U.S. News
Michael J. Sniffen
Associated Press
Thu, 01 Dec 2005 12:00 EST
Washington -- Companies lobbying government, colleges seeking star speakers and groups eager for information or face time paid for $2.3 million in trips over six years for White House officials, a watchdog organization reported Wednesday.
Powerful presidential confidants, like President Bush's political guru, Karl Rove, and President Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, shared in this bounty.
More than 620 White House aides took free trips between late 1998 and late 2004 to speak to conferences in Paris, Rome and other foreign capitals, Hawaii and Florida, ski resorts in Colorado and Switzerland. Of course, less exotic locales, like Detroit, Cleveland and Oklahoma City, also were among more than 350 destinations.
Doug Thompson
Capitol Hill Blue
Thu, 01 Dec 2005 12:00 EST
The dwindling numbers of those who continue to support, without question, George W. Bush's failed policies in Iraq didn't get much to support their cause when the President delivered what the White House promised would be a major policy speech.
The speech, offered to a carefully-selected audience of Naval Academy midshipmen at Annapolis, gave us nothing new and offered one more glimpse of Bush's inability to grasp reality.
Either Bush is purposely lying when he claims progress in training Iraqis to handle their own security or he is just too damn dumb to realize how bad things are in the country he invaded two-and-a-half years ago.
Even worse, he apparently learned nothing from the botched photo op aboard an aircraft carrier in 2003 where he stood before that ridiculous Mission Accomplished banner and declared victory in Iraq.
Norman Solomon
Counterpunch
Thu, 01 Dec 2005 12:00 EST
Newspapers across the United States and beyond told readers Wednesday about sensational new statements by a former top assistant to Colin Powell when he was secretary of state. After interviewing Lawrence Wilkerson, the Associated Press reported he "said that wrongheaded ideas for the handling of foreign detainees after Sept. 11 arose from a coterie of White House and Pentagon aides who argued that 'the president of the United States is all-powerful,' and that the Geneva Conventions were irrelevant."
AP added: "Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and like-minded aides. Wilkerson said that Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror assaults, because 'otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard.'"
Dave Lindorff
Counterpunch
Thu, 01 Dec 2005 12:00 EST
Has anyone seen a car with one of those 2004 "Bush/Cheney" bumper stickers on it lately? It's been days since I've noticed one.
My community, which is about 50 percent Republican, used to be full of them, mostly pasted on the backs of hulking SUVs and brightly colored Hummers.
Mike Whitney
Counterpunch
Thu, 01 Dec 2005 12:00 EST
Somebody Should Tell Bush He Lost Iraq
It's pathetic to see the world's most powerful man, shunted into prearranged venues so he can pitch his snake-oil to college aged boys. That said, Bush's appearance today at the Naval Academy has got to be a new low for the White House public relations team. Apparently the only people buying the huckster-in-chief's bedraggled vision of a democratic Iraq are rosy-cheeked young men who dream of battlefields instead of girlfriends.
Is this the last place Bush can count on a round of applause without body-scanning everyone who enters the door?
Rupert Cornwell
UK Independent
Thu, 01 Dec 2005 12:00 EST
President George Bush said yesterday that America was on course for "complete victory" and he ruled out any firm timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Instead he declared that Iraqi forces were beginning to take the lead in the battle against the insurgency.
In a speech aimed squarely at restoring morale on the home front, and to meet the growing clamour for a pull-out, Mr Bush set out what critics say he has conspicuously failed to deliver: a clear exit strategy from the two-and-a-half-year conflict.
Comment: As Bush's brain was concentrated on yesterday's speech on Iraq, the real war planners outlined their strategy for continuing to destroy Iraq in a 35 page document entitled "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" that was also published yesterday.
Bush's main point in his speech was:
"We will never give in, and we will never accept anything less than complete victory."
Apparently Bush has never heard Kissinger comment on guerilla war:
"In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
The national strategy (NeoCon) document stipulated that Bush's complete victory required leaving behind a country that was "peaceful, united, stable, and secure, well integrated into the international community, and a full partner in the global war on terrorism", but given that the Bush administration plans on leaving behind an Iraqi political system that is completely under American control, there is little chance that Iraq will be united, and, as a result, the chance of a peaceful Iraq is just as distant.
"Failure is not an option," according to the NeoCon document, because to fail would mean that Iraq is "a safe haven from which terrorists could plan attacks against America".
The reality of course is that Iraq is not becoming a safe haven for terrorists, even the Bush administration itself has admitted that the vast majority of attacks against the US military in Iraq come from Iraqi grass roots insurgents who are demanding a withdrawal of US troops. If in the future however, Iraq does become a "terrorist" haven, then contrary to what the Bush administration says, there can and will be only one cause, as John Kerry has, for once, stated correctly:
"The large presence of American forces on the ground are what feeds the insurgency".
So what is the explanation? Why does the Bush administration seem so anxious to prevent a troops withdrawal from Iraq and willing to run the risk of seriously bad press in the process?
More than likely,
they are being blackmailed by Israel.
Ira Chernus
CommonDreams.org
Thu, 01 Dec 2005 12:00 EST
Jews who support a U.S. war against Iraq should think again. If the war "goes bad," with too many U.S. casualties and not enough rapid victory, the finger of blame could well point at the U.S. Jewish community. That may be unfair, but fairness will hardly matter if it starts to happen. It could spell the end of the Jewish community's free ride in this country. Smart Jews may want to think ahead.
FAIR
Thu, 01 Dec 2005 12:00 EST
For media elite, why U.S. went to war is a meaningless debate
With polls showing growing opposition to the Iraq War and an increasing distrust for the White House, one might think that the press corps would be willing to re-examine how the threat from Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction was used to lead the country into war. But for many pundits, the origins of the Iraq War are old news....
As the Washington Post's David Broder argued on NBC's "Meet the Press" (11/27/05), there's no point in raising such questions: "This whole debate about whether there was just a mistake or misrepresentation or so on is, I think, from the public point of view largely irrelevant. The public's moved past that. The public wants to know what we're going to do next in Iraq." (The 44 percent of the public that wants to see a withdrawal from Iraq, according to a October 30-November 2 ABC-Washington Post poll, is out of luck, however; Broder added that Rep. John Murtha's advocacy of withdrawing U.S. troops "certainly crystalized the debate about the possibility of an immediate withdrawal, but that was very quickly rejected.")
Daniel Hopsicker
Mad Cow Morning News
Thu, 01 Dec 2005 12:00 EST
The MadCowMorningNews has learned that California Republican Congressman Randy 'Duke' Cunningham steered $500 million in defense contracts in less than a decade, according to the company's own website, to a start-up San Diego software firm which - and here's the beauty part - doubled as a lobbying firm.
The lobbying firm then gratefully kicked back - at a bare minimum - hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to a Jack Abramoff-directed Washington D.C. lobbying and consulting firm run by two former senior staffers of Texas Republican Tom DeLay.
It offered, in other words, one-stop shopping.
While the focus was on the $2 million in bribes paid to Cunningham after his guilty plea, the question of just what the Congressman had done for all that long green received scant media attention.
SOTT
November 30, 2005
SOTT
November 30, 2005
Wed, 30 Nov 2005 12:00 EST
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Bush's main point in his speech was: Apparently Bush has never heard Kissinger comment on guerilla war: The national strategy (NeoCon) document stipulated that Bush's complete victory required leaving behind a country that was "peaceful, united, stable, and secure, well integrated into the international community, and a full partner in the global war on terrorism", but given that the Bush administration plans on leaving behind an Iraqi political system that is completely under American control, there is little chance that Iraq will be united, and, as a result, the chance of a peaceful Iraq is just as distant.
"Failure is not an option," according to the NeoCon document, because to fail would mean that Iraq is "a safe haven from which terrorists could plan attacks against America".
The reality of course is that Iraq is not becoming a safe haven for terrorists, even the Bush administration itself has admitted that the vast majority of attacks against the US military in Iraq come from Iraqi grass roots insurgents who are demanding a withdrawal of US troops. If in the future however, Iraq does become a "terrorist" haven, then contrary to what the Bush administration says, there can and will be only one cause, as John Kerry has, for once, stated correctly: So what is the explanation? Why does the Bush administration seem so anxious to prevent a troops withdrawal from Iraq and willing to run the risk of seriously bad press in the process?
More than likely, they are being blackmailed by Israel.