News of the Month

October 11, 2003

To start with tonight, I’m going to let you in on a big secret (and don’t tell anyone): politicians lie. “Gasp and gadzooks! Don’t tell me! Politicians lie?” Ohhhh, yeah. The Bush junta spent most of the month of September back-pedaling from the lies they told in order to get us into this $100 billion fiasco in empire expansion into our new colony of Iraq. A hundred billion of your dollars – does that make you mad? Maybe fighting mad? Good! But there’s more you need to know about the lies that our flight-suit-in-chief’s minions are backing down from.

On September 10 of this year, Bush said there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 attacks. (That’s not what he told the American people last March, before we marched our reserve forces off to conquest, glory, … and death.) Or take this one – three days before we invaded Iraq, Cheney said, “We believe [Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.” On September 14, on Meet the Press, he said, “I misspoke.” In other words, he admitted, “I lied.” Or how about those famous Weapons of Mass Destruction™? Remember, two weeks into the war, Donald “Rummy” Rumsfeld said, “We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.” Oh, really? Wait: what did he just say? That they’re either in Tikrit and Baghdad or east, west, south, or north of them somewhere. Duhhh! What’s left? Then, on September 16, when someone asked him why they hadn’t been found, he said, “What do you mean? You're talking about a country the size of California.” In other words, “I lied.”

Or consider this Associated Press report by Dafna Linzer and John J. Lumpkin on August 25:

“In building its case for war, senior Bush administration officials had said Iraq’s drones were intended to deliver unconventional weapons (meaning those phantom weapons of mass destruction). Secretary of State Colin Powell even raised the alarming prospect that the pilotless aircraft could sneak into the United States to carry out poisonous attacks on American cities. … But the Air Force, which controls most of the American military’s UAV (unmanned air vehicle) fleet, didn’t agree with that assessment from the beginning, and analysts at the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency said the Air Force view was widely accepted within their ranks as well.

Instead, these analysts said they thought the drones posed no threat to Iraq’s neighbors or the United States, officials in Washington and scientists involved in the weapons hunt in Iraq told The Associated Press. … (T)he Air Force thought Iraq’s UAV programs were for reconnaissance, as are most American UAVs. Intelligence on the drones suggested they were not large enough to carry much more than a camera and a video recorder, Boyd said. Postwar (Hah! Tell that to the people who’ve died “postwar”.) Postwar evidence uncovered in July in Iraq supports those assessments, according to two U.S. government scientists assigned to the weapons hunt. ‘We just looked at the UAVs and said, “There's nothing here. There’s no room to put anything in here,” ’ one scientist said.”

And, speaking of lies by our rulers in Washington, listen to what the Congressional Research Service has dug up on our beloved Vice-President, Cheney the Dick – well, “Vice-President” is his title, but it’s so obvious he’s the boss over there, I wonder why they bother with the subterfuge any more. But back to the Dick’s lies:

Cheney said something else on Meet the Press, that since becoming vice president, “I’ve severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven’t had, now, for over three years.” Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey didn’t believe him, and he asked the Congressional Research Service to do some digging. Their report states that unexercised stock options and deferred salary – both of which Cheney has from Halliburton – are well within the definition of “retained ties” to a former employer. Lautenberg said the report makes it clear that Cheney does still have financial ties to Halliburton. (It’s worth nothing that Halliburton’s KBR subsidiary is the main US contractor working to “restore Iraq's oil industry” in an open-ended contract awarded without competitive bidding.)

There’s a new book out – The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception – by political investigator David Fox. Worth reading. Here’s an excerpt from Mr. Fox, from a recent column in The Nation, about one retired General’s opinion of the pseudo-war in Iraq:

“On Thursday night, (retired General Anthony) Zinni, the former commander of the U.S. Central Command, was interviewed by Ted Koppel on Nightline. And he was rather sharp in his assessment of George W. Bush's policy in Iraq. … ‘I’m suggesting,’ Zinni said, ‘that either the [prewar] intelligence was so bad and flawed – and if that's the case, then somebody's head ought to roll for that – or the intelligence was exaggerated or twisted in a way to make a more convenient case to the American people.’

“Zinni raised the issue that Bush might have purposefully misled the public and not shared with it the true reason for the war: ‘If there's a strategic decision for taking down Iraq, if it’s the so-called neoconservative idea that taking apart Iraq and creating a model democracy, or whatever it is, will change the equation in the Middle East, then make the [public] case based on that strategic decision. … I think it's a flawed – like the domino theory – it's a flawed strategic thought or concept.

“Zinni was, in a way, being polite. Earlier in the month, he addressed a forum sponsored by the U.S. Naval Institute and the Marine Corps Association. There he let loose. Reflecting the views of high-ranking U.S. military officials who were dubious about launching a war against Iraq and skeptical about the occupation that would follow, Zinni accused the Bush crowd of having not been ready for the challenges to come after defeating the Iraqi army. ‘We’re in danger of failing,’ he noted, because the Bush administration had not readied itself for what would follow the initial military engagement. ‘We fought one idiot here [in Iraq], just now,’ he said. "Ohio State beat Slippery Rock 62 to 0. … You know! But we weren't ready for that team that came onto the field at the end of that three-week victory.

“Zinni displayed little confidence in Bush and his aides. He said that their Iraq endeavor has landed the United States into the middle of assorted ‘culture wars’ in the Middle East. ‘We don't understand that culture,’ he remarked. ‘I've spent the last 15 years of my life in this part of the world. And I'll tell you, every time I hear ... one of the dilettantes back here speak about this region of the world, they don’t have a clue. They don’t understand what makes them tick. They don't understand where they are in their own history. They don't understand what our role is.

“Do you think Zinni is angry over the war? He did get worked up as he ended his speech: ‘We should be ... extremely proud of what our people did out there. ... It kills me when I hear of the continuing casualties and the sacrifice that’s being made. It also kills me when I hear someone say that, well, each one of those is a personal tragedy, but in the overall scheme of things, they’re insignificant statistically.’ … Zinni continued: ‘When we put [our enlisted men and women] in harm’s way, it had better count for something, it can’t be because some policy wonk back here has a brain fart of an idea of a strategy that isn’t thought out.’ ”

Bill Clinton lied about one act of sex, and the Republicans tried to ride him out of town on a rail, tar, feathers, and all. George Bush – hell, his entire staff – have told lie after lie after lie, and those lies have led this once-proud nation into murder (of the thousands of civilians who have died in Iraq in this imperialist misadventure), death (more US soldiers have died in Iraq after our flight-suit-in-chief declared the war to be “over” than died during it), and bankruptcy (so we can fund Halliburton’s open-ended contract). How much longer are we going to take this? How much longer will the American people moo contentedly in their stalls, neither knowing nor caring what awaits them at the other end of the passage out of those stalls?

You can do something about this national catastrophe named CheneyBushCorp. All of them have to go. Whether you’re a Libertarian, or a Green, or a Democrat, or even a thinking Republican, you have to know – they have to go. The American people need to be educated out of their complacency, to be made aware of the massive lies being told by everyone in power in Washington now – and the deadly consequences of those lies on our people over there – and then to take action against it. You see all the places, all the ways, that the Bush junta is lying; and all the unnecessary deaths those lies have caused; now go out and tell the people you know! It’s quite literally possible that our very lives depend on it – every day we occupy our colony of Iraq is another day that the other terrorists (that is, the ones not in CheneyBushCorp) strengthen their resolve, increase their forces, and finalize their plans for retribution.

You know, I used a word a few minutes ago, that I didn’t think I’d ever use. It’s a word that was way over-used by the Russians about this nation back in the ’50s and ’60s – the word is “imperialist.” It’s gotten to be almost a cliché – something ranted by a nut out on a soapbox, used so much that nobody listens to it any more. Well, friends, I’m sorry to say that that word, “imperialist,” is the exact right word for the condition of this nation right now. Under the … I almost said “leadership” … of CheneyBushCorp, this nation is building an empire. Building it by force of arms, against people who don’t want to live in a US colony, and maintained to keep oil money – and now construction money – flowing into the pockets of a few powerful and influential men.

OK; here’s a liberty-related issue, right here in good ol’ Austin. Did you know the city has been spraying insecticide all over town, to control mosquitos? No? Funny – I mean, they told … well, no one, actually. They didn’t bother to find out whether the people of Austin wanted to be poisoned; and they didn’t even tell anyone that they were doing it. They just did it. Your government, at your service. But it gets worse – when someone I know called them, they lied about it. First, they said, “No, we aren’t doing it.” Then, when confronted with the facts, they said, “Well, we’re only doing it away from populated areas.” My friend then said she had evidence they were doing it in East Austin, the city fellow said something on the order of, “Well, they don’t count.” Balderdash! Do you like it when your government takes actions that directly affect your health, without consulting you, or even telling you? You don’t? Neither do I, and neither does the Libertarian Party. We stand squarely for the rights of individuals (you) against harmful, unwanted actions like this by the government – and nowadays, you know “government” includes government’s owners, the mega-corporations, as well.

Meanwhile, the occupation of our colony of Iraq continues, and the chicken hawks that run it keep screaming, “Support our troops!” (It worked in Oil War I; why not this one, too?) Support our troops. Let me fill you in on the latest way that the government is “supporting our troops.” You may have seen the front-page picture in last Sunday’s American-Statesman of a soldier, wounded in Iraq, being carefully tended by his wife. Then, if you read the article, you found out that (a) he wasn’t even in a hospital – they’d kicked him out of the hospital, and put him into a hotel room for his recovery, and (b) because the Army put him on medical retirement, his wife and children are being kicked out of their base housing and forced find commercial housing, at several times the cost of base housing, on a drastically reduced income. “Support our troops.”

But there’s more to this story. In that front-page picture, lying on the bed just to his right side, there’s a little tube or something. Two nurses I know both said that’s a suction drain to relieve the pressure of internal fluid build-up when a gall bladder is first removed. The first thing both these nurses said when they saw the picture was, “That’s full! It should never be allowed to get that full – it’s agonizingly painful when it’s that full.” Support our troops. Get wounded over there, and you’ll be: kicked out of base housing and your hospital, and warehoused in a hotel, where there aren’t enough trained staff to prevent you from spending your time in agony because nobody there knows to do a simple, 2-minute, standard procedure. Support our troops. Hah!

But wait! There’s actually some good news – the US House of Representatives gave a resounding “No!” to our little Emperor’s attempt to eliminate overtime pay to over 8 million workers – including all you veterans out there who learned your skills in the military. By a vote of 221-203, the House voted down the changes proposed by the Bush junta’s Secretary of Labor, Elaine Chao. I reported on that little bit of investor-payback nastiness last month, but wonder of wonders, our Congress turned around and bit their corporate masters right on the … never mind.

And, of course, there’s this little matter of treason in the White House. Listen to this report from MoveOn.org, substantiated in every detail with publicly available information:

“According to the Washington Post, ‘two top White House officials’ committed a high crime in the first weeks of July. They handed over the identity of an American secret agent to journalists. They blew her cover, risking the lives of colleagues and contacts, and possibly erasing years of intelligence work. Why? ‘Purely and simply for revenge,’ an administration official told the Post. The spy’s husband was a vocal critic of the Iraq war. ... President Bush has said he has no plans to ask his staff whether they were connected to it.

“On July 6th of 2003, Valerie Plame’s husband Joe Wilson wrote an editorial in the New York Times. Joe Wilson was a former Ambassador to Iraq, appointed originally by President George H. W. Bush, who had been sent in 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger. He concluded that ‘based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.’

“On July 14th, conservative columnist Robert Novak revealed that according to ‘senior administration officials,’ Wilson’s wife was ‘an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction.’ Up to this point, Valerie Plame’s identity was a carefully kept secret, but Novak blew her cover.

“Then, last Sunday (September 28), the Washington Post printed an article titled ‘Bush Administration is Focus of Inquiry.’ The article contained a revelation: ‘Yesterday, a senior administration official said that before Novak’s column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson’s wife. ... ‘Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge,’ the senior official said of the alleged leak.’ ”

Interesting that Novak was the only one of the six who chose to run the treasonous story. Why “treasonous”? To continue with the article:

“In 1999, President George H. W. Bush said that ‘I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the names of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors.’ Right now, it looks like possible traitors in the White House are being given a free pass.”

This, all by itself, should convince you that this country is being run by a bunch of stupid, rank amateurs! Oh, they know how to buy, coerce, blackmail, and defraud their way into being declared the victors in an election they didn’t win – but when it comes to actually running the country, they don’t know jack … sprat. The figurehead at the front of it all is an immature, dumb, and clinically insane frat-rat who’s more interested in his own good times than the good of the country. For example, according to an August 2003 article in the Washington Post, Bush has spent all or part of 166 days during his presidency at his Crawford, Texas, ranch or en route. Add the time spent at or en route to the presidential retreat of Camp David and the Bush family estate in Kennebunkport, Maine, and Bush has taken 250 days off as of August 2003. That’s 27% of his presidency spent on vacation ... and that’s during “wartime”.

Even King George I is on record as opposing this type of spiteful vengeance; at the dedication ceremony for the CIA building named after him, he said:

“Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors.”

But for not just one, but two “senior administration officials” to deliberately destroy the career, and very possibly the life, of a US intelligence officer and who knows how many of her contacts, for no other reason than to go “nya, nya, nya” at her husband, – that shows not only the petty malice we’ve known about all along, but a depth of stupidity that boggles the mind. Let’s be really clear just what we’re talking about here. Listen to this article by James Roger Brown, Director of The Sociology Center of Little Rock, Arkansas, on October 1:

“Valerie Plame was a clandestine field agent working under corporate cover. The exposure of an undercover field agent is considered tantamount to a death sentence that requires immediate remedial action. … The intentional exposure of field agents by government officials is not unknown. Espionage is a dirty business, and agents have knowingly been sacrificed for strategic and tactical purposes. … The exposure of Valerie Plame is in a class by itself. Mr. Wilson offended the Bush Administration by insisting that the public (be) informed that false information had been disseminated by the President himself.

“Someone in the Bush Administration decided to make an example of Mr. Wilson, and his wife, to discourage others from contradicting the official line. The intended lesson for Mr. Wilson and any potential emulators to take to heart is that if you cross President George W. Bush there will be no compunctions about arranging the death of your spouse. … If there is anyone who does not yet understand, the Bush White House is the most dangerous America has ever seen. Bush Administration Officials do not care how many of our soldiers are killed daily around the World. They do not care how many citizens are unemployed. They do not care how many jobs are lost daily. They do not care if a career CIA agent is murdered as a lesson to her husband and others. They do not care about anything but the power they hold.”

So who was that someone? Here’s what Ambassador Wilson himself said on a recent “Democracy Now” TV show in Seattle:

“At the end of the day, it’s of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of White House in handcuffs. And trust me when I use that name, I measure my words. … I have reason to believe that it was the political office that at a minimum confirmed it, and the political office was Karl Rove. … It was a reporter who told me it was Karl Rove, and that’s as far as I want to go right now.”

Karl Rove. Karl with a “K” – the German form. The man who, more than anyone else, taught our little toy emperor how to … seem imperial. The man who has a more direct access to li’l Georgie’s ear than anyone else, with the possible exception of his corrupt Richelieu, Dick Cheney, who is after all the channel for orders from the CheneyBushCorp’s real bosses.

All right – one final story. As you all know, last Tuesday the voters of California (those of them who could stop barfing long enough to make it to the polls, anyway) transformed that state … from a circus, into a lunatic asylum. They elected to lead the most populous state in this country a sexual predator; a man who has, with the acquisition of his fifth Hummer, defined the term “wretched excess;” whose only experience at running anything is running away from Richard Dawson’s game show host character in ”The Running Man;” and who participated in a meeting to prevent California from recovering over $9 billion in stolen energy money. Here’s what investigative reporter Greg Palast has to say about Herr Ah-nuld:

“…on May 17, 2001, at the Peninsula Hotel in Los Angeles, he had consensual political intercourse with Enron chieftain Kenneth Lay. Also frolicking with Arnold and Ken was convicted stock swindler Mike Milken.

“Now, thirty-four pages of internal Enron memoranda have just come through this reporter’s fax machine (that) tell all about the tryst between Maria's husband and the corporate con men. It turns out that Schwarzenegger knowingly joined the hush-hush encounter as part of a campaign to sabotage a Davis-Bustamante plan to make Enron and other power pirates then ravaging California pay back the $9 billion in illicit profits they (had) carried off.

“Here’s the story Arnold doesn’t want you to hear. The biggest single threat to Ken Lay and the electricity lords is a private lawsuit filed last year under California’s unique Civil Code provision 17200, the ‘Unfair Business Practices Act.’ This litigation, heading to trial now in Los Angeles, would make the power companies return the $9 billion they filched from California electricity and gas customers.

“It takes real cojones to bring such a suit. Who’s the plaintiff taking on the bad guys? Cruz Bustamante, Lieutenant Governor and reluctant leading candidate against Schwarzenegger.

“Now follow the action. One month after Cruz brings suit, Enron’s Lay calls an emergency secret meeting in L.A. of his political buck-buddies, including Arnold. Their plan, to undercut Davis (according to Enron memos) and ‘solve’ the energy crisis – that is, make the Bustamante legal threat go away.

“While Bustamante’s kicking Enron butt in court, the Davis Administration is simultaneously demanding that George Bush’s energy regulators order the $9 billion refund. Don’t hold your breath: Bush’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is headed by a guy proposed by … Ken Lay. Bush’s boys on the commission have a problem. The evidence against the electricity barons is rock solid: fraudulent reporting of sales transactions, megawatt ‘laundering,’ fake power delivery scheduling, and straight out conspiracy (including meetings in hotel rooms).

“So the Bush commissioners cook up a terrific scheme: charge the companies with conspiracy, but offer them, behind closed doors, deals in which they have to pay only two cents on each dollar they filched.

“Problem: the slap-on-the-wrist refunds won’t sail if the Governor of California won’t play along. Solution: Re-call the Governor.

“New Problem: the guy most likely to replace Davis is not Mr. Musclehead, but Cruz Bustamante, even a bigger threat to the power companies than Davis. Solution: smear Cruz because – heaven forbid! He took donations from Injuns (instead of Ken Lay).

“The pay-off? Once Arnold is Governor, he blesses the sweetheart settlements with the power companies. When that happens , Bustamante’s court cases are probably lost.”

And now there’s a Constitutional amendment in the works – no, not just “in the works,” it’s actually (but ever so quietly) been introduced into, and is being discussed by, Congress – to stop requiring the President to be a natural-born citizen, and permit anyone who has been a citizen for over 20 years to take the office. Well, guess when Ah-nuld decided that the money was greener over here than in Austria? Nahh, it couldn’t be … it is! It was in 1983 – 20 years ago, nearly to the month. Oh, come on – that has to be a coincidence, right? Riiiiiiight.

Let me close this segment of the show tonight with an editorial cartoon by Austin’s own Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, Ben Sargent, about how power is gained these days.