Monthly Archives: February 2004

Save Your Outrage

Posted by on 2004-02-24 No comments

Save your outrage for the outdated electoral process, Florida election fraud and the Supreme Court appointment of a president. The Greens have comparatively little political influence; they can’t automatically get on a ballot or qualify for matching election funds. So let’s be clear: it wasn’t Nader that elected Bush in 2002.

Democrats seem to have forgotten who they are. Some of the recent crop of Democratic candidates like Joe Lieberman were virtually indistinguishable from Republicans. John Kerry, with his support for the Iraq War, NAFTA, and the Patriot Act, and now with his “Band of Brothers” show, goes out of his way to be GOP-Lite. Democratic candidates like Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich have run spirited campaigns, yet have not received much support from their own party.

If Democrats won’t give voters a choice, third parties like the Greens will. Don’t blame Nader, Dean, or Kucinich. Blame a party that’s driving away its own membership.

A Failure of Intelligence

Posted by on 2004-02-07 No comments

The Bush Administration’s investigation of what the Intelligence community knew before its own invasion of Iraq should be deeply troubling to Americans.

Besides lying to us about ìweapons of mass destructionî in the first place, the Bush administration now seeks to redirect the blame to Intelligence agencies. In investigating itself, accountability to voters goes out the window and a whitewash seems likely. Far from a failure of spy data, the fact is, the Bush administration favored “regime change” and concocted the invasion of Iraq well in advance of 911.

The National Security Strategy (the “Bush Doctrine” of preemptive strikes on other nations) may have been published by this administration on September 2002, but every page has the fingerprints of neo-conservatives who now litter this administration. Visit the newamericancentury.org website and read their 1997 Statement of Principles, signed by Elliott Abrams, William Bennett, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Dan Quayle, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and others. Its vision is of a new century of US military domination and a massive increase in military spending. Sound familiar?

On page A21 of the January 27th (1998) issue of the Washington Times, a public letter to then-President Clinton (“Speaking of Iraq”) appeared, signed by current Bush administration members Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, among others, calling for “regime change” in Iraq.

In an editorial published in “Foreign Affairs” in April 1999, Paul Wolfowitz again presented his rationale for an invasion of Iraq.

Now former Bush administration Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill confirms that the Bush administration had planned the invasion of Iraq in advance of 9-11.

Need more proof? Let a bi-partisan Congressional investigation, not the Bush administration itself, decide.

In failing to remind Congress that it is constitutionally the body that declares war, in failing to call the executive branch to account for its explanations of WMDs, in refusing to press Dick Cheney for the records of his pre-war meetings with old cronies, and now in patiently listening to more mendacity and finger-pointing from the Oval Office, only suckers who continue to believe these lies will demonstrate what “failure of intelligence” really means.