Harry´s Blog

Herbert Kuhner

Black gold is the rub.
Paul Wolfowitz: “…we just had no choice in Iraq.
The country swims on a sea of oil.”

Yes, Wolfy, it’s blood for oil. But it’s no skin off your ass,
is it?

“When Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, supported by (President) Ford,  pushed a plan to have government help develop alternative sources of energy and reduce our dependence on oil and Saudi Arabia, guess who helped scotch it? Dick Cheney. Then and now, the man is a menace.”

We need oil to fill the coffers of our men at the top.
White House Joins Fight Against Electric Cars:
The Bush administration went to court today
to support the automobile industry’s effort to eliminate requirements
in California that auto manufacturers sell electric cars.

Ted Koppel presents the nub!
“Washington’s greatest gift to the Iranians lies next door in Iraq.
By removing Saddam Hussein, the United States endowed
the majority Shiites with real power,
while simultaneously tearing down the wall
that had kept Iran in check.”

“Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy,
or that anyone who embarks on that strange voyage
can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter.
The statesman who yields to war fever must realize
that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master
of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.”
- Winston Churchill

“Of course the people don’t want war.
But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy,
and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along
whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship,
or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought
to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is tell them
they are being attacked,
and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism
and exposing the country to greater danger.”
- Herman Göring at the Nuremberg Trials

What more can be said?

Well here’s more! God is brought into the picture.

According to George W., the “highest” advisor
told him what to do, and he followed that advice.
That’s how U.S. bogged down in the Iraqi swamp.

Bob Woodward, author of Plan of Attack,
asked the president whether he consulted his father.
Bush seemed surprised. “There is a higher father that I appeal to.”

“God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them,
and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did.”

George Bush’s bishop got another message from upstairs.
He’s opposed to the war.
Bishop Melvin G. Talbert of the United Methodist Church
stated that going to war with Iraq
“violates international law, it violates God’s law
and the teachings of Jesus Christ….
War will only create more terrorists
and a more dangerous world for our children.”

The bishop gets backing from a conservative voice,
Edward Peck, U.S. ambassador to Iraq in the Reagan administration:
“Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, nothing to do with al Qaeda.”

Bush agrees with Peck. “Nobody’s ever suggested
that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq.”

Michael White of The Guardian on Tony Blair:
“Tony Blair is reconciled to the prospect that God and history
will eventually judge his decision to go to war with Iraq,
and says his decision, like much of his policymaking,
was underpinned by his Christian faith.”

Apparently Tony Blair consults Bush’s advisor.
“Well, I think if you have faith about these things,
then you realize that judgment is made by other people….
If you believe in God, (the judgment) is made by God as well.”

If the Deity advised Bush and Blair to attack Iraq,
there are two possibilities:
either the Deity made a mistake,
or He’s on Osama’s side.

George Jr. might have been better off consulting his earthly father: ”
Trying to eliminate Saddam …would have incurred incalculable human
and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible …
We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq …
there was no viable “exit strategy” we could see….Furthermore,
we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern
for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world.
Going in and occupying Iraq,
thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations’ mandate,
would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression
that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route,
the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power
in a bitterly hostile land.”

Dick Cheney is the most gung-ho of the gung-ho-ers.
During Desert Storm, Dick chickened out of taking Baghdad.
Maybe this Cheney should have listened to that Cheney,
and maybe he should have stuck to his second thoughts.
Here’s “that” Cheney from Maureen Dowd’s Bushworld:
“Back in 1991, as Bush I’s defense secretary Dick Cheney defended the decision
not to go into Baghdad, saying that America would simply
have to install a ‘puppet regime.’
‘How long would we have to stay there to keep this regime in power?
How effective would it be if it were perceived as the ‘puppet regime’
of the United States military? It gets to be a very nebulous,
a very long drawn out kind of commitment,
what I would describe as a quagmire.
We have no interest in getting U.S. military forces involved inside Iraq.’”

Yes Dick, you used the word “quagmire.”
So don’t get so hot and bothered about those
who are using the same word now!

Maureen Dowd: “Who on earth could predict the inevitable?”
Answer: Dick Cheney, for one.

And as far as lost opportunities are concerned,
Dick leads the pack.
Let’s go back to 2003!
Cheney helped to kill diplomatic overtures from Iran
to discuss concessions on its nuclear program and policy toward Israel.

And here’s Tom DeLay in times gone by:
“I cannot support a failed foreign policy.
History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace.
This admin¬istration is just learning that lesson right now.”
DeLay, on the campaign against Slobodan Milosevic, April 28,1999.

If there was a time to carry through, that was the time.
However, in the Gulf War the Shiite Moslems
were encouraged to revolt against Saddam
and were left to their fate.
They don’t much love us for that.

Here’s James Woolsey, former CIA director:
“…In 1991, when we had half a million troops in Iraq,
and we signed a cease fire agreement that let the Kurds and Shiites,
whom we encourage to rebel, be massacred”

Way back in ‘64, the voice of reason concerning Vietnam
was Lyndon Johnson
and Barry Goldwater was the warmonger.
After election the “voice of reason” carried out
the “warmonger’s” intentions to a T.

George W. opposed the NATO military action in Kosovo.
The Albanians had been from driven out by the Milosevic Government - and worse.
The Europeans wanted to stop the forced exodus of Albanian
for humanitarian reasons and so that they would not have them on their hands.
Kosovo was bombed, since NATO feared military casualties -
Bush has no such compunctions.

Here we have Dr. Jekyll of the Jekyll-Hyde duo:
“I’m not so sure the roll of the United States is going around the world saying
this is the way it’s got to be. If we are an arrogant nation, they’ll resent us….
I think one way for us to be viewed as the ugly American is to go around the world
saying we do it this way, so should you….I don’t want that our troops should be used for what‘s called nation building. Let me say this to you,
I wouldn’t use force, I wouldn’t use force.”
Thus spake Governor Bush in 2000. Remember?!

George W. claimed that there were connections between Saddam and Osama.
Actually, Osama had asked the Saudis to allow him to lead a “Muslim Army”
to eject Saddam from Kuwait. The Saudis unfortunately turned him down
and we know the rest.

Bush stated that he was “tired of swatting flies.”
Bin Laden’s flies were responsible
for the destruction of the Twin Towers,
not Saddam. And the flies are spreading
all over the world.

In the Vietnam War,
the United States
united traditional enemies -
against the United States.

The United States was able to withdraw from Vietnam,
with nothing but a mountain of dead, wounded and mutilated,
as well as unlimited humiliation.

Nazi Germany, instead of polishing Britain off (Thank God!),
invaded the Soviet Union.

Here’s George playing politics:
“We’ve got a game plan.”

Instead of carrying through in Afghanistan,
the United States invaded Iraq.

By invading Iraq, the United States removed a Sunni buffer state,
in the Sunni-Shia divide, strengthening Shia Iran.
In Iraq, there is now a Sunni-Shia civil war.

Bush doublespeaks: “We gave him [Saddam Hussein] a chance
to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in.
And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power….
I was hoping to solve this (Iraq) problem diplomatically….The world said,
‘Disarm, disclose or face serious consequences’….We worked
to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world.
And when he chose to deny the inspectors, when he chose not to disclose,
then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him.
And we did. And the world is safer for it.”

Is this dialectical materialism?

I hope to God that Iraq does not turn out to be
what Waterloo was for Napoleon
and what Gettysburg was for the South.

And concerning Iran,
the 9/11 pilots were let in and out
with no questionings asked,
and that country was and is
the danger that Iraq was touted to be
by George, Dick and the neo-cons.

Here’s the late Robin Cook:
“Our own experience in Northern Ireland has demonstrated
that the only way to diminish the threat from terrorism
is to isolate the terrorists and to deny them
any sympathy from their own public.
The invasion of Iraq has handed the terrorists
a whole new weapon to deploy on the Arab street.
The great irony is that invading Iraq
is precisely what al Qaeda wanted us to do,
because it served their agenda of polarizing
the West and the Islamic world.
As George Soros has observed,
‘We have fallen into a trap.’”

Yes, George Bush and his cronies have maneuvered
the United States into a no-win situation.
Staying in won’t get us anywhere
but getting out is the lesser of two evils.
In the meantime the death toll increases.

George W. may have shirked combat service in Vietnam,
but he’s certainly showing his mettle now -
by sacrificing the lives of others.

The following have succeeded in making the United State
into a paper tiger: Johnson, Nixon, Kissinger and George W. Bush.
And invariably liberals have been used as scapegoats
for their catastrophic failures.

Walter Cronkite, who helped bring Lyndon Johnson down
after he escalated the Vietnam War, told Larry King:
“I’ll tell you what I think about Iraq right now.
I think it is a great chance for us to get out of there right now.
We’ve got the excuse to do so.”

An analysis by Michael Ware of Time magazine:
“I don’t have any sense of victory or a sense that the coalition,
that the West is winning right now. I mean, it seems to me we’re losing ground,
figuratively and literally….And every day, we’re creating more recruits for the insurgents,
and every day more young men from outside Iraq, from the Muslim world agree,
the disenfranchised, they’re rising up and coming to join the fight, to blood themselves.
Right now, we are the midwives of the next generation of jihad, of the next al Qaeda.
So the very thing that the administration says it went there to prevent, it is creating.
And despite the honor and the bravery and the uncommon valor that I see
among the American boys there in uniform who are fighting this grinding war day to day, when I see them dying in front of me, I can’t help but think that perhaps they’re dying in vain, because we’re making the nightmare that we’re trying to prevent.”

Dialogue between Pat Robertson and George B.:
Bush: “Oh, no, we’re not going to have any casualties” in the invasion of Iraq.
Robertson: “The Lord told me it was going to be A, a disaster, and B, messy,”
Robertson continued, adding that he wished Bush would acknowledge his mistake.

Afghanistan was merely a sideshow, a prelude to Iraq.
Instead of following through in Afghanistan
and apprehending bin Laden, George W. Bush invaded Iraq.

Here’s retired General Paul Eaton: “Even before Tora Bora,
President Bush told Rumsfeld to have his generals start looking at Iraq.”
And Eaton on Rumsfeld:” It’s not loyalty, it’s fealty that he demands.”

Guess who showed up on TV before the elections,
looking as fit as a fiddle, to mock his main adversary?

As George Bush rightly noted, Osama bin Laden is still at large
“because we haven’t captured him yet.”

Bush’s new tune on bin Laden:
“So I don’t know where he is.
You know, I just don’t spend that much time on him…
I truly am not that concerned about him.”

“Gosh, I just don’t think I ever said
I’m not worried about Osama bin Laden.
It’s kind of one of those exaggerations.”

John Kerry:
“George Bush: never in doubt, frequently in error.”

But it would be a mistake to “misunderestimate” him.
He may be tongue-tied at times,
but he’s as slick as they come.

A trap was laid for Dan Rather.
Doctored copies of documents
were passed on to Dan’s buddies
by the buddies of guess who?

Dan was so glad to get the goods on George
that he jumped the gun
and trudged right into it,
taking the heat off George
and finishing himself off in the process.

Focusing on Bush’s game of “hooky”
in the Guard on the home front
gave way to focusing on Rather’s credibility.

George Bush and Dick Cheney
are hawks who stayed at home
but are gung-ho for others to go.

George struts, hands at hip,
like a gunslinger heading for a shootout,
but others are doing the shooting
and getting shot at.

Dick fesses up: “I had other priorities in the 60’s
than military service.”

And who’s another deferree?
You guessed it, Karl Rove.
Rove Democrats are “fall(ing) back on that party’s old pattern
of cutting and running.”

John Murtha: “Rove is sitting in his air-conditioned office
on his big fat backside sating ‘stay the course’”

Have you noticed that none of the gung-ho hawks
to a man (and a woman) served?
I don’t condemn men who shirk service,
but I’m opposed to stay-at-home soldiers and deferred civilians
sending others to fight and die in a gratuitous war.

The Iraq (mis)adventure was mounted exclusively
by stay-at-home soldiers and deferred civilians
like George Bush and Dick Cheney.

And in that respect, the Blair Bunch is no different
from the Bush Crowd.
Here’s Geoffery Wheatcraft in the “traitorous” Trib:
“…a Blair government, not one of whom
has ever performed any kind of military service,
and a Bush administration whose senior members
have never been burdened by any sense
of private honor incurred by privilege.
Like Dick Cheney they ‘had other priorities’ when they
should have been drafted.”

Here’s more about Cheney of yore.
Young Cheney was doing business in those days too.
Dowd of the Times gives us the info:
“When Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, supported by Ford,
pushed a plan to have government help develop alternative sources of energy
and reduce our dependence on oil and Saudi Arabia,
guess who helped scotch it?
Dick Cheney. Then and now, the man is a menace.”

Dick may have a bum ticker, but he’s doing business till the last gasp.
Yes, the oft-”deferred” Dick is “Mr. Moneybags.”
He’s the power behind “the throne,”
and he’ll be active
till the Grim Reaper shows up.

George on Dick: “Cheney is somebody
who is going to shoot straight
with the American People. (With or at?)
And I think he has a reputation in Washington
as being a real straight shooter.”

Yeah, Dick shot straight at Harry Whittington,
who’s a dead ringer for a little birdm,
while hunting quail without a license.

“Hunting” is a good word
The quail are bred to be shot at
and are released by the breeders.
Dick missed and hit Harry.

Bill Maher comments: “Now, to the Vice President’s credit,
he did own up to it. On Fox News, he said the fault is his.
He can’t blame anybody else. Boy, it’s amazing.
The only time you get accountability out of this administration
is when they are actually holding ‘a smoking gun.’”
And how do the Reps wriggle out?
By digging up an old skeleton.
“I’d rather go hunting with Dick Cheney,
than driving with Ted Kennedy!”

Dick too has a sense of humor.
Lynne Cheney to Dick:
“Do you know how many terrorists it takes
to paint a wall?”
Dick to Lynne: “It depends of how hard
you throw them.”

Hawr! Hawr! Hawr!

And here’s some Dem wishful thinking:
“How can we get Bush to go hunting with Cheney?”

And Bush to his Vice: “Dick, I’m 38 percent in the polls
and you shot the only trial lawyer who supports me.”

Paul Krugman: “Dick Cheney isn’t a mensch….
the most characteristic moment was the final act -
The Moscow show-trial moment in which the victim
of Cheney’s recklessness apologized for getting shot….
The anti-mensches now ruling America
are destroying our moral standing.”

I can’t help it, but Elmer Fudd comes to mind.
Elmer was the cartoon character with a shotgun
who stalked Bugs Bunny,
but in contrast to Cheney, he was a mensch.

Robert Byrd refers to Bush’s “victory” speech:
“I do question the motives of a deskbound president
who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech.”

Decorated Vietnam veteran John Murtha takes a swipe at Bush and Cheney:
“I like guys who’ve never been there who criticize us who’ve been there.”
And here’s a special swipe for Cheney:
“I like guys who got five deferments and never been there
and sent people to war and then don’t like to hear suggestions
that what may need to be done.”

Cheney replies: “The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians
from losing their memory, or their backbone.”

He’s seconded by Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, the most junior member of the House.
She told of a phone call she received from a Marine colonel:
“He asked me to send Congress a message - stay the course.
He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message -
that cowards cut and run, Marines never do.”

Another lady has a similar view on “staying the course.”
She’s a sylphlike sweet, delicate beauty,
who gives off an aura of Vincent Price playing Dracula.
Here’s Ann Coulter to disabled Vietnam vet Max Clelland:
“People like you caused us to lose that war.”

And concerning backbones,
Cheney may have been deferred,
but he has the courage shoot at
domestic quail bred to be killed
by the likes of him.

Here’s an assessment by William Buckley, Jr.
the founder of The National Review:
who incidentally fought in World War II:
“It didn’t work .One can’t doubt
that the American objective in Iraq has failed.”

Here’s a military man you can’t accuse
of being a wimp or a chicken.
Lt. Gen. James Mattis: “Actually it’s fun to fight ‘em.
It’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people.
I’ll be right up front. Yes, I like brawling.”

Jimmie Mattis at least says what he means,
but imagine, the toadies of those who didn’t serve
went about maligning those who did,
namely John Kerry and John McCain.
McCain spent five years as prisoner of war,
un-deferred and tortured,
but that didn’t deter the toadies.

“(Ted) Sampley calls McCain the Manchurian Candidate,
maintaining that the Vietnamese brainwashed McCain,
then sent him home to do their bidding -
which, to Sampley’s way of thinking,
explains why McCain
was instrumental in the nation’s normalization
of relations with Vietnam.”
Ted Sampley is head of the Vietnam Veterans Against Kerry.

“Mr. Sampley said an organization with close ties to the White House
paid him $500 to infiltrate a group of veterans
who ran a vigil site near the Vietnam memorial,
and that the individual who paid him was reporting back
to a staff member of the Reagan National Security Council.”

Oh yes, the men at the helm to like to keep their hands clean
while the toadies do the dirty work.

What’s more, the “stay-at-homes”
are sending American soldiers into battle
without protective vehicle armor
and having those court marshaled
who used armor from military junkyards.
And they are sending girls in uniform who are in
or barely out of their teens to Iraq as truck convoy drivers.

These girls are sitting ducks for the terrorists.

(George, what about sending Jena and Barbara
to Iraq as convoy drivers?)

Ron Glaser: “How many women daily
running the most dangerous roads in the world
have been killed or severely wounded?”
Answer: “59 killed and over 386 wounded;
Well over one half with severe injuries: amputations.”

And here’s how service men and women are being cared for.
I quote Congressman Rahm Emanuel:” But as Congress prepared to pay homage
to those who have fought for our freedom this past Memorial Day weekend,
Republicans did the unthinkable - or rather the unconscionable.
On Wednesday, Republicans voted to deny adequate healthcare
to our National Guard and Reservists. And now,
at a time when their heroics are supposed to be celebrated,
the Republicans instead turn their backs on them.

Thomas Friedman puts it this way:
“What t could possibly be more injurious and insulting
to America’s men and women in uniform
than sending them off to war, without the proper equipment,
so that some soldiers in the field were left
to buy their own body armor and to retrofit
their own jeeps with scrap metal so that roadside bombs in Iraq
would only maim them for life and not kill them?”

Concerning 2,500 servicemen and -women casualties,
Tony Snow, Press Secretary:
“It’s a number, and every time there’s one of these
500 benchmarks people want something.”
Congratulations Tony, you’ve laid it on the line.
Deaths are just a “benchmark” to our president
He doesn’t give a damn.
His main interests are oil and bucks.

A CIA man spells it out: “The safety of Americans or the lives of American citizens
never really came first. It’s very difficult, I think, to define 9/11 as an intelligence failure, sir.
Intelligence failures usually don’t come from a lack of information.
They come from a lack of action. And the clandestine service of the United States
gave its government 10 opportunities, which are documented in the 9/11 Commission report, to attack Osama bin Laden or to capture him. In none of those occasions, did we do it.
And most of the times, it was because we were afraid of what the Europeans
would think of us. We were afraid of reaction in the Muslim world.
And, of all things, we were at one time afraid we were going to kill an Arab prince
who was dining with bin Laden.”

Robert Steele, a former CIA officer relates that a man came off the street to the Newark
FBI office in 2000 and warned that passenger planes would be used to ram
into the Twin Towers - and was ignored.

And brilliant counter-terrorism precaution by Mayor Giuliani:
Although the Towers were first attacked in 1993,
Rudi established the Command and Control Center there in 1997.

Here’s Richard Clarke: “He (Bush) ignored terrorism for months,
when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11…
on January 24, 2001, I wrote a memo to Condoleezza Rice
asking for, urgently - underlined urgently - a Cabinet-level meeting
to deal with the impending al Qaeda attack.
And that urgent memo - wasn’t acted on.”

Clarke on NBC: “Let’s take all of my emails and all the memos
I sent to the national security adviser and her deputy from January 20 to September 11
and let’s declassify all of them.”

According to Bob Woodward’s State of Denial,
Condi was warned by George “Slam-Dunk” Tenent
and CIA Counter-Terrorism Chief J. Cofer Black
of an immanent attack in July of 2001.
Black was dismayed that “…they were not getting through to Rice.”
Black later said, “The only thing we didn’t do was pull the trigger
to the gun we were holding to her head.”

Richard Clarke on Condi: “Well, she knew who Bin Laden was. She didn’t know who Al Qaeda was. She didn’t have time - she didn’t have time until the week before 9/11 to hold a meeting on Al Qaeda, in spite of the fact that the CIA and my staff and everybody was saying, “There’s about to be a major attack.” She didn’t have time to deal with it. So, let’s have her run. Let’s have that all come out. Let’s have her describe how she sat in the White House with these torture meetings and decided what torture to use on what - what person. Let’s have all that come out. [applause] [cheers]
Bill Maher on George: But, she (Condi) is not the only one who doesn’t know
major pieces of the puzzle. She may not have known who Al Qaeda was,
but Bush, famously, before the war in Iraq, didn’t know the difference
between the Sunnis and the Shiites. I love his comment,
“I thought they were all Muslims.”

Condi and her friends don’t seem to have lost any sleep
over not having listened to warnings that could have been acted on.

(But then Harry Truman didn’t let “Little Boy” and “Fat Man”
keep the Sandman away.)

Casualties are nothing but statistics
to those who now represent us.

Richard Clarke finally got his meeting about al Qaeda in April,
three months after his urgent request.
But it wasn’t with the president or cabinet.
It was with the second-in-command in each relevant department.

Clarke relates, “I began saying, ‘We have to deal with bin Laden;
we have to deal with al Qaeda.’ Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense,
said, ‘No, no, no. We don’t have to deal with al Qaeda.
Why are we talking about that little guy?
We have to talk about Iraqi terrorism against the United States.’”….
Clarke says that as early as the day after the attacks,
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was pushing for retaliatory strikes on Iraq,
even though al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan….
“Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq….
And we all said … “no, no, al Qaeda is in Afghanistan.
We need to bomb Afghanistan.”

“We had a terrorist organization that was going after us! Al Qaeda….
yet it wasn’t until Sept. 11th that he ever got to brief Mr. Bush on the subject.”

And here’s another Clark, but without the ‘e:’ “Look…if George Bush
had done his job as commander in chief before 9/11,
we would never have had the strike of 9/11.”

While people were trying to escape flames
by jumping out of Twin-Tower windows,
our president gazed into space for seven whole minutes.

Clark again: “I went through the Pentagon right after 9/11…about ten days after 9/11…
the generals called me into a room, and they said, “Sir, we want to tell you a joke….
Saddam Hussein, if he didn’t do it, too bad;
he should have because we’re going to get him anyway.”

At Press Conference, at the White House, August 21, 2006, George absolves Saddam:
Ken Herman, Cox News: “What did Iraq have to do with it?”
Bush: “What did Iraq have to do with what?”
Herman: “The attack on the World Trade Center.”
Bush: “Nothing. Except it’s part of -
and nobody has suggested in this administration
that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a -
Iraq - the lesson of September 11th is take threats
before they fully materialize, Ken.
Nobody’s ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq.”

Here’s Maureen Dowd on the Intelligence Report:
“Cheney and his Gestapo Office, as Colin Powell called it, then shoehorned
all their meshugas about Saddam Hussein’s aluminum tubes, weapons labs, drones
and Qaeda links into Powell’s UN speech. Powell spent four days and three nights
at the CIA before making the presentation, trying to vet the material,
because he knew that Cheney, who had an idée fixe about Saddam,
was trying to tap into his credibility and use him as a battering ram.”

Stay-at-home Dick wanted to go it alone. According to the Sunday Times,
the “US vice-president, ‘waged a guerrilla war’
against attempts by Tony Blair to secure
United Nations backing for the invasion of Iraq.”
One Blair aide remarked: “He’s a visceral unilateralist.”
Another agreed: “Cheney fought it all the way -
at every twist and turn, even after Bush’s speech to the UN.”

“What is clear, though, is that Blair simply failed to comprehend
that neocons such as Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle,
whom (Christopher) Meyer says Colin Powell privately dismissed
as ‘fucking crazies,’ saw Iraq as ‘the anvil on which
they could forge a realignment of the Middle East,’
and that Britain was being inexorably dragged down their path.”

Dowd again:
“When the “values” president and his aides do it, they’re rewarded.
Condoleezza Rice was promoted to secretary of state.
Stephen Hadley, Condi’s old deputy, was promoted to national security adviser.
Bob Joseph, a national security aide who helped shovel the uranium hooey
into the State of the Union address, is becoming an undersecretary of state.
Paul Wolfowitz, who painted the takeover of Iraq as such a cakewalk
that our troops went in without the proper armor or backup,
will run the World Bank. George Tenet, who ran the CIA when Al Qaeda attacked
and when Saddam’s mushroom cloud gained credibility, got the Medal of Freedom.
Then the president appoints a compliant Democrat and a complicit conservative judge
to head an inquiry set up to let the president off the hook.
Please, no more pantomime investigations. We all know what happened.
Dick Cheney and the neocons had a fever to sack Saddam.
Cheney and Rummy persuaded W., “the Man,” that it was the manly thing to do. Everybody feigned a 9/11 connection. Ahmad Chalabi conned his neo-con pals,
thinking he could run Iraq if he gave the Bush administration the smoking gun
it needed to sell the war.”

Here’s the nub! Paul Wolfowitz: “…we just had no choice in Iraq.
The country swims on a sea of oil.”

And guess what, ladies and gents?
Paul was another “deferred” non-warrior.
Yeah, the guys who never saw action
are hot for others to trot.

The chutzpa of chutzpas is
Bush and the Bushmen and -women
using 9/11 for propaganda purposes
in order to present Bush as a great leader.
Roosevelt did not use Pearl Harbor
and Kennedy did not use the Bay of Pigs
as a triumphant hype.
9/11 was exemplary for lack of leadership,
incompetence and irresponsibility.

Imagine George W. enjoyed popularity
after the attack and conveyed the image
of a “strong leader.”
Those who should have hidden their heads
held them high instead.

And here is Karl Rove who exceeds the Chutzpa of Chutzpas:
“Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks
and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy
and understanding for our attackers.”
Conservatives, he said, “saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks
and prepared for war.”

It was not the “liberals” who disregarded all warnings before 9/11 and shooed away
those who attempted to deliver the warning.
These incompetents are guilty of criminal negligence and share the blame
for what happened.

Saddam was not involved in 9/11,
he did not have weapons of mass destruction,
nor was he a threat to the U.S.
Could it be that that
reports were doctored by Bushmen
to give Bush the green light?
And could it be that George Tenet’s “slam dunk” was trumped up?

The answer is yes!
That’s why the Bushmen tried to suppress
Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s report
on non-existent uranium purchases by Saddam
and that’s why Valerie Plame, Wilson’s wife,
was outed as a CIA agent.

“(Colin) Powell once referred in frustration to Cheney,
Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz as ‘fucking crazies.’”

The “crazies” opened Pandora’s Box and Powell couldn’t stop them.
In fact, he let them use him to make the case for war.

If Bush had simply swallowed intelligence concoctions served to him,
he might have some vague claim to integrity,
but if he deliberately had intelligence distorted
to serve his Iraqi intentions, he’s as guilty as sin,
and he’s swimming in the sea of the blood he caused to be shed.

Here’s the question posed by Daniel Shore: “Was Mr. Bush conned,
or was he the con man?”

After Colin Powell’s speech at the UN of February 5, 2003,
he remarked to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, his chief of staff:
“I wonder how we will all feel if we send
half a million troops into Iraq
and search from one corner of the country to another
and find nothing.”

Wilkerson describes the documents
Powell was given by CA-Director George Tenet
as “a sort of a Chinese menu from
which you could pick and choose.”

Later, when the fruitless search for WMD had been completed,
Powell lamented, “I will forever be known as the one who made the case.
I have to live with that.”

Wilkerson’s comment: “I wish I had not been involved in it.
I look back on it, and I still say it was the lowest point in my life.”

Powell again: “I’m very sore.
I’m the one who made the television moment.
I was mightily disappointed when the sourcing of it all
became very suspect and everything started to fall apart.

Now with Powell gone, there is no reining in the “crazies.”

The born-again jingoist cruds and the neo-cons
put the men and women of our armed forces
in harm’s way gratuitously,
and the blood of the fallen and the maimed
is on their hands.

Saddam is doubtlessly a monster,
but he kept the bin Laden insurgents out of Iraq.

“You break it, you own it.
You understand the consequences.
You know you’re going to be owning this place?”
Powell warned Bush, according to Bob Woodward.

Well it’s broken now.
And with Powell gone, there is no reining in the “crazies.”

Bush did succeed in having Saddam captured,
but on the downside, Iraqi doors have been opened wide for al Qaeda.

Naom Chomsky describes “a better world:”
“It’s certainly true that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein -
and also without the people who supported him through his worst atrocities.”

Is Chomsky only referring to Saddam’s cohorts,
or also his former allies,
who provided him with the means
to do the job?

A man of God is on bin Laden’s track in Afghanistan.
General Jerry Boykin: “I knew my God was bigger than his….
and the real enemy was Satan.”

And if Boykin gets Osama now,
a Moslem Mel Gibson will come along
and make a film called The Passion of the Osama.

Bush & Co. swatted a hornet’s nest in Middle East,
but are ignoring terror cells on the Continent.

Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh
was assassinated by a Moslem extremist
for bringing the abuse of Moslem women
to the attention of the Dutch TV public.

Europe is peppered with Islamist cells,
and a satellite English language al Jazeera,
which is the propaganda arm of Al Qaeda,
is being established for world-wide viewing.

And some comments on the opposite sex:
A Taliban speaker at the beginning of the century:
“How can you trust anyone who bleeds once a month?!”
And here’s Australian Mufti Sheik Taj Din al-Halali:
“If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street,
or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover,
and the cats come and eat it…whose fault is it, the cats
or the uncovered meat? If she was in her room, in her home
and covered up, no problem would have occurred.”
In the same sermon al-Hilaly also alluded to the infamous Sydney gang rapes -
carried out in 2000 by mainly Lebanese youths who received long jail sentences -
suggesting the attackers were not entirely to blame. He said there were women
who “sway suggestively” and wore make-up and immodest dress…
and then you get a judge without mercy and gives you 65 years.”

Our President would be well-advised to act
in concert with our European allies
to root out the existing cells
and nip the burgeoning ones in the bud
since new plots are being hatched on the Continent
and on the Island of our major ally.

There are two million Muslims in Britain.
12 % approve of Bin Laden’s terrors attacks.

In the Koran schools of our friends,
as well as those who are not,
children are being taught hatred
and being indoctrinated for terrorism.
This must be stopped.
The United States must set about doing this
in conjunction with the Europeans
and everyone else who opposes terrorism.

European countries are exporting weapons
to countries that sell or give them to terrorists.

Here’s Peter Pilz, Austrian Green politician:
“According to my concept of legality,
the (Austrian) Law for the Export of Arms forbids
the sale of arms to states in which human rights are transgressed,
to political crisis areas, and to areas where weapons
can be used for terrorist attacks.
The Steyr-Weapon 50 HS is ideal for Iraq.
This armor-piercing weapon can destroy an armor-plated sedan of,
let us say, the Iraqi president, from a distance of two kilometers.
This weapon is relatively small and can easily be transported.
Every Iraqi terrorist dreams of having such weapon at his disposal.
And, as I hear, the Ministry of the Interior
still approves of the sale of such weapons to Iran.”

Such sales must be stopped everywhere.

As far as Israel is concerned, there are two alternatives:
Dismantle the settlements, which are Beau Geste forts,
and clear out of areas where Palestinians are in the majority.
Maintain an area that you can secure
and where you are in the majority!
Or stay put on the territory where you are a minority
until there is a “one man, one vote” situation,
which sooner or later must come.

Maybe the Chosen People have a “divine” claim to Judea and Samaria,
but as we know the Jews were “chosen” to be singled out,
and it would be better not to bank on divine commitments -
it would be prudent to keep a segment that can be defended
rather than speculating on “all or nothing at all.”
Losing the gamble would mean being swallowed up or worse.
At any rate, getting out of Gaza was a good first step.

I was wrong. No more clearing out!
Since Hamas and Hezbollah
use their side of the border for rocket launching pads,
there can be no more concessions without guarantees.

Thomas Friedman on the wall: “I’m all for the wall.
I think Israel should build it 100 feet high.
But I think she should build it on the 1967 line.
And when you have a wall that has Jews on both side of it, that is,
Israeli settlers on one side, you know, Israeli citizens on the other,
that’s going to be a problem in the long run.”

By the way, Israel is the best thing that ever happened
to the Sunni-Shia divide in the Middle East.
Israel keeps these factions united against Israel,
and thus, from fighting against each other -
as they are doing in Iraq.

There’s one thing that Sunnis and Shiites hate
more than Israelis - and that’s each other.

Here we go again with the “Divine Line.”
The Almighty is giving our George advice again:
“And now, again, I feel God’s words coming to me,
‘Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security,
and get peace in the Middle East.’ And by God I’m gonna do it.’”

I don’t know if this is good news or bad news.
The advice he’s gotten in the past hasn’t been very salubrious.
I certainly hope that the Almighty will be more cooperative this time.

Concerning 9/11, Bill Clinton and the Bush Crowd share complicity
since both factions let things ride.
Bill passed bin Laden off as “a nut in a sheet”
and passed the opportunity of apprehending him in Sudan.
Sandy Berger, Clinton’s, National Security Advisor
took classified papers home to prevent embarrassing facts
concerning lack of security to be revealed to the 9/11 Commission.

Here’s Louis Freeh, former FBI Director:
“Prior to September 11, the United States did not declare war and take war to its enemy.
They were blowing up embassies. They almost sank an Aegis-class warship
in October of 2000. And we were responding by indicting bin Laden.
Neither President Bush, nor President Clinton,
nor their security advisers put the country
on a war footing before September 11.
And that is the real story of 9/11.”

Bill blew it when he fiddled around
with an incidental babe who came his way -
and got caught. If he’d kept himself buttoned up,
his hands wouldn’t have been tied
and he could have tended to matters of defense.
And what’s more, the “Crowd” wouldn’t be in Washington now,
and we wouldn’t be bogged down in Iraq
with the men and women of our armed
forces gratuitously in harm’s way,
but there’s no sense in crying over spilt -
milk.

And speaking of crying,
tears aren’t being shed for the victims of World Trade Center and Iraq
in quarters where they should be shed.

Barbara Bush: “But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many,
what day it’s gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose?
Or, I mean, it’s, it’s not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind
on something like that? And watch him suffer.”

Defense Secretary “Rummy” Rumsfeld’s
right hand is so weary (What’s it up to?)
that he needs a machine to sign the condolences
for the families of our “relatively few” casualties.

Rumsfeld just doesn’t give a damn.
Here’s some background on “Rummy” by James Carroll:
“The disaster in Iraq both recapitulates American mistakes of the past
and worsens them immeasurably. Let’s begin with Rumsfeld himself.
In 1975, he was President Gerald Ford’s Secretary of Defense
when the U.S.S. Mayaguez was seized off Cambodia
by the newly empowered Khmer Rouge.
The American crew of 38 was captured. Rumsfeld shaped the response -
which was to ignore diplomacy, begin bombing a Cambodian port city
and dispatch a large force of marines to rescue the crew.
Bad moves based on bad intelligence.
Untold numbers of Cambodian civilians were bombed
and 40 American rescuers were killed in an attack
on an island where the crew was thought to be held.
In fact, the American sailors had already been released unharmed
and set adrift on a Thai fishing vessel.
The Mayaguez Affair was a dress rehearsal for Rumsfeld’s war in Iraq.”

And speaking of compassion for one’s fellow man,
George Bush (Sr.) said John Walker Lindh
should be marched through American cities
wearing the tattered clothes he was captured in.

Ann Coulter has an even more humane suggestion:
“We need to execute people like John Walker
in order to physically intimidate liberals,
by making them realize that they can be killed too.
Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors”

Coulter made this suggestion in speech at the CPAC.
Her words were applauded by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice
and Lynne Cheney, who attended.

Two years later Coulter elaborated: “I didn’t say it loud enough
and in a large enough public forum. And when I said
we should ‘execute’ John Walker Lindh, I mis-spoke.
What I meant to say was ‘We should burn John Walker Lindh alive
and televise it on prime-time network TV’. My apologies
for any misunderstanding that might have occurred.

More compassion from Coulter:
“To expiate the pain of losing her firstborn son in the Iraq war,
Cindy Sheehan decided to cheer herself up by engaging in Stalinist agitprop
outside President Bush’s Crawford ranch….
Someone needs to teach these liberals how to mourn.”

And here’s Karl Rove, the most “Compassionate Conservative”:
“Cindy Sheehan is a clown!”

The insurgents in Iraq are not “freedom fighters”
as Cindy Sheen has asserted. They are brutal terrorists
bent on establishing a sectarian dictatorship.
Among their means is blowing up buildings, Miss Coulter.

Ann Coulter sinks to a new low in her new Godless book.
She calls 9/11 widows opposed to the Iraq war
“the Witches of East Brunswick….
I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much….
And by the way, how do we know their husbands
weren’t planning to divorce these harpies?”

Lorie Van Auken, one of the widows, answers:
“Having my husband burn alive in a building brought me no joy.
Watching it unfold on national TV and seeing it repeated endlessly
was beyond what I could describe. Telling my children
they would never see their father again was not fun.

And we had no plans to divorce.”

Make no bones about it, she’s not a lone loon!
She receives “official” support from Republicans.

Here’s Republican strategist Karen Hanretty:
“I am telling you that I think it’s true that people
are making a lot of money off the death of their loved ones
in a lot of different cases.”

And here’s Republican strategist Jack Burkman:
“Before the bodies are cold,
they’re out selling and trying to make money.”

And speaking of loons, here’s Ann on March 2, 2007
at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference:
“I was going to have a few comments on the other
Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards,
but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot.’”

This brought laughs and applause from the “values” audience.
And here’s how Mitt Romney introduced Ann,
“I’m happy to hear that after I speak
you’re going to hear from Ann Coulter.
That’s a good thing…oh yeah!”

Yeah, Mitt it is was “a good thing,”
so don’t be surprised at what she said.
It’s just typical of the good things she says.

At any rate, Ann you’re right
“you do have to go into rehab!”

Ann mitigates: “…if I’m going to say anything about John Edwards in the future,
I’ll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot.”

Question: What would you do if you were stranded
on a desert island with Ann Coulter?
Answer: I’d look for a tree with soft bark.

Back to Mitt!
“Between 1993 and 2002, Romney sat on the board of Marriott….
Marriott has made ‘millions of dollars off in-room porn.
Millions and millions. And millions.’”
(Marriott is a Mormon operation.)

“Spokespeople for two of the biggest hotel chains, Hilton and Marriott,
defended the policies that make adult movies widely available at their affiliated hotels. (Roger) Conner said none of the programming offered by Marriott is illegal,
and he depicted adult movies as a standard part of today’s hotel business.”

Yeah, morals and values are one thing,
but business is business.

Don’t fret if you’re a soldier in Iraq!
You’re relatively safe, according to Rush Limbaugh.
“There is one place in this country which, if you’re there,
you are at far greater risk than any American soldier anywhere in the world today,
including Iraq, and that is the womb of an American woman…
particularly if that American woman happens to be in a Planned Parenthood office.
If you wear the uniform of the United States military in Iraq,
you have a fairly good chance of walking out alive….
You don’t hear the American left concerned about that at all.”

Rush, my boy, I think you take the cake for cockeyed correlations.
If this is how the Deity inspires you, I‘ll pass!
The rabble rousers, demagogues and born-again jingoist cruds
have been ushered into the inner sanctum of the Republican Party.

There’s no shortage of leftie crazies, but they’re not sitting pretty
in the inner sanctum of the Democratic Party.

I am a liberal and a registered Democrat.
“Conservative” and “Republican” are not dirty words for me -
However “reactionary” is -
as are “rabble-rouser” and “demagogue.”

Individuals like Coulter, Hanretty, Burkman and Limbaugh
have become the pundits of the Grand Old Party,
and today they represent the Party
They have catapulted themselves
out of the realm of civilized discourse,
and it is self-evident that and any kind
of consensus with them is out of the question.

A civil war is already being waged.

According to the jingoists,
God is not on the side of atheistic Democrats.
He’s in the Republican corner,
although the way things are going in Iraq,
you wouldn’t know it.

After conferring with the Almighty,
Bush, the compassionate conservative,
approved 152 executions as Governor of Texas

He’s dead certain that there was no error:
“The only things that I can tell you is that every case I have reviewed,
I have been comfortable with the innocence or quilt of the person I’ve looked at.
I do not believe we’ve put a guilty…I mean innocent person
to death in the State of Texas.”

Concerning Karla Faye Tucker, who was condemned to death in Texas:
“Although he said he was anguished by the decision,
in an interview in Talk Magazine, writer Tucker Carlson
described Bush mimicking the woman’s final plea for her life.
‘Please,’ Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, ‘don’t kill me!’”

(On the other hand, Bush the President did not want to see
Saddam falling through the trap door. )

How’s that for “Compassionate Conservatism?!”
(Somehow, this term brings
“Communism with a Human Face” to mind.)

A little family background: Grandfather Preston was a link
between American business and Nazi Germany well into the war.
Father George voted against the Civil Rights Bill of 1964
and along with John Negerponte enjoyed cordial relations
with Robert D’Aubusson, the Salvadorian Death Squad top gun,
who excelled as a rapist, torturer, murderer,
and chief assassin of Bishop Oscar Romero.

The attack on the World Trade Center was a barbaric attack
carried out by barbarians.
Barbarians use torture. Are we barbarians?

Pat Buchanan makes the case:
“Can torture - the infliction of intolerable,
even excruciating, pain to extract information from war criminals -
ever be justified?…Is the deliberate infliction of pain always immoral?
Of course not! Twisting another kid’s arm to make him tell
where he hid your stolen bicycle is not wrong.
Parents spank children to punish them and drive home the lessons of living good lives.
Even the caning of that American kid in Singapore that caused a firestorm
was not immoral….What will history say about people who hold Harry Truman
to be a moral hero for dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
but recoil in horror from painfully extracting the truth out of one mass murderer
to stop the almost certain slaughter of their own people?…Thus, the question:
Would it be moral to inflict pain on this beast to force him to reveal what he knows?
Positive law prohibits it. However, the higher law, the moral law,
the Natural Law permits it in extraordinary circumstances such as these.”

Bill O’Reilly of Fox has no qualms:
“Today some Americans think waterboarding is wrong….
The President must have the power to approve
extraordinary interrogation methods.”

Here’s an “ideal” torture situation as delineated by Charles Krauthammer:
“Let’s take the textbook case. Ethics 101:
A terrorist has planted a nuclear bomb in New York City.
It will go off in one hour. A million people will die.
You capture the terrorist. He knows where it is. He’s not talking.
Question: If you have the slightest belief that hanging this man by his thumbs
will get you the information to save a million people, are you permitted to do it?
Now, on most issues regarding torture, I confess tentativeness and uncertainty.
But on this issue, there can be no uncertainty:
Not only is it permissible to hang this miscreant by his thumbs.
It is a moral duty.”

Everybody knows that in the “ideal” situation,
the man with the info on the bomb
is going to get “leant” on,
but what these guys want is the “green light”
for ghoulish fun and games.

Remember Bob and Ray! “Write if you get work! Hang by your thumbs!”

Last time, they didn’t need to hang anyone by his, or rather her thumbs.
All Condi had to do was receive White House Security Advisor Richard Clarke
in the White House and act on his warning. She didn’t,
but she doesn’t seem to be losing any sleep about having done nothing.

Our new attorney general seems to also have no qualms about stringent methods:
“A controversial Justice Department memorandum cleared by (Alberto) Gonzales
argued that laws prohibiting torture do ‘not apply to the president’s detention
and interrogation of enemy combatants,’ and that the pain caused by interrogation
must include ‘injury such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions -
in order to constitute torture.’”

We’re doing pretty well on the torture count ourselves,
and we also send suspects, who may or not be terrorists,
to locations where the catchpoles excel in medieval methods.

Here is our president’s assessment of Abu Ghraib:
“…a few American Troops on the night shift.”

And here’s a babe in the woods, or rather in Washington,
Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense:
“Now, it was just startling to all of us, and yet there it was.
Some people in our custody were not treated properly…
You know what was going on in the midnight shift in Abu Ghraib Prison
halfway across the world is something that clearly someone
in Washington, D.C., can’t manage or deal with. And so I have no regrets.”

Remember the Nazis? They used torture.
Just look at the old Hollywood propaganda films of the Forties!
They were the bad guys and we were the good guys.
They were crooked and we played it straight.
They tortured for an evil cause. That’s why their torture was evil.
We’ll torture for a good cause and that’s why our torture will be good.

The Bush administration has tried - and succeeded -
in legalizing torture. The Detainee Bill,
which became law in October of 2006,
gives American catchpole the green light they needed.

And thus spake Rush Limbaugh, a God-fearing man with moral values:
“This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation…
I’m talking about people having a good time”
And we hear that the most humiliating thing you can do is make one Arab male
disrobe in front of another. Sounds to me like it’s pretty thoughtful…
here we have these pictures of homoeroticism that look like
standard good old American pornography…
Sounds to me in the context of war this is pretty good intimidation -
and especially if you put a woman in front of them
and then spread those pictures around the Arab world.
Maybe the people who executed this pulled off a brilliant maneuver.”

(Rush attended Southeast Missouri State University for three semesters.
If fraternity initiations there can be compared to Abu Ghraib,
maybe the place should be shut down.
And if this is the way pledges are pledged across the nation,
our colleges and universities should be shut down immediately.

And guess where gung-ho Rush didn’t go after leaving the U.?
That’s right: Vietnam!
He had a pustule on his posterior.)

Here’s a sample of a fraternity prank and “having a good time.”
“A detainee’s hands were covered in alcohol
and set on fire severely burning them.”

According to Frank Rich of the Trib,
30 prisoner deaths are under investigation.

But why the fuss about torture? What’s new?
Haven’t we been training South American catchpoles
in the art of torture for decades on American soil?

“The US Army School of Americas (SOA), based in Fort Benning, Georgia,
trains Latin American soldiers in combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics. Graduates of the SOA are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses
in Latin America. Among the SOA’s nearly 60,000 graduates
are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama,
Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru,
Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia.
Lower-level SOA graduates have participated in human rights abuses
that include the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero
and the El Mozote Massacre of 900 civilians.”

Who are Barbarians?
Barbarians sacked the National Museum in Baghdad,
one of the primary museums of the world,
and who stood by while they did it?

And guess what?
We’ve built a helicopter airstrip
on the ruins of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

And back to the good old days before Bush:
Good old Bill certainly is a capable man,
but he was more interested in getting his cigar moist
than running the country.
Let’s face it, thanks to his tryst with Monica,
Bill blew his presidency,
contributed in ruining Gore’s chances
and helped shoe Bush in.

However, the investigating gambit of the Right
starring Kenneth Starr takes the cake for perfidy.
The Right was more intent in nailing Clinton
and giving him the heave-ho
than in taking care of matters of state.

Here’s what Tom and Newt were up to,
while they were trying to crucify Bill.
And now, after the fact, Tom takes a swipe
at fellow adulterer Newt.

“DeLay criticizes Gingrich for, among other things,
conducting an affair with a Capitol Hill employee
during the 1998 impeachment trial of Bill Clinton,
one of his “proudest moments.”
(The woman later became Gingrich’s third wife.)
“Yes, I don’t think that Newt could set a high moral standard,
a high moral tone, during that moment.
You can’t do that if you’re keeping secrets
about your own adulterous affairs.
I was no longer committing adultery by that time,
the impeachment trial. There’s a big difference.
Also, I had returned to Christ and repented my sins by that time.”

Pardon me folks, I can’t take it any longer.
I’ve got to barf!

Rush Limbaugh again: “Linda Trip - What a beautiful heroine!!!
Now there’s a person who can really lead….
Here’s a question for the pop pollsters:
Who is a better role model “for the children” of America:
Bill Clinton or Linda Tripp?
I’m telling my sons to imitate her.”

Pardon me, I’ve got to barf again.

Hiding a mike and getting a friend to tell all
and then snitching to the authorities
is a sample of born-again moral values.
Denunciation is the name of the game.
Rush old boy, do you recall the
Twentieth Century dictatorship on the Continent
which called upon adults and children to denounce
neighbors, friends and family members?

And guess who rushes to Rush to give his spiel?
None other than our veep, Deadeye Dick!

And here’s what the real Rush is up to:
US Customs finds unprescribed Viagra in his luggage
on his return from the Dominican Republic a June day in ‘06. AP reports:
“Limbaugh joked about the search on his radio show Tuesday,
saying Customs officials didn’t believe him when he said
he got the pills at the Clinton Library and he was told they were blue M&Ms.
He later added, chuckling: ‘I had a great time in the Dominican Republic.
Wish I could tell you about it.’”

Why don’t you tell us about it, Rush?

Question: What kind of sex is readily available in sex tourism locations?

Arnie Schwarzenegger does not share “Rush” to judgment:
“The impeachment proceedings and the Lewinsky scandal
was another thing I will never forgive the Republican Party for….
We spent one year wasting time because there was a human failure.
I was ashamed to call myself a Republican during that period.”

Arnie provides an “American” definition of extramarital proceedings:
When a friend caught in a compromising situation on the set,
Arnie said “We won’t tell Maria about it, since it’s only a blowjob
and not real infidelity.”

And “Babs” Bush on the subject:
“Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks
or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex,
no matter how bad it is.”

It’s the holier-than-thou Crowd that hired David Brock to defame Anita Hill
in The Real Anita Hill, after she had testified that she had been sexually harassed
by super-Conservative Supreme Court Justice-to-be Clarence Thomas.

No, you can’t sink any lower when you’ve hit rock bottom!
And everything that is done is done in the name of the Deity and religion.

Religion is all about morals.
The law is laid down for ethical behavior.
Isn’t that great!
There’s a code for religious representatives to abide by.

Where’s the fly in the ointment?
Why are the adherents of moral values
engaging in such scabrous behavior?
By the way, shouldn’t religion have something to do
with human decency?

The moral values of the religious right
seem to be very distant from Jesus and his teachings.

I’d like to quote John Shelby Spong, retired bishop, Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey:
“It was George H. W. Bush who gave us Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court,
calling him “the most qualified person in America.” Thomas replaced Thurgood Marshall, who had been the legal hero to black Americans during the struggle over segregation. Clarence Thomas, the opponent of every governmental program
that made his own life possible, is today an embarrassment to blacks in America.
To appoint a black man to do the racist work against black people is demonic.
Consistent with that pattern, this administration entered.”

These days you don’t have to have pale skin,
or even be male to be Whitey,
otherwise known as “The Man.”

The Founding Fathers were Masons, a liberal organization
traditionally at loggerheads with organized religion.
These great men intended to found a country
with a separation of church and state.
The Bush Crowd is in the process of attempting to transform
the United States into a sectarian state.

“I don’t believe there is a separation of church and state.
I think the Constitution is very clear.
I hope the Supreme Court will finally read the Constitution
and see there’s no such thing, or no mention,
of separation of church and state in the Constitution.
The only separation is that there will not be a government church.”
Thus spake Creationist Tom DeLay, onetime House Majority Leader.

DeLay analyses the Columbine Massacre:
“Guns have little or nothing to do with juvenile violence.
The causes of youth violence are working parents
who put their kids into daycare,
the teaching of evolution in the schools,
and working mothers who take birth control pills.”

If someone believes that the world is five thousand years old, that’s his business,
but a lawmaker who strives to impose the teaching of “Creation”
on our educational system and forbid the teaching of evolution
is an example of what H. L. Mencken termed “Boobus Americanus.”

Rep. Robert Aderholt of Alabama has a solution to school massacres.
“If the Ten Commandments had been posted at Columbine High School,
the April 20th massacre would never have happened.”

Ann Coulter chimes in: “If those kids had been carrying guns,
they would have gunned down this one [child] gunman….Don’t pray.
Learn to use guns.”

On June l7, 1999 the House of Representatives voted
to allow the Ten Commandments
to be posted in schools and other government buildings.

And Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia comments:
“This will end children killing children and promote morality.”

Well, that’s that! Glad that the problem has been solved.
The Republican Party is the Action Party.

After the Virginia Tech Massacre, George Bush expressed condolences,
and before the blood of the victims had dried,
his spokeswoman Dana Perino comforted the National Rifle Association.
“The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms,
but that all laws must be followed.”

I guess the shooter didn’t follow those laws.

Problems are solved with no time lost.

Back to evolution. DeLay poses the question.
“Give me one example that proves evolution.
One example! You can’t.”

If you have any doubts, take a trip to Petersburg, Kentucky!
The Creation Museum presents “a walk through history.
Designed by a former Universal Studios exhibit director.”
Motto: “Prepare to believe!”

Here’s a dissident:
Question: “Do you believe that the world is only 5,000 years old?
Pastor John McArthur: “No, I wouldn’t say necessarily 5,000,
but I would say I doubt that it’s more than 10,000 years old.”

H. L. Mencken where are you?

Here’s our President on the subject:
“After all, religion has been around a lot longer than Darwinism”
Both sides ought to be properly taught…
so people can understand what the debate is about.
Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought.”

Theocracy is the “Utopia”
these guys want to take us to.

Sinclair Lewis put it this way:
“When fascism comes to America,
it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.”

And here’s the indicted, God-fearing Tom on translucence:
“The time has come that the American people know exactly
what their representatives are doing here in Washington.
Are they feeding at the public trough, taking lobbyist-paid vacations,
getting wined and dined by special interest groups?…
the American people have a right to know.”

Yes, Tom, and your friend the convicted Jack Ambramoff will tell them.
He’s agreed to spill the beans on his lobbyist transgressions,
so that he won’t be spending the next three decades behind bars.

And here’s Mark Twain:
“In the first place God made idiots. That was for practice.
Then he made congressmen.”

Hey, Mark! What about senators and higher ups!

According to Jack Krugman, “Fahrenheit 9/11
is a tendentious, flawed movie,
but it tells essential truths about leaders
who exploited a national tragedy for political gain,
and the ordinary Americans who paid the price.”

Bush and Co. are experts at turning failure into a mirage of success
by the use of PR and propaganda.
Every gaffe is disguised as a gambit,
and Karl Rove takes care of the critics and adversaries
by opening his bag of dirty tricks.

There are questions to be asked of Karl
about the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame,
but this is part of the “Blame Game” that liberals are playing.

However, George isn’t asking any questions
“Karl’s got my complete confidence.
He’s a valuable member of my team.”

Coulter’s analysis: “Liberals have a preternatural gift
for striking a position on the side of treason.”

Here is how the Right deals with critics.
Anne Coulter: “I am prepared - just this once - to name a traitor:
Pinch Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times…
By not opposing a military coup by the great Augusto Pinochet
against a Chilean Marxist, Salvador Allende, the Times implied,
the U.S. was party to a terrorist act similar to the 9-11 attack on America.”

Sure, Pinch is a “Traitor” and Pinochet is “Great”!
Lauding Pinochet is in keeping with leading the charge
to rehabilitate Joseph McCarthy.

(What do you do when a little bit less that half
or a little bit more of the country
consists of cowards and traitors?
That’s right you cancel them out and take over.)
There is not only a civil war in Iraq,
we have one right here on the home front.

President Eisenhower shilly-shallied concerning Tailgunner Joe.
His comment: “Never get in a pissing match with a skunk!”
However, when Joe claimed that the US Army was a hotbed
for commies, Ike came out of his neutral corner.

And Coulter expresses specific wishes:
“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is
he did not go to the New York Times Building.”
For those who need a history brush-up,
McVeigh was the perpetrator
of the Oklahoma City bombing of April 19, 1995.

Miss Coulter regrets: “Of course I regret it. I should have added,
‘after everyone had left the building except the editors and reporters.’”

Fox-man Bill O’Reilly shares the spirit:
“I just wish Katrina had only hit the United Nations building,
nothing else, just had flooded them out, and I wouldn’t have rescued them.”

Bashing the Times is the Right’s favorite pastime.
And, imagine, the despised “Grey Lady” was used
to plant the WMD-fabrication by “Scooter” Libby -
with Judy Miller as the willing instrument!

Here’s the genteel and soft-spoken O’Reilly
on Afghanistan: “This is a very primitive country.
And taking out their ability to exist day to day
will not be hard. Remember, the people of any country
are ultimately responsible for the government they have.
We should not target civilians. But if they don’t rise up
against this criminal government, they starve, period”

Bill on Iraq: “Their infrastructure must be destroyed
and the population made to endure yet another round of intense pain….
Maybe then the people there will finally overthrow Saddam.”

Bill wanted to continue mopping:
“If Libya’s Moammar Khadafy does not relinquish power
and go into exile, we bomb his oil facilities, all of them.
And we mine the harbor in Tripoli. Nothing goes in, nothing goes out.
We also destroy all the airports in Libya. Let them eat sand.”

Why didn’t George simply listen to Bill?
If he had, he could have gone whole hog,
instead of fiddling around with half measures.

And listen, Bill’s heart is in the right place!
No “Season’s Greetings” for him.
He’s all for putting the Christ back in Christmas
“If you don’t stick up for the baby Jesus,
who are you going to stick up for?”

Miss Coulter concerning John Murtha:
“The reason soldiers invented ‘fragging.’”
(Fragging means wounding or killing a fellow soldier.)

Talk show host Melanie Morgan also has a drastic solution
for Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times.
“If he were to be tried and convicted of treason,
yes, I would have no problem with him being sent to the gas chamber.”

Don’t think such these individual are on the fringe.
They and their ilk have carte blanche
to the inner sanctum of the Grand Old Party.

More Coulter: “Feminists don’t care about Saddam’s rape rooms.”

It’s nice of non-feminist Coulter to be concerned about rape.
However, in her Sept. 17th article she lauds “the great Augusto Pinochet”
who oversaw execution, torture and “rape” after his Chilean coup in 1973.
The number of his mortalities equals those of 9/11.
And dear Ann, the United States supported a bevy
of right-wing Latin-American rapist dictators,
mostly under Republican administrations.
Remember the four nuns who were raped and murdered in El Salvador in 1980!
Reagan’s Secretary of State Al Haig explained it in Congress this way:
“They drove through a ‘legitimate’ road block.”(!?)

Unfortunately, rape is a common occurrence in our world.
In Iran religious law forbids the execution of a virgin,
so if a virgin is condemned to death,
she is raped first.

And what about our prisons, Anne, where rape is a common occurrence?
Why don’t we tackle that?

Yes Ann, we’re not exactly babes in the woods.
We’ve been coddling right-wing dictators down in South America for years,
and we’ve engaged in our share of hanky-panky.
Remember the mining of Nicaragua City Harbor in 1984!
That of course was okay, since the government consisted of a bunch of commies.
Ditto for Salvador Allende!

As far as maiming, murder and rape were concerned, the Contras took the cake.
Their spokesmen gave gory accounts of how they dealt
with the peasants and villagers they came upon in their forays.

And Saddam was raping when he was our friend.
Oh, our former friends aren’t boy scouts now
and they weren’t boy scouts then.

Here’s Saddam on Conservative icon Ronald Reagan:
“Reagan and me, good.
I wish things were like when Ronald Reagan was still president.”

Yeah, and a lot of other people have nostalgia for those days.
Here’s Ron, the compassionate conservative:

“We were told four years ago that 17 million people
went to bed hungry every night.
Well, that was probably true.
They were all on a diet.”

“Because Vietnam was not a declared war,
the veterans are not even eligible for the G. I. Bill of Rights
with respect to education or anything.”

The Saudis are sort of our friends now.
They want to have their cake and eat it
since they play both ends against the middle -
as far as terror is concerned.

Here’s an incident described by Maureen Dowd in Bushworld:
“In March of 2002, fifteen girls were forced back
into their burning school building by the religious police
after they fled the fire without their head scarves.”

Back to Saddam!
Bush interrupted the United Nations Weapons Inspectors.
Why didn’t he let them keep searching?
Saddam should have been a problem for the international community,
and for the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
But we’re not members of the latter. Why? What have we got to hide?
If we’re on the up and up, what are we afraid of?
Could it be that such situations as Abu Ghraib could bring us in the dock?
But if we intend to spread freedom and democracy where evil ones reign,
shouldn’t we too be called to account like any other nation?

And if we’re going to invade nations
to give dictators their due,
where will this end?
And what about our friends?

Did the United States bring democracy to Kuwait?
And what about the Saudis?

In Afghanistan, which we liberated,
it’s a capital crime to convert to Christianity.

The sharia as a national code of law -
and that’s what the fundamentalists have and want -
cancels out any possibility for a democratic form of government.

George denies what he is doing:
“We understand that history says loud and clear
that democracies do not war.”

And what the hell are we doing George?

American lives are being squandered
and other lives are being taken,
with no end in sight.

And it’s invariably poor men’s the sons and daughters
who are doing the sacrificing.

Here’s an example of Right-wing eloquence,
John McNulty: “…it is my deeply held conviction
that the best part of John Kerry
dripped down his mother’s leg,”
(I never heard that one before. But you live and learn.)

And here’s a new twist by McNulty:
“Bush lied so he could get us into an unnecessary war in Iraq.
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! A thousand times wrong!
Bush lied so he could get us into a NECESSARY war in Iraq.”

Right, except for “necessary!” Let me insert a quote from the so-called
“Downing Street Memo” labeled “Secret and Strictly Personal - UK eyes only”:
“Military action was now seen as inevitable,
Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action,
justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.
But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

Johnny Boy, remember “the boy who cried wolf?”
I’m not buying anything from this Crowd.
And isn’t veracity vaguely connected with values?

Allegedly, John Kerry and John Edwards lost the ‘04 election
due to the issue of “moral values.”

Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter and their ilk
exemplify those “values.”

In “doublethink,” moral values are being propagated
by mendacity, duplicity and defamation.
Actually, these “values” are in the tradition of Dick Nixon,
who was a God-fearing man who even brought
the secular Henry Kissinger down to his knees to pray.

Nixon was a true believer,
but he didn’t mind scotching Johnson’s attempts
at negotiating an end to the Vietnam war,

Nixon to Henry Kissinger on civilian casualties in Vietnam:
“You’re so goddamned concerned about the civilians,
and I don’t give a damn.”

Kissinger still blames the liberals for the debacle in Vietnam.
Nixon admitted in 1969 that the Vietnam War was lost.
“We simply cannot tell the mothers of our casualties in Vietnam
that the war is unwinnable.”

After the Voting Rights Act of 1965 had been passed,
President Lyndon Johnson commented:
“I’ve just handed the South to the Republicans for fifty years,
certainly for the rest of our life times.”
Incidentally, George H. W. Bush voted against that bill.

The Right Wing is slick.
Sometimes it even helps choose a candidate fro the Dems.
Here’s a dirty trick of yesteryear, perpetrated by a Rove antecedent:
“During the 1972 U.S. presidential election, Donald H. Segretti,
a political operative for President Nixon’s reelection campaign,
released a faked letter, on Senator Edmund Muskie’s letterhead,
falsely alleging that Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson,
against whom Muskie was running for the Democratic Party’s nomination,
had had an illegitimate child with a 17-year-old.
Muskie, who had been considered the frontrunner,
lost the nomination to George McGovern, and Nixon was reelected.
The letter was part of a campaign of so-called “dirty tricks”,
directed by Segretti, and uncovered as part of the Watergate Scandal.
Segretti, went to prison in 1974,
after pleading guilty to three misdemeanor counts
of distributing illegal campaign literature.”

Nixon showed his strength of character
by letting others take the rap
and letting surrogates go to the clink.

Here’s a definition by Dick. It still seems to be valid.
“When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

Karl Rove is a chip off his mentor’s block.
He was Segretti’s protégé.

But let’s leave yesterday and come back to today!
While the born-again evangelicals are teaching us lessons
in ethical comportment, here’s how the cookie crumbles,
as related by Eleanor Clift:
“All it takes is a wink and a nod from the White House,
and this network springs into action:
After getting beat in New Hampshire by McCain,
Bush’s first event was at Bob Jones University in South Carolina.
Standing next to Bush on the stage was a veteran who went right at McCain,
questioning his Vietnam service while Bush remained silent.
A whisper campaign told voters that McCain had a black child.
(The McCains have an adopted daughter from Bangladesh.)
McCain lost the primary; the veteran became a Bush administration appointee.”

Here’s Professor Richard Hand of Bob Jones University:
McCain had “chosen to sire children without marriage.”
CNN interviewed Hand and put him on the spot:
“Professor, you say that this man had children out of wedlock.
He did not have children out of wedlock.”
Hand replied, “Wait a minute, that’s a universal negative.
Can you prove that there aren’t any?”

But McCain can be cruel too. Here he is in 1998:
“Question: Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?
Answer: Because her father is Janet Reno!”

Here are more low-down jibes from the Right.

Emmet Tyrell: “The other day on CNN,
I heard the mentally disturbed Michael Moore
dismiss Lieberman as ‘a Republican.”

The lovely Miss Ann chimes in:
“The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof…In his native tongue, weaselese
(sic, or rather sick; a language is capitalized), Kristof claimed he would be gung-ho
for war if only he were convinced we could “oust Saddam
with minimal casualties and quickly establish a democratic Iraq.”
When Clinton first showed his fat oleaginous mug to the nation,
the Republicans screamed he was a draft-dodging, pot-smoking flim-flam artist.

Speaking of sick descriptions, here’s one by Jonah Goldberg:
“Next to Uday Hussein’s deservedly mangled corpse, they found his briefcase”

And here’s a dollop of noblesse oblige from right-winger John Spencer,
Hillary’s former foe for the New York Senate seat:
“Whew, she was hideous before ‘work’ She got ‘millions of dollars’
in plastic surgery.You ever see a picture of her back then?
Whew! I don’t know why Bill married her.”
But he concedes: “She looks good now.”

No, doubt about it, you’ll find insults galore among some leftist bloggers,
but the liberal media deals with the Right in a more or less correct manner.
You’d seldom find such ignominious writing in a serious liberal journal.

There may have been some cheating
the first time around
and there may have been some
the second time,
but there’s no doubt about it,
the Crowd now has a mandate,
and in my biased view
redistricting and gerrymandering
will insure that we get more of the same in the future.

Here’s a quote by Joseph Stalin:
“The people who count the votes decide everything.”

Here’s a quote by Ron Reagan:
“I will vote for whoever the viable candidate is
who can defeat George W. Bush.”

Ron voted, but unfortunately
there weren’t enough Rons to unseat George Jr.

George says what he means:
“Now that I have got the will of the people at my back,
I’m going to start enforcing the one-question rule.”

Yes, it’s winner take all -
at home!
But in order to defeat a resolute foe,
you need a unified nation,
and that doesn’t seem to be
in the cards.

Bob Jones 3rd thanks the Almighty:
“In your re-election, God has graciously granted America -
though she doesn’t deserve it - a reprieve from the agenda of paganismR