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The thing about the Vietnam War that troubles me as I look back was it was a political war. We had politicians making military decisions. . .

President Bush on Meet the Press – 2/8/04

Complete Transcript

“We had politicians making military decisions.” Funny, that. Could I get a show of hands, how many people think that the current military intervention in Iraq was driven by the political whims of the Bush administration? How many believe it was because Saddam Hussein was able to deploy WMD “within 45 minutes”?

I encourage everyone to read this article at Mother Jones entitled, The Lie Factory. It is an excellent article. I’m going to continue repeating this until everyone gets tired of hearing it. And then I’ll repeat it some more. This war was manufactured. Planning started from Day 1 of the Bush administration.

The reports, virtually all false, of Iraqi weapons and terrorism ties emanated from an apparatus that began to gestate almost as soon as the Bush administration took power. In the very first meeting of the Bush national-security team, one day after President Bush took the oath of office in January 2001, the issue of invading Iraq was raised, according to one of the participants in the meetingÇ — and officials all the way down the line started to get the message, long before 9/11.

Bush and Cheney created a secret intelligence group, the Office of Special Plans, to manufacture intelligence that would justify going to war. It was all false.

The purpose of the unnamed intelligence unit, often described as a Pentagon “cell,” was to scour reports from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and other agencies to find nuggets of information linking Iraq, Al Qaeda, terrorism, and the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In a controversial press briefing in October 2002, a year after Wurmser’s unit was established, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged that a primary purpose of the unit was to cull factoids, which were then used to disparage, undermine, and contradict the CIA’s reporting, which was far more cautious and nuanced than Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Feith wanted.

Read this article, support the democrats who have called for an investigation into the workings of the OSP.

The gentleman on the right is making an album of songs about the democratic party. He worked with Harry Truman. He walked away before I could find out how to send him this picture. He wanted it for the album cover of his aforementioned album of songs about the democratic party.

I’m so glad I bought this camera.

Today at the Olmsted County Government Center, Terry McAuliffe, Chair of the Democratic National Committee, gave a press conference and answered questions from the crowd.

About one hundred people were there, and Mr. McAuliffe spoke briefly about overtime benefits, health care, and how the primary system has been working this year.

Afterwards I had a chance to shake his hand, and introduce myself. He asked if I was excited about the election and that he could see I was a Dean supporter (I had my button on). I said to him, “Dean has brought in a lot of new voters like myself to the party, don’t forget about it”.

Whoops, I felt like I was on the Daily Show. I meant to say, “Don’t forget about us!” “Don’t forget about it” sounds a little too combative. Terry if you’re out there, don’t forget about us!

As this picture was being taken, I believe he was talking about his lapel pin that said “ABB”

He also told the crowd that in 2000, Ralph Nader said that he ran because nobody in the Democratic Party reached out to him. Terry said this year would be different, and that they have already had meetings with Mr. Nader.

I voted for Nader in 2000 not because I’m a Green or because I necessarily agree with him or his policies. But I think our system is messed up, and it needs to be fixed. At the time, the choice between Gore and Bush looked to be no choice at all. Bush didn’t win the election, Gore lost it by not standing up for what he believes in. Gore gave a couple speeches in the past year that I thought were very good, and it put some faith of mine back into Al Gore. But it’s 2003, and it’s a bit late for that now. (Obviously in hindsight, I have no doubt Gore would have been the better option)

So hopefully all you long time democrats who are voting for Kerry know what you are doing. I want someone to get Bush out of there, and I hope that if Kerry is the nominee, he’ll have what it takes to stand up and fight for the next 8 months. Nader isn’t the problem. Providing a real alternative to Bush is the problem. And when the democrats figure that out, they’ll have found the solution.

AOL Presidential Match Main

I like these issue quizzes since it allows you to answer without bias towards one candidate or the other. I ended up with Kucinich 100%, Kerry 85%, Dean 81% and then on down from there… to Bush 11%

Take the test to see who has your views…

Doesn’t this strike anyone as odd? Am I the only one that feels that this is a huge waste of time and resources? Bush Seeks Big Jump in Missile Defense Spending

The administration seeks to boost funding for its controversial missile defense program by 13 percent to $10.2 billion next year from $9 billion requested for fiscal 2004.

Think about this for a moment. Who posesses these types of missles? According to the “National Institute for Public Policy (some conservative think tank, i believe) Here is the list. They are arguing for a missile defense system, so I’m sure they’re going to make it look as scary as possible:

Countries that supposedly have ICBMs:
• Iraq (whoops, apparently not, cross them off)
• Iran
• North Korea
• China
• Russia

Now, China and Russia would never use them against us. Why? They’re both in the UN (permanent members of the UNSC), and they are both major trading partners.

Iraq obviously doesn’t have this capability (why did we go there again?), Iran and North Korea both would bring a world of hurt upon themselves if they launched them at us.

My point is this. Missile defense does nothing to stop terrorists. We face basically zero threat of someone launching a full-scale, state-sponsored attack on us.

What we do face is a lack quality intelligence processing, and a lack of following the immigration standards that are already in place. It is becoming clear now that the terrorists who hijacked the planes were here on expired visas, fake passports, etc. We need to be able to better process the information that we have available to us.

Combatting terrorism is not like playing the game Risk. It is not a matter of bettering your odds by increasing the size of your army. The way to combat terrorism is to promote good will towards your country. Promote development of undeveloped societies. Use our enormous economic powers for building up those less fortunate in the world.

Think of how this $10 billion dollars we’re spending on a missile defense system could be better used. What if we simply matched the aid we give to Israel, and give it to the government of Palestine. Take a true neutral stance in the Middle East, and bring the different sides to the table. And stay there. Create a Palestinian state. Truly work towards peace.

I won’t even get into all the different positive things we could spend $10 billion on here at home, but it’s clear that we could do better than to spend it on some foolish and false sense of security that will only anger our allies and embolden our enemies.

All I want to know is… what is going to be the “smoking gun” so to speak that will wake up the American public?

Earth to Americans! Bush and his cronies lied to you. Repeatedly.

The Bush Administration is now saying it never told the public that Iraq was an “imminent” threat, and therefore it should be absolved for overstating the case for war and misleading the American people about Iraq’s WMD. Just this week, White House spokesman Scott McClellan lashed out at critics saying “Some in the media have chosen to use the word ‘imminent’. Those were not words we used.” But a closer look at the record shows that McClellan himself and others did use the phrase “imminent threat”

Read the whole article here… In Their Own Words: Iraq’s ‘Imminent’ Threat

This op-ed in the nytimes is along the lines of a previous article I had posted about framing the issues. The Dead Center, have a look!

I hope that Mr. Edwards and the others will stay on message ó and movement. After all, Democrats have seen what the Republican Party has been able to accomplish over the years. The conservative movement has developed dedicated sources of money and legions of ground troops who not only get out the vote, but also spend the time between elections persuading others to join their ranks. It has devised frames of reference that are used repeatedly in policy debates (among them: it’s your money, tax and spend, political correctness, class warfare).