willingness to take out their anger on GOP members of the House and Senate in 2006.


6. Bullies feed off submission and acquiescence, and retreat in the face of united opposition.

It is beyond comprehension why it took an entire first term for the Democrats to understand that you can't make nice with those who are working to destroy you as an effective political force. But the Dems did act as if politics could be conducted as usual, thus becoming enablers of Bush's most destructive policies and, by so doing, made themselves essentially irrelevant. In the first year of Bush's second term, the Democrats occasionally were more feisty, behaving as an Opposition Party should. But they still tend to tiptoe around controversial topics (electoral integrity and fraud, for example, which they won't touch with an 11-foot pole, and withdrawal from Iraq ASAP), still terrified of being called "unpatriotic" or "soft on terrorism" or "sore losers." Reid exhibits some starch in the Senate, and Pelosi at times in the House, and they've been able to keep their forces united on enough occasions so that, in alliance with GOP moderates, they've been able to give Bush&Co. fits. Note to Democratic leaders: Stand up straight and fight back, or you'll wind up on the dung-heap of history, tossed there by your aroused, angry Democratic base. If they can get no leverage in turning around their party, they may go the third-party route, along with many disaffected moderate Republicans.


7. If you compromise on morality at the top, inventing rationales for bad behavior, eventually that weakened ethical system will work its way down the chain of command.

For example, if you assert the right of the government to torture prisoners in your care, eventually torture will be widespread throughout the system. If you set up secret CIA prisons around the world where especially recalcitrant prisoners are interrogated with "enhanced" methods, and you "render" prisoners to countries where excruciatingly painful torture methods are employed, you have lost any moral high ground you might have once possessed. In addition, you guarantee that U.S. soldiers held prisoner will be treated in the same manner, and you provide effective recruiting arguments for militant Islamists around the globe. In short, torture is a self-destructive policy -- "stupid" would be another word for it. And, of course, once the feds began massive spying on ordinary citizens, the states and cities followed suit by spying on local peace groups and non-violent activists.


8. If you invade a country, you automatically become occupiers and de facto governors of that country. Ergo, you get blamed for everything that goes wrong. Addendum: It is always easier to get in than to get out.

The U.S. invaded Iraq based on a neo-con belief that victory would come cheap, and they could mold the country into a lackey state easily and quickly. There was no Plan B. Its military Occupation ran into a deadly reality on the ground: nationalism, tribalism, religious fervor demonstrated their solid strength (as they do around the world). The U.S. can not "win" in Iraq, in the same way the U.S. could not "win" in Vietnam; eventually, America, in a prolonged and unwinnable stalemate, will have to leave. Better now than later, after tens of thousands more American troops and Iraqi civilians will have been slaughtered or maimed. Bush could declare "victory" now: We helped get them on their feet, they've chosen their own government, they desire us to go, and now it's time for us to feel good about our contributions and bring our soldiers home. But he won't. He and his friends still covet all that oil, and still want to topple a few more regimes in the Middle East; it's not outside the realm of possibility that as Bush's poll numbers continue to head for the cellar, Iran's nuclear power plants will be bombed or Syria will be attacked. Anything to change the subject away from Bush&Co./GOP crimes and corruption.


9. Imperialism is even more difficult to maintain in the 21st Century than it was in earlier times.

All imperial countries, blinded by greed and power-hunger (or sometimes even by idealism), eventually are forced out of their colonies. Ask the Romans, the French in Indochina and North Africa, the Russians in Eastern Europe and Afghanistan. The U.S. is no different, and is learning to its chagrin that ultimate military power doesn't mean control on the ground. The U.S. is running up a half-trillion in debt fighting this unnecessary war of choice in Iraq, bringing corruption on a grand scale to that country, losing its moral soul with its torture policies; to top it all off, the citizens of Iraq in poll after poll indicate they'd like us to leave. It's time to learn what history has to teach about the high price paid for imperial arrogance and intransigence and get out of there. In short, native populations over time tend to defend their homelands successfully against foreign invaders. Even if the U.S. left Iraq, America still would be the 800-lb. gorilla in the world, and probably could get most of what it wants through diplomacy and economic power -- "soft imperialism." Overt imperialism, controlling the world at gunpoint, is on its way out; the U.S. quagmire in Iraq demonstrates the limits of superpower status. But Bush&Co. believe history (and the laws of science) don't apply to them. So much the worse for them, for those around the globe, and for us U.S. citizens. In the Bush worldview, it doesn't matter that the U.S. is not liked, it's enough that it is feared; taking and controlling -- that's mostly what's important to these guys.


10. Ethics always will be years, sometimes decades, behind the ramifications of technological/scientific breakthroughs; the passage of laws dealing with those ramification often will lag even further behind.

Whatever the weapon or technology, if you invent it, it will be used, and abused. Our high-tech computing and surveillance systems, for example, permit the government to mine data on millions of emails and phone calls at a time -- and so it's doing so, supposedly directed at foreign terrorists but involving American citizens in the process. (Since everything connected to this eavesdropping is top-secret, it's possible that political "enemies" of Bush&Co. are deliberately being targeted. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.) This type of domestic spying is against the law -- and should be enough to impeach Bush and Cheney. Bush is shameless, saying he'll continue to violate the law, because he's the "commander-in-chief" during "wartime" and thus has the authority and power to do whatever he chooses to do, so what are you going to do about it? Similarly, there are technological breakthroughs that permit even more violations of the right to privacy, and they are being utilized also, or will be soon. The laws haven't even come close to catching up with the ramifications of those scientific breakthroughs.


11. When logic meets faith, most of the time the rational mind disappears, until the day when brute facts intervene to such an extent as to demand attention, action and forsaking of denial.

The world is moving so fast, forcing social and cultural changes so quickly, that many people become frightened, confused, irritated, and long for simpler, more stable societies of old. Religious fundamentalism provides all the black-and-white answers; doesn't matter if it's Christianity, Judasim, Islam, the syndrome is the same. Islam has its Taliban and strict ayatollahs, we have our conservative religious leaders, our own tight-assed Christian Taliban and ayatollahs, who preach the old verities and simplified nostrums that are so attractive to many of our fellow Americans. No matter what the Bush scandal, he can always count on that 25-30% who support him on religious grounds. But more and more citizens are starting to realize the inherent dangers in permitting such religious power to go unchecked, especially when those beliefs come into conflict with science -- on, say, global warming -- and are starting to rebel.


12. An organism -- a human being, a nation -- needs accurate information in order to compose a reasonable assessment of reality and thus survive the dangers out there. Without that accurate assessment of reality, you can expect disaster.

Rarely does one get accurate information from the Bush Administration about anything. Down in their isolated bunker, they either are fooling themselves, or trying to fool us -- more likely both. The mass-media, corporate-owned and largely conservative in nature, are complicit in keeping the truth from their readers, viewers and listeners. (The so-called "liberal" New York Times, for just one example, had the NSA data-mining story and could have released it a year earlier than it did -- and thus probably affected the outcome of the 2004 election -- but, at the behest of the Bush Administration, chose not to publish it.) To get a more accurate assessment of reality, one has to go to less-controlled media: the foreign press, smaller and independent publications and media outlets (for example, The Nation, Air America, and a few liberal radio talk-show hosts), and, especially, to the largely uncensored internet journalists, websites and bloggers. Only when the wealthy liberal/progressive opposition is willing to put its money where its politics are -- by buying up and founding cable networks, newspapers, radio stations and think tanks -- will there be some political parity in the mass-media. If you want a free press, as A.J. Liebling said, set up one of your own.


Let us not ignore reporter I.F. Stone's famous maxim: "The first rule of journalism is that governments lie. All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out."

Not a bad description of the Bush Administration. Amen, Izzy.

---

Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at various universities, was formerly a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently co-edits The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org). To comment:  crisispapers@comcast.net .
 

Copyright 2006, by Bernard Weiner

Santa Baby,
Please Make These Wishes Come True

By Bernard Weiner

December 14, 2005

Let us stipulate that maybe much in the list below is not going to happen. But one sits on Santa's lap not for the certainty that the presents requested will be under the tree on Christmas Day, but because we can voice our hopes out loud to a stand-in for our preferred deity that perhaps, just perhaps, a few of our wishes will be granted.

With that understood, here is what I -- representing, I think, a goodly number of Americans roughly from the center-left to the center-right -- want for Christmas.

Oh please, Santa, make at least some of these come true.

1. Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald obtains indictments of Cheney, Rove, Rice, Feith, Hadley and others in the outing of a CIA agent (a crime Bush#1 called "traitorous"), and for lying to Congress in order to get authorization for a war that has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians.

2. Indictments are unsealed for Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, Dick Cheney, Gen. Jeffrey Miller and others for concocting legal theories officially-sanctioning torture of detainees in U.S care. The avalanche of these, and the Plamegate/Iraq War, indictments leads to a clamor for impeachment as more and more traditional GOP leaders abandon the White House.

3. Congress, led by GOP members desperate to get re-elected, passes a resolution calling for phased U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, beginning ASAP. Bush, desperate to maintain Republican control of the House and thus stave off impeachment talk, makes moves in that direction; he says he'll withdraw thousands now and maybe as many as 50,000 next Summer, "unless the security situation requires our presence." Congress doesn't buy it -- they suspect Bush will re-insert U.S. troops in-country after the 2006 election, and/or will substitute bombing from the air as their method of warfare. They vote to cut funding for the Iraq war.

4. As a result of the GOP defections, indictments of top officials, and the growing corruption scandals, the GOP loses its majority in both the House and Senate in 2006.

5. GOP leaders in the House, Senate and business community visit the White House to tell Bush and Cheney that they have lost the confidence of the public, and are endangering the future of continuing conservative rule; Bush and Cheney are urged to resign.

6. Because Bush and Cheney do not resign, impeachment hearings begin in the House, a bill of impeachment is rendered, and Senate trial date is set. The Senate votes to convict Bush & Cheney. The new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, becomes President. She is sworn in by the Chief Justice -- and, notably, also by new Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

7. The Bush tax cuts, which mostly benefit the already-wealthy, are repealed by Congress. Numerous GOP members, who formerly supported the tax breaks, use as their rationale that the hundreds of billions of dollars should go first to fund important social programs and infrastructure upkeep. The budgets for those programs are significantly increased.

8. The mass-media, having supported the Bush Administration through it all, sink even further in public esteem. To save their hides, and their bottom-line profitability, they take the desperate step of reporting the truth. Their circulation and viewership begins to rise; the neo-con crazies -- Limbaugh, Savage, Coulter, O'Reilly, Hannity, et al. -- are dropped by a good share of the radio and cable networks, due to a massive falloff in ratings.

9. The insurance industry, seeing the global-warming handwriting on the wall and going broke paying out claims for floods and hurricanes and pollution-caused deaths, leans on Congress to enact strict greenhouse-emission limits on manufacturing; automakers double their fuel-efficiency standards, and the government once again pays more attention to science and less to faith-based and profit-based lobbyists.

10. Noting the many questions raised about the integrity of the election process under a computer-voting system, all states return to paper ballots, hand-counted, with party observers verifying the honesty of the vote-tally. In addition, investigations are held to determine the validity of the 2000, 2002, and 2004 federal elections and the 2005 balloting in Ohio. A number of Diebold technicians testify under oath that they manipulated ballot numbers on orders of their superiors; officials of the GOP-supporting computer-voting companies are indicted.

11. Spurred on by the success they had in championing a phased withdrawal from Iraq, the Democrats in Congress decide to re-acquaint themselves with their spines on other issues as well. A true, two-party system emerges, with civil debate on the issues. Academics likewise feel more free to state their political views publicly, and are especially effective in the non-renewal of many of the Patriot Act's worst provisions.

12. The U.S. government, anxious to reduce the major reasons for extreme Islamic terrorism in the world, works tirelessly to broker a just peace between Israel and Palestine. The two states work out ways to live side by side -- Israel is guaranteed security within its borders by the Palestinians, now that it has withdrawn its settlers from the West Bank, and Palestine has a viable, contiguous state; both sides agree to pacts on water rights, job-creation, and joint administration of Jerusalem. Terrorism begins to decrease overnight; the U.S. is more secure at home.


MOVING ON FROM THE WISHES

So, there they are: The 12 wishes that could turn our country around, permitting us to start undoing the enormous domestic and international damage effected during the past five years, and implementing a more helpful, positive program.

But wishes don't make it so. So how to help a burdened Santa make them come true?

Yes, the imploding Bush Administration -- beset by scandals, corruption, incompetence, arrogance, bullyboys, whistleblowers, ignorance -- is doing its part to bring itself down. But the rest of us have roles to play as well.

In the main, those roles involve organizing, talking truth to power, and keeping the momentum-ball rolling.


HELPING THE GRASSROOTS GROW

Money is a big part of political organizing, sending our donations and energies to where they can do the most good. Find the party or grassroots group or lobbying organization with which you feel most politically comfortable, and help provide them the funds -- and/or donate some of your time to them in battling the forces of regression, repression and violence.

Two of our friends, just for a simple example, host monthly dinner parties for activist-minded colleagues and neighbors; each such evening includes composing hand-written letters to local or national officials on a particular issue. At times, especially on local issues, it's clear their letters have had a demonstrable impact on local pols' decision-making.

Note: When a legislator receives a handwritten or typed letter from an actual constituent -- not a form-letter or email or petition that originated in a lobbyist's office -- it carries immense weight; I was told once by a Congressional staffer that each such genuine constituent letter, whether handwritten or typed, represents 10,000 voters who think likewise. The pols pay attention to such letters.


BRINGING LIGHT INTO THE DARK PLACES

Talking truth to power can mean something as simple as writing letters to the editor, or calling local radio talk-shows, or participating in "sit-in" demonstrations at a legislator's office -- or traveling to Crawford, Texas, to let Bush know there is nowhere he can hide from citizen wrath. On another level of speaking-truth-to-power, there's Rep. John Murtha stepping up and telling Bush and his fellow members of Congress that enough is enough, the Iraq War is a thoroughgoing disaster and we need to get out ASAP.

Many in the Democratic party leadership secretly harbored such sentiments, but were too timid to stray far from the Bush line lest they be tarred as "unpatriotic" or "soft-on-terrorism" by the Roveian legions. Some leading Democrats, with presidential ambitions, are still mired in that fear-swamp, and you know who I mean (I won't print her name, but her initials are Hillary Clinton). We have yet to locate a charismatic, ELECTABLE national progressive leader -- one who can united a divided party -- willing to step out and tell it like it really is.

Those who choose to imitate HardRight conservatives should pay a penalty: Put a scare in the DINOs (Democrats in Name Only) by supporting alternative progressive candidates in the primaries.

Murtha could say what he said because millions of us out here in ordinary America have spent years preparing the anti-war soil to such an extent that now close to two-thirds of our fellow citizens believe invading and occupying Iraq was a huge ideological and military mistake, based on lies and deceptions ladled out by the Bush Administration. As a result of this grassroots labor, the operative question no longer is whether we should "stay the course" in Iraq, getting tens of thousands more U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians slaughtered and maimed in the process, but how best to extricate ourselves as quickly as possible. That huge shift in American sentiment can be ascribed, at least partially, to our willingness to talk truth to power.

A major contributor to that shift in support for Bush's war are those whose official job-description traditionally has been the talking of truth to power. I'm referring to opinion-molders and institutional and internet journalists and bloggers. For the names of many of those courageous writers, see "Honoring Our Journalistic Heroes."   Progressive websites on the internet, ours included, receive precious little funds from anybody but their readers, so don't forget to donate regularly to those who consistently shine the light of fact into the dark caves of illusion and deceit.


KEEPING THE MOMENTUM BALL ROLLING

In recent weeks and months, the wheels have started to come off the HardRight's juggernaut bus. The Bush Administration is self-destructing from within and beset by more and more forces from without. We are just about at the point of critical mass.

But the BushCheneyRove forces are still in the White House -- unless we can pry their fingers from the levers of power -- and thus are still able to do enormous, deadly damage both to what remains of Constitutional rights and protections domestically, and to the shreds of American respectability abroad as a result of imperial wars and cruel torture carried out in our names.

To get to critical mass, an unrelenting and increasing pressure must be built up, to the point where the momentum for change is so strong that the Bush forces will be unable to reverse it.

That's our job right now. So let's get to it.
 

Copyright 2005, by Bernard Weiner

---

It's Time to Play Beat-the-Bully

By Bernard Weiner

December 7, 2005

We all know this from our schooldays and our workplaces. The thing about bullies, especially the really cocky ones, is that they're often really insecure. They strut their stuff, and get in your face aggressively, but once you organize opposition and indicate you're not afraid of them anymore, thus stripping them of their essential power over you, they're lost in the world of ordinary mortals.

Bullies need to seem successful, which helps explain why so many cheat and lie and threaten in order to get their way; they don't believe they can make it on their own abilities. This behavior also helps explain why they avoid responsibility by blaming others for their own faults.

I got to thinking about this the other day when learning that the Bush Administration secretly paid for pro-U.S. stories in Iraqi newspapers. That reminded me of how Bush&Co. got caught secretly paying a number of U.S. journalists to write pro-Administration articles and plant them in various media outlets. And that reminded me of how the Pentagon and other Administration departments created their own fake "TV news stories" about Bush policies and sent them out to small-town stations around the country, who ran them as real news.

And that reminded me of how Bush during the campaign almost always appeared before hand-picked supportive audiences, and how he almost never gives major foreign-policy speeches these days except before supportive military audiences. Ordinary American civilians who may or may not agree with all his policies are not to be included in the democratic process; as Bush famously told one citizen who expressed mild disapproval, "What do I care what you think?"

It's plain that the Bush Administration believes (or at least suspects) that its own arguments, if presented straight, won't pass muster with the American populace, or, in the case of the purchased news stories in Iraq, that country's public. The Administration's versions of the truth won't be enough to convince readers, viewers or voters-- for good reason, as they derive from a greedy, mean-spirited ideology -- so propaganda is employed to fool the public.

Such deception can be carried out in microcosm by, say, writing a story, getting it translated into Arabic and then paying to have it run in a Baghdad newspaper. Or the deception can be on the macrocosmic Big Lie scale: Asserting that Saddam Hussein is in cahoots with Osama bin Laden and is going to pass some of his supposed huge store of biological and chemical and nuclear WMD to Al-Qaida. The bigger the lie, in some ways, the easier it is to sell to the public -- especially when your highest officials spend months and months engaged in such falsehoods and deceptions. Then you add the mainstream media into the equation: by not doing their job and questioning the Bush assertions early on, they appeased the bullies, thereby giving them more power.


RECALLING HOW WE GOT IN THIS MESS

You'll recall that the White House Iraq Group, the unit established to "market" the war to the American people, had a devil of a time coming up with a successful selling tool. Should they tell the truth, that the war was necessary as part of a long-term campaign to control the huge oil/gas energy fields in the Mideast and to alter the geopolitical map of that region? No, that wouldn't fly with the citizenry, they figured; nobody wants their kids killed or maimed for imperial adventures created by ivory-tower ideologues who made sure never to put on their country's uniform in times of war.

So, according to Paul Wolfowitz, one of the key neo-con architects of the war, the Bush Administration finally settled on the scary bogeyman of "weapons of mass destruction" that Saddam Hussein supposedly was ready to unleash on America -- biological and chemical agents dropped or sprayed from drone planes off the East Coast, "mushroom clouds" over American cities, and so on.

Even though U.S. leaders knew Saddam was a paper tiger and no longer possessed such weaponry or even active programs to acquire such capabilities, they launched their WMD-scare offense on the American public and provided cherry-picked intelligence (devoid of the doubts, caveats and demurrers of the intelligence analysts) to the Congress.

To help push the propaganda campaign along, they added one more powerful deception to their arsenal of lies. Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rice and others began conflating Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 terror attacks. There was no such linkage, of course; the Administration was informed by their counter-terrorism experts shortly after 9/11 that the attacks were pure al-Qaida, with no Iraqi involvement. (Further, Saddam slaughtered any Islamicists he could find in Iraq, and Osama bin Laden had targeted him as a secular enemy.)

The Iraq/9/11 linkage was all B.S., of course, but most American leaders swallowed it -- including those of the supposed Democrat "opposition" -- while the rest of the world, more savvy about the reality and complexity of the situation, were not afraid to confront the Superpower bully and angrily denounced the Bush lies. More than 10,000,000 citizens demonstrated worldwide against the impending war. Maybe they were more willing to take on the U.S. because they remembered what happened in Europe when appeasement of a war-hungry Adolph Hitler led to World War II, in which 60 million were slaughtered.

Two years after the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, the suspicions raised by the anti-war forces around the globe about the Bush Administration's duplicity and lies were verified when the top-secret Downing Street Memos -- minutes from inside the Blair war cabinet, detailing the invasion preparations of the U.S. and U.K. leadership -- were leaked to the British press, and, of course, were given little attention by the American corporate mainstream media.


TODAY: LYNNE CHENEY'S TWISTED KNICKERS

In the wake of the recent indictment of Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, for obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame case, the run-up to the Iraq War again has become the subject of great scrutiny. And it turns out that the duplicitous war campaign is non-stop, because the lies are non-stop. The other day, Lynne Cheney expressed outrage that her husband was being accused once more of making those links to Iraq and 9/11. He never expressed such linkages, she said adamantly.

Too bad, Lynne, there are such things as videotape and audiotape, and that record still exists of his intertwining 9/11 and Iraq.

And the linkage deceptions still go on. In Bush's Annapolis speech the other day, he correctly laid out the three main components of the Iraqi insurgency early: "The enemy in Iraq is a combination of rejectionists, Saddamists and terrorists. The rejectionists are by far the largest group. These are ordinary Iraqis. ...The second group...contains former regime loyalists who held positions of power under Saddam ...The third group is the smallest but the most lethal: the terrorists affiliated with or inspired by al-Qaida." But throughout the rest of the speech, he often used the term "terrorists" to describe all those fighting the U.S. occupation.

In other words, to deflect attention away from the true nature of the bulk of the Iraqi insurgency -- nationalists and ex-Baathists angry at being invaded by foreigners, and enraged by an occupying army that brutalizes and tortures Iraqi civilians at will -- the insurgency suddenly is given the rubric of "terrorists."

But the situation in Iraq, in the world, is much more complex than labels, with all sorts of competing tribes and clans, and those representing diverse economic, political, religious, and ethnic interests. To understand those complexities, and devise equally as nuanced responses to them would take real creativity and hard work. It's much easier to simply divide Iraq and the world into black and white categories, "those who are with us and those who are against us." The latter category is given the hated title "terrorists," and the propaganda flows much more easily from that designation, aided enormously by a generally quiescent, at times cooperative, mass media.

(Speaking of cooperative reporters who abdicated their journalistic responsibilities, mostly recently it was Bob Woodward of the Washington Post. Once an outsider press hero doing battle against the Nixon bullies, Woodward for years has been a shameless insider protecting the powerful; he knew of the intelligence community's doubts about the Bush Administration's broad WMD assertions -- three high-level sources told him about the deceptions -- but he kept silent, apparently in order to guarantee total access to Bush for the book he was writing about the run-up to the war. For shame!)


MURTHA SPEAKS FOR THE GENERALS

Not much changes over time, only the justifications, the spin. Now Bush, trying to avoid culpability for the disaster that is the Iraq War, is trying to deflect criticism by (as usual) blaming others: It's the CIA's fault, or, in essence, the American public's fault, since they re-elected him during wartime, and Congress' fault since they voted to authorize the war in the first place. The administration spinmeisters claim that Congress voted for the war based on the same intelligence that Bush saw -- an assertion that is patently false, since the White House provided only summaries cleansed of all doubts and caveats having to do with the supposed stockpiles of WMD.

Finally, belatedly, even with blood on their hands, some Democrats are speaking up forcefully against Bush's war policies: the deceptive way we were led into the war, and the gross incompetencies of the Occupation -- and so the entire history of that war is once again Topic A for public discussion. Recent reports that the Vietnam War decades before (where millions died) also rested on lies, exaggerations and deceptions, sheds new light on the current situation.

Rep. John Murtha, who earned his bravery medals in 'Nam, spoke with great force the other day, calling for the U.S. to withdraw quickly from Iraq before more senseless slaughter occurs. What is plainly apparent is that Murtha is not speaking only for himself in his denunciation of Bush policy and in calling for a speedy American withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Murtha, a militarist hawk for decades with close ties to the officer corps, also is speaking for those generals inside the services who revealed their strong disagreements with Bush's Iraq policy openly to him but who are afraid to voice their objections in public, lest they be fired or otherwise have their career-advancements closed off.

So where are we? Though there are differences in emphasis and approach, there is a wide, strong opposition to the continuing U.S. presence in Iraq, coming from supposedly disparate groups: Officers inside the military, Establishment conservatives, liberals and radicals and mainstream Democrats, the peace movement, nearly two-thirds of the American people. But, even with all this opposition, Bush&Co. remain in power and, if Bush's Annapolis speech is to be taken seriously, the Iraq War will continue until some vague, indefinable thing called "victory" is obtained. Which is to say the 12th of Never.

Bush may make a few accommodations prior to the 2006 election -- withdraw thousands of Guard and Reserve troops, for example, and promise more withdrawals -- in order to seem to be in line with the public mood. But the war will continue, with bombing from the air taking the place of any boots missing on the ground, and the imperial goals of dominating the region and controlling the energy fields will remain operative. No matter how long it takes, Bush is willing to sacrifice the lives of U.S. troops and spend the treasury into bankruptcy for "the mission"; he believes the war against radical Muslims is his holy work and he won't back down unless absolutely required to do so. Besides, keeping the American citizenry on a constant fear-boil, Rove believes, provides openings through which to slip Bush&Co.'s domestic agenda.

In short, it's long since time for us to respond to the bullies in charge of our foreign and domestic policy, to remember the lessons of history when insecure leaders are not confronted early enough -- Hitler in Europe, Presidents Johnson and Nixon enlarging the disastrous Vietnam War, Sen. Joe McCarthy running roughshod over Americans' civil liberties in his mad hunt for supposed "communists" in 1950s America, et al. We have the proper role models: Fannie Lou Hamer taking on the segregationist Mississippi Democrats, Edward R. Murrow and Joseph Welch finally taking on Joe McCarthy, John W. Dean and the Washington Post stepping forward to reveal the lawless Richard Nixon, Daniel Ellsberg making sure the Pentagon Papers got published about the Vietnam debacle, and other such brave souls, Cindy Sheehan speaking truth to power about the shameful lies that continue to fuel the slaughter in Iraq. They stood up to the bullyboys when it was vital that they do so, and we all are the better for their fortitude.

So, if we American citizens truly want to get the U.S. out of its Iraq War quagmire before more thousands of U.S. troops are killed and maimed, along with thousands of Iraqi civilians as "collateral damage" -- before America has to get out of Iraq anyway years down the road -- we simply must organize our opposition and confront our own bullies head on.


PRYING THEIR FINGERS OFF POWER LEVERS

We don't have a parliamentary system in this country whereby a vote of no-confidence can remove incompetent, corrupt or ideologically dangerous fools from office. The only way to pry their fingers off the levers of power is to either vote them out of office or to impeach them and send them packing, either with a conviction or with their resignations. Both take lots of time, and the current election option is plagued by a voting and vote-counting system that is easily corruptible and has already demonstrably been corrupted.

One would hope Bush&Co. would see the handwriting on the wall and, for the good of the country, would resign their offices now, but we know these power-hungry zealots are not going to go willingly. So we -- progressives, moderate conservatives, libertarians, right wingers, leftwingers -- must join together and put our efforts into passing laws mandating honest elections and hand-counted votes, and then sweeping enough Republicans out of office in the House and Senate next November so that the proper investigations finally can be conducted that will lead to impeachment and removal.

We can work long-range toward either drastic reform of the Democrat Party or the founding of an electable alternative party. But our immediate goal, our immediate job   -- because the stakes are so extraordinarily high -- is to do everything possible to close down this war, to ensure honest elections, and to protect the Constitution from further ravaging. We can do this.

Copyright 2005, by Bernard Weiner

Extreme Bush: The Good, Bad & Ugly

By Bernard Weiner

November 23, 2005

I watched the newscast footage of Bush addressing an election-eve rally in Virginia a few weeks ago, and the guy looked and sounded somewhat inebriated, slurring his words, a goofy grin on his face, oversized mannerisms. I had read recent articles about Bush's inability to handle the enormous stress he's under these days (screaming and ranting at his aides), and the likelihood of his being on anti-depressants and/or hitting the bottle again, but just assumed those were sensationalist bloggers spreading some dirty fictions.

But, oh my, when I watched the video clips of his sad performance at that Virginia rally, I began to wonder. It can't be easy being Bush these days, when all is collapsing around him. Consider:

• The Iraq war going so badly that even that old dependable warhawk John Murtha is urging Bush to close it down and redeploy the troops; Libby, DeLay under indictment and the Abramoff scandal getting closer to the White House, with Frist on a legal hot seat as well; Patrick Fitzgerald heating up the Plamegate probe after hearing from Bob Woodward, which could put Cheney, Rove, Hadley and Rice once again under the Grand Jury microscope; the centrist Republicans causing grief for Bush's agenda; McCain's treatment-of-prisoners amendment making headway, forcing Cheney and Bush to lobby for torture; GOP stalwart Sen. John Warner sticking it to Bush on the lack of success in Iraq; establishment conservative Republicans like Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Wilkerson and Bill Buckley and others firing off the equivalent of mortar rounds into the White House over Bush's Iraq war; the Downing Street Memos from inside Tony Blair's headquarters verifying that the Iraq war had been on the boards for at least a year before the invasion, with the job being to "fix the intelligence" around that policy decision;
   

• More: Doug Feith and his Office of Special Plans being probed by the Pentagon's Inspector-General for allegedly "stovepiping" raw intel directly to CheneyLibby in the White House; the Taliban majorly regrouping in Afghanistan; ANWAR drilling taken off the table yet again; the price of home heating oil rising astronomically just as winter approaches; Harry Reid implying the Dems might filibuster on Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court; Bush's poll numbers plunging into the mid- and even low-30s; the residue of the "incompetence" and "lack of trust" issues from Katrina and the Iraq disasters; the CIA leaking more and more damaging info about Bush policy; etc. etc.

The Good News: On the one hand, all that is positive for the U.S. and the world: The Bush agenda is in jeopardy and the once-tight GOP organization is in tatters. Corruption and incompetence and wrongheadedness everywhere. Imperial ambitions running headlong into reality. All these provide room to maneuver for GOP moderates, and openings to attack for the Democrats, who finally are beginning to feel their gonadal sacs waking up after years of numbness and atrophy.

The Bad News: On the other hand, Bush&Cheney&Rove and the GOP remain in power; can you imagine three more years of that cornered, weakened, flailing crew, with all the deliberate and unintended damage they can do?

What would happen, for example, if a desperate or half-deranged Bush decides on an extreme wag-the-dog action -- say, if he were to order a "pre-emptive" nuclear strike on Iran or Syria or North Korea or Venezuela, or all of them together? Would there be anybody to stop him inside the Administration? Would the Joint Chiefs have the courage, and be able, to rein him in?

Who knows? We've never been in this dark place before.


CONSTITUTIONAL CRISES, THEN & NOW

Then: Well, maybe we almost were once, when a heavy-drinking Nixon seemed ready to take the country and the Constitution down with him as he was heading over the political cliff known as Watergate and into the Senate's impeachment dock. But, perhaps because cooler heads prevailed, Nixon resigned instead, the first such asterisk next to a president's name in America's history. But the damage Nixon could do was almost more personal than political or international.

Now: The carnage Bush could do to the country, and the world, is of an entirely different order of magnitude.

Domestically, Bush could, for example, force the country into a Constitutional crisis -- by, say, declaring martial law as "commander in chief" during "wartime."

Yes, that's right; according to this cockamamie legal doctrine worked out by his then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez and his neo-con legal team, Bush claims to be legally home-free to ignore and violate laws whenever he acts as "commander in chief" during "wartime."

This makes him pretty much a dictator, indefinitely, since Bush&Co. continually tell us that we're in the midst of a "war" that will last forever. So far as I know, neither Bush nor Gonzales, now Attorney General, has ever disavowed the memos that supplied that rationale for what a President legally can do.


You may recall that Nixon tried something similar during the Watergate scandal, claiming that any time a President took an action, it was, by virtue of him being President, ipso facto legal. The U.S. Supreme Court shot down that one quickly, but it would appear that Bush&Co. are willing ignore that decision, because they've come up with a different legal gimmick, the "commander-in-chief-during-wartime" ploy. Sure, a presumptive Bush case would wend its way up to the Supreme Court, but that could take a year or more and, in the interim, all kinds of deadly mischief could be implemented and the Constitution wrecked even more. Plus, given a Roberts and Alito on the court, and their affinity for strong executive preeminence in "wartime," there's no guarantee of a decision similar to the Nixon case.


THE PLAME/MURTHA CONNECTION

Watching how the Republicans are attacking John Murtha for criticizing Bush's failed policy in Iraq makes the genesis of the Plamegate scandal more understandable.

Consider: Ambassador Joseph Wilson wrote his famous op-ed piece for the New York Times some months after Bush gave the Iraqis a healthy dose of "shock & awe." But things weren't going well for the Occupation or for the way the U.S. war on Iraq was viewed around the world. Old allies were openly in opposition, no WMD had been found, millions of folks around the globe who earlier had gone into the streets in opposition to Bush's invasion were becoming more and more anti-American. And then here comes insider Joe Wilson, with an administration pedigree and solid credentials, telling the world that, in effect, the BushCheneyRumsfeldRiceRove cabal in the White House had lied about Iraq's nuclear capabilities, and by extension, the whole WMD issue in general, along with the supposed Saddam/al-Qaida connection. In short, the war had been launched, and an Occupation had been established, based on lies and deceptions. The political fallout from Wilson's article could be devastating.

Rove and the rest of the high-ranking White House Iraq Group -- established to "market" and defend the war -- simply had to stop further attacks on Bush's credibility and quickly, before anti-war sentiment gained any further momentum. Thus the slime attack on Wilson, and the outing of his CIA operative wife, Valerie Plame -- slicing him where it hurts. Hitting Wilson/Plame hard, the Bush Administration believed, would get the message to other insider whisteleblowers to keep their mouths shut.

And, their plan worked, at least for a good while. True, anti-Bush elements inside the CIA, reacting to what had been done to their colleague Plame, leaked a lot of damaging revelations about how the case for war had been concocted out of unreliable raw intel, and went unvetted by the professional intelligence agencies. But, on the whole, the Bushies were able to keep a lid on their hidden policies and crimes, at least through the all-important 2004 election.

But simmering below the surface was Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's criminal probe of the Plamegate scandal, with Cheney's surrogate, Chief of Staff I. Lewis Libby, indicted on five counts of lying, perjury and obstruction of justice. (Update: Fitzgerald recently acknowledged that he's once again bringing witnesses before a sitting grand jury, which suggests that other Administration heavies could be indicted soon. Possible targets: Rove, Cheney, Hadley, Rice and others.)


IRAQ RETURNS TO THE FRONT BURNER

Suddenly the false reasons for going to war in 2003 are thrust back into the headlines. This development dovetails with a major increase in deaths to American military personnel and Iraqi civilians and police forces at the hands of Iraqi insurgents -- and growing evidence of increasing tension between Sunni and Shi'ite elements. Very quickly, in poll after poll, Americans of all stripes -- including, most ominously for the Bush Administration, conservative Republicans -- indicate that they increasingly believe the Administration hasn't got a clue what it's doing in Iraq and that the time has come for considering whether to cut our losses and get the hell out of that incipient civil war situation. Bush's ratings are down in the mid-30s, as low as they've ever been in five years.

And then horror of horrors for the neo-cons who took the country into war: The one influential Democrat warhawk they always could count on, Representative John Murtha, launches a frontal assault on the justifications for staying in what is a disastrous war effort in Iraq. The time to get out is now, he says -- actually he said re-deploying U.S. troops out of Iraq sometime within the next six months -- before additional tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel and Iraqi civilians are killed or wounded and we have to get out anyway at that time. In other words, the Vietnam-quagmire scenario.

Which brings us to The Ugly: We're back to Karl Rove's revolting attack scenario, similar to what he devised in the Joe Wilson/Plamegate situation: Got to slime and brutalize Murtha, their loyal ideological war-hawk buddy (even threatening him with an ethics probe), to make an example of him so that nobody else gets the idea that it's wise to criticize either the rationale for war or the conduct of the war. Murtha and his ilk, especially among the suddenly feisty Democrats, have to be defeated now, lest the anti-war and impeachment momentum build even more.


It's their political future that Bush&Co. have put into the political poker pot. No margin for error. This is for the big ones: continued exercise of power, and avoiding jail terms down the line for their crimes. That's why the gloves are off, and the emotional intensity is so heightened -- that plus the fact that this is the first real debate on the war, so lots of pent-up passions are being loosed. The Busheviks are fighting to remain in control -- and out of prison -- and the Democrats are battling not only to end an immoral and illegal war but to try to retake at least one house of Congress in next year's midterm election, thus insuring serious Congressional movement to impeach Bush and Cheney forthwith.


WHAT'S TO BE DONE?

So what should we progressives, moderates and traditional conservative Republicans do in response to what's happening in D.C.? Just stand by, with grins on our faces, watching the GOP run around utterly confused as their carefully-constructed house of cards comes tumbling down? Say "a pox on both your houses" and work to establish a third-party alternative to the corrupt, power-hungry Republican zealots and the programless, timid Democrats? Give aid and comfort to those Dems now asserting themselves and try to reform the party from within? Make our first priority the integrity of the vote in next year's mid-term elections, focusing on hand-counted paper ballots, given the history of how easy it is to manipulate the tally-numbers in an e-voting system?

From where I sit, the answer is: All of the above. This is no time to choose just one and sit back and watch. All of our energies and time and money have to be devoted not only to the short-term project of getting this reckless, corrupt crew out of the White House but also to the longer-term necessity of getting our political and electoral houses in order.

Here are some essential areas for action:

• Keep pouring it on, don't give the Bushies a moment of peace to regroup their forces: Alito's nomination, the catastrophe that is the Iraq War, the specific lies and deceptions that took us into that war, the endemic corruption, torture as state policy, the lack of true homeland security, the Patriot Act crimes against the Constitution, the huge tax breaks for the already-wealthy while popular social programs are cut for the middle-class and poor, the stagnant economy, the humongous deficits, etc. etc.
   

• Focus on taking back the House and/or Senate in 2006.
   

• Keep the options open and do the necessary exploratory work to develop a wide and deep third party movement should the Democrats return to their milquetoast ways, especially on the Iraq War issue. And, where appropriate, DINO Democrats -- Democrats In Name Only -- should be challenged in the primaries.
   

• Heap high praise on those elected Dem leaders willing to stand up openly to the White House -- the Murthas, the Reids, the Pelosis, the Kennedys, et al. -- and even such Republicans as Specter, Snowe, Hagel and the like. And keep that momentum building in the Congress, to provide a brake on overweening executive power. Doing so will encourage more Congressional willingness to consider impeachment, especially if Fitzgerald lowers the indictment boom on more Bush Administration officials.

TRUE ELECTION REFORM

• And, finally, and most importantly, do not permit the voting system in this country to remain corruptible and corrupted, as it is and has been for years with the current e-voting system in so many states, where the votes are tabulated by Republican-supporting companies using secret software only they control. It has been demonstrated that numbers easily can be changed by knowledgeable insiders, or hackers from outside, leaving no evidence of such manipulation.

Even if all the other reforms were implemented, they wouldn't mean a thing if the vote were to be stolen (again) on Election Day 2006.

Paper ballots, hand-counted, observed by representatives of both parties -- this balloting system works in much of the rest of the world and it's time for America once again to have elections in which we can trust.

So, that's the news from this correspondent -- the good, the bad, the ugly. As Scoop Nisker says, if you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own.
 

---

The views expressed are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect those of Bush Watch.

---

previous essays by...BERNARD WEINER

---

Guardian:
Bush Watch Is
"Best Of The Bunch"
--Chris Alden, 10/24/01

---

SF Chronicle:
Bush Watch Is
"The Foremost Anti-Bush Site"
--Rob Morse, 9/17/01

---

Political Dot Comedy Award
Bush Watch Is
"Best Of The Net"
--About, 2001 and 2002

---

To unsubscribe, change your address, or subscribe, go to http://www.bushwatch.net/mailman/listinfo.cgi/bushheadlinenews for Bush Headline News or...http://www.bushwatch.net/mailman/listinfo.cgi/insidebushwatch for Inside Bush Watch.

---

Bush Watch is a daily political internet magazine based in Austin, Texas, a non-advocacy site paid for and edited by Politex, a non-affiliated U.S. citizen. Contents, including "Bush Watch" and "Politex," (c) 1998-2001 Politex. The views expressed herein and the views in stories that you are linked to are the writers' own and do not necessarily reflect those of Bush Watch. Permission of author required for reprinting original material, and only requests for reprinting a specific item are considered. The duration of the working links is not under our control. Bush Watch has not reviewed all of the sites linked to our site and is not responsible for the content of any off-site pages or any other sites linked to our site. Your linking to any other off-site pages or other sites from our site is at your own risk.
Send all e-mail to Politex.