I usually do not rant about politics. My preferences are probably assumed fairly accurately by friends and family, but I generally keep the details to myself. Well, just for today, I think I will make an exception. First I want to say a few things about today's vote in California. And, if you want to know how I really feel about the Bush administration, you are welcome to read the continuation of this blog entry below.
A former colleague and I exchanged email about the recall a few weeks ago. Here is a copy of my last message to him:
* How is his plan not going to drive this economy further in the hole?
Bustamante's plan is grounded in balancing the budget. For it to work long-term the Democrats must have the discipline to resist increased spending as the economy comes back--the kind of discipline exhibited by Congress and the President during the Clinton administration. California can return to the solid and safe condition of an economy that balanced budgets assure.
* Has anyone thought about cutting spending?
The plan brought forward by Bustamante includes significant cuts in spending. The issue is what are you willing to decimate? Education is already in the pits. Healthcare sucks. The state's infrastructure is in dire need of attention. The lack of progressive welfare policies is about to raze the quality of life for all Californians and turn us into a culture of slave masters holding court over angry mobs of poverty-ridden workers. Despite the crisis created by the Bush administration we must maintain a minimum level of government services or we will soon have a revolt on our hands.
* Isn't that what families do when their budget just won't make the current bills
Families have compassion for all members of the clan and see to it that the young, elderly and helpless are nurtured. Families care about one another. Families notice when one of theirs is struggling and in need of assistance. Families find a way to keep everyone afloat even when it means taking someone into their home.
And then the subject turned to the Bush administration...
* Why do you say Bush is liar?
I say it because he lies. Let me enumerate just some of the lies about Iraq:
1. "Iraq is responsible for the September 11 attacks"
A supposed meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta, leader of the September 11 hijackers, and an Iraqi intelligence official was the main basis for this claim, but Czech intelligence later conceded that the Iraqi's contact could not have been Atta. This did not stop the constant stream of assertions that Iraq was involved in 9/11, which was so successful that at one stage opinion polls showed that 70% of Americans believed the hand of Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks. Almost as many believed Iraqi hijackers were aboard the crashed airliners; in fact there were none.
It was only a couple of few weeks ago that Dick Cheney got on national television and said "we don't know whether Hussein was involved in 9/11" (in the same way we don't know if Cheney is a robot sent from the future to destroy the world). A few days later Bush shrugged his shoulders on national TV and said "Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the Twin Tower attack" as though we all knew that was the case all along. The lie finally came full circle--now a lie that claims he never told a lie.
2. "Iraq and al-Qa'ida were working together"
Persistent claims by US and British leaders that Saddam and Osama bin Laden were in league with each other were contradicted by a leaked British Defense Intelligence Staff report, which said there were no current links between them. Bin Laden's "aims are in ideological conflict with present-day Iraq", it added. Subsequent testimony before Congress confirms that no one in the US government had evidence of a link between Iraq and al-Qa'ida.
Another strand to the claims was that al-Qa'ida members were being sheltered in Iraq, and had set up a poisons training camp. When US troops reached the camp, they found no chemical or biological traces.
3. "Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa for a 'reconstituted' nuclear weapons program"
The head of the CIA has now admitted that documents purporting to show that Iraq tried to import uranium from Niger in west Africa were forged, and that the claim should never have been in President Bush's State of the Union address. Britain sticks by the claim, insisting it has "separate intelligence." The Foreign Office finally conceded that this information is now "under review." This scandal is part of the evidence that may soon bring down Tony Blair as Prime Minister.
4. "Iraq was trying to import aluminum tubes to develop nuclear weapons"
The US persistently alleged that Baghdad tried to buy high-strength aluminum tubes whose only use could be in gas centrifuges, needed to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. Equally persistently, the International Atomic Energy Agency said the tubes were being used for artillery rockets. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed El Baradei, told the UN Security Council in January that the tubes were not even suitable for centrifuges. Finally, the US conceded that the tubes were probably to be used for the exact purpose claimed by the Iraqis
5. "Iraq still has vast stocks of chemical and biological weapons from the first Gulf War"
Iraq possessed enough dangerous substances to kill the whole world; it was alleged more than once. It had autonomously piloted aircraft which could be smuggled into the US and used to spray chemical and biological toxins. Experts pointed out that apart from mustard gas, Iraq never had the technology to produce materials with a shelf-life of 12 years, the time between the two wars. All such agents would have deteriorated to the point of uselessness years ago.
6. "Iraq retains up to 20 missiles which could carry chemical or biological warheads, with a range which threaten British forces in Cyprus"
Apart from the fact that there has been no sign of these missiles since the invasion, Britain downplayed the risk of there being any such weapons in Iraq once the fighting began. It was also revealed that chemical protection equipment was removed from British bases in Cyprus last year, indicating that the Government did not take these claims seriously. The White House has since backed away from this claim because they lack any evidence whatsoever.
7. "Saddam Hussein has the wherewithal to develop smallpox"
This allegation was made by the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, in his address to the UN Security Council in February. The following month the UN said there was nothing to support it. Neither the Secretary nor the White House has repeated the allegation.
8. "Our claims are supported by the inspectors"
Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix "pointed out" that Iraq had 10,000 liters of anthrax. Tony Blair said Iraq's chemical, biological and "indeed the nuclear weapons program" had been well documented by the UN. Mr. Blix's reply: "This is not the same as saying there are weapons of mass destruction," he said last September. "If I had solid evidence that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction or were constructing such weapons, I would take it to the Security Council." In May this year he added: "I am obviously very interested in the question of whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction, and I am beginning to suspect there possibly were not." Today Hans Blix is flatly saying that the US fabricated every WMD claim it made to justify going to war.
9. "Previous weapons inspections failed"
In fact, the UN got the Iraqi regime to admit to its biological weapons program, meager as it was, more than a two years before the war. No evidence has been found to show any further development of these weapons. No evidence has been found to show any further development of nuclear weapons. The inspections seem to have worked quite well.
10. "Iraq is obstructing the inspectors"
CIA testimony before Congress claimed inspectors' escorts were "trained to start long arguments" with other Iraqi officials while evidence was being hidden, and inspectors' journeys were monitored and notified ahead to remove surprise. There was no clarification as these "facts" were reported in the media. Hans Blix said last February that the UN had conducted more than 400 inspections, all without notice, covering more than 300 sites. "We note that access to sites has so far been without problems," he said. "In no case have we seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew that the inspectors were coming."
11. "Iraq can deploy its weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes"
This now-notorious claim was based on a single source, said to be a serving Iraqi military officer. This individual has not been produced since the war, but in any case Tony Blair contradicted the claim in April. He said Iraq had begun to conceal its weapons in May 2002, which meant that they could not have been used within 45 minutes. And now we know that there was no concealment because there are no weapons. The urgency to act was based on a lie.
12. "Winning the war will be easy"
Public fears of war in the US were assuaged by assurances that oppressed Iraqis would welcome the invading forces; that "demolishing Saddam Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq will be a cakewalk," in the words of Kenneth Adelman, a senior Pentagon official in two previous Republican administrations. Resistance was patchy, but stiffer than expected, mainly from irregular forces fighting in civilian clothes. "This wasn't the enemy we war-gamed against," one general complained.
And now we are discovering that winning the peace will be more expensive in both money and the lives of young men and women in the armed forces than was the war, in fact, maybe more expensive than we can endure.
13. The "rescue" of Private Jessica Lynch
Private Jessica Lynch's "rescue" from a hospital in Nasiriya by American Special Forces was presented as the major "feel-good" story of the war. She was said to have fired back at Iraqi troops until her ammunition ran out, and was taken to hospital suffering bullet and stab wounds. It has since emerged that all her injuries were sustained in a vehicle crash, which left her incapable of firing any shot. Local medical staff had tried to return her to the Americans after Iraqi forces pulled out of the hospital, but the doctors had to turn back when US troops opened fire on them. The Special Forces encountered no resistance, but made sure the whole episode was filmed. The administration continues to remain silent about the lies made about this incident.
14. "Our troops will face chemical and biological weapons"
As US forces approached Baghdad, there was a rash of reports that they would cross a "red line," within which Republican Guard units were authorized to use chemical weapons. But Lieutenant General James Conway, the leading US marine general in Iraq, conceded afterwards that intelligence reports that chemical weapons had been deployed around Baghdad before the war were false and had, in fact, never existed.
"It was a surprise to me ... that we have not uncovered weapons ... in some of the forward dispersal sites," he said in the days following the advance to Baghdad. "We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there. We were simply wrong and I have no report that supports the statements made at the time. Whether or not we're wrong at the national level, I think still very much remains to be seen." Well, it has been many months since then--we've seen.
15. "Interrogation of scientists will yield the location of WMD"
"I have got absolutely no doubt that those weapons are there ... once we have the co-operation of the scientists and the experts, I have got no doubt that we will find them," the President said in April. Numerous similar assurances were issued by other leading figures who said interrogations would provide the WMD discoveries that searches had failed to supply. But almost all Iraq's leading scientists are in custody, and claims that lingering fears of Saddam Hussein are stilling their tongues are beginning to wear thin. Let's face it; another lie.
16. "Iraq's oil money will go to Iraqis"
"People falsely claim that we want to seize" Iraq's oil revenue. We were also told that oil revenue should be put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people administered through the UN. A Security Council resolution was promised that would affirm "the use of all oil revenues for the benefit of the Iraqi people."
Instead we co-sponsored a Security Council Resolution that gave the US and UK control over Iraq's oil revenues. There is no UN-administered trust fund. Far from "all oil revenues" being used for the Iraqi people, the resolution continues to make deductions from Iraq's oil earnings to pay us compensation for the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
17. "WMD were found"
After repeated false sightings Dubya proclaimed on May 30 that two trailers found in Iraq were mobile biological laboratories. "We have already found two trailers, both of which we believe were used for the production of biological weapons." Our deceitful president went further: "Those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons--they're wrong. We found them." It is now certain that the vehicles were for the production of hydrogen for weather balloons, just as the Iraqis claimed. It is also now confirmed that the trailers were exported from Britain about two years before the war and the US knew this all along.
The lies are not only about Iraq, of course. We were told that the tax cuts were not for the wealthy, but to benefit the poor and middle class. Need I point out how false a claim that was? It does not take much imagination to see that current tax policy is undermining Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, state and city governments through unfunded mandates, et cetera. Our economy is in shambles and some economists are starting to warn about the real crash that may be around the corner.
We are seeing something now that we have not encountered at any other time in our history. We have had bad policies; we have had unethical presidents who have been at least somewhat dishonest (even Watergate was a relatively minor lie by comparison with what we are now enduring). We have never had an epidemic of lying about major national and international concerns in the way propagated by the current administration.
We should be outraged, but part of the nature of this problem is the way our mealy-mouthed media report the lies. Paul Krugman's description of this situation is fun to repeat. He said, "If Bush said that the earth is flat, Fox News would say 'of course the earth is flat and anyone who says different is unpatriotic.' The main-stream media would have stories with headlines like 'Shape of Earth; Views Differ' and would report that 'some Democrats say that it is round.'" Objectivity is difficult to bring to deception, giving equal time is easy. If 79% of Americans believed that Martha Stewart was shortstop for the New York Yankees, wouldn't the New York Times try to correct the situation? Our traditional sources for insightful news are failing us. Thank God for weblogs!
The Bush team has discovered that if you create fear and put the nation's military at risk, use the situation to suppress individual rights and create a security priority for the government, and promote the smoke and mirror idea of tax-free capital to cure all ills, all justified by bald-faced lies, then you can get away with behavior we will look back upon as the darkest since our nation's endorsement of slavery.
No one wants to see the situation for the manipulative charade that it actually is--we are in a sorry state of denial. Do you remember how Clinton was called to task for having sexual encounters with Monica Lewinsky? Why are we not holding this president accountable for sins much more devastating to our nation? Britain's Hudson Inquiry is bringing Blair to task. Where is our outrage?
So, now you know how I really feel.
