Let's talk about replacing GWBush in 2004.

There are too many lies, too many transgressions to list. Richard Nixon, in a less cynical era, told only one. And we were all supremely affronted by what he did to our democracy.

George W. Bush, and Karl Rove, has told dozens, each one of them more damaging than lying about a break-in of a political headquarters. And yes, Bill Clinton lied. But nobody died. He told an all-too-common male lie about consensual sex. But he did not send the sons and daughters of America marching off to war wearing the boots of a well-told lie. George W. Bush's one term will mark a low point in our country's history. But if we all pay closer attention, and vote, we can recover.

I love my country. But I hate my president.

Did conservative elements in the White House provoke an Exxon front group to sue EPA to suppress a report on climate change? That's the question that two State Attorney Generals have asked US Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate, after Greenpeace uncovered a routine email in a Freedom of Information Act request.


In the email, Myron Ebell of the Exxon-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute writes to Phil Cooney, a senior official at the White House Council for Environmental Quality. He describes his plans to discredit an EPA study on climate change through a lawsuit. He states the need to "drive a wedge between the President and those in the Administration who think that they are serving the president's interests by publishing this rubbish." He notes his group is considering a call for the then-head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Christine Todd Whitman, to resign, and openly suggests that she'd make an appropriate "fall gal" if the administration is serious about getting back into bed with conservatives opposing action on climate change.

His memo to the US government official begins "Thanks for calling and asking for our help."

That statement, and the cosy, conspiratorial tone of the document was enough to make Richard Blumenthal, State Attorney General of Connecticut, and G. Steven Rowe, State Attorney General of Maine, demand an investigation by US Attorney General John Ashcroft into whether Cooney or other officials in the Bush administration solicited the Competitive Enterprise Institute's filing of the new lawsuit, as the memo certainly makes it appear.

Italgato, I'm Asian, and I find Ms Chao's statement about "growing jobs" to be stupid. This administration has succeeded in over three million job loss, so how in tarnation are they going to "grow jobs?"
c.i.

But for millions of people globalization has not worked. Many have actually been made worse off, as they have seen their jobs destroyed and their lives become more insecure. They have felt increasingly powerless against forces beyond their control. They have seen their democracies undermined, their cultures eroded.

If globalization continues to be conducted in the way that has been in the past, if we continue to fail to learn from our mistakes, globalization will not only not succeed in promoting development but will continue to create poverty and instability. Without reform, the backlash that has started will mount and discontent with globalization will grow.

"Very simple" No Saddam, no WMD problem: Rice
WASHINGTON (AFP) Sep 08, 2003
President George W. Bush did not address the issue of weapons of mass destruction in his speech to the nation at greater length because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power, Bush's national security adviser said Monday.

"It's very simple. Saddam Hussein is no longer in power," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told NBC television, one day after Bush addressed the nation in a primetime speech about the challenges ahead in Iraq.

"Saddam Hussein was the problem with weapons of mass destruction, Rice said when asked why Bush had not said more about what was a main justification for invading Iraq.

"It was he who had a thorough appetite for weapons of mass destruction. It was he who had used weapons of mass destruction. It was he who was using the wealth and patronage of the country to develop weapons of mass destruction," she said.

Rice added that "we have every reason to believe that a stable. Prosperous and democratizing Iraq will not be a problem in this regard."

Inspector "David Kay will come back with a report on what happened to the weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein's programs," she said, but she stressed that "removing Saddam Hussein removes the threat of weapons of mass destruction."

Howard Dean, a leading Democratic contender for president, told NBC Monday that Rice and Bush "deliberately left a false impression: one, that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11; and two, that there were terrorists actively working out of Iraq."

"There's no evidence for either one of those, other than some peripheral evidence that is circumstantial," Dean said.

"The fact is that we are now bogged down in a war which the president continually justifies."

"The president is leaving the false impression that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11 and the false impression that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda were in league," Dean charged.

All rights reserved. © 2003 Agence France-Presse.

Perception is, of course, manipulatable, and that is Rove's expertise. Rove is undoubtedly pleased that so many Americans believe, for example, some connection between al Qaeda and Iraq, though the perception is false. Fortunately for the rest of us, such propagandist projects when so jam-packed with falsities and mis-directions become better understood for what they have been, there can be a rather severe disenchantment with the purveyors.

"It is understandable that so little time is actually devoted to the president's true actions on the morning of 9/11. Because to show the entire 23 minutes from 9:03 to 9:25 a.m., when President Bush, in reality, remained seated and listening to "second grade story-hour" while people like my husband were burning alive inside the World Trade Center towers, would run counter to Karl Rove's art direction and grand vision."