‘Is a President, on the eve of
his re-election campaign, legally entitled to ward off political embarrassment
and conceal past failures in the exercise of his office by unilaterally and
informally declassifying selected -- as well as false and misleading --
portions of a classified National Intelligence Estimate that he has previously
refused to declassify, in order to cause such information to be secretly
disclosed under false pretenses in the name of a "former Hill staffer"
to a single reporter, intending that reporter to publish such false and
misleading information in a prominent national newspaper? 

The answer is obvious: No.
Such a misuse of authority is the very essence of a criminal conspiracy to
defraud the United States. It is also precisely the abuse of executive power
that led to the impeachment of Richard M. Nixon.’ 

Bush's Final Jeopardy

‘On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad,
President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two
small trailers captured by U.S. troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile
"biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the
weapons of mass destruction." 

The claim, repeated by top
administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a
vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S.
intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true. 

A secret fact-finding mission to
Iraq - not made public until now - had already concluded that the trailers had
nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored
mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on
May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.’ 

Lacking
Bio-labs, Trailers Carried Case for War

  
meanwhile, in a humiliating
backdown ….
 

‘On Monday, former Secretary of State Colin Powell told me
that he and his department's top experts never believed that Iraq posed an
imminent nuclear threat, but that the president followed the misleading advice
of Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA in making the claim. Now he tells us. 

The harsh truth is that this
president cherry-picked the intelligence data in making his case for invading
Iraq and deliberately kept the public in the dark as to the countervailing
analysis at the highest level of the intelligence community. While the
president and his top Cabinet officials were fear-mongering with stark images
of a "mushroom cloud" over American cities, the leading experts on
nuclear weaponry at the Department of Energy (the agency in charge of the U.S.
nuclear-weapons program) and the State Department thought the claim of a
near-term Iraqi nuclear threat was absurd.’ 

Now
Powell Tells Us

 

of course, not a word of
regret or remorse over the fact that more than 200,000 innocent Iraqi civilians
& 2,500 US servicemen & women have paid for the wicked lies &
criminal deceit perpetrated by Bush & his war criminal colleagues ….. &
not a peep from the rodent or his dim-witted sidekick, “fishnets” Downer
acknowledging their complicity in this obscene war crime.

Things you have to believe to be a Republican today.... 

1                   

Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals &
Hillary Clinton.

 

2                  Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when
Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him
& a bad guy when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden"
diversion.

 

3                

Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is Communist, but
trade with China & Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.

 

4                

The United States should get out of the United Nations &
our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iran.

 

5                

A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body,
but multi-national corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind
without regulation.

 

6                

The best way to improve military morale is to praise the
troops in speeches, while slashing veterans' benefits & combat pay.

 

7                

If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have
sex.

 

8                

A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our long-time
allies, then demand their cooperation and money.

 

9                

Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy, but
providing health care to all Americans is socialism. HMOs & insurance
companies have the best interests of the public at heart.

 

10            

Global warming & tobacco's link to cancer are junk
science, but creationism should be taught in schools.

 

11            

A president lying about an extramarital affair is an
impeachable offence, but a president lying to enlist support for a war in which
thousands die is solid defense policy.

 

12           

Government should limit itself to the powers named in the
Constitution, which include banning gay marriages & censoring the Internet.

 

13           

The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades,
but George Bush's driving record is none of our business.

 

14           

Being a drug addict is a moral failing & a crime, unless
you're a conservative radio host. Then it's an illness & you need our
prayers for your recovery.

 

15            

What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national
interest, but what Bush did in the '80s is irrelevant.

Mark Fiore's new animation "36"
has just been posted!

From the BBC

Iraq unrest forces 65,000 to flee
By Andrew North
BBC News, Baghdad

At least 65,000 Iraqis have fled their homes as a result of sectarian violence and intimidation, according to new figures from the Iraqi government.

And the rate at which Iraqis are being displaced is increasing.

Figures given to the BBC by the Ministry for Displacement and Migration show a doubling in the last two weeks of the number of Iraqis forced to move.

There has been a sharp rise in sectarian violence since the bombing of an important Shia shrine in February.

This triggered the current tensions between the country's majority Shia Muslims and minority Sunni Muslims, and hundreds of people have since been killed.

Intimidation

Reports of people leaving their homes because of violence or intimidation, or simply because they no longer feel safe, are becoming more and more common.

Bombs push Iraq towards the abyss
Some of the intimidation is being carried out by mobile phone.

People have been receiving threatening text messages and gruesome videos filmed on mobile phone cameras.

In one, a Sunni Iraqi man who entered a mainly Shia neighbourhood of Baghdad is seen being beaten and killed by men in black clothes.

The video was then sent out with the warning that this is what would happen to any other Sunni who comes to this area.

Makeshift camps

The Iraqi Ministry for Displacement and Migration told the BBC almost 11,000 families had left their homes - equivalent to about 65,000, based on the average Iraqi family size.

read more at the BBC

------------------

Gus advises this news is not new on this site here but worthy of repeat

‘The transcript the feds released this week of the final
minutes of Flight 93 proves that President Bush brazenly and consistently lied
to the American people about how that flight ended. 

The transcript shows that the Arab hijackers chose to
crash the plane into the ground after the American passengers stormed the
cockpit. There is no guarantee that the transcript is accurate, and the
government has already been caught fabricating evidence at terrorist trials in
the post 9/11 era. 

But the government’s own version of events damns Bush. The
transcript was available in early 2002, if not earlier, and was shown at that
time by federal officials to some of the survivors of the people killed when
Flight 93 went down.’ 

Another Bush 9/11 Lie
Exposed

‘Bush is entangled in his own past. His explanations
compound his troubles and point to the original falsehoods. Through his first
term, Bush was able to escape by blaming the Democrats, casting aspersions on
the motives of his critics and changing the subject. But his methods have
become self-defeating. When he utters the word "truth" now most of
the public is mistrustful. His accumulated history overshadows what he might
say.  

The
collapse of trust was cemented into his presidency from the start. A compulsion
for secrecy undergirds the Bush White House. Power, as Bush and Cheney see it,
thrives by excluding diverse points of view. Bush's presidency operates on the
notion that the fewer the questions, the better the decision.  

The State
Department has been treated like a foreign country; the closest associates
of the elder President Bush, Brent Scowcroft and James Baker, have been excluded;
the career professional staff have been bullied and quashed; the
Republican-dominated Congress has abdicated oversight; and influential elements
of the press have been complicit.’  

The Slow-Motion Trap

‘Vice President Dick Cheney
directed his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on
July 12, 2003 to leak to the media portions of a then-highly classified CIA
report that Cheney hoped would undermine the credibility of former Ambassador Joseph
C. Wilson, a critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, according to
Libby's grand jury testimony in the CIA leak case and sources who have read the
classified report. 

The March 2002 intelligence
report was a debriefing of Wilson by the CIA's Directorate of Operations after
Wilson returned from a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger to investigate claims,
later proved to be unfounded, that Saddam Hussein had attempted to
procure uranium from the African nation, according to government records.’ 

Cheney Authorized
Leak Of CIA Report, Libby Says

‘This country, my country, has already become a fascist
police state. 

Our government lies to the people, spies on citizens,
kidnaps, imprisons without trial, engages in torture, and is leading the
country to ruin. Incredibly, all of this is done with the support of its
citizens. How is this possible? How can a democratic government abandon the
people it serves and squander blood, treasure, and traditions in an irrational
pursuit of global domination? 

First, realize that the government
no longer serves the people. It has been bought by the trans-national corporate
power structure and serves them, and is now simply the military arm of the
corporations. Meanwhile, the corporate media fulfills the propaganda role –
they control what the people experience as reality and therefore control how
the people think. 

They have the public so filled
with fear that they will agree to anything.’ 

Blood On Our Hands

‘Not too long ago, I was
listening to Air America when a caller to the religious right of war
supporter/evangelist Pat Robertson said it didn't bother him that George Bush
doesn't follow the law of our land because when we have a man who is a
"Christian" in office, we don't need the rule of law! The caller and
I am afraid too many more people in America are saved from the responsibility
of democracy because they believe that George follows a higher law than our
Constitution. The person who called in really meant that. I found that call
disturbing for several reasons, but to think that a man who kills his pretend
enemies and is a warmaker with wanton disregard for the teachings of Jesus
Christ is a Christian flies in the face of everything that I was taught about
Jesus of Nazareth and about the Christian faith. 

Thinking about how unloving,
punitive and unjust the brand of Christianity that George Bush practices is
reminded me of an experience that I had in Assisi the first time I visited Italy
in January of this year. The Franciscan model of Christianity is totally the
opposite of Bushianity.’ 

Make Me An
Instrument Of Peace

Thank you Mr Bush for exposing overtly in full sun light what has been so far been the semi-secret US international policy for many years. Some Presidents used it with discretion for some "good", some did use it while poking sticks in other countries affairs for less "good", but you have exposed, with full brass band, this secret intent, that of full blown world conquest by America — a master plan set in motion before 1900 by some of the US secret elite and still running hot within their sons' hearts. And at every turn of your policies, comes this hypocritical bad faith of pointing the finger at others trying to even express a tiny amount of similar yet modest desire — and even at those trying to succeed on their own.

With our little grocer set as as spruiker for your world domination game, and your idiotic bumbling possibly coming via thinking previous Presidents were too shy about enforcing it full bore, you have impatiently pushed the plan forward regardless of the consequences. Your fantasy about a war on terror, now a "long war" whatever that is, using the tools of destruction oozing from your forgery of a Christian faith, is dangerous and ill-promoted. I hope that even your most ardent media supporter now realise how you have really abandoned long ago any sense of proper understanding just to satisfy your "decider's" childish tantrums.

It is now obvious that America wants a world built to its own image, like we build our images of our gods based on our own reflections in mirrors. But we mostly know that these are illusions cast in our need to believe anything to reassure us from our cosmic uncertainty, and when they are promoted as the only way, they simply stink and furthermore in the case of American desires, they become dangerous. Even the illusions are peddled by Hollywood as well as the Pentagon...

Lucky the rest of the world is not as fragile as the US would like it to be but, still, the US is doing a darn good job at unsettling it. After the cock-ups of the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, more and more fake reports pop up everywhere regarding this or that country. Whatever the official source, the underlying origins are anchored in the bellies of the US administration and its subsidiaries such as the CIA and the Pentagon, and the trail is long but achieves the purpose of planting the seeds of doubt even if reports are then proven false.

The spruiking by Vice president Cheney at the door steps of Russia for example were not designed to benefit the countries involved — which do not need to familiarise themselves with the often corrupt US business techniques — but to shift the liberated influences from Russia towards a controlled colonial management team from the US. Russia is patient but getting a bit smarter than the average bear despite being a bit behind in the secrets of manipulative psychological influence through the so called "freedom" of choice.

While the US has been in the grip of the fabulous techniques of managing mobs through powerful manipulative advertising techniques since the 1900, Russia has been in the throes of totalitarian enforcement. It is to be said that they are new at the game of enforcing outcomes through clever manipulation of opinions in the framework of freedom of expression. The US is the master of this illusion of choice. Everything comes with a price tag... Even the moronic spruiker can win the jackpot with a bit of masterly manipulation from puppet masters.

In the meantime, for example, a chunk of disinformation is spread around the world about Iran planning to place red stickers on Christians and yellow stars on Jews — a story published in many papers around the world but vehemently denied, even by Jewish organisations. But the objective is achieved. Doubt is niggling, the possibility of it has been raised...

We live in the era of the porkie. As I have coined here before, we certainly live in THE AGE OF DECEIT. True, we have lived in this sordid portion of our planet's history since the time our ancestors left the trees they were perched in. It's not new, it's "natural"... Yes the animal world is full of deceit and corruption, but it could be hoped that — as we claim Braggartly that since we are the sliced cheese of intelligence on earth — we could do better and improve our relationships without the arsenal of greater deceit, without more dangerous weapons, without the desire to thwart everything that is not like us and without the desire to own everything and leave nothing to the rest — whether to human or other species. This grab-all attitude of course is not natural anymore... Most species will never stuff themselves silly as to eradicate the supply they need and if they do, it's mostly by accident rather than by desire.

We humans have thus developed this ancient corruption to an art form... Sadism, masochism, hate, anger, vengeance — all these become mismanaged emotions that badly brew in the depth of our complex memory. We twist the reality to suit our convictions, and we learn not to feel pain when we should. On one hand our leaders will encourage us to be charitable while on the other hand they undo the good work by waging conflicts that destroy our efforts, or develop armaments for the next biffo, that cost thousands of times our generosity amount in human lives and resources.

Yes more could be said here, more example of treachery but all I'd like to do is to thank Mr Bush the Lesser for having been so blunt as to have let the cat out of the bag: the US administration wants it all for itself —the world that is...

This is the way
the world will end;
Not with a bang,
but a whimper.

~ T.S. Eliot
 

‘The impending death of the Bush
empire has been the subject of some recent thoughtful articles. Such a
prognosis seems well-founded, but greatly understates the broader implications
of our current situation. It is the American political system, itself, that
appears to be in a terminal state. Intelligent minds need to focus on the
question: if this government collapses, what will be the nature of the social
systems that replace it? Will the state, itself, survive and, if so, will it be
in the same constitutional form as the present system?’ 

The Death of the
American State

From the Washington Post

The New Temptation Of Democrats
By Ruth Marcus
Tuesday, May 23, 2006; Page A17

When mega-pastor Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church opened last year in its new Houston home, the city's former professional basketball arena, a most unlikely guest was on hand for the celebration: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), a minister's son who chairs the House Democrats' Faith Working Group, headed to Dallas a few months later to worship with Bishop T.D. Jakes, an African American Pentecostal minister who's been called "the next Billy Graham."

This month, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean -- yes, that would be the Howard Dean who dismissed Republicans last year as "pretty much a white, Christian Party" -- went on Pat Robertson's "700 Club," asserting that Democrats "have an enormous amount in common with the Christian community, and particularly with the evangelical Christian community." Randy Brinson, founder of Redeem the Vote (think Rock the Vote meets Jesus), met last week with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council

-----------------------
Gus is not religious...
Saving the world from "sin" is not the best political idea but if that can get rid of Bush, then it might have to do for now... But surely...

‘Bullshit alert! 

After watching George Bush and
Dick Cheney weep and wail over the "damage" done by the New York
Times for reporting that financial data is being dumped into the CIA as part of
an effort to find terrorist networks, I kept waiting for Darryl Hannah to pop
up and say: "Live, from New York, it's Saturday Night." Does George
have Alzheimer's Disease? Has he forgotten that he used to love the New York
Times?

The only thing funnier is that
most of the mainstream media is reporting the antics of these clowns as
straight up news. 

President Bush crying about
"leaks" to the New York Times is like listening to former Hollywood
Madam Heidi Fleiss complain about sexual promiscuity. Sorry George, we ain't
buying your song and dance.’

Bush Confused About
Leaks