/ "If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams\'/y

"I think this is a deliberate, intentional destruction of the United States of America." - Bill Moyers //'/y //// "I am more fearful for the state of this nation than I have ever been - - because this country is in the hands of an evil man: Dick Cheney. It is eminently clear that it is he who is running the country, not George W. Bush." ////    - Elmer L. Andersen, former Minnesota governor and lifelong Republican -- until now. // / Go fuck yourself, Anderson. / __________________________________________________ / "The vice president is the single greatest threat to American and international security in the world today." 

"Not Osama Bin Laden.  Not the ghost of Saddam Hussein.  Not Ahmadinejad or Kim Jung Il.  Not al-Qaida, the Taliban, or Jose Padilla himself.  Not even George W. Bush can lay claim to this title.  It is Dick Cheney's alone." / - Scott Ritter, "Why Cheney Really Is That Bad", Truthdig, Aug 21, 2007 ///

/

Go fuck yourself too, Ritter.

___________________________________________________

/

"One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. /// ///// It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress."

- From "There Is No Tomorrow", by Bill Moyers, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, January 30, 2005

G.F.Y., Moyers!

 

____________________________________________/y

PROFILE: Richard "P.P." Cheney ____________________________________________ \

hfnmhmnh dg"Conservatives are crazy as bedbugs. They are bullies." rhe/wh - Kurt Vonnegut, "Strange Weather Lately, May 9, 2003

KURT VONNEGUT: "I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d'etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka "Christians," and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or "PPs." And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them?

And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick. What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can't. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody's telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!"

- From "Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !*!@", In These Timeshfm

"...when it was becoming ever more evident that the infant German democracy was about to be murdered by psychopathic personalities ­ hereinafter P.P.s ­ the medical term for smart, personable people who have no conscience. P.P.s are fully aware of how much suffering their actions will inflict on others but do not care. They cannot care. The classic medical text about how such attractive leaders bring us into unspeakable calamities is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. An American P.P. at the head of a corporation, for example, could enrich himself by ruining his employees and investors and still feel as pure as the driven snow. A P.P., should he attain a post near the top of our federal government, might feel that taking the country into an endless war with casualties in the millions was simply something decisive to do today. So to bed."

- Kurt Vonnegut, "Vonnegut at 80", January 10, 2003

You know what to do, Vonnegut.... ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________// / // "...In this election, they will speak endlessly of risk. We will speak of progress. They will make accusations. We will make proposals. They will feed fear. We will appeal to hope. / / They will offer more lectures, and legalisms, and carefully worded denials. . . We offer another way, a better way, and a stiff dose of truth." / - Dick Cheney, speech to the GOP convention, 2000 / Vice President Cheney also says on Meet the Press: "Mohamed Atta, who was the lead hijacker, did apparently travel to Prague on a number of occasions. And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attack on the World Trade Center." Tim Russert: "What does the CIA say about that?" Vice President Cheney: "It's credible." ./ The CIA in fact deemed this not credible a few days after Cheney first mentioned it. -Source: ""Lie By Lie" , a Mother Jones interactive timeline on the run-up to the invasion './ / './ ./"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." - Speech to VFW National Convention, August 26, 2002 .// "After saying several times that Saddam is trying to build a nuclear weapon, Cheney says: "And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." Six months later, after the beginning of the war, Cheney will claim that he misspoke." -Source: ""Lie By Lie" , a M other Jones interactive timeline on the run-up to the invasion ./ "Vice President Cheney said that Iraq was "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11." The bipartisan 9/11 Commission found that Iraq had no involvement in the 9/11 attacks and no collaborative operational relationship with Al Qaeda." - Source: MSNBC, 9-11 Commission .// "In his statement Sunday  (September 12, 2004), Kerry complained that Cheney "continues to intentionally mislead the American public by drawing a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 in an attempt to make the invasion of Iraq part of the global war on terror." //'CNN.com - Kerry challenges Bush on Iraq-9/11 connection - Sep 12, 2004 /./ "The senator has got his facts wrong. I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11, but there's clearly an established Iraqi track record with terror." - Dick Cheney, Vice Presidentiaal debate, October 5, 2004 ..././ / .. "The al Qaeda organization had a relationship with the Iraqis." - "Vice President and Mrs. Cheney's Remarks and Q&A in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin", September 11, 2004 (Source: whitehouse.gov) /// /____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________//

Report: 9/11-Iraq link refuted days after attack
Magazine says administration refused to give key docs to Senate committee

MSNBC
Nov 22, 2005

Ten days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, President Bush was advised that U.S. intelligence found no credible connection linking the attacks to the regime of Saddam Hussein, or evidence suggesting linkage between Saddam and the al-Qaida terrorist network, according to a published report.

The report, published Tuesday in The National Journal, cites government records, as well as present and former officials with knowledge of the issue. The information in the story, written by National Journal contributor Murray Waas, points to an abiding administration concern for secrecy that extended to keeping information from the Senate committee charged with investigating the matter.
In one of the Journal report's more compelling disclosures, Saddam is said to have viewed al-Qaida as a threat, rather than a potential ally.

Presidential brief

The president's daily brief, or PDB, for Sept. 21, 2001, was prepared at the request of President Bush, the Journal reported, who was said to be eager to determine whether any linkage between the Sept. 11 attacks and the Iraqi regime existed.

And a considerable amount of the Sept. 21 PDB found its way into a longer, more detailed Central Intelligence Agency assessment of the likelihood of an al-Qaida-Iraq connection.
The Journal story reports that that assessment was released to Bush, Vice President Cheney, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, and other senior policy-makers in the Bush administration.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has requested from the White House the detailed CIA assessment, as well as the Sept. 21 PDB and several other PDBs, as part of the committee's continuing inquiry into whether the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information in the months before the start of the war with Iraq in March 2003. The Bush administration has refused to surrender these documents.

"Indeed," the Journal story reported, citing congressional sources, "the existence of the September 21 PDB was not disclosed to the Intelligence Committee until the summer of 2004."

Long-alleged connection

After Sept. 11, the administration insisted that a connection existed between Iraq and al-Qaida. President Bush, in an October 2002 speech in Cincinnati, said the United States had "learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaida members in bomb-making and poisons and gas."

And Vice President Cheney, in a September 2003 appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," alleged there was "a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s."

But the National Journal report said that the few believable reports of contact between Iraq and al-Qaida "involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to monitor the terrorist group."
Saddam considered al-Qaida "as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime," the Journal reported. "At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating the ranks" of al-Qaida with Iraqi intelligence operatives as a way to get more information about how the organization worked, the Journal said

Journal: Little has changed

The Journal story asserts that little has changed to refute the initial absence of information linking Saddam and the al-Qaida network.
"In the four years since Bush received the briefing, according to highly placed government officials, little evidence has come to light to contradict the CIA's original conclusion that no collaborative relationship existed" between Iraq and al-Qaida, the Journal reported.

Reporter Waas quotes one former administration official, whose assessment is a problematic contradiction of the administration's longstanding assertions:
"What the President was told on September 21 was consistent with everything he has been told since - that the evidence was just not there."

© 2007 MSNBC Interactive
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________///

"...there are two passions which have a powerful influence in the affairs of men. These are ambition and avarice—the love of power and the love of money. Separately, each of these has great force in prompting men to action; but, when united in view of the same object, they have, in many minds, the most violent effects. Place before the eyes of such men a post of honor, that shall, at the same time, be a place of profit, and they will move heaven and earth to obtain it."

- Benjamin Franklin

avarice (noun)

1.  avarice, greed, covetousness, rapacity, avaritia
Reprehensible acquisitiveness; insatiable desire for wealth (personified as one of the deadly sins)

"...O'Neill had been preaching that a fiscal crisis was looming and more tax cuts would exacerbate it. But others in the White House saw a chance to capitalize on the historic Republican congressional gains in the 2002 elections. Surely, Cheney would not be so smug. He would hear O'Neill out. In an economic meeting in the Vice President's office, O'Neill started pitching, describing how the numbers showed that growing budget deficits threatened the economy. Cheney cut him off. "Reagan proved deficits don't matter," he said. O'Neill was too dumbfounded to respond. Cheney continued:

"We won the midterms. This is our due."

- From "Confessions of a White House Insider", by JOHN F. DICKERSON From the Jan. 19, 2004 issue of TIME magazine (below) ///"The President, his father, the Vice President a whole host of powerful government officials, along with stockholders and executives from Halliburton and Carlyle, stand to make a mint off this war. Long-time corporate sponsors from the defense, construction and petroleum industries will likewise profit enormously." - "Blood Money", by William Rivers Pitt (BELOW) /

  "I severed my ties with Halliburton when I became a candidate for Vice President in August of 2000." ­ Dick Cheney, 1/22/04

     FACT: Along with the 433,000 stock options, "Cheney still receives about $150,000 a year" from Halliburton. ­ CNN, 10/25/03

     "What happens financially [by joining the GOP ticket], obviously, is I take a bath , in one sense." ­ Dick Cheney, 7/25/00

     FACT: Halliburton "has agreed to let Mr. Cheney, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, retire with a package worth an estimated $20 million, according to people who have reviewed the deal." ­ NY Times, 8/12/00

/ Thanks for the tax dollars, SUCKERS! ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________// ggw/// (M.O.W. editorial insert) ./ Blood Money By William Rivers Pitt t r u t h o u t | Perspective

"In the counsels of Government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military Industrial Complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."
- President Dwight Eisenhower, January 1961.

Thursday 27 February 2003

George W. Bush gave a speech Wednesday night before the Godfather of conservative Washington think tanks, the American Enterprise Institute. In his speech, Bush quantified his coming war with Iraq as part of a larger struggle to bring pro-western governments into power in the Middle East. Couched in hopeful language describing peace and freedom for all, the speech was in fact the closest articulation of the actual plan for Iraq that has yet been heard from the administration.

In a previous truthout article from February 21, the ideological connections between an extremist right-wing Washington think tank and the foreign policy aspirations of the Bush administration were detailed.

The Project for a New American Century, or PNAC, is a group founded in 1997 that has been agitating since its inception for a war with Iraq. PNAC was the driving force behind the drafting and passage of the Iraqi Liberation Act, a bill that painted a veneer of legality over the ultimate designs behind such a conflict. The names of every prominent PNAC member were on a letter delivered to President Clinton in 1998 which castigated him for not implementing the Act by driving troops into Baghdad.

PNAC has funneled millions of taxpayer dollars to a Hussein opposition group called the Iraqi National Congress, and to Iraq's heir-apparent, Ahmed Chalabi, despite the fact that Chalabi was sentenced in absentia by a Jordanian court to 22 years in prison on 31 counts of bank fraud. Chalabi and the INC have, over the years, gathered support for their cause by promising oil contracts to anyone that would help to put them in power in Iraq.

Most recently, PNAC created a new group called The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Staffed entirely by PNAC members, The Committee has set out to "educate" Americans via cable news connections about the need for war in Iraq. This group met recently with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice regarding the ways and means of this education.


(M.O.W. editorial insert)

Who is PNAC? Its members include:

* Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the PNAC founders, who served as Secretary of Defense for Bush Sr.;

* I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's top national security assistant;

* Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, also a founding member, along with four of his chief aides including;

* Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, arguably the ideological father of the group;

* Eliot Abrams, prominent member of Bush's National Security Council, who was pardoned by Bush Sr. in the Iran/Contra scandal;

* John Bolton, who serves as Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security in the Bush administration;

* Richard Perle, former Reagan administration official and present chairman of the powerful Defense Policy Board;

* Randy Scheunemann, President of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, who was Trent Lott's national security aide and who served as an advisor to Rumsfeld on Iraq in 2001;

* Bruce Jackson, Chairman of PNAC, a position he took after serving for years as vice president of weapons manufacturer Lockheed-Martin, and who also headed the Republican Party Platform subcommittee for National Security and Foreign Policy during the 2000 campaign. His section of the 2000 GOP Platform explicitly called for the removal of Saddam Hussein;

* William Kristol, noted conservative writer for the Weekly Standard, a magazine owned along with the Fox News Network by conservative media mogul Ruppert Murdoch.

The Project for the New American Century seeks to establish what they call 'Pax Americana' across the globe. Essentially, their goal is to transform America, the sole remaining superpower, into a planetary empire by force of arms. A report released by PNAC in September of 2000 entitled 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' codifies this plan, which requires a massive increase in defense spending and the fighting of several major theater wars in order to establish American dominance. The first has been achieved in Bush's new budget plan, which calls for the exact dollar amount to be spent on defense that was requested by PNAC in 2000. Arrangements are underway for the fighting of the wars.

The men from PNAC are in a perfect position to see their foreign policy schemes, hatched in 1997, brought into reality. They control the White House, the Pentagon and Defense Department, by way of this the armed forces and intelligence communities, and have at their feet a Republican-dominated Congress that will rubber-stamp virtually everything on their wish list.

The first step towards the establishment of this Pax Americana is, and has always been, the removal of Saddam Hussein and the establishment of an American protectorate in Iraq. The purpose of this is threefold: 1) To acquire control of the oilheads so as to fund the entire enterprise; 2) To fire a warning shot across the bows of every leader in the Middle East; 3) To establish in Iraq a military staging area for the eventual invasion and overthrow of several Middle Eastern regimes, including some that are allies of the United States.

Another PNAC signatory, author Norman Podhoretz, quantified this aspect of the grand plan in the September 2002 issue of his journal, 'Commentary'. In it, Podhoretz notes that the regimes, "that richly deserve to be overthrown and replaced, are not confined to the three singled-out members of the axis of evil. At a minimum, the axis should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as 'friends' of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority, whether headed by Arafat or one of his henchmen." At bottom, for Podhoretz, this action is about "the long-overdue internal reform and modernization of Islam."

This casts Bush's speech to AEI on Wednesday in a completely different light.

Weapons of mass destruction are a smokescreen. Paeans to the idea of Iraqi liberation and democratization are cynical in their inception. At the end of the day, this is not even about oil. The drive behind this war is ideological in nature, a crusade to 'reform' the religion of Islam as it exists in both government and society within the Middle East. Once this is accomplished, the road to empire will be open, ten lanes wide and steppin' out over the line.

At the end of the day, however, ideology is only good for bull sessions in the board room and the bar. Something has to grease the skids, to make the whole thing worthwhile to those involved, and entice those outside the loop to get into the game.

Thus, the payout.

(M.O.W. editorial insert)

The President, his father, the Vice President, a whole host of powerful government officials, along with stockholders and executives from Halliburton and Carlyle, stand to make a mint off this war. Long-time corporate sponsors from the defense, construction and petroleum industries will likewise profit enormously.

It is well known by now that Dick Cheney, before becoming Vice President, served as chairman and chief executive of the Dallas-based petroleum corporation Halliburton. During his tenure, according to oil industry executives and United Nations records, Halliburton did a brisk $73 million in business with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. While working face-to-face with Hussein, Cheney and Halliburton were also moving into position to capitalize upon Hussein's removal from power. In October of 1995, the same month Cheney was made CEO of Halliburton, that company announced a deal that would put it first in line should war break out in Iraq. Their job: To take control of burning oil wells, put out the fires, and prepare them for service.

Another corporation that stands to do well by a war in Iraq is Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton. Ostensibly, Brown & Root is in the construction business, and thus has won a share of the $900 million government contract for the rebuilding of post-war Iraqi bridges, roads and other basic infrastructure. This is but the tip of the financial iceberg, as the oil wells will also have to be repaired after parent-company Halliburton puts out the fires.

More ominously is Brown & Root's stock in trade: the building of permanent American military bases. There are twelve permanent U.S. bases in Kosovo today, all built and maintained by Brown & Root for a multi-billion dollar profit. If anyone should wonder why the administration has not offered an exit strategy to the Iraq war plans, the presence of Brown & Root should answer them succinctly. We do not plan on exiting. In all likelihood, Brown & Root is in Iraq to build permanent bases there, from which attacks upon other Middle Eastern nations can be staged and managed.

Again, this casts Bush's speech on Wednesday in a new light.

Being at the center of the action is nothing new for Halliburton and Brown & Root. The two companies have worked closely with governments in Algeria, Angola, Bosnia, Burma, Croatia, Haiti, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Somalia during the worst chapters in those nation's histories. Many environmental and human rights groups claim that Cheney, Halliburton and Brown & Root were, in fact, centrally involved in these fiascos. More recently, Brown & Root was contracted by the Defense Department to build cells for detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The bill for that one project came to $300 million.

Cheney became involved with PNAC officially in 1997, while still profiting from deals between Halliburton and Hussein. One year later, Cheney and PNAC began actively and publicly agitating for war on Iraq. They have not stopped to this very day.

Another company with a vested interest in both war on Iraq and massively increased defense spending is the Carlyle Group. Carlyle, a private global investment firm with more than $12.5 billion in capital under management, was formed in 1987. Its interests are spread across 164 companies, including telecommunications firms and defense contractors. It is staffed at the highest levels by former members of the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations. Former President George H. W. Bush is himself employed by Carlyle as a senior advisor, as is long-time Bush family advisor and former Secretary of State James Baker III.

One company acquired by Carlyle is United Defense, a weapons manufacturer based in Arlington, VA. United Defense provides the Defense Department with combat vehicle systems, fire support, combat support vehicle systems, weapons delivery systems, amphibious assault vehicles, combat support services and naval armaments. Specifically, United Defense manufactures the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the M113 armored personnel carrier, the M88A2 Recovery Vehicle, the Grizzly, the M9 ACE, the Composite Armored Vehicle, the M6 Linebacker, the M7 BFIST, the Armored Gun System, the M4 Command and Control Vehicle, the Battle Command Vehicle, the Paladin, the Crusader, and Electric Gun/Pulse Power weapons technology.

In other words, everything a growing Defense Department, a war in Iraq, and a burgeoning American military empire needs.

(M.O.W. editorial insert)

Ironically, one group that won't profit from Carlyle's involvement in American military buildup is the family of Osama bin Laden. The bin Laden family fortune was amassed by Mohammed bin Laden, father of Osama, who built a multi-billion dollar construction empire through contracts with the Saudi government. The Saudi BinLaden Group, as this company is called, was heavily invested in Carlyle for years. Specifically, they were invested in Carlyle's Partners II Fund, which includes in that portfolio United Defense and other weapons manufacturers.

This relationship was described in a September 27, 2001 article in the Wall Street Journal entitled 'Bin Laden Family Could Profit From Jump in Defense Spending Due to Ties to US Bank.' The 'bank' in question was the Carlyle Group. A follow-up article published by the Journal on September 28 entitled ' Bin Laden Family Has Intricate Ties With Washington - Saudi Clan Has Had Access To Influential Republicans ' further describes the relationship. In October of 2001, Saudi BinLaden and Carlyle severed their relationship by mutual agreement. The timing is auspicious.

There are a number of depths to be plumbed in all of this. The Bush administration has claimed all along that this war with Iraq is about Saddam Hussein's connections to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, though through it all they have roundly failed to establish any basis for either accusation. On Wednesday, Bush went further to claim that the war is about liberating the Iraqi people and bringing democracy to the Middle East. This ignores cultural realities on the ground in Iraq and throughout the region that, salted with decades of deep mistrust for American motives, make such a democracy movement brought at the point of the sword utterly impossible to achieve.

This movement, cloaked in democracy, is in fact a PNAC-inspired push for an American global empire. It behooves Americans to understand that there is a great difference between being the citizen of a constitutional democracy and being a citizen of an empire. The establishment of an empire requires some significant sacrifices.

Essential social, medical, educational and retirement services will have to be gutted so that those funds can be directed towards a necessary military buildup. Actions taken abroad to establish the preeminence of American power, most specifically in the Middle East, will bring a torrent of terrorist attacks to the home front. Such attacks will bring about the final suspension of constitutional rights and the rule of habeas corpus, as we will find ourselves under martial law. In the end, however, this may be inevitable. An empire cannot function with the slow, cumbersome machine of a constitutional democracy on its back. Empires must be ruled with speed and ruthlessness, in a manner utterly antithetical to the way in which America has been governed for 227 years.

And yes, of course, a great many people will die.

It would be one thing if all of this was based purely on the ideology of our leaders. It is another thing altogether to consider the incredible profit motive behind it all. The President, his father, the Vice President, a whole host of powerful government officials, along with stockholders and executives from Halliburton and Carlyle, stand to make a mint off this war. Long-time corporate sponsors from the defense, construction and petroleum industries will likewise profit enormously.

Critics of the Bush administration like to bandy about the word "fascist" when speaking of George. The image that word conjures is of Nazi stormtroopers marching in unison towards Hitler's Final Solution. This does not at all fit. It is better, in this matter, to view the Bush administration through the eyes of Benito Mussolini. Mussolini, dubbed 'the father of Fascism,' defined the word in a far more pertinent fashion. "Fascism," said Mussolini, "should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."

Boycott the French, the Germans, and the other 114 nations who stand against this Iraq war all you wish. France and Germany do not oppose Bush because they are cowards, or because they enjoy the existence of Saddam Hussein. France and Germany stand against the Bush administration because they intend to stop this Pax Americana in its tracks if they can. They have seen militant fascism up close and personal before, and wish never to see it again.

Would that we Americans could be so wise.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ngnfdd SEE ALSO: IN THEIR OWN WORDS: The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) : / "Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President" and Iraq War Planned Pre-9/11? (CBS News, Jan. 10,2004) _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ .. / "...If you look at those matters, you will come to the conclusion that the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace. It is clearly a decision that is motivated by George W Bush's desire to please the arms and oil industries in the United States of America."/ /- Nelson Mandela

///

This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks - - men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war. This is a blueprint for US world domination -- a new world order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world. I am appalled that a British Labour Prime Minister should have got into bed with a crew which has this moral standing.'"

-Tam Dalyell, British Labour Party MP

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"GOD IS WITH US"

 

Dick and Lynne's Christmas card

Dick Cheney overlooked more relevant quotes from Benjamin Franklin when he chose one for his Christmas card. Here are a few he should have used.

Dick Cheney, Vice President of the US, used the following quote by Benjamin Franklin on his Christmas card this year: "And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid ?"
The implication is that
God must approve of the wars he is vice-presiding over, and be actively assisting the rise of the US empire. Folowing the same logic, God must also be approving of and assisting the Iraqi resistance to the occupation. Is God therefore following classic US foreign policy by supporting both sides in a conflict to destabilise a region ? Let's leave Cheney to this theological mess, he's used to messes, and move on to more relevant quotations from Benjamin Franklin he could have used.
As regards the total mess the US has made in post-war Iraq (that means pre- Bush strutting about on an aircraft carrier) he could have used,
"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail."
As regards the onslaught on the people of Afghanistan following 9/11, we have,
"Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame."
And as regards both wars started by the Bush regime to feed the bottomless greed of their corporate buddies, we have,
"There never was a good war or a bad peace."
Finally, Franklin prophetically had the measure of Bush and Cheney as pathetic reincarnations of past greed and shame when he said, "
.... the revenues of princes constantly increasing, and we see they are never satisfied, but always want more .... There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh, get first all the people's money, then their lands, then make them and their children servants for ever ..." That kind of encapsulates the essence of the Bush regime, and if Cheney won't use it next Christmas, Bush really should.

_______________________________________________

"Empire may well go to war, but it's out in the open now, too ugly to behold its own reflection, too ugly even to rally its own people. It won't be long before the majority of American people become our allies."
- Award-winning author ARUNDHATI ROY

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Uncanny parallels from 50 YEARS AGO:

Excerpts from "The Danger of American Fascism"

by Vice President Henry A Wallace, The New York Times, 1944

Henry Agard Wallace (October 7, 1888 ­ November 18, 1965) was the 33rd Vice President of the United States (1941-45), the 11th Secretary of Agriculture (1933-40), and the 10th Secretary of Commerce (1945-46).

" A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends. The supreme god of a fascist, to which his ends are directed, may be money or power; may be a race or a class; may be a military, clique or an economic group; or may be a culture, religion, or a political party.

  The perfect type of fascist throughout recent centuries has been the Prussian Junker, who developed such hatred for other races and such allegiance to a military clique as to make him willing at all times to engage in any degree of deceit and violence necessary to place his culture and race astride the world. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.

 "The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power.

They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead."

"During his tenure, according to oil industry executives and United Nations records, Halliburton did a brisk $73 million in business with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. While working face-to-face with Hussein, Cheney and Halliburton were also moving into position to capitalize upon Hussein's removal from power. In October of 1995, the same month Cheney was made CEO of Halliburton, that company announced a deal that would put it first in line should war break out in Iraq. Their job: To take control of burning oil wells, put out the fires, and prepare them for service."

   "Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion. American fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after "the present unpleasantness" ceases:

  "The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy. They use isolationism as a slogan to conceal their own selfish imperialism. They cultivate hate and distrust of both Britain and Russia.

"They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection."

  "The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power.

  - "The Danger of American Fascism", by Vice President Henry A. Wallace The New York Times, 1944

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"Enron was the first storm warning but no one realized how easily accepted that cluster of capers would be by a polity marinated in corruption --
-- as Ben Franklin predicted, in 1789, as our eventual fate."

- from "Gore Vidal Delivers Chilling Predictions of Despotism", By Arthur Jones, National Catholic Reporter

 

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY SUED PERSONALLY FOR ALLEGED STOCK FRAUD

Alleged Fraudulent Accounting Practices Occurred At Halliburton


July 10, 2002 (Washington, D.C.)
nnJudicial Watch, the group that investigates and prosecutes corruption by government officials, announced today that it is filing a shareholders suit in Dallas, Texas, against Vice President Dick Cheney and the other involved directors of Halliburton, as well as Halliburton itself, for alleged fraudulent accounting practices which resulted in the overvaluation of the company's shares, thereby deceiving investors and others.

(M.O.W. editorial insert) / Conservative Group sues Vice President Cheney, Halliburton

By Laurence McQuillan, USA TODAY

"....In Miami, the usually conservative Judicial Watch, which made its name in a series of legal skirmishes with the Clinton administration, announced a lawsuit against Cheney, Halliburton and auditor Arthur Andersen. The lawsuit alleges that accounting fraud led to shareholder losses." http://www.usatoday.com/money/energy/2002-07-10-cheney-suit.htm

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"...This is the most corrupt and racist American administration in over 80 years". He said: "Some US journalist came up to me and said: 'How can you say this about President Bush?' Well, I think what I said then was quite mild. I actually think that Bush is the greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen. The policies he is initiating will doom us to extinction."

- KEN LIVINGSTONE, the MAYOR of LONDON

"This junta that is governing us, this Enron/Pentagon junta, dedicated only to enrichment through the oil business, as all the Bushes and Cheneys and so on are oil people, they are going to destroy, for personal profit, the United States. We are going to be destroyed by the hatred of the rest of the world."

- GORE VIDAL

"Vidal sees the country in the grip of a corporate-oil patch-military oligarchy. Asked if the Iraq war was an oil patch-White House deal so huge Americans can't stand back far enough to see it, Vidal replied, "Kindly Dr. Goebbels used to say that the greater the lie a government tells (and repeats loudly), the more it will be believed. Yes, it is -- was -- about oil and, of course, giving the Cheney-Bush junta's friends like Halliburton vast contracts to rebuild what we have carefully knocked down." -

"Gore Vidal Delivers Chilling Predictions of Despotism", By Arthur Jones, National Catholic Reporter, 8/2/03

/ "Nowadays, if your country is attacked, you immediately get a contract to rebuild something. Then perhaps you are a member of the cabinet who knocks down cities, and then you go over to the vice president and get his company, Halliburton, to rebuild them with treasury money." - GORE VIDAL
(Click the article title for the complete article)

Halliburton Accused of Fraud under Cheney

 By Jonathan Stempel, Reuter, August 06 2004

New York - Halliburton Co. and several top executives intentionally engaged in "serial accounting fraud" from 1998 to 2001, including when it was led by Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a new filing in a shareholder class-action lawsuit against the company.

 The filing accuses Houston-based Halliburton, the world's No. 2 oilfield services company, of systematic accounting misdeeds far more wide-ranging than those charged in a recent civil lawsuit by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Cheney was not named as a defendant in either proceeding.

 Halliburton agreed on Tuesday to pay $7.5 million to settle SEC charges that it misled investors by not disclosing an accounting change that boosted profit in 1998 and 1999.

 Among other things, the filing accuses Halliburton of inflating results, failing to disclose a big asbestos verdict in a timely manner, and being unable to account for $3.1 billion of profit and cash.

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Iraq Delays Hand Cheney's Halliburton a Billion Dollars
Oliver Morgan
The Observer | Guardian UK , Sunday 07 December 2003

______________________________________________________

Halliburton's Iraq Deals Greater Than Cheney Has Said
Affiliates Had $73 Million in Contracts
By Colum Lynch
, Special to The Washington Post , Saturday, June 23, 2001

UNITED NATIONS -- During last year's presidential campaign, Richard B. Cheney acknowledged that the oil-field supply corporation he headed, Halliburton Co., did business with Libya and Iran through foreign subsidiaries. But he insisted that he had imposed a "firm policy" against trading with Iraq.

"Iraq's different," he said.

According to oil industry executives and confidential United Nations records, however, Halliburton held stakes in two firms that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer of the Dallas-based company.///

"They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead."

- "The Danger of American Fascism by Henry A Wallace, The New York Times, 1944:

/

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Patriots and Profits
By Paul Krugman , NY TIMES , December 16, 2003

"Some Americans still seem to feel that even suggesting the possibility of profiteering is somehow unpatriotic. They should learn the story of Harry Truman, a congressman who rose to prominence during World War II by leading a campaign against profiteering. Truman believed, correctly, that he was serving his country. On the strength of that record, Franklin Roosevelt chose Truman as his vice president. George Bush, of course, chose Dick Cheney.

______________________________________________________

Halliburton Accused of Wasting Tax Money

Friday 13 February 2004 WASHINGTON (AP) -- Frustrated that they couldn't convince Republicans to conduct hearings on Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, Democrats convened a panel of their own Friday to hear a former Halliburton employee testify that the company wastes taxpayers' money.    "Remember, this is a 'cost plus contract' so Halliburton would get reimbursed for its costs plus a percentage," he said.

     The chairman of the panel, Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said the hearing was needed because of allegations that Halliburton overcharged for delivery of gasoline to Iraq; that company employees took kickbacks and that the firm charged too much for meals served to troops in Iraq.

     "It seems to me that these incidents may well reflect a broad mind-set: one that was born on the day that these contracts were awarded without competition, and that was nurtured through a lack of oversight by this current administration and majority-controlled Congress," Dorgan said.

______________________________________________________

Spending On Iraq Sets Off Gold Rush
Lawmakers Fear U.S. Is Losing Control of Funds

By Jonathan Weisman and Anitha Reddy , Washington Post Staff Writers October 9, 2003

"All I can say is it's mind-boggling," James Lyons, a former military subcontractor in Bosnia, said of the opportunities for private contractors. "People must be drooling."

_____________________________________________

Iraq Could Produce Another Enron
By Nomi Prins,  Newsday , 02 December 2003

"As one UN senior insider said, "No country has ever had so much control over information and resources for reconstruction efforts in history. But the murkiness of Iraq finances goes beyond a mere jiggering of the books. In the case of Iraq, there are no obvious books."

"Enron was the first storm warning but no one realized how easily accepted that cluster of capers would be by a polity marinated in corruption -- as Ben Franklin predicted, in 1789, as our eventual fate."

- from "Gore Vidal Delivers Chilling Predictions of Despotism", By Arthur Jones, National Catholic Reporter

______________________________________________________

/"Iraq Could Produce another Enron" "...there are no obvious books...."   10 MONTHS later...

Billions in Iraq funds 'missing'
San Jose Mercury News, Oct 24, 2004
http://www.themercury.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,7654183%255E1702,00.html

"The British-based charity Christian Aid yesterday alleged that $US4 ($5.69) billion out of an estimated $US5 ($7.11) billion had "disappeared into opaque bank accounts" administered by the CPA.

The group urged any potential contributor at the conference to demand explanations before pledging any additional assistance, claiming that "no independent body knows where this cash has gone".

It said the "financial black hole" would only fuel suspicions that large amounts of the money in the fund were being siphoned off for large US firms and not being channelled to deal with Iraq's serious needs."

The oversight body to monitor the US-led coalition's handling of Iraqi oil money - the International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB) for post-war Iraq - was formally established on Wednesday. Bremer rejected charges that he and the CPA had obstructed its creation.

"That's nonsense," Bremer bristled when asked about the charge. "It is simply untrue to say we obstructed it. I've been anxious to get this board established."

______________________________________________________

Audit: $9 Billion Unaccounted For in Iraq

 By Larry Margasak, The Associated Press, Sunday 30 January 2005

WASHINGTON - The U.S. occupation authority in Iraq was unable to keep track of nearly $9 billion it transferred to government ministries, which lacked financial controls, security, communications and adequate staff, an inspector general has found.

The U.S. officials relied on Iraqi audit agencies to account for the funds but those offices were not even functioning when the funds were transferred between October 2003 and June 2004, according to an audit by a special U.S. inspector general.

Bremer complained the report "assumes that Western-style budgeting and accounting procedures could be immediately and fully implemented in the midst of a war."

"U.S. officials, the report said, "did not establish or implement sufficient managerial, financial and contractural controls." There was no way to verify that the money was used for its intended purposes of financing humanitarian needs, economic reconstruction, repair of facilities, disarmament and civil administration."

Some of the transferred funds may have paid "ghost" employees, the inspector general found.

CPA staff learned that 8,206 guards were on the payroll at one ministry, but only 602 could be accounted for, the report said. At another ministry, U.S. officials found 1,417 guards on the payroll but could only confirm 642.

 When staff members of the U.S. occupation government recommended that payrolls be verified before salary payments, CPA financial officials "stated the CPA would rather overpay salaries than risk not paying employees and inciting violence," the inspector general said.

The inspector general's report rejected Bremer's criticism. It concluded that despite the war, "We believe the CPA management of Iraq's national budget process and oversight of Iraqi funds was burdened by severe inefficiencies and poor management."

______________________________________________________

Administration Withheld Halliburton Overcharges from International Auditors
- Commitee on Government Reform Minority Office

    Thursday 17 March 2005

    Rep. Waxman revealed that Administration officials, acting at the request of Halliburton, redacted a Pentagon report to conceal more than $100 million in fuel overcharges from international auditors. In letters to government auditors , Halliburton subsidiary KBR explains that it redacted statements that it considered "factually inaccurate or misleading" and gives consent for the release of the audits to international auditors "in redacted form."

    The Administration then sent the heavily redacted report pdf to the International Advisory and Monitoring Board overseeing the Development Fund for Iraq, the fund established by the U.N. for the management of Iraq's oil sales and foreign donations.

    An interactive feature reveals the extent of the redactions in the first ten pages of the Pentagon report.

    Rep. Waxman has released the original Defense Department audit report with Halliburton's edits highlighted. In light of this new information, Rep. Waxman has asked National Security Subcommittee Chairman Shays pdf to hold immediate hearings on U.S. management of the Development Fund for Iraq.

LINKS 

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For Cheney, Tarnish From Halliburton
Firm's Fall Raises Questions About Vice President's Leadership There

By Dana Milbank, Washington Post Staff Writer, July 16, 2002

.."An executive sells shares in his energy company two months before the company announces unexpected bad news, and the stock price eventually tumbles to a quarter of the price at which the insider sold his.

George W. Bush at Harken Energy Corp. in 1990? Yes, but also Richard B. Cheney at Halliburton Co. in 2000."

"...The humbling of Halliburton raises doubts about Cheney's stewardship there and, by extension, his reputation as a smart executive bringing a businessman's acumen to the White House.

Four other Halliburton insiders also sold shares in August, including the vice chairman and the chief financial officer.

Cheney, in a 1996 promotional video, praised Halliburton's accountants, Arthur Andersen, for their advice "over and above the, just sort of the normal by-the-books audit arrangement."


"...
Despite these connections, Harken did badly. But for a time it concealed its failure - sustaining its stock price, as it turned out, just long enough for Mr. Bush to sell most of his stake at a large profit - with an accounting trick identical to one of the main ploys used by Enron a decade later. (Yes, Arthur Andersen was the accountant.)

"It's true that Mr. Bush's story about that failure has suddenly changed, from "the dog ate my homework" to "my lawyer ate my homework - four times." But the administration hopes that a narrow focus on the reporting lapses will divert attention from the larger point: Mr. Bush profited personally from aggressive accounting identical to the recent scams that have shocked the nation."

- "Succeeding in Business", by Paul Krugman, New York Times, March 30, 2004

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

/

Did Cheney Okay a Deal?

By Timothy J. Burger and Adam Zagorin   Time 30 May 2004 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040607-644111,00.html kjrdkrrjj

  Vice President Dick Cheney was a guest on NBC's Meet the Press last September when host Tim Russert brought up Halliburton. Citing the company's role in rebuilding Iraq as well as Cheney's prior service as Halliburton's CEO, Russert asked, "Were you involved in any way in the awarding of those contracts?" Cheney's reply: "Of course not, Tim ... And as Vice President, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the [Army] Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the Federal Government."

  Cheney's relationship with Halliburton has been nothing but trouble since he left the company in 2000. Both he and the company say they have no ongoing connections. But TIME has obtained an internal Pentagon e-mail sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official-whose name was blacked out by the Pentagon-that raises questions about Cheney's arm's-length policy toward his old employer. Dated March 5, 2003, the e-mail says "action" on a multibillion-dollar Halliburton contract was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. The e-mail says Douglas Feith, a high-ranking Pentagon hawk, got the "authority to execute RIO," or Restore Iraqi Oil, from his boss, who is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. RIO is one of several large contracts the U.S. awarded to Halliburton last year.

  The e-mail says Feith approved arrangements for the contract "contingent on informing WH [White House] tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VP's [Vice President's] office." Three days later, the Army Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton the contract, without seeking other bids. TIME located the e-mail among documents provided by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group.

  Cheney spokesman Kevin Kellems says the Vice President "has played no role whatsoever in government-contract decisions involving Halliburton" since 2000. A Pentagon spokesman says the e-mail means merely that "in anticipation of controversy over the award of a sole-source contract to Halliburton, we wanted to give the Vice President's staff a heads-up."

  Cheney is linked to his old firm in at least one other way. His recently filed 2003 financial-disclosure form reveals that Halliburton last year invoked an insurance policy to indemnify Cheney for what could be steep legal bills "arising from his service" at the company. Past and present Halliburton execs face an array of potentially costly litigation, including multibillion-dollar asbestos claims.

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 Cheney, Halliburton & the Government 

By The Center for American Progress

The president had promised to cut taxes, and he did. Within six months of taking office, he pushed a trillion dollars worth of tax cuts through Congress.
But O'Neill thought it should have been the end. After 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, the budget deficit was growing. So at a meeting with the vice president after the mid-term elections in 2002, Suskind writes that O'Neill argued against a second round of tax cuts.

"Cheney, at this moment, shows his hand," says Suskind. "He says, 'You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due.' O'Neill is speechless."

-TIME, "Confessions of a White House Insider" (below)

   (M.O.W. editorial insert)//

Vice President Dick Cheney has gone to great lengths to claim that there are very few connections between Halliburton and the U.S. government. He has also claimed that scrutiny of Halliburton only comes from political opponents who are "desperate." In each of his claims, the facts tell a very different story.

     Government Contracts

     "The government had absolutely nothing to do with [my economic success at Halliburton]." ­ Dick Cheney, 10/5/00

     FACT: "Cheney's comment left out how closely Dallas-based Halliburton's fortunes are linked to the U.S. government. The world's largest oil services firm is a leading U.S. defense contractor and has benefited from financial guarantees granted by U.S. agencies. During Cheney's five years as chairman and chief executive, Halliburton was identified as a potential participant in 10 loans or loan guarantees valued at a total of $1.8 billion awarded by the U.S. government. Additionally, during Cheney's tenure, the U.S. Defense Department granted Halliburton contracts valued at about $1.8 billion, according to department records." In 1999 alone, "the Pentagon ranked Halliburton the No. 17 recipient of ''prime contract awards'' with $657.5 million." ­ Bloomberg News, 10/6/00

      "I wouldn't know how to manipulate the [government contract] process if I wanted to." ­ Dick Cheney, 1/22/04

     FACT: "A report by the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity suggested that Halliburton essentially cashed in - doubling the value of its government contracts - on Cheney. The company took in revenue of $ 2.3 billion on government contracts ," which was "up $1.2 billion from the five-year period before he arrived." ­ LA Times, 10/19/00 ; Chicago Tribune, 8/10/00 ; AFP, 12/14/03

     Charges Against Halliburton

      Cheney said: "Halliburton gets unfairly maligned simply because of their past association with me.' He said allegations of corruption stem from 'desperate' political opponents who 'can't find any legitimate policy differences to debate. He said critics haven't produced any evidence to support their claim, which he said is unfounded." ­ Dow Jones, 1/22/04

     FACT: Halliburton itself has acknowledged that it "accepted up to $6 million in kickbacks" in its no-bid contract work in Iraq . Additionally, it is the Bush Administration ­ not "political opponents" that is looking into allegations that the company overcharged the government by $61 million. And it is the Bush Administration that "repeatedly warned the company that the food it was serving the 110,000 U.S. troops in Iraq was 'dirty'" with an audit finding "blood all over the floor" of its kitchens, "dirty pans," and "rotting meats ... and vegetables." - Boston Globe, 1/23/04; CBS, 12/12/03;

   

(M.O.W. editorial insert--whitehouse.org)

Cheney's Continued Links to Halliburton

     Vice President Dick Cheney continues to say that he has no ties to Halliburton since joining the GOP ticket in 2000. He also promised to clear himself from any conflict of interest should he become Vice President. In each of his claims, the facts tell a very different story.   

 "But what I'll have to do, assuming we're successful [in the election], is divest myself, that is, sell any remaining shares that I have in the company."  ­ Dick Cheney, 7/30/00

     FACT: A congressional report found that Cheney still owns "more than 433,000 Halliburton stock options," including "100,000 shares at $54.50 per share, 33,333 shares at $28.125 and 300,000 shares at $39.50 per share."  CNN, 9/25/03

  "I severed my ties with Halliburton when I became a candidate for Vice President in August of 2000." ­ Dick Cheney, 1/22/04

     FACT: Along with the 433,000 stock options, "Cheney still receives about $150,000 a year" from Halliburton. ­ CNN, 10/25/03

     "What happens financially [by joining the GOP ticket], obviously, is I take a bath , in one sense." ­ Dick Cheney, 7/25/00

     FACT: Halliburton "has agreed to let Mr. Cheney, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, retire with a package worth an estimated $20 million, according to people who have reviewed the deal." ­ NY Times, 8/12/00

(M.O.W. editorial insert--whitehouse.org)

 Conflict of Interest

  "I'll do whatever I have to do to, Sam, to avoid a conflict of interest. I will eliminate the conflict. I can assure you, I've said repeatedly, I will not tolerate or be party to a conflict of interests while I'm vice president. I'll do whatever I have to do to resolve that conflict." ­ Dick Cheney, 8/27/00

     FACT: A congressional report found that "the more than 433,000 stock options he possesses 'is considered among the 'ties' retained in or 'linkages to former employers' that may 'represent a continuing financial interest' in those employers which makes them potential conflicts of interest." ­ CNN, 9/25/03

 Cheney's Tenure at Halliburton

     Vice President Dick Cheney has told many stories about his time at Halliburton. And even as criticism mounts over Halliburton's treatment of U.S. troops and taxpayers, he continues to say he is proud of the company.

 "I had a firm policy that I wouldn't do anything in Iraq even arrangements that were supposedly legal. We've not done any business in Iraq since the sanctions were imposed and I had a standing policy that I wouldn't do that." ­ Dick Cheney, 8/27/00

     FACT: "According to oil industry executives and confidential United Nations records, however, Halliburton held stakes in two firms that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer of the Dallas-based company. Two former senior executives of the Halliburton subsidiaries say that, as far as they knew, there was no policy against doing business with Iraq . One of the executives also says that although he never spoke directly to Cheney about the Iraqi contracts, he is certain Cheney knew about them. The Halliburton subsidiaries joined dozens of American and foreign oil supply companies that helped Iraq increase its crude exports from $4 billion in 1997 to nearly $18 billion in 2000. Since the program began, Iraq has exported oil worth more than $40 billion." ­ WP, 6/23/01

(M.O.W. editorial insert--whitehouse.org)
Halliburton's Reputation

  "Halliburton is a fine company, and I'm pleased that I was associated with the company." ­ Dick Cheney, 8/7/02

     FACT: Halliburton has acknowledged that it "accepted up to $6 million in kickbacks" in its contract work in Iraq . It is also under scrutiny over allegations of overcharging the government by $61 million in Iraq ­ a practice the company was previously fined $2 million for. The company also potentially faces criminal charges in a $180 million international bribery scandal during the time Cheney was CEO of the company. The Pentagon has also " repeatedly warned the company that the food it was serving the 110,000 U.S. troops in Iraq was 'dirty'" with an audit finding "blood all over the floor" of its kitchens, "dirty pans, dirty grills, dirty salad bars and rotting meats and vegetables."

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"Cheney has always had a Hobbesian view of life. The world is a dangerous place; war is the natural state of mankind; enemies lurk." /// (M.O.W. ed///itorial insert)

Their Master's Voice

By MAUREEN DOWD The New York imes November 13, 2003
WASHINGTON

It must be the voice.

It is the basso pretendo profundo voice of the dean of boys in a strict private school. At the tables of power, he speaks so sparsely and softly in that low hypnotic monotone, with that lower jaw tilting to the side in a self-assured "I only talk out of one side of my mouth" kind of way, that others at the table have no choice but to listen up. He is the one who must be obeyed.

Dick Cheney's dry Wyoming voice has the same effect on some male Republicans, starting at the very top, and even some journalists, that a high-pitched whistle has on a dog. How else to explain the vice president's success in creating a parallel universe inside the White House that is shaping the real universe?

Congressman Charles Rangel of New York introduced a resolution this week urging President Bush to fire Donald Rumsfeld for misleading the American public about how well the war and the occupation are going, and for sending American forces into battle "without adequate planning" and showing "a lack of sensitivity" about U.S. casualties.

Certainly, Rummy is a worthy target. But maybe Mr. Rangel should aim higher. If the Pentagon is responsible for mismanaging the occupation in Iraq, it is the vice president's office that is responsible for the paranoid vision - the "with us or against us" biceps flex against the world - that got us into this long, hard slog.

This week's Newsweek cover story on the vice president characterized a recent article by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker as raising the question of whether "Cheney had, in effect, become the dupe of a cabal of neoconservative full-mooners, the Pentagon's mysteriously named Office of Special Plans, and the patsy of an alleged bank swindler and would-be ruler of Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi."

Mr. Cheney's parallel universe is a Bizarro world where no doubts exist. He indulges in extremes of judgment, overpessimistic about our ability to contain Saddam and overoptimistic about the gratitude we would encounter as "liberators" in Iraq.

In Cheneyworld, the invasion of Iraq has made the world a safer place (tell it to the Italians), W.M.D. are still concealed in all those Iraqi basements, every Iraqi insurgent is a card-carrying member of Al Qaeda, and the increase in attacks on Americans reflects the guerrillas' desperation, not their strengths. Guerrilla attacks on American soldiers are labeled acts of terrorism rather than acts of war, even though the official U.S. definition describes terrorism as attacks on civilians.

As Eric Schmitt reported in The Times this week, Mr. Cheney has implied in recent speeches that Al Qaeda is responsible for the major attacks in Iraq this past summer, even though senior military and intelligence officials say there is no conclusive evidence for that. Clearly, Mr. Cheney remains oblivious to the fact that the president has already had to correct the vice president's previous assertion that the government did not know whether Saddam Hussein had a connection to the 9/11 attacks. Mr. Bush conceded that "no, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th."

But while some have suggested that the president feels let down by Mr. Rumsfeld, he still seems seduced by the siren call of that deep Cheney voice and lugubrious Cheney world view. As Newsweek suggested, quoting those who know him: "Cheney has always had a Hobbesian view of life. The world is a dangerous place; war is the natural state of mankind; enemies lurk."

Mr. Cheney's darkness ends up dominating Mr. Bush's lightness.

As Newsweek noted, the vice president cherry-picks the intelligence, then feeds his version of reality to Mr. Bush. The president leaves himself open to manipulation because, by his own admission, he doesn't read the papers and relies on his inner circle to filter information to him.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported yesterday that the C.I.A. had issued a top-secret report from Iraq, endorsed by Paul Bremer, warning that growing numbers of Iraqis are concluding that the U.S. can be defeated and are supporting the insurgents.

The question is whether other voices can ever break through that sonorous ominous murmuring in the president's ear.

© 2004 New York Times Company  (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)			

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    Cheney's Latest Distortions

  /   By The Center for American Progress
    Friday 23 January 2004

    In January 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney did a round of media interviews with NPR and others in which he reinforced his claims of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. To back these claims up, he cited documents already discredited as "inaccurate" by the Bush Administration.

 SADDAM-AL QAEDA CONNECTION

     CHENEY CLAIM: "There's overwhelming evidence there was a connection between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government. I am very confident that there was an established relationship there." - Vice President Cheney, 1/22/04

   FACT: According to documents, "Saddam Hussein warned his Iraqi supporters to be wary of joining forces with foreign Arab fighters entering Iraq to battle U.S. troops. The document provides another piece of evidence challenging the Bush administration contention of close cooperation between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda terrorists." [NY Times, 1/15/04]

    FACT: "CIA interrogators have already elicited from the top Qaeda officials in custody that, before the American-led invasion, Osama bin Laden had rejected entreaties from some of his lieutenants to work jointly with Saddam." [NY Times, 1/15/04]

    FACT: "Sec. of State Colin Powell conceded Thursday that despite his assertions to the United Nations last year, he had no 'smoking gun' proof of a link between the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and terrorists of al-Qaeda.'I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection,' Powell said." [NY Times, 1/9/04]

    FACT: "Three former Bush Administration officials who worked on intelligence and national security issues said the prewar evidence tying Al Qaeda was tenuous, exaggerated and often at odds with the conclusions of key intelligence agencies." [National Journal, 8/9/03]

    FACT: Declassified documents "undercut Bush administration claims before the war that Hussein had links to Al Qaeda." [LA Times, 7/19/03].

    FACT: "The chairman of the monitoring group appointed by the United Nations Security Council to track Al Qaeda told reporters that his team had found no evidence linking Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein." [NY Times, 6/27/03]

    FACT: "U.S. allies have found no links between Iraq and Al Qaeda.'We have found no evidence of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda,' said Europe's top investigator. 'If there were such links, we would have found them. But we have found no serious connections whatsoever.'" [LA Times, 11/4/02]

YASIM ALLEGATION

   CHENEY CLAIM: "Abdul Rahman Yasim arrived back in Iraq and was put on the payroll and provided a house, safe harbor and sanctuary. So Saddam Hussein had an established track record of providing safe harbor and sanctuary for terrorists." ­ Vice President Cheney, 1/22/04

    FACT: "Even if the new information holds up - and intelligence and law enforcement officials disagree on its conclusiveness - the links tying Yasin, Saddam and al-Qaeda are tentative." [USA Today, 9/17/03]

SUPPORTING EVIDENCE

     CHENEY CLAIM: "You ought to go look at an article that Stephen Hayes did in the Weekly Standard here a few weeks ago, that goes through and lays out in some detail, based on an assessment that was done by the Department of Defense and forwarded to the Senate Intelligence Committee some weeks ago. That's your best source of information" to justify the Saddam-Al Qaeda claim. ­ Vice President Cheney, 1/9/04

    FACT: "Reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee are inaccurate. Individuals who leak or purport to leak classified information are doing serious harm to national security; such activity is deplorable and may be illegal." [DoD, 11/15/03]

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    Halliburton Contract Critic Loses Her Job
    By Griff Witte
    The Washington Post

Monday 29 August 2005

Go to Original

Performance review cited in removal.

    A high-level contracting official who has been a vocal critic of the Pentagon's decision to give Halliburton Co. a multibillion-dollar, no-bid contract for work in Iraq, was removed from her job by the Army Corps of Engineers, effective Saturday.

    Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, commander of the Army Corps, told Bunnatine H. Greenhouse last month that she was being removed from the senior executive service, the top rank of civilian government employees, because of poor performance reviews. Greenhouse's attorney, Michael D. Kohn, appealed the decision Friday in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, saying it broke an earlier commitment to suspend the demotion until a "sufficient record" was available to address her allegations.

    The Army said last October that it would refer her complaints to the Defense Department's inspector general. The failure to abide by the agreement and the circumstances of the removal "are the hallmark of illegal retaliation," Kohn wrote to Rumsfeld. He said the review Strock cited to justify his action "was conducted by the very subjects" of Greenhouse's allegations, including the general.

    Carol Sanders, a spokeswoman for the Army Corps, said she could not comment on personnel matters, but noted that the Department of the Army approves all actions involving members of the senior executive service.

    Greenhouse came to prominence last year when she went public with her concerns over the volume of Iraq-related work given to Halliburton by the Corps without competition. The Houston-based oil services giant already had a competitively awarded contract to provide logistics support for the military in the Middle East and was awarded a no-bid contract to repair Iraq oil fields on the eve of the war there in 2003.

    Greenhouse complained internally about that contract. Last fall she started giving interviews to national publications. And in June she testified before a Democrat-sponsored Capitol Hill event on contracting in Iraq.

    "I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR represents the most blatant and improper abuse I have witnessed" in 20 years working on government contracts, Greenhouse said at the Democratic forum.

    She said the independence of the Corps' contracting process was compromised in the handling of the contact. "I observed, first hand, that essentially every aspect of the [Restore Iraqi Oil] contract remained under the control of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. This troubled me and was wrong."

 

Watch how a democracy deals with wrongdoing and with scandal" - Donald Rumsfeld

    Greenhouse has been the Army Corps' top procurement official since 1997. Then-commander Gen. Joe N. Ballard has said he wanted Greenhouse -- a black woman -- to provide a jolt to the clubby, old-boys' network that had long dominated the contracting process at the Corps.

    Since then, Greenhouse has developed a reputation among those in both government and industry as being a stickler for the rules. To her critics, she's a foot-dragging, inflexible bureaucrat. To her supporters, she's been a staunch defender of the taxpayers' dime.

    In the lead-up to the Iraq war in 2003, Greenhouse objected to a decision to give a five-year, no-bid contract to KBR for putting out the oil fires that Pentagon officials believed retreating Iraqi troops would set as the United States invaded. KBR had earlier been hired to write the plans for how that work would be conducted.

    When the time came to award the Restore Iraqi Oil contract, the terms stipulated that the contractor had to have knowledge of KBR's plan. KBR was the only contractor deemed eligible. Normally, contractors that prepare cost estimates and plans are excluded from bidding on the work that arises from those plans.

    When superiors overruled her objections to awarding the contract to KBR without competition, she recorded her concerns by writing next to her signature on the contract a warning that the length of the deal could convey the perception that limited competition was intended.

    As Greenhouse became more vocal internally, she said she was increasingly excluded from decisions and shunned by her bosses.

    Last October, Greenhouse has said, Maj. Gen. Robert Griffin, the Corps' deputy commander, told her that he was demoting her, citing negative performance reviews. He also gave her the option to retire. Instead, she hired a lawyer and took her story to the public. jd

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/ "Watch how a democracy deals with wrongdoing and with scandal" ;/ - Donald Rumsfeld // "In America, you can go on the air and kid the politicians, and the politicians can go on the air and kid the people." / - Groucho Marx /

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(M.O.W. ed///itorial insert)

Marvels of Hypocrisy

By Molly Ivins

Thursday, December 18, 2003

LOS ANGELES -- Well! I am certainly glad to see that we are telling off the French, Germans and Russians. I couldn't agree more with the Bush administration that those treacherous, undependable countries should be punished for their past cooperation with Saddam by being shut out of the $18.6 billion in Iraqi reconstruction contracts. No contracts for quislings! Someone's got to uphold of standards of morality and purity, and who better than us? As the president so often reminds us, this is a fight between good and evil.

I was particularly pleased when Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz took that sharp little dig at all three countries when he said a prime consideration for who gets the contracts was "protection of the essential security interests of the United States." And was there ever anything more inimical to our security than all those tons and tons of weapons of mass destruction we have found in Iraq? That'll teach those vodka-swilling Rooskies to think our security is not their affair. Way to go, Wolfie.

Of course, it was a little awkward that Wolfowitz gave the three Saddam-dealing nations that body slam just as former Secretary of State James Baker was setting out to ask them for money. That did sort of bring up Casey Stengel's plaintive question, "Doesn't anybody here know how to play this game?" But the beauty of our position is its moral clarity. Surely the French, Germans and Russians won't mind being cut out and dissed just when we're asking them for money -- it would be so petty of them.

I was especially entranced to read about the moral case for stiffing these nations on the op-ed page of The New York Times in an article by Claudia Rosett, (LIES AND THE LYING LIARS WHO TELL THEM) senior fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. It says on its website that the foundation is against terrorism, thus distinguishing it from all the foundations in favor of terrorism.

Rosett calls the three delinquent countries "the Axis of Avarice." Isn't that cute? In all fairness, the senior fellow reminds us: "Remember, plenty of money flowed through Saddam Hussein's Iraq ... many countries took part in that frenzy of lending, including Japan as the No. 1 sovereign lender. Then came Russia, France and Germany and, yes, the United States as No. 5." But surely you see the immense moral difference between being No. 5, as opposed to being 2, 3 or 4? All the difference in the world.

Rosett continues: "But in the 1990s, as the Iraqi dictator's depravities became increasingly evident to the rest of the world, that list narrowed." (Actually, his depravities had been evident to many of us as far back as the days when the Reagan administration was sending Saddam arms.)

The senior fellow continues: "Under the U.N.'s oil-for-food program, the despot got to tap his preferred business partners. ... What began as a relief program for Iraqis suffering under sanctions turned into a multibillion dollar contracting business flowing through the shrouded books of the United Nations. By the end, the Russians were selling the Baathist elite luxury cars, the French were providing broadcasting equipment for the Information Ministry, and the Germansand Chinese worked on the phone system. ... Old Europe's indignation over the (U.S.) list is a marvel of hypocrisy."

Speaking of marvels of hypocrisy, the U.N.'s books on who dealt with Iraq are not all that shrouded. For example, one of the disgusting companies actually making profits from dealing with the despicable dictator in the 1990s -- long after his depravities had become evident to even the less attentive sectors of the world -- was, well, golly, look at this, Halliburton. Between 1997 and 2000, while Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, the company sold $73 million worth of oilfield equipment and services to Saddam Hussein.

At least Halliburton was not selling luxury cars to the Baathist elite. Halliburton, the oilfield equipment company, merely kept Saddam Hussein's oil fields pumping, the only thing that allowed the s.o.b. to stay in power. Halliburton cleverly ran its business with Saddam through two of its subsidiaries, Dresser Rand and Ingersoll-Dresser, in order to avoid the sanctions.

Unlike the Germans, the French and the Russians, Halliburton was not punished by the Bush administration for dealing with the dictator. Instead, it got the largest reconstruction contract given by this administration, with an estimated value between $5 billion and $15 billion. And the company got the contract without competitive bidding.

(M.O.W. editorial inser)

Halliburton has amply repaid the administration's faith. The Pentagon is now investigating the company for at least $120 million in overcharges, including $60 million for importing gasoline into Iraq and $67 million on a food services contract. Among the allegations are that Halliburton had blood in its food service refrigerators and is serving our soldiers rotten meat.

I think the French will particularly enjoy being lectured on their hypocrisy, preferably by Cheney himself. It's the kind of thing sophisticated people especially appreciate.

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/ (M.O.W. editorial insert--whitehouse.org)

"Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Haliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer."

A Pack of Lies

British Respect Party MP George Galloway

"I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims, did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning. Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong, and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies."

"..On the very first page of your document about me you assert that I have had 'many meetings' with Saddam Hussein. This is false.

"I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once in August of 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as "many meetings" with Saddam Hussein.

"As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defence made of his.

"I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and Americans governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas. I used to demonstrate outside the Iraqi embassy when British and American officials were going in and doing commerce./

"...If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today. Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth.
 
"Have a look at
the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Haliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer.
 
"Have a look at
the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where? Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it.
 
"Have a look at
the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee. That the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own Government."
 

- Excerpts from British Respect Party MP George Galloway's testimony in front of the farcical (and monumentally hypocritcal) Senate inquiiry into war profiteering by other people).

The most highly charged testimony since the Mc Carthy hearings. COMPLETE VIDEO

An excellent ARTICLE on the Galloway testimony by Julian Borger, The Guardian UK

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"We have the first, if you will, Co-Presidency, and I think Cheney is--we just had Woodward's revelations further confirm what I had found. And we know that this man has enormous powers. But only Dick Cheney and George Bush really know exactly what's going on, but I think Dick Cheney is shrewd enough that he lets Bush wake up every morning and believe he's President. "

- Former Nixon counsel John Dean interview on PBS' Tavis Smiley show http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/archive/20040421_transcript.html

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Charlie McCarthy Hearings By MAUREEN DOWD The New York Times April 1, 2004 / (M.O.W. editorial insert)

Following is the text of a letter sent yesterday to Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton of the Sept. 11 commission from Alberto R. Gonzales, counsel to President Bush.

While we continue to hold to the principles underlying the Constitutional separation of powers, that the appropriate and patriotic action for the Commission is to shut down and stop pestering us, the President is prepared, in the interest of comity and popularity, to testify, subject to the conditions set forth below.

The President at all times, even on trips to the men's room, will be accompanied by the Vice President.

The Commission must agree in writing that it will not pose any questions directly to the President. Mr. Bush's statements will be restricted to asides on Dick Cheney's brushoffs, as in "Just like he said," "Roger that" and "Ditto."

Another necessary condition, in keeping with the tenets of executive privilege: Mr. Cheney will require that the Commission observe the rules of his favorite show from the Eisenhower Administration, "What's My Line?" The panelists, in the manner of Dorothy Kilgallen and Bennett Cerf, must try to guess what the President and Vice President didn't know and when they didn't know it through questions that elicit a "yes" or "no."

After 10 "no" answers, the panel will not be allowed to question Mr. Cheney or anyone else in the Administration ever again. In the mystery-guest round, Richard Ben-Veniste, Bob Kerrey and other Democrats on the Commission will be blindfolded.

(Or Mr. Cheney is willing to follow the precedent of Garry Moore and Bess Meyerson, using "I've Got A Secret" rules: The Vice President will whisper a secret about the Administration's inadequate response to terrorism in the President's ear and each panelist will have 30 seconds to question Mr. Cheney in an attempt to guess the secret, which he will not reveal even if they guess right.)

As an additional accommodation, the President and Vice President have now agreed to take a "pinkie oath," looping little fingers with each other, while reserving the right to cross the index and middle fingers of their remaining hands and hide them behind their backs.

(M.O.W. editorial insert)

We must deny your request that Mr. Cheney bring along a PowerPoint presentation depicting who was in and out of the loop, in accordance with separation-of-PowerPoint principles. The Vice President has decreed that the loop of influence is under the cone of silence.

The White House is taking the extraordinary step of bowing to public opinion - even though Mr. Cheney states that he doesn't give two hoots about public opinion. Therefore, the Vice President will only entertain questions about negligence in fighting terrorism concerning the critical period between Jan. 21, 1993, and Jan. 20, 2001. As President Bush stated on Tuesday, March 30, the Commission must gain "a complete picture of the months and years before Sept. 11."

The Vice President will not address any queries about why no one reacted to George Tenet's daily "hair on fire" alarms to the President about a coming Al Qaeda attack;

or why the President was so consumed with chopping and burning cedar on his Crawford ranch that he ignored the warning in an Aug. 6, 2001, briefing that Al Qaeda might try to hijack aircraft;

or why the President asked for a plan to combat Al Qaeda in May and then never followed up while Richard Clarke's aggressive plan was suffocated by second-raters;

or why the President was never briefed by his counterterrorism chief on anything but cybersecurity until Sept. 11;

or why the Administration-in-amber made so many cold war assumptions, such as thinking that terrorists had to be sponsored by a state even as terrorists had taken over a state;

or why the President went along with the Vice President and the neocons to fool the American public into believing that Saddam had a hand in the 9/11 attacks;

or why the Administration chose to undercut the war on terrorism and inflame the Arab world by attacking Iraq, without a plan to protect our perilously overextended forces or to exit with a realistic hope that a democracy will be left behind.

The Commission must not, under any circumstances, ask the Vice President why American soldiers and civilians in Iraq are being egreted with barbarous infernos rather than flowery bouquets.

Finally, we request that when the President finishes with this painful teeth-pulling visit, the Commission shall offer him a lollipop.  

© 2004 New York Times Company 
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
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/

 

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.

.__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ .// The Mystery Deepens   The New York Times | Editorial

  Saturday 3 April 2004

  The Bush administration's handling of the bipartisan commission investigating the 9/11 tragedy grows worse and more oddly self-destructive with each passing day. Following its earlier attempts to withhold documents from the panel and then to deny its members vital testimony, we now learn that President Bush's staff has been withholding thousands of pages of Clinton administration papers as well.

  Bill Clinton authorized the release of nearly 11,000 pages of files on his administration's antiterrorism efforts for use by the commission. But aides to Mr. Clinton said the White House, which now has control of the papers, vetoed the transfer of over three-quarters of them. The White House held the documents for more than six weeks, apparently without notifying the commission, and might have kept them indefinitely if Bruce Lindsey, the general counsel of Mr. Clinton's presidential foundation, had not publicly complained this week. Yesterday the commission said the White House had agreed to allow its lawyers to review the withheld documents, but without guaranteeing any would be released.

  This latest distressing episode followed the White House's pattern of resisting the commission in private and then, once the dispute becomes public, reluctantly giving up the minimum amount of ground. Earlier in the week, Mr. Bush finally agreed to allow Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, to testify under oathbut only after extracting a commitment that the commission would not seek any further public testimony from any White House official. After months of foot-dragging, Mr. Bush also grudgingly agreed to let the panel question him and Vice President Dick Cheney privately. Last year the Pentagon, the Justice Department and other agencies stonewalled the commission's requests for documents until its chairman, Thomas Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, complained publicly.

  Explaining the latest act of obstruction, Scott McClellan, the president's spokesman, said on Thursday that some documents were duplicative, unrelated or "highly sensitive." The White House, he said, had given the commission "all the information they need." Mr. Bush's staff should not be making that judgment. The commission's 10 members can be trusted with sensitive material.

  Moreover, given the repeated criticism of this administration's obsessive secrecy on other issues, it is astonishing that it would still withhold anything that did not pose an immediate and dire threat to national security. The American people would like to know that they have a government that freely gives information to legitimate investigations on matters of grave national interest, not one that fights each reasonable request until it is exposed and forced to submit. The White House is serving no public purpose by acting less interested than the rest of us in having this commission do its vital work. Its ham-handed behavior is also gravely damaging the entire concept of executive privilege.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

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Presidential assistant Donald Rumsfeld, right, and his deputy Richard Cheney meet with reporters at the White House in Washington, D.C., Thursday, Nov. 7, 1975. At that time Rumsfeld and Cheney were persuading Ford to veto one of the most important Watergate-inspired reforms, an enhanced Freedom of Information Act, designed to guarantee public and media scrutiny of the FBI and other agencies. - " Restoring the imperial presidency" by Bruce Shapiro http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2002/06/17/bush_watergate/print.html
//

"We're through the looking glass here, people. Where white is black and black white" - District Attorney Jim Garrison in 'JFK". / ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

"We won the midterms. This is our due."


Confessions of a White House Insider

A book about Treasury's
Paul O'Neill paints a presidency where ideology and politics rule the day

By JOHN F. DICKERSON

From the Jan. 19, 2004 issue of TIME magazine

"These people are nasty and they have a long memory," he tells Suskind. But he also believes that by speaking out even in the face of inevitable White House wrath, he can demonstrate loyalty to something he prizes: the truth. "

Saturday, Jan. 10, 2004
If anyone would listen to him, Paul O'Neill thought, Dick Cheney would. The two had served together during the Ford Administration, and now as the Treasury Secretary fought a losing battle against another round of tax cuts, he figured that his longtime colleague would give him a hearing.

O'Neill had been preaching that a fiscal crisis was looming and more tax cuts would exacerbate it. But others in the White House saw a chance to capitalize on the historic Republican congressional gains in the 2002 elections. Surely, Cheney would not be so smug. He would hear O'Neill out. In an economic meeting in the Vice President's office, O'Neill started pitching, describing how the numbers showed that growing budget deficits threatened the economy. Cheney cut him off. "Reagan proved deficits don't matter," he said. O'Neill was too dumbfounded to respond. Cheney continued: "We won the midterms. This is our due."

A month later, Paul O'Neill was fired, ending the rocky two-year tenure of Bush's first Treasury Secretary, who became known for his candid statements and the controversies that followed them. Rarely had a person who spoke so freely been embedded so high in an Administration that valued frank public remarks so little.

Now O'Neill is speaking with the same bracing style in a book written by Pulitzer prizewinning journalist Ron Suskind. The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill traces the former Alcoa CEO's rise and fall through the Administration: from his return to Washington to work for his third President, whom he believed would govern from the sensible center, through O'Neill's disillusionment, to his firing, executed in a surreal conversation with Cheney, a man he once considered a fellow traveler. Suskind had access not only to O'Neill but also to the saddlebags he took with him when he left town, which included a minute-by-minute accounting of his 23 months in office and 19,000 pages of documents on CD-ROM.

So, what does O'Neill reveal? According to the book, ideology and electoral politics so dominated the domestic-policy process during his tenure that it was often impossible to have a rational exchange of ideas. The incurious President was so opaque on some important issues that top Cabinet officials were left guessing his mind even after face-to-face meetings. Cheney is portrayed as an unstoppable force, unbowed by inconvenient facts as he drives Administration policy toward his goals.

(M.O.W. editorial insert)

O'Neill's tone in the book is not angry or sour, though it prompted a tart response from the Administration. "We didn't listen to him when he was there," said a top aide. "Why should we now?"

But the book is blunt, and in person O'Neill can be even more so. Discussing the case for the Iraq war in an interview with TIME, O'Neill, who sat on the National Security Council, says the focus was on Saddam from the early days of the Administration. He offers the most skeptical view of the case for war ever put forward by a top Administration official. "In the 23 months I was there, I never saw anything that I would characterize as evidence of weapons of mass destruction," he told TIME. "There were allegations and assertions by people.

But I've been around a hell of a long time, and I know the difference between evidence and assertions and illusions or allusions and conclusions that one could draw from a set of assumptions. To me there is a difference between real evidence and everything else. And I never saw anything in the intelligence that I would characterize as real evidence." A top Administration official says of the wmd intelligence: "That information was on a need- to-know basis. He wouldn't have been in a position to see it."

From his first meeting with the President, O'Neill found Bush unengaged and inscrutable, an inside account far different from the shiny White House brochure version of an unfailing leader questioning aides with rapid-fire intensity. The two met one-on-one almost every week, but O'Neill says he had trouble divining his boss's goals and ideas. Bush was a blank slate rarely asking questions or issuing orders, unlike Nixon and Ford, for whom O'Neill also worked. "I wondered from the first, if the President didn't know the questions to ask," O'Neill says in the book, "or if he did know and just not want to know the answers? Or did his strategy somehow involve never showing what he thought? But you can ask questions, gather information and not necessarily show your hand. It was strange." In larger meetings, Bush was similarly walled off. Describing top-level meetings, O'Neill tells Suskind that during the course of his two years the President was "like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people."

"I guess it's just I've tried to think a step ahead. A president must do that. And the other job that I have is to ask questions ­ some of them may be the questions that aren't worth asking, but I'm not afraid to ask them. That's one of the things that I'm now very comfortable with. There is no such thing as a dumb question, by me or anybody else on our team."

- George W. Bush, from an interview conducted by Bob Woodward in Crawford, Texas, for 'The Washington Post, 20 November 2002

In his interview with TIME, O'Neill winces a little at that quote. He's worried it's too stark and now allows that it may just be Bush's style to keep his advisers always guessing. In Suskind's book, O'Neill's assessment of Bush's executive style is a harsh one: it is portrayed as a failure of leadership. Aides were left to play "blind man's bluff," trying to divine Bush's views on issues like tax policy, global warming and North Korea. Sometimes, O'Neill says, they had to float an idea in the press just to scare a reaction out of him. This led to public humiliation when the President contradicted his top officials, as he did Secretary of State Colin Powell on North Korea and Environmental Protection Agency administrator Christine Todd Whitman on global warming. O'Neill came to believe that this gang of three beleaguered souls--only Powell remains--who shared a more nonideological approach were used for window dressing. We "may have been there, in large part, as cover," he tells Suskind.

If the President was hard to read, the White House decision-making process was even more mysterious. Each time O'Neill tried to gather data, sift facts and insert them into the system for debate, he would find discussion sheared off before it could get going. He tried to build fiscal restraint into Bush's tax plan but was thwarted by those who believed, as he says, that "tax cuts were good at any cost." He was losing debates before they had begun. The President asked for a global-warming plan one minute and then while it was being formulated, announced that he was reversing a campaign pledge to cut carbon dioxide emissions and pulling out unceremoniously from the Kyoto global- warming treaty, short-circuiting his aides' work. The President was "clearly signing on to strong ideological positions that had not been fully thought through," says O'Neill. As for the appetite for new ideas in the White House, he told Suskind, "that store is closed."

To grope his way out of the wilderness, O'Neill turned to his old friends from the Ford Administration, Alan Greenspan and Dick Cheney. According to the book, Greenspan agreed with many of his proposals but could not do much from his Delphian perch. When O'Neill sought guidance from the Vice President about how to install a system that would foster vigorous and transparent debate, he got grumbles and silence but little sympathy. Soon O'Neill concluded that his powerful old colleague was rowing in a different direction."I realized why Dick just nodded along when I said all of this, over and over, and nothing ever changed," he says in the book. "This is the way Dick likes it."

Where ideology did not win, electoral politics did. Overruling many of his advisers, the President decided to impose tariffs on imported steel to please voters in key swing states like Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio.

When the corporate scandals rocked Wall Street, O'Neill and Greenspan devised a plan to make CEOs accountable. Bush went with a more modest plan because "the corporate crowd," as O'Neill calls it in the book, complained loudly and Bush could not buck that constituency. "The biggest difference between then and now," O'Neill tells Suskind about his two previous tours in Washington, "is that our group was mostly about evidence and analysis, and Karl (Rove), Dick (Cheney), Karen (Hughes) and the gang seemed to be mostly about politics. It's a huge distinction."

A White House that seems to pick an outcome it wants and then marshal the facts to meet it seems very much like one that might decide to remove Saddam Hussein and then tickle the facts to meet its objective. That's the inescapable conclusion one draws from O'Neill's description of how Saddam was viewed from Day One. Though O'Neill is careful to compliment the cia for always citing the caveats in its findings, he describes a White House poised to overinterpret intelligence. "From the start, we were building the case against Hussein and looking at how we could take him out and change Iraq into a new country," he tells Suskind. "And, if we did that, it would solve everything. It was about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The President saying, 'Fine. Go find me a way to do this.'"

Cheney helped bring O'Neill into the Administration, acting as a shoehorn for O'Neill, who didn't know the President but trusted the wise counselor beside him. So it was perhaps fitting that Cheney would take O'Neill out. Weeks after Bush had assured O'Neill that rumored staff changes in the economic team did not mean his job was in peril, Cheney called. "Paul, the President has decided to make some changes in the economic team. And you're part of the change," he told O'Neill. The bloodless way he was cut loose by his old chum shocked O'Neill, Suskind writes, but what came after was even more shocking. Cheney asked him to announce that it was O'Neill's decision to leave Washington to return to private life. O'Neill refused, saying "I'm too old to begin telling lies now."

"Your never too old, you stupid ass... oh, and one more thing, Paul...

(...go fuck yourself.)

(M.O.W. editorial insert)

Suskind's book-informed by interviews with officials other than O'Neill-is only a partial view of the Bush White House. Bush's role on key topics like education, stem-cell research and aids funding is not explored. Bush's role as a military leader after 9/11 is discussed mostly through O'Neill's effort to stop terrorist funding. Bush comes across as mildly effective and pleased with O'Neill's work. The book does not try to cover how Bush engaged with his war cabinet during the Afghan conflict or how his leadership skills were deployed in the making of war. On the eve of the Iraq war, however, O'Neill does tell Suskind that he marvels at the President's conviction in light of what he considers paltry evidence: "With his level of experience, I would not be able to support his level of conviction."

There is no effort to offer an opposing analysis of O'Neill's portrayal of his tenure. The book lists his gaffes-he ridiculed Wall Street traders, accused Democrats of being socialists and disparaged business lobbyists who were seeking a tax credit that the President supported-but it portrays these moments as examples of brave truth telling in a town that doesn't like it. White House aides have a different view: It wasn't just that O'Neill was impolitic, they say; his statements had real consequences-roiling currency markets and Wall Street. What O'Neill would call rigor, Bush officials say, was an excessive fussiness that led to policy gridlock and sniping within the economic team.

O'Neill says he hopes that straight talk about the broken decision-making process in the White House will highlight the larger political and ideological warfare that has gripped Washington and kept good ideas from becoming law. Perhaps naively or arrogantly, or both, he even believes it may help change the climate. Ask him what he hopes the book will accomplish, and he will talk about Social Security reform in earnest tones: tough choices won't be made in Washington so long as it shuns honest dialogue, bipartisanship and intellectual thoroughness. O'Neill may not have been cut out for this town, but give him this: he does exhibit the sobriety and devotion to ideas that are supposed to be in vogue in the postironic, post- 9/11 age.

Loyalty is perhaps the most prized quality in the White House. In the book, O'Neill suggests a very dark understanding of what happens to those who don't show it. "These people are nasty and they have a long memory," he tells Suskind. But he also believes that by speaking out even in the face of inevitable White House wrath, he can demonstrate loyalty to something he prizes: the truth. "Loyalty to a person and whatever they say or do, that's the opposite of real loyalty, which is loyalty based on inquiry, and telling someone what you really think and feel-your best estimation of the truth instead of what they want to hear." That goal is worth the price of retribution, O'Neill says. Plus, as he told Suskind, "I'm an old guy, and I'm rich. And there's nothing they can do to hurt me."

- From the Jan. 19, 2004 issue of TIME magazine

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

THE DISINFORMER

"Who are you going to believe -- me, or your own eyes?" - Groucho Marx ______________________________________________________________________

/

Ex-CIA Agent on Cheney Iraq Speech:

"Longest Statement of Disinformation" Ever Fed U.S. Public
Democracy NOW, Friday, July 25th, 2003

"Former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman responded on Democracy Now! by describing Cheney's speech as "the longest statement of disinformation that I think the American government has distributed to the American people." Goodman went on to say, "For Dick Cheney to recite those charges we all know now not to be true adds to the terrible politicization of intelligence that's created a scandal in the intelligence community unlike anything I ever saw in my 24 years in the C.I.A. That includes the period of Vietnam, the period of the intelligence failure on the Soviet Union, and the incredibly contentious disputes over arms control." - "Longest Statement of Disinformation" Ever Fed U.S. Publicg

,,g"The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.... The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact." - "The Danger of American Fascism by Henry A Wallace, The New York Times, 1944

"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the State."

- Dr.Joseph Goebbels

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________herehje/bfherehje

 

Cheney loves Limbaugh, Rush loves Dick

"Most of us here in the media are what I consider infotainers... ... Rush Limbaugh is what I call a disinfotainer. He entertains by spreading disinformation." / - Al Franken, at the White House Correspondents' Dinner (4/23/94) fherehje/ __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ bfherehje

" On "60 Minutes" on Sunday, Mr. Clarke said the previously unsayable: that Mr. Bush, the self-proclaimed "war president," had "done a terrible job on the war against terrorism." After a few hours of shocked silence, the character assassination began. He "may have had a grudge to bear since he probably wanted a more prominent position," declared Dick Cheney, who also says that Mr. Clarke was "out of the loop." (What loop? Before 9/11, Richard. Clarke was the administration's top official on counterterrorism.) It's "more about politics and a book promotion than about policy," Scott McClellan said."

- From "Lifting the Shroud" by PAUL KRUGMAN , New York Times, March 23, 2004

Here are some quotes from Limbaugh, the man Dick Cheney chose to be his first interviewer in response to terrorism czar Richard Clarke's accusations about the Bush administration's incompetence and insanity:

"There is only one way to eliminate nuclear weapons...use them."

- "Rush Limbaugh's Original 35 Undeniable Truths of Life "

"Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up."

- Rush Limbaugh. October 5, 1995. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1159

"If you commit a crime, you're guilty."

"Did you know that the White House drug test is multiple choice?"

"What this says to me is that too many whites are getting away with drug use, too many whites are getting away with drug sales, too many whites are getting away with trafficking in this stuff. The answer to this disparity is not to start letting people out of jail because we're not putting others in jail who are breaking the law. The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too."

-- Rush Limbaugh. October 5, 1995 show transcript.http://www.takebackthemedia.com/gophotwrush.html

"It's kind of like sentencing. A lot of people say that we have a heavy sentence for this crime and a light sentence for another crime, and what we ought to do is reduce the heavy sentence so it's more in line with the other. Wrong. In most cases we ought to increase the light sentence and make it compatible with the heavy sentence, and be serious about punishment because we are becoming too tolerant as a society, folks, especially of crime, in too many parts of the country."

-- Rush Limbaugh. October 5, 1995 show transcript. http://www.takebackthemedia.com/gophotwrush.html

Imagine him making the above quotes by day, and meeting his dealer in a Denny's parking lot at night.

"The difference between Los Angeles and yogurt is that yogurt comes with less fruit."

"...the sponsors of these protests were not peace protesters at all. They are all talking about racism, environmental wackoism, feminism or other liberal causes. Very little about these protests was about the war in Iraq."

"If they were for peace, they would give every dollar they raise to the U.S. defense department because it's the U.S. defense department that keeps the peace and liberates the oppressed in the world and gives them the opportunity to have freedom, which is what we want for Iraq. It's beyond me how anybody can look at these protesters and call them anything other than what they are: anti-American, anti-capitalist, pro Marxists and communists."

- So much for freedom of expression in Rush's version of "democracy". Of course, this is just another lie--- at least 90% of the protest signs (in San Francisco at least) were about Iraq, and there were people of all kinds at the demonstrations: conservative Church groups, straight-laced businesmeen, hippies, punks, grandmothers, etc. etc. More lies and pure propaganda from the biggest hypocrite in media---Cheney's first choice as a venue to spew his spin unchecked on what members of Bush's own cabinet (Clarke and O'Neil) have to say about Bush administration deceit. - MOW Ed.

"If you commit a crime, you're guilty!"

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ./ "Four easily verifiable lies in just a few sentences"

Cheney's lies about the existence of an Iraq ­ 9/11 connection on his Meet the Press appearance last Sunday got some long-overdue attention, as pointed out in yesterday's AB post. But Cheney, being the fair-minded guy that he is, didn't restrict his lying to just one topic. He actually told several lies about economic issues in that appearance, as well. Let's go to the tape: 

Transcript from Meet the Press, September 14, 2003

VICE PRES. CHENEY: The deficit that we're running today, after we get the approval of the $87 billion, will still be less as a percentage of our total capacity to pay for it, our total economic activity in this country, than it was back in the '80s or the deficits we ran in the '90s. We're still about 4.7 percent of our total GDP. A significant chunk was taken out of the economy by what happened after the attacks of 9/11. 

MR. RUSSERT: And tax cuts. 

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Tax cuts accounted for only about 25 percent of the deficit. 

[And a minute later:] 
VICE PRES. CHENEY: The cost of one attack on 9/11 was
far greater than what we're spending in Iraq.

____________________________________________________________________

How many lies about economic issues can we find in these few sentences? At least four. 

1. "We're still about 4.7% of GDP." 
In actuality, the White House projects that the budget deficit will be $455 billion in 2003, and that GDP will be $10,746 bn in 2003. (You can find the White House estimates here. ) If you add the administration's request for $87 billion, my calculator tells me you get $542 billion. Which my calculator then tells me is 5.0% of GDP. (It's a very clever calculator.) Wait, maybe he was referring to FY2004, not 2003. Well, the White House projection is a deficit of $475 billion in 2004, not including Iraq. Add in $87 bn, and you get $562 bn, which is 5.0% of their projected 2004 GDP of $11,266 bn. So
he lied: the deficit is significantly above "4.7% of GDP." 

2. "The deficit we're running today will still be less than it was back in the 80s or the deficits we ran in the 90s." 
If you check the data (which you can find in Table 1.2 of this White House document), you will find that there are only two years in the 80s when the deficit was greater: 1983, and 1985 ­ and in 1985 it was just barely greater, at 5.1%. Cheney's statment implied that we regularly ran greater deficits back in the 80s. It is therefore misleading at best. And in the 90s? There are
zero years in the 90s when the deficit was 5.0% of GDP, so that's just a plain old lie. 

3. "Tax cuts accounted for only about 25 percent of the deficit." 
The CBO has conveniently provided estimates of the cost of the various Bush tax cuts, here here and
here. If you add up the estimates of the cost of the tax cuts contained in those three CBO documents, you get a total cost of tax cuts of $199 billion for 2003 and $293 billion for 2004. The White House projection of the deficit is $455 billion in 2003, and $475 billion for 2004. My clever calculator tells me that the tax cuts therefore are responsible for 44% of the deficit this year, and 52% of the deficit next year, once the additional Iraq request is included. So he lied: tax cuts definitely account for more than "about 25 percent" of the deficit. 

4. "The cost of one attack on 9/11 was far greater than what we're spending in Iraq." 
The CBO also has conveniently estimated the cost of 9/11, published in this document. They added up all spending on disaster relief, increased spending on counter-terrorism, increased defense spending related to the invasion of Afghanistan and other counter-terror operations, victim compensation funds, and the airline bailouts. How much is it? The total of 2001 through 2004 will be about $68.3 billion. As far as I can tell, the Bush administration's original request for
$64 billion for Iraq, plus its new request for $87 billion for Iraq, adds up to a number larger than $68.3 billion. So Cheney had it exactly backwards: Spending in Iraq is far greater than the cost of the attack on 9/11. 

Four easily verifiable lies in just a few sentences, by the Vice President of the United States on national television ­ pretty impressive! Lying liar. 

- "Kash", Angry Bear (Blogspot), Friday, September 19, 2003

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

/ "The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information."

.

 

" A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends. The supreme god of a fascist, to which his ends are directed, may be money or power; may be a race or a class; may be a military, clique or an economic group; or may be a culture, religion, or a political party.

  The perfect type of fascist throughout recent centuries has been the Prussian Junker, who developed such hatred for other races and such allegiance to a military clique as to make him willing at all times to engage in any degree of deceit and violence necessary to place his culture and race astride the world. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.

 "The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power.

They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead."

"During his tenure, according to oil industry executives and United Nations records, Halliburton did a brisk $73 million in business with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. While working face-to-face with Hussein, Cheney and Halliburton were also moving into position to capitalize upon Hussein's removal from power. In October of 1995, the same month Cheney was made CEO of Halliburton, that company announced a deal that would put it first in line should war break out in Iraq. Their job: To take control of burning oil wells, put out the fires, and prepare them for service."

   "Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion. American fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after "the present unpleasantness" ceases:

  "The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy. They use isolationism as a slogan to conceal their own selfish imperialism. They cultivate hate and distrust of both Britain and Russia.

"They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection."

  "The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power.

  - "The Danger of American Fascism", by Henry A. Wallace The New York Times, 1944 (FULL ARTICLE)

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ / /"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. /

To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.

To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.

To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.

To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to.

To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself

and those you love into slavery."

/

- Octavia Butler / __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

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Liars and Crooks and Warmongers, Oh My! / /_____________ / Smart People nrfnnfnf/ Bushwars / Bushlies / Cheneylies / Incurious George / St. George / King George (the madness of) / George the Lionheart and the New Crusades / George of Orwell / Georgie Warbucks / George W. Hoover / Vanishing Votes // Death Culture / Hall of Shame // 911 Accountability / (Not-so) Friendly Fascism / Project For A New American Perpetual War / Fanning the Flames of Fear, Loathing and Terror / T h e C o l l a t e r a l C h i l d r e n / About This Site: A Gathering Danger ______________ / Kurt Vonnegut Speaks  / Bill Moyers Rallies / Gore Vidal Rants / Mark Twain Sings ______________ .

 

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Liars and Crooks and Warmongers, Oh My!

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