The Reelection of Bush,No Problem!!

[Chanman]

The Truth About Bush?s ?Lies? An attack from the Left misfires.

here's an idea gaining momentum among Democrats and pundits on the left: George W. Bush is a bigger liar than Bill Clinton ever was. Writers like Paul Krugman of the New York Times, E. J. Dionne and Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, and Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect have all suggested that Bush has a serious problem with the truth, while others, like The Nation's Eric Alterman, have said flatly, "President Bush is a liar." The Post's Richard Cohen invoked Mary McCarthy's famous jab at Lillian Hellman - "Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'" - before concluding: "The same cannot yet be said about George W. Bush and his administration, but it has not been around as long as Hellman was and is not nearly as creative."

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On the web, Bushwatch.com maintains a special "Bush Lies" section, while another site, Dailyhowler.com, keeps up a running commentary on the president's alleged untruths. And this fall, sometime comedian Al Franken will no doubt be pushing the idea in his book, Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them - A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. In short, accusing the president of lying is a growth industry on the left.

What seems particularly galling to liberal writers is the notion that Bush is getting away with his lies even as his predecessor was flayed for lesser offenses. "If a Democrat, say, Bill Clinton, engaged in Bush-scale dishonesty, the press would be all over him," Drake Bennett and Heidi Pauken wrote in a recent issue of The American Prospect. "Unless the voters and the press start paying attention, all the president's lies will have little political consequence - except to certify that we have become something less than a democracy."

What's going on here? Certainly George W. Bush, like every other politician, has said things, sometimes in off-the-cuff remarks, that were wrong. But was he lying? Like Bill Clinton? As appealing as the idea may be to the president's opponents, a look at the record shows that the charges just don't stand up to scrutiny.

"FACTS ARE MALLEABLE"
One of the most influential articles questioning the president's credibility appeared last October on the front page of the Washington Post under the headline "For Bush, Facts Are Malleable." Reporter Dana Milbank wrote that a close look at Bush's statements on a range of subjects suggested that "a president who won election underscoring Al Gore's knack for distortions and exaggerations has been guilty of a few himself." Milbank placed Bush in a tradition of presidents like Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, the latter of whom, Milbank said, "fibbed" about his "personal indiscretions."

Milbank's case against Bush began with the October 7 address to the nation on the subject of Iraq, in which the president warned that Saddam Hussein had a growing fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that could be used, in Bush's words, "for missions targeting the United States." That statement, Milbank claimed, was "dubious, if not wrong," because a CIA report on the unmanned aircraft "said nothing about [their] having sufficient range to threaten the United States."

But Milbank quoted just a few words of Bush's speech. A more complete look at the text would have shown that Bush actually said: "We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical and biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States."

The longer statement puts Bush's words in a somewhat different light. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer wrote to the Post indicating that Milbank had "wrongly interpret[ed] the president to be saying that Iraq would launch the UAVs from Iraq. The president never suggested that. The threat from UAVs would come from their being launched from a ship or a truck or by their being smuggled into the United States."

Another Bush statement that Milbank labeled "dubious, if not wrong" was something the president said last September during a news conference with British prime minister Tony Blair. The president "cited a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] saying the Iraqis were 'six months away from developing a weapon,'" Milbank wrote. But Milbank said the IAEA report, which was issued in 1998, "made no such assertion."

In response, the White House argued that the president had simply misspoken. "It was in fact the International Institute for Strategic Studies [IISS] that issued the report concluding that Iraq could develop nuclear weapons in as few as six months," Fleischer wrote. "The source may be different, but the underlying fact remains the same." And in fact, the IISS had finished a report, which was released the Monday after Bush's Saturday statement, which said Iraq could "assemble nuclear weapons within months if fissile material from foreign sources were obtained."

And even the IAEA report cited by Milbank was far less conclusive than he implied. The Post quoted a portion of the report that said the IAEA "has found no indication of Iraq having achieved its program goal of producing nuclear weapons or of Iraq having retained a physical capability for the production of weapon-usable nuclear material or having clandestinely obtained such material." But Milbank did not quote the next portion of the report, which began, "At the same time, the IAEA points out the limitations inherent in a countrywide verification process and consequently its inability to guarantee that all readily concealable items have been found." The IAEA said that inspectors were not allowed to visit new weapons sites, and as a result, "the level of assurance the IAEA can give that prohibited activities are not taking place in Iraq is significantly reduced."

On the economy, Milbank took Bush to task for urging Congress to pass a terrorism insurance bill. "There's over $15 billion of construction projects which are on hold," Bush said in a speech last October, "which aren't going forward - which means there's over 300,000 jobs that would be in place, or soon to be in place, that aren't in place." Milbank complained that the $15 billion figure was not a government estimate but had instead been produced by the Real Estate Roundtable, which favored terrorism insurance and had come up with that number through an "unscientific survey" of its members. The figure of 300,000 jobs, Milbank wrote, was also suspect, but he offered no evidence that either figure was actually incorrect. The White House stood its ground; an official told ABCNews.com's " The Note <http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/TheNote/TheNote.html>" that the jobs figure was "vetted and approved by the president's economic team."

So in one example, Milbank apparently misinterpreted the president's remarks about UAVs. In another, he hit Bush for a misstatement on Iraqi arms, while failing to tell readers that the IAEA report in question was nowhere near as definitive as he suggested. And in the third example, he criticized Bush for citing statistics - surely a time-honored political practice - that Milbank found wanting, although without any proof that they were wrong. Milbank filled out his article with a couple of other examples, one a Bush statement about a union dispute in which the meaning of the president's words was debatable, and another Bush statement about an Iraqi defector and an al-Qaeda leader in which Bush "omitted qualifiers that make the accusations seem less convincing." And that was it. One might reasonably ask whether any of those cases represented examples of presidential lying in the tradition of Nixon and Clinton.

ANOTHER LITTLE LIE?
In mid May, Post columnist E. J. Dionne picked up Milbank's theme: "Bush and his White House say whatever is necessary, even if they have to admit later that what they said the first time wasn't exactly true." Exhibit A in Dionne's account was the president's May 1 flight to the USS Abraham Lincoln for a speech announcing the official end of hostilities in Iraq. The White House, Dionne noted, had originally said Bush would fly to the carrier in an S3B Viking jet because the ship was hundreds of miles off shore, too far to travel by helicopter. But when the president actually left, the carrier was about 30 miles from shore, close enough for a routine chopper flight. Nevertheless, the president took the jet for a dramatic landing on the Lincoln. "Now that's very interesting," Dionne concluded. "You can be absolutely sure that if an Al Gore White House had comparably misled citizens about the reason for a presidential made-for-television visit to an aircraft carrier, Gore would have been pilloried for engaging in yet another 'little lie.'"

 

[Chanman]

Part 2

Part 2

It was an argument heard over and over around Washington, especially from Democratic lawmakers. But a close look at events suggests there was, in fact, no lie - big or little - in the Lincoln affair.

When the White House first announced the speech, Fleischer told reporters the president would be going to the Abraham Lincoln in a jet because the carrier would be far off the California coast. But as the day approached, it appeared that no one in the press office had any precise idea of exactly where the carrier would be. On the day of the event, reporters traveling to San Diego aboard Air Force One asked Fleischer how far off shore the Abraham Lincoln was. "I don't have accurate information on it," Fleischer answered. "I've been asking for it. I don't have it yet."

While most of the press corps reported on events from San Diego, a small pool of reporters flew to the Abraham Lincoln. As those reporters were getting ready to leave, they asked the pilots how far they would be going, and were told the ship was about 30 miles offshore. Once on board, the pool reporters sent back word that the Abraham Lincoln was well within range of the presidential helicopter. Navy officials explained that because of good weather, the ship had made faster-than-expected progress and was thus closer to shore than originally planned. The news appeared in some press accounts the next day, with the Associated Press quoting Fleischer as saying that the president "could have helicoptered, but the plan was already in place. Plus, he wanted to see a landing the way aviators see a landing."

The issue did not stir much controversy until the next week, when Democrats claimed that the White House had lied about the distance to the carrier so the president could star in a photo-op for his 2004 reelection campaign. At the regular White House briefing on May 6, a reporter brought up Fleischer's original statement that the ship would be hundreds of miles offshore. "Were you misled?" the reporter asked.

"No," said Fleischer. "The original planning was exactly as I said." Fleischer explained that the president still wanted to take the jet, even after it became clear that the ship was close enough for a helicopter ride. "The president wanted to land on it, on an aircraft that would allow him to see an aircraft landing the same way that the pilots saw an aircraft landing. And that's why, once the initial decision was made to fly out on the Viking, even when a helicopter option became doable, the president decided instead he wanted to still take the Viking."

Was the story a lie? It appears not. In the days leading up to the flight, Fleischer seemed unsure of how far the carrier would be from shore. On the day of the landing, when reporters learned the actual distance, he quickly conceded that the president could have taken a helicopter but had wanted to fly in the jet - a statement that jibed with statements Fleischer had made earlier that the president had been looking forward to the flight for quite some time.

Moreover, the incident raises the question of why Fleischer would tell a lie that reporters would be able to discover almost immediately - well before the president's speech. "It would have been foolish from a political standpoint to utter an easily checkable falsehood," says one White House reporter. Adds another journalist on the beat: "If you put the pieces together, I think basically what you had was they designed the trip to allow the president to take the jet, and I think what happened was that the ship had good weather and came in too quickly." Which is what the White House said.

WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION?
To the president's opponents, the mother of all Bush "lies" is the administration's case for going to war in Iraq, specifically the president's claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. "So whose books were more cooked - Enron's accounts of its financial doings or the administration's prewar reports on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction?" asked Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect, in a column published in the Washington Post. The administration's position, Meyerson concluded, was "as phony a casus belli as the destruction of the Maine in Havana Harbor."

It's an argument that's been heard more and more in recent weeks. "Does it matter that we were misled into war?" asked the New York Times's Paul Krugman. Bush's statements about weapons of mass destruction were "one of the administration's Big Lies of the war on Iraq," wrote The Nation's David Corn. And Democratic senator Robert Byrd has issued almost daily allegations that Bush lied about Iraq.

Such accusations are risky - after all, the search for Iraqi weapons is ongoing, and any day might bring a significant discovery, or evidence that weapons have been destroyed. Still, for the sake of argument, assume there is no discovery. Does that mean Bush was lying?

In the months leading up to the war, there was a bipartisan consensus that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction; the real debate was between those who believed that Saddam would have to be disarmed by force and those who wanted to rely on U.N. inspectors to contain him. The world knew from those inspectors that, when last checked, Iraq had large stores of anthrax and nerve gas. The world also knew that before the first Gulf War, Iraq had an aggressive nuclear-weapons program. Last December, there was general agreement that Iraq's 12,000-page declaration of its weapons programs was grossly incomplete. And in January of this year, former Clinton administration officials Kenneth Pollack and Martin Indyk wrote in the New York Times that Iraq "must be made to account for the thousands of tons of chemical precursors, the thousands of liters of biological warfare agents, the thousands of missing chemical munitions, the unaccounted-for Scud missiles, and the weaponized VX poison that the United Nations has itself declared missing."

Such a consensus makes it extremely difficult to argue that the president lied about Iraq and WMD; if the administration's case was a lie, then everybody, including much of the political opposition, was in on it. Just as importantly, if it turns out that prewar estimates of Iraq's capabilities were incorrect, the Bush administration can say - truthfully - that it erred on the side of protecting American national security. One could argue that the White House paid insufficient attention to intelligence indicating a threat to American security before September 11. One could also argue that this administration was therefore determined not to underestimate future threats. "What 9/11 did was teach a generation of policymakers to interpret things in an alarmed rather than a relaxed way," says one former administration official.

Did that make the Iraq campaign a lie? The equivalent of Enron bookkeeping? Only the president's most fevered enemies would try to make that case.

 

[Chanman]

Part 3

Part 3

THE CLINTON STANDARD
In a March 21, 1995, Rose Garden speech on violence against women, President Clinton said, "The FBI estimates that a woman is beaten in this country once every twelve seconds." The statistic was wrong, and the White House retracted it within hours. There were a few newspaper articles about the numbers, and the story disappeared.

Had Clinton lied? More likely he made a mistake - perhaps an exaggeration to support a political point he wanted to make. But such rhetoric was well within the generally recognized boundaries of political argument, even if the president's opponents disagreed with it.

If Clinton had limited his transgressions to statements like that, he might be known today as an honest man. Instead, he is remembered for making, at various times, false statements about: Gennifer Flowers, the draft, Travelgate, campaign finance, payoffs to Webster Hubbell, Whitewater, and, most famously, Monica Lewinsky.

Despite that imposing list, Clinton's defenders argue that he lied about little, personal, unimportant things, while George W. Bush has lied about big, public, important things. "Bush's lies are the most serious kinds of lies that a public official can be involved in," says one Democratic strategist. "It's far more important than committing perjury under oath."

Yet for all their alleged pettiness, Clinton's falsehoods led to disastrous consequences. For one thing, they undermined his credibility on critical public matters: Was his August 1998 cruise-missile attack on Sudan and Afghanistan simply a response to terrorism, or was it also a way to divert attention from the Lewinsky scandal? They also mired his administration in a succession of legal and political quagmires, culminating in a federal judge's decision to hold him in contempt of court for giving "false, misleading, and evasive answers that were designed to obstruct the judicial process" in the Paula Jones case. In the end, Clinton's lies led to impeachment and a ruined presidency.

Try as the former president's defenders might, they simply cannot make a similar case against George W. Bush. Some of their charges, as in the Lincoln incident, are trivial. Others, as with Iraqi weapons, are dead serious, but don't stand up to even cursory examination. Still others, like the statistics questions, are just political quibbling. (They are part of a grand tradition in which the political parties cite figures to support their economic proposals and denounce the other party's figures as "lies"; opponents of the president's tax cuts, in particular The New Republic, have made a habit of that sort of thing.)

Americans seem to understand what's going on. In spite of all the charges, the president's approval ratings remain high, and an April Gallup poll found that 73 percent of those surveyed felt that the description "honest and trustworthy" applied to Bush. In the last such poll of Clinton's presidency, that number was 39 percent.

It is not possible or wise to defend every word George W. Bush says. As the world knows, he can be remarkably inarticulate when speaking off-the-cuff. He sometimes mangles thoughts and misuses statistics in the manner of most politicians. But - outside of the editorial offices of The Nation, The American Prospect, and some quarters of the New York Times and Washington Post - few people believe he is a liar. They've seen that in the White House before, and they know better.

 

[Equity Trader]

Yes how about those lies,need we forget..

Yes how about those lies,need we forget..

Good reading Chanman....So far the difference in the so called lies being labeled on Bush is only an attempt to sway public oppinion and as your article states is just a mere fact of subjective rambling by the left...As we now know the lies born out of the Clinton babble crap has been true lies and he got caught with,excuse the pun,his shorts down....Clinton has had a whole history of lying and distorting the truth going back to his day's as attorney general in Arkansas...

I agree, all politicians have a knack for speaking in dribble and babble talk,but they aren't lies..When a politician starts out on his campaign, he/she basicily stating their position with,I believe certain honesty,but once he /she gets to Washington,they find out real quick that the agenda they stood for is over shaddowed by the slow wheels of the political apparatus,being that you must tow the line...

So far we haven't seen any truth in the misdeeds of Bush that the left is determined to frought out as lies...The left is in denial and can't seem to attack on legitimate issues so they just dream things up and hope they stick..

Some on the left hoped that when the war started in Iraq we would be confronted with hundreds of body bags and thousands of civilian deaths..Of course, this turned out not to be the case so they have the next agenda of the WMD to dwell on and this too will prove that they (left) will be eating crow...When we started out in Afganistan,they now say we took our eye off of Osuma that we haven't found him or killed him,but they will never acknowledge that we have apprehended quite a few of the top tier..Geez,they just assume that if they were in charge that things would be different....What in the hell do they think..Democrats are nothing more than a bunch of peasing malcomtempts without real vision on the real issue that confronts terrorism...The American people know darn well that Democrats will never have been able to achieve the results that this president has achieved and that is a fact...Just more of stupid moron thinking from the left and their only argument they have is hoping that their followers will take their babble without real questioning...

Now we have the book coming out on what Hillary believes is her story on what happened and her so called life in the public forum..Well it's already showing that she is also capable of distorting the truth and the book hasn't even been released yet..Monday for you diehard liberals if you want that fiction..Her interpretation is already showing contradictions with one ardent supporter that wrote a different version in his book...Also,Dick Morris has already stated that what led Bill to confront her with Monica didn't happen the way she wrote in her book,she knew before hand and the blue dress proves that the timeline in her book is false... Face it,Hillary is more capable of lying and is much more of a lier than Bill...She lied to the grand jury about those papers from her tenure at the Rose law firm,which were later found upstairs where nobody but them could access that area...Everything about them is business and having power..She wrote a thesis in her later years of college,but she had her attorney's put a non-release on that document so we can't view it..Some say that the release would have grave consequences on what her true beliefs and agenda is..She is one scaring politician and will in no doubt ruin the constitution as the founding fathers wrote it...It is this reason why a divided country and congress will be able to keep politicians in check.

Yeah, it's all politics,who can you believe,but it is the results and so far Bush has shown that he has what it takes to get the job done..The economy will rebound and this too will have the Democrats in awe..

Oh what next can they use??Their frivolous attacks are just that and they are running scared....

Have a good day..

ET

Waydago Internet Marketing System http://www.waydago.com

 

[StevieD]

STOP THE PRESSES by ERIC ALTERMAN
Bush Lies, Media Swallows

The more things change... Roughly ten years ago, I celebrated the
criminal indictment of Elliott Abrams for lying to Congress by writing an
Op-Ed in the New York Times on the increasing acceptance of official
deception. (I was just starting my dissertation on the topic back then.) The
piece got bogged down, however, when an editor refused to allow me even to
imply that then-President Bush was also lying to the country. I noted that
such reticence made the entire exercise feel a bit absurd. He did not
dispute this point but explained that Times policy simply would not allow
it. I asked for a compromise. I was offered the following: "Either take it
out and a million people will read you tomorrow, or leave it in and send it
around to your friends." (It was a better line before e-mail.) Anyway, I
took it out, but I think it was the last time I've appeared on that page.

President Bush is a liar. There, I said it, but most of the mainstream media
won't. Liberal pundits Michael Kinsley, Paul Krugman and Richard Cohen have
addressed the issue on the Op-Ed pages, but almost all news pages and
network broadcasts pretend not to notice. In the one significant effort by a
national daily to deal with Bush's consistent pattern of mendacity, the
Washington Post's Dana Milbank could not bring himself (or was not allowed)
to utter the crucial words. Instead, readers were treated to such
complicated linguistic circumlocutions as: Bush's statements represented
"embroidering key assertions" and were clearly "dubious, if not wrong." The
President's "rhetoric has taken some flights of fancy," he has "taken some
liberties," "omitted qualifiers" and "simply outpace[d] the facts." But
"Bush lied"? Never.

Ben Bradlee explains, "Even the very best newspapers have never learned how
to handle public figures who lie with a straight face. No editor would dare
print this version of Nixon's first comments on Watergate for instance. 'The
Watergate break-in involved matters of national security, President Nixon
told a national TV audience last night, and for that reason he would be
unable to comment on the bizarre burglary. That is a lie.'"

Part of the reason is deference to the office and the belief that the
American public will not accept a mere reporter calling the President a
liar. Part of the reason is the culture of Washington--where it is somehow
worse to call a person a liar in public than to be one. A final reason is
political. Some reporters are just political activists with columns who
prefer useful lies to the truth. For instance, Robert Novak once told me
that he "admired" Elliott Abrams for lying to him in a television interview
about illegal US acts of war against Nicaragua because he agreed with the
cause.

Let us note, moreover, that Bradlee's observation, offered in 1997, did not
apply to President Clinton. Reporters were positively eager to call Clinton
a liar, although his lies were about private matters about which many of us,
including many reporters, lie all the time. "I'd like to be able to tell my
children, 'You should tell the truth,'" Stuart Taylor Jr. of the National
Journal said on Meet the Press. "I'd like to be able to tell them, 'You
should respect the President.' And I'd like to be able to tell them both
things at the same time." David Gergen, who had worked for both Ronald
Reagan and Richard Nixon as well as Clinton and therefore could not claim to
be a stranger to official dishonesty, decried what he termed "the deep and
searing violation [that] took place when he not only lied to the country,
but co-opted his friends and lied to them." Chris Matthews kvetched,
"Clinton lies knowing that you know he's lying. It's brutal and it
subjugates the person who's being lied to. I resent deeply being constantly
lied to." George Will, a frequent apologist for the lies of Reagan and now
Bush, went so far as to insist that Clinton's "calculated, sustained lying
has involved an extraordinarily corrupting assault on language, which is the
uniquely human capacity that makes persuasion, and hence popular government,
possible."

George W. Bush does not lie about sex, I suppose--merely about war and
peace. Most particularly he has consistently lied about Iraq's nuclear
capabilities as well as its missile-delivery capabilities. Take a look at
Milbank's gingerly worded page-one October 22 Post story if you doubt me. To
cite just two particularly egregious examples, Bush tried to frighten
Americans by claiming that Iraq possesses a fleet of unmanned aircraft that
could be used "for missions targeting the United States." Previously he
insisted that a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency revealed
the Iraqis to be "six months away from developing a weapon." Both of these
statements are false, but they are working. Nearly three-quarters of
Americans surveyed think that Saddam is currently helping Al Qaeda; 71
percent think it is likely he was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks.

What I want to know is why this kind of lying is apparently OK. Isn't it
worse to refer "repeatedly to intelligence...that remains largely
unverified"--as the Wall Street Journal puts it--in order to trick the
nation into war, as Bush and other top US officials have done, than to lie
about a blowjob? Isn't it worse to put "pressure...on the intelligence
agencies to deliberately slant estimates," as USA Today worded its report?
Isn't it more damaging to offer "cooked information," in the words of the
CIA's former chief of counterterrorism, when you are asking young men and
women to die for your lies? Don't we revile Lyndon Johnson for having done
just that with his dishonest Gulf of Tonkin resolution?

Here's Bradlee again: "Just think for a minute how history might have
changed if Americans had known then that their leaders felt the war was
going to hell in a handbasket. In the next seven years, thousands of
American lives and more thousands of Asian lives would have been saved. The
country might never have lost faith in its leaders."

Reporters and editors who "protect" their readers and viewers from the truth
about Bush's lies are doing the nation--and ultimately George W. Bush--no
favors. Take a look at the names at that long black wall on the Mall.
Consider the tragic legacy of LBJ's failed presidency. Ask yourself just who
is being served when the media allow Bush to lie, repeatedly, with impunity,
in order to take the nation into war.

 

[StevieD]

Report: Some CIA Analysts Said Felt Pressure on Iraq
Thu Jun 5, 1:36 AM ET Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo!



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - "Multiple" visits to the CIA by Vice President Cheney and a top aide over the past year created an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make assessments of Iraq data fit the administration's policy objectives, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.


The report cited an unnamed senior CIA official as saying that the visits by Cheney and his chief of staff to question the analysts "sent signals, intended or otherwise that a certain output was desired from here."


The disclosure comes amid growing concern that the administration exaggerated -- either deliberately or due to faulty intelligence -- the threat posed by Iraq's weapons.


The assertion by the Bush administration that Iraq possessed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and had a program to develop nuclear weapons was a prime justification for the war but no such weapon has been found since President Saddam Hussein was toppled.


The Washington Post said it could not learn the exact number of visits by Cheney to the CIA but it reported that one agency official described them as "multiple."


The report cited intelligence officials as saying that visits to CIA headquarters by a vice president are unusual.


The newspaper reported that former and current intelligence officials said they felt a continual drumbeat not only from Cheney but also from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and, to a lesser extent, CIA Director George Tenet, to find information or write reports in a way that would help the administration make the case that invading Iraq was urgent.


The Post said a spokeswoman for Cheney declined to discuss the matter on Wednesday.


The newspaper quoted senior administration sources as saying that the visits allowed Cheney and his chief of staff, Lewis Libby, to have direct exchanges with analysts rather than ask questions of their daily briefers.


The paper quoted sources, which it described as sympathetic to the vice president's approach, as saying that their goal was to have a free flow of information and not to intimidate the analysts. The sources said

 

[Chanman]

Touche' StevieD. Hope we can meet in LV for the Super Bowl. First round is on me. Maybe you can cut n paste the following for future reference...
After receiving reports from a number of you, that your emails to me were being returned undelivered, I today spoke with my email provider about the situation...

I thought I should share with you the results of that conversation -- it may explain to you why some of your emails have not been reaching me and (who knows?), perhaps some of you may now also want to switch over to MY ISP for your own email services as well....

First of all, let me thank you for your patience. If you let me know about any problems and, if it is troublesome to get through- Please DO try again - they're still working on getting the kinks out of the new system.

I thought it would be useful for you to know that my ISP has just installed a brand new, leading edge, 'feature-rich' email system
which, among other things, provides user clients with the latest in third-generation email filtering. This new high-tech filtering takes a large number of factors into account, not the least of which is the user-client's (geo-political) location...

By way of example... Perhaps it would be helpful for you to know that, as a resident here on the left coast, in beautiful California,
I will no longer be able to receive any of your emails which:
1. Contain the words 'Republican' or 'Conservative' ...unless immediately preceded by one (or more) of the words 'damn', 'rich' or 'uncaring';

2. Contain the term 'tax cut' or 'tax cuts' ...unless preceded by the word 'directed', or followed by the the term 'for the rich';

3. Contain the word 'Right'... unless immediately followed by the term '-wing wacko;

4. Contain the name 'Reagan' ...either preceded or followed within a five-word proximity to the words 'best' or 'great';

5. Contain the terms 'choice, 'rights', or 'constitutional rights', in conjunction with any of the terms 'gun', 'firearm' or 'second amendment', or 'private property', 'property owner', 'property rights', 'building permit', 'fifth amendment', or the like. (Note however, that the term 'rights' may be used without restriction in connection with the terms 'animal', 'tree', 'red-legged frog', 'salamander', 'thistle', 'pond-slime', 'shark', 'mountain lion',
'wolf', or similar.);

6. Contain the prefix Eco-' ...if followed by any of the words 'freak', 'terrorist' or the like. (...and of course, the term
'tree-hugger' will NOT be allowed under ANY circumstances);

7. Contain the words 'pot' or 'marijuana' within a ten-word proximity to the word 'illegal' or 'criminal';

8. Contain the any of the terms 'well-qualified', 'diversity' or 'Senate Obstruction' in conjunction with 'Judge Pickering', 'Judge Owens' or 'Judge Estrada';

9. Are in any way denigrating, or which speak harshly about, anyone Biden', 'Boxer', 'Clinton', 'Daschle', 'Davis', 'Farr',
'Gore', 'Hollings', 'Leahy', 'Meathead Reiner', 'Schumer', or
'Kennedy', or which contain the name 'Byrd', within a ten-word
proximity to the word 'pork';

10. Contain any of the terms 'leftist', 'limo-lib', 'control freak', 'tax-and-spend' or 'obstructionist' placed within a ten-word
proximity of the word 'democrat';

This list is, of course, by no means all-inclusive...

 

[Turfgrass]

Here are the top 10 reasons why many Democratic leaders are simply out of touch with America and why the Democratic Party may not soon reclaim the White House or Congress. In order to be a real Democrat, you have to believe that:

1. The most preventable disease, the AIDS virus, is caused by a lack of federal funding.

2. Social promotion in schools is good, and tests are either discriminatory or don't measure anything.

3. Global temperature changes are due not to cyclical, documented changes in Earth's climate but to too many yuppies driving SUVs.

4. Capital punishment is wrong but abortion on demand is the cat's meow.

5. Businesses are mean spirited and create oppression, and big governments are honest and create prosperity.

6. Hunters and farmers don't care about nature, but designer-suited environmental lawyers do.

7. We should change all our foreign policy to appease the terrorists to protect ourselves from their bombings.

8. Our taxes are too low, but ATM fees are too high.

9. Standardized tests are racist, but racial quotas and set-asides aren't.

10. Millions of illegal aliens are good for our economy, but the businesses that hire them are bad

 

[StevieD]

Turfgrass that is exactly the type of lies that Murdoch and his fellow lap dog republicans like to advertise. Now I am not a Democrat. I am just less of a republican. But maybe you can clear one of those points you made in your last post for me. Number 7. We should change our foreign policy to apease the terrorists. Could you or anyone please give me an example of that?

 

[Turfgrass]

Giving money to N. Korea so they would stop building their nukes.

 

[StevieD]

Thank you for the quick answer Turf but......I don't see the relationship. Yes, we did enter an agreement with North Korea under Clinton and yes Bush did break the agreement and yes N. Korea is holding us up but how does that relate to a change in foreign policy to apease the terrorists?
I happen to hope The Road Map works but doesn't doesn't contain a few compromises that could be twisted to say it is a change in foreign policy to apease the terrosists?

 

[Equity Trader]

Bush didn't break the agreement

Bush didn't break the agreement

Clinton adminstration was blackmailed into giving billions to N.Korea with the agreement that they would stop testing and building...Now the Bush adminstration broke this arrangement for good reason,because it was N.Korea that defaulted not the Bush adminstration..You may feel that blackmailing on such a large scale is appropriate,but trying to work out peace in the Middle East for economic aid is by far not considered Blackmail,because simply,aid will be given once the main parties sign the agreement under the auspicious of both governments..Now we can not be responsible because a faction or a few individuals that don't want peace will continue to undermind the process..This isn't the same as what N.Korea has done when they received payment before the actual end result..The Clinton adminstration had a similar program with the Russians that former vice-president Al Gore was in charge of and that too was squandered by leaving politico factions in Russia..

 

[StevieD]

Well it was Rumsfeld who helped prop up Hussien and Reagan who gave him weapons. As has been said here before things change.

 

[Equity Trader]

There is no denying that Rummy and Reagin help with Saddam,but he wasn't a major threat at the time,but it was Iran that had to be constrained and now Iran has become a major threat..Now does this make it right?Probably not,but the only justification for this whole gambit of global shuffling is that regimes change and so must the foriegn policy and the only satisfaction that can result from this is learn from our mistakes..Osama is in the same camp,we helped him when Afganistan was invaded by the Soviet Union and we just needed to curb that assault and supported the Muhajadeen,which Osama was a leader,now where are we??Fighting the exact same weapons we supplied for that conflict is one of the main sore points and the solution may very well be to stop the supplying,but than on the other note you will have despot nations supply the weapons to offset for us not to.......Face it, the guy with the biggest gun wins and this makes this whole issue a no win situation no matter how the cards are dealt.

 

[StevieD]

At least we can agree with that ET. This situation will not be over, not for a long time. Because we are not fighting nations, we are fighting an idea if you will. An idea of hatred that is true. I was against going into Iraq but now that we have I wonder if we should go into Syria and then Iran. But I also wonder if we have the money to back such an undertaking. I certainly do not have any answers only questions. My problem is with a media that is shrinking everyday. With news that is not news but fluff that is either for the adminestration or against the administration. This is a time in history where we need real news men asking the tough questions. We need leaders telling us the truth, not throwing things into the air and seeing what flies and running with that. This is a time when we need many voices asking questions and giving opinions without threat of ridicule or reprisal by those who have managed to kidnap our airways.
We have seen what they have done to music, now they are trying to do it with our news.

 

[djv]

First off they say Bush does not lie as much as long as he stays of the sauce.
Second. He and his staff talk to N Korea just like everyone else has for 50 years. Some how I wonder if food and oil to N Korea will be the answer. In other words no change.
Now if someone would tell the truth why we invaded Iraq. It would be nice. Not the BS truth the real truth.

 

[Turfgrass]

This ?BUSH LIED? thing just isn't going to work.

Have you ever seen Democrats acting more desperate? The fought the tax cut because they knew it would boost the economy. That didn?t work. They fought the war because they knew that it would succeed and Iraq would be liberated. That didn?t work.

Now Iraq is liberated. There are true strides being made toward peace between Israel and the ?Palestinians.? The Dow just went past 9000 .. and is in its fourth straight ?up? month. Not one single Democratic candidate is capturing any more than the hearts and minds of a few fanatics.

Things aren?t looking good for 2004 ? not if you?re a left-winger.

Wait! Let?s try this! We haven?t found any WMDs in Iraq yet. Oh, we?ve found those mobile biological weapons labs. We discovered chemical weapon residue in the Euphrates ? but we haven?t actually found the weapons! So, how about we say that Bush lied! Let?s say that George Bush knew there were no weapons but he said that there were weapons just so he could get us into a war! Oh, we?ll have to ignore the fact that the U.N. said those weapons existed, and that Britian, France, Germany and Russia also acknowledged that those weapons were there. We?ll also have to conveniently forget that our own Tom Daschle said ?We do know that Iraq has weaponized thousands of gallons of anthrax and other deadly biological agents. We know that Iraq maintains stockpiles of some of the world?s deadliest chemical weapons.?

We?ll also have to forget that our favorite Democrat, Bill Clinton, said ?Some day, some way, I guarantee you, he?ll use the [chemical and biological] arsenel.?

The Democrats know that they can count on the mainstream media NOT to remind the public about those statements from Democratic leaders ? especially not now while these very same Democrats are trying to convince the American people that George Bush lied when he said the very same things.

Well, hell. Nothing else has worked. Maybe this will.

 

[djv]

Turf there lieing like grazy to us. Some are buying it. Many more are starting to ask questions. Half the reasons you state why we went to Iraq. Well they were never even mentioned when reasons were given to the world why to invade. Hell no. We were told Iraq getting read to use these. Bush yesterday said could be data was not so good. Yes the peace process is right on track with Israel. Today they attacked again with there gun ships. And yeaterday it was the Palestinians turn.
The dow at 9000 is joke. Check where it was when Bush was sworn in. Now check where it was 6 months later. Unemployment at 6.1%. Wages taken home by Americans workers increasing at slowest pace since 50's.
Not a good pitcure. Health care out of control. I said I voted for him. And I did. He has lots of work to do before I do it again.
Doing nothing about the 9/11 Saudi connection pisses me off more then all of the above. We gave Saudi a free pass.

 

[Turfgrass]

The dow at 9000 is joke. Check where it was when Bush was sworn in. Now check where it was 6 months later.

So tell us what happened. Was it just the fact he took office?


Wages taken home by Americans workers increasing at slowest pace since 50's.

Aren't you one of the ones that were against tax cuts?

Look I'm not all flowers about Republicans. But you make it sound like big goverment is the way to go. Well it ain't!

Another lesson in why I vote libertarian.

Last week the Senate passed a welfare bill. By a 94-2 vote our Senators decided to take money away from those who actually earned it so that the cash could then be doled out to non-taxpayers. Low income parents will get a $400 check for every dependent child. Pure welfare.

When the Senate passed this welfare spending bill there was strong doubt it would survive the House. Now we have President Bush urging House Republicans to vote for the measure. So, for the sake of political expediency we have a Republican president pushing pure, unadulterated income redistribution.

So --- you thought that the Republicans, the party of less government, would be opposed to income redistribution? Think again.

Think Libertarian

 

[dr. freeze]

yep Bush is definitely starting to piss me off with some of his spending programs....unreal....maybe he is a closet liberal