Bad Deeds for 3-21-2008

Another Lie to Scare You: Bush Falsely Says Iran Announced Their Desire for Nuclear Weapons – President Bush contended that Iran has “declared they want a nuclear weapon to destroy people” and that the Islamic Republic could be hiding a secret program. Iran, however, has never publicly proclaimed a desire for nuclear weapons and has repeatedly insisted that the uranium enrichment program it’s operating in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions is for civilian power plants, not warheads. Bush made his assertion Wednesday in an interview marking the Iranian New Year with Radio Farda, a U.S. government-run radio service that broadcasts into Iran in the Farsi language.

White House Press Secretary Says Your Opinion Only Counts Once Every Four Years – The following is from the March 20th White House press briefing:

HELEN THOMAS: The American people are being asked to die and pay for this. And you’re saying they have no say in this war?

PERINO: No, I didn’t say that Helen. But Helen, this president was elected…
THOMAS: But it amounts to it. You’re saying we have no input at all.
PERINO: You had input. The American people have input every four years, and that’s the way our system is set up.

Like Dick Cheney, Perino is clearly suggesting that current opposition to the Iraq war is inconsequential. Perino leaves out one other inconvenient fact: the 2006 mid-term elections.

Fox News Publishes False “Black Panther” Endorsement of Barrak Obama – The front page of FoxNews.com shows an article titled “Obama Gets ‘Panther’ Ok”. They point to a public profile set up by somebody claiming to be a member of the New Black Panther Party who supports Barack Obama. More than 700,000 people have created accounts on Obamma’s website and Fox selected this one and put a screenshot of the inflammatory content on the front page of FoxNews.com. When Obamma’s site was alerted of the existence of this page, they pulled it down. Yet even after they pulled the page, Fox News continues to disingenuously and prominently feature this “story” on their homepage. Fox has done this same sort of thing with Daily Kos and Huffington Post. Bill O’Reilly has been banging this tired drum — calling Huffington no different from Nazis and the KKK — for weeks now. Response to Fox News “story”

Racist Comments on FOX News Website – I don’t want to repeat them here, but if you feel that you must read them, check the link.

Fox News Tries to Make You Scared of Blacks – On his Fox News radio show, Tom Sullivan predicted that if Barrak Obama loses, African-Americans would be rioting in the streets similar to what happened after the O.J. trial in the 1990s.

So Much Obama Bashing on Fox News That one Anchor Walks Off; Another Speaks Out – This morning on “Fox and Friends,” Brian Kilmeade walked off the set after a dispute with his co-hosts over Obama’s comment that his grandmother is a “typical white person.” Kilmeade argued that the remark needed to be taken in context and eventually got so fed up with his co-hosts that he walked off set. Later, “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace came on the show and railed against “Fox and Friends” for what he called “Obama-bashing.”

Rush Limbaugh Encouraged Voter Fraud in Ohio – During the Texas and Ohio primaries, Rush Limbaugh was urging Republicans to skip their party’s primary on March 4 and instead cast a vote for Hillary Clinton in order to prolong the fight between her and Barack Obama. And that Tuesday, as media in both states reported, thousands of Republicans did just what Limbaugh and others had suggested — they changed parties to vote for Clinton. “I want Hillary to stay in this, Laura,” Limbaugh told Laura Ingraham on Feb. 29, near the start of his Hillary crusade. “This is too good a soap opera. We need Barack Obama bloodied up politically, and it’s obvious that the Republicans are not going to do it and don’t have the stomach for it, as you probably know.”

The Cuyahoga County Board of Election has now launched an investigation that could lead to criminal charges against voters who maliciously switched parties for the March 4 presidential primary. One voter scribbled the following addendum to his pledge as a new Democrat: “For one day only.” “Such an admission amounts to voter fraud,” the report continued, attributing that conclusion to BOE member Sandy McNair.

America: What’s Not To Mindlessly Love? – From Lionel at AirAmerica: Some of us, me (Hello!) included, are embarrassed over our history and current treatment of some people. While I love Americans for the most part and certainly wouldn’t want to necessarily leave the country, this east coast “elite” has a few problems inter alia with the government of these United States: (1) gays and lesbians are treated as second-class citizens; (2) non-believers are all but ignored; (3) the evangelical jihadists have a stranglehold on this place and have successfully killed all chances of there finally being federal funding for embryonic stem cell research; (4) our treatment of Native Americans heretofore is nothing short of despicable; (5) we’ve invaded a sovereign country as part of a neocon pipe dream; (6) this administration has eroded more constitutional protections than most are even aware ever existed; (7) the advancement of the unitary executive has all but destroyed the separation of powers doctrine; (8) we have marginalized our image in the world and went from being respected to now almost universally-loathed; (9) our drug law policies are archaic if not antediluvian; (10) our Boeotian Prez has made anti-intellectualism quaint; (11) speaking of quaint, we’ve likened the protections of the Geneva Conventions as “quaint”; and (12) ______________ (Your choice.)

God bless what’s left of my America.

How Many Neocons Does It Take to Screw Up a Decision? Below, is an excerpt from the chapter titled “Their Finest Hour: America Readies Itself To Free The Iraqi People” from the book “Mission Accomplished! Or How We Won The War In Iraq.”

WALK IN THE PARK:
“I believe demolishing Hussein’s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk.”- Kenneth Adelman, member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, 2/13/02

“Support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse after the first whiff of gunpowder.” – Richard Perle, Chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, 7/11/02

“Desert Storm II would be in a walk in the park… The case for ‘regime change’ boils down to the huge benefits and modest costs of liberating Iraq.” – Kenneth Adelman, member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, 8/29/02

“Having defeated and then occupied Iraq, democratizing the country should not be too tall an order for the world’s sole superpower.” – William Kristol, Weekly Standard editor, and Lawrence F. Kaplan, New Republic senior editor, 2/24/03

TROOP LEVELS:
“I would be surprised if we need anything like the 200,000 figure that is sometimes discussed in the press. A much smaller force, principally special operations forces, but backed up by some regular units, should be sufficient.” – Richard Perle, Chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, 7/11/02

“I don’t believe that anything like a long-term commitment of 150,000 Americans would be necessary.” – Richard Perle, speaking at a conference on “Post-Saddam Iraq” sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, 10/3/02

“I would say that what’s been mobilized to this point — something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required.” – Gen. Eric Shinseki, testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, 2/25/03

“The idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces, I think, is far from the mark.” – Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 2/27/03

“I am reasonably certain that they will greet us as liberators, and that will help us keep [troop] requirements down. … We can say with reasonable confidence that the notion of hundreds of thousands of American troops is way off the mark…wildly off the mark.” – Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, testifying before the House Budget Committee, 2/27/03

“It’s hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army. Hard to image.” – Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, testifying before the House Budget Committee, 2/27/03

“If our commanders on the ground say we need more troops, I will send them. But our commanders tell me they have the number of troops they need to do their job. Sending more Americans would undermine our strategy of encouraging Iraqis to take the lead in this fight. And sending more Americans would suggest that we intend to stay forever, when we are, in fact, working for the day when Iraq can defend itself and we can leave.” – President George W. Bush, 6/28/05

“The debate over troop levels will rage for years; it is…beside the point.” – Rich Lowry, conservative syndicated columnist, 4/19/06

CASUALTIES:
“Oh, no, we’re not going to have any casualties.” – President George W. Bush, response attributed to him by the Reverend Pat Robertson, when Robertson warned the president to prepare the nation for “heavy casualties” in the event of an Iraq war, 3/2003

“Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? Oh, I mean, it’s not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?” – Barbara Bush, former First Lady (and the current president’s mother), on Good Morning America, 3/18/03

“I think the level of casualties is secondary… [A]ll the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war… What we hate is not casualties but losing.” – Michael Ledeen, American Enterprise Institute, 3/25/03

COST OF IRAQ INVASION:
“Iraq is a very wealthy country. Enormous oil reserves. They can finance, largely finance the reconstruction of their own country. And I have no doubt that they will.” – Richard Perle, Chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, 7/11/02

“The likely economic effects [of the war in Iraq] would be relatively small… Under every plausible scenario, the negative effect will be quite small relative to the economic benefits.” – Lawrence Lindsey, White House Economic Advisor, 9/16/02

“It is unimaginable that the United States would have to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars and highly unlikely that we would have to contribute even tens of billions of dollars.” – Kenneth M. Pollack, former Director for Persian Gulf Affairs, U.S. National Security Council, 9/02

“The costs of any intervention would be very small.” – Glenn Hubbard, White House Economic Advisor, 10/4/02

“When it comes to reconstruction, before we turn to the American taxpayer, we will turn first to the resources of the Iraqi government and the international community.” – Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 3/27/03

“There is a lot of money to pay for this that doesn’t have to be U.S. taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people. We are talking about a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.” – Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, testifying before the Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, 3/27/03

“The United States is committed to helping Iraq recover from the conflict, but Iraq will not require sustained aid.” – Mitchell Daniels, Director, White House Office of Management and Budget, 4/21/03

“Iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people. And so there are a variety of means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction.” – Ari Fleischer, White House Press Secretary, 2/18/03

HOW LONG AN OCCUPATION?
“Now, it isn’t gong to be over in 24 hours, but it isn’t going to be months either.” – Richard Perle, Chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, 7/11/02

“The idea that it’s going to be a long, long, long battle of some kind I think is belied by the fact of what happened in 1990. Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that.” – Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 11/15/02

“I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing to take that wager?” – Bill O’Reilly, 1/29/03

“It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could be six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.” – Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 2/7/03

“It won’t take weeks… Our military machine will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there’s no question that it will.” – Bill O’Reilly, 2/10/03

“There is zero question that this military campaign…will be reasonably short. … Like World War II for about five days.” – General Barry R. McCaffrey, national security and terrorism analyst for NBC News, 2/18/03

“The Iraq fight itself is probably going to go very, very fast. The shooting should be over within just a very few days from when it starts.” – David Frum, former Bush White House speechwriter, 2/24/03

“Our military superiority is so great — it’s far greater than it was in the Gulf War, and the Gulf War was over in 100 hours after we bombed for 43 days… Now they can bomb for a couple of days and then just roll into Baghdad… The odds are there’s going to be a war and it’s going to be not for very long.” – Former President Bill Clinton, 3/6/03

“I think it will go relatively quickly…weeks rather than months.” – Vice President Dick Cheney, 3/16/03

Regards,

Jim