- Even the word chutzpah isn't strong enough to account
for the lies that flow daily from the mouths of the Bush team. Are these
people so deranged that they actually believe they can get away with telling
whopper after whopper after whopper or do they think the American people
are so stupid that they will buy all the lies as long as the lies are humongous
ones?
-
- How many of you fell off your chairs when National Security
Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Supreme Court appointed Vice President Dick
Cheney declared that Richard Clarke, who says the administration was soft
on terrorism before 9/11, was out of the loop? That Clarke, the administration's
top counterterrorism official, was not included in meetings where possible
acts of terrorism were discussed?
-
- The only thing Clarke may have been out of the loop on
was the Bushies using the intelligence he provided them about impending
al Qaeda attacks on US soil to either give CIA asset Osama bin Laden the
green light or just sitting back and waiting for the attacks to happen.
Either way, Bush and his neocons would get their "new Pearl Harbor"
to pave the way for their long-planned illegal preemptive strike on Iraq,
which was to be the first step in imposing US rule on the Arab states of
the Middle East, in addition to neutralizing Team Sharon's enemies - real
or perceived.
-
- For those of you who still think that "our government
wouldn't do that to us," the picture becomes clearer by the day that
it is exactly what it did do. The only question remaining is whether the
Bushies were complicit in 9/11 or did they just let it happen? Either way,
it is not only an impeachable offense - one among a mountain of othersóbut
a criminal, possibly even a treasonous, act.
-
- How else to explain the waffling, the stonewalling, the
hiding behind executive privilege and the fact that George W. Bush got
to investigate himself and his underlings by appointing the members of
the so-called independent 9/11 commission to do the investigating? That
is the equivalent to a citizen accused of a crime appointing his own judge,
prosecutor and jury.
-
- Richard Clarke is no dove. He is an unabashed hawk. Clarke
spent 30 years in government service. Beginning in 1973, he spent 19 years
in the Pentagon, the intelligence community and the State Department. He
served three presidents - Reagan, Bush I and Clinton - and the current
White House resident. Under Reagan, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of
State for Intelligence. Under Bush I, he was Assistant Secretary of State
for Political-Military Affairs and coordinated diplomatic efforts for Poppy's
Gulf War and was in charge of security. Under Clinton, he was National
Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counterterrorism.
Under Bush II, he first was the chief counterterrorism official and later
demoted to cyberterrorism czar.
-
- Now Clarke, a true believer who votes Republican, must
be destroyed. Then the Bushies are good at eating their own, especially
those who dare to publicly disagree with them or those who no longer serve
their purpose. Just ask Saddam Hussein or Manuel Noriega about that.
-
- A savvy insider and wily tactician, Clarke is being savaged
for being smart enough to respond only to questions he was asked in prior
testimony to the 9/11 commission. That, according to Rice, waving an email
he sent her regarding an issue the commission never asked him about, shows
he lied.
-
- It was Rice who ignored a letter from Clarke sent to
her one week before 9/11, asking how the Bushies would feel if hundreds
of Americans were killed in a terrorist attack.
-
- When high administration officials aren't engaged in
attempting to assassinate Clarke's character by charging that he was "disengaged,"
"disgruntled" over being demoted, and that he might even have
a partisan agenda in the hopes of a getting a job in a Kerry administration
- something he has flat out denied, saying he doesn't wish to serve in
anyone's administration - they are whining and shedding crocodile tears
over the timing of Clarke's book, "Against All Enemies: Inside America's
War on Terror." What the Bushies are failing to own up to is that
Clarke's book was given to them last fall, which Clarke, as a former government
official, was required by law to do. But they didn't scream and howl and
shed false tears then, did they? Or did they fail to read the galleys,
too? Is the whole Bush administration reading-challenged?
-
- Clarke is only the latest target of the Bushies' fury,
but he has shown himself well equipped to handle it, as did former Treasury
Secretary Paul O'Neill before him. In going after former Ambassador Joseph
Wilson IV when he called the Bush lie about Saddam trying to buy uranium
yellowcake from Niger, two administration officials, as yet unknown, committed
a criminal act by outing his wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative to
a number of reporters, including Robert Novak who published it. When Army
Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki, in testimony before Congress, disputed
the Bushies over how many troops would be needed for the illegal war on
Iraq, his military career came to an end.
-
- Randy Beers, who succeeded Clarke, served only one month
before resigning for the same reason Clarke quit. Beers told the Washington
Post last June, "The administration wasn't matching its deeds to its
words in the war on terror. They're making us less secure, not more."
He further told the Post, "The difficult, long-term issues both at
home and abroad have been avoided, neglected or shortchanged, and generally
underfunded." The Bushies have used the fact that Beers and Clarke
are friends and that Beers is currently a volunteer security adviser to
John Kerry's presidential campaign more, at this point, to smear Clarke
than Beers. But there is still time to punish Beers.
-
- Richard Foster, Medicare's chief actuary, says he was
threatened with being fired if he told Congress the truth about the cost
of Bush's Medicare prescription drug program, which far exceeded what the
administration had told Congress. Foster's revelations have sparked a congressional
inquiry. Time will tell what fate Foster will suffer. The Bushies let no
good deed go unpunished.
-
- Lesser lights also have felt Team Bush's wrath. Tom Flocco
yesterday reported that FBI translator Sibel Edmonds charged before some
"50 reporters and 12 television cameras," following yesterday's
Tuesday's to the 9/11 commission, that she was offered a "substantial
raise and a full time job to encourage her not to go public that she had
been asked by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to retranslate and adjust
the translations of [terrorist] subject intercepts that had been received
before September 11, 2001, by the FBI and CIA."
-
- Edmonds is quoted as saying, "Attorney General John
Ashcroft told me 'he was invoking State Secret Privilege and National Security'
when I told the FBI I wanted to go public with what I had translated from
the pre 9-11 intercepts."
-
- And what was in her original translations that Ashcroft
wanted suppressed? "My translations of the pre 9-11 intercepts included
[terrorist] money laundering, detailed and date specific information enough
to alert the American people, and other issues dating back to 1999 which
I won't go into right now."
-
- The term "State Secret Privilege," she told
Flocco came to her in an October 18, 2002, memo from Department of Justice
spokesperson Barbara Comstock.
-
- Ms. Edmonds told Flocco that since her appearance on
60 Minutes she has been silenced by Ashcroft, followed by the FBI and,
in 2002, threatened in 2002 with jail if she went public.
-
- It is doubtful that all these people are liars or nutcases.
Those honors belong to the Bushies whose nefarious schemes are coming unraveled.
Truth is powerful stuff, so powerful that when it starts coming out, even
a Karl Rove can't hold it back.
-
- The biggest question is if and when the Democrats are
going to pick up on all the Bush lies being handed to them on the proverbial
silver platter. Must Bush and his evil twin, Ariel Sharon, set the world
aflame before the Democrats wake up? Might there be some unwritten rule
that a Bonesman (John Kerry) cannot speak the truth about another Bonesman
(George W. Bush)? If so, all is lost.
-
- On the lighter side (maybe not), a Condi Rice fan has
set up an unofficial Condoleezza Rice for President in 2008 website.
-
- Copyright © 1998-2004 Online Journalô. All
rights reserved.
-
- http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/032604Conover/032604conover.html
|
