Memogate

What we have here is yet another effort by the Left to do unto Bush what they believe was done unto Clinton.

Finn d'Abuzz wrote:

What we have here is yet another effort by the Left to do unto Bush what they believe was done unto Clinton.

That is definitely not the case. If impeachment is needed it would be because of Bush's illegal war. That's petty to say that it's about payback.

Kerry would be a fool to pursue impeachment with this current congress because they are just as corrupt as Bush. If he's smart he'll wait until 2006 when the democrats win back both houses. Then we can look into impeachment and start to repair the damage caused by this out of control administration.

This president has done nothing but harm since he's been in office. It has nothing to do with Clinton. And here we are again talking about Clinton when the issue is about Bush. You Neocons can't debate without saying the name Clinton. Find a new argument...

<chuckle>

No argument that SOMEBODY needs a new argument. The Dems sure haven't had notable success at convincing The Electorate of much of anything since '96. Oh, and that '06 "Comeback" you anticipate - that's gonna be just like the famous Dem comebacks of '98, '00, '02, amd'04.

WASHINGTON -
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20050610-1048-bush-ap-ipsospoll.html

When it comes to public approval, President Bush and Congress are playing "how low can you go."

Bush's approval mark is 43 percent, while Congress checks in at 31 percent, an Associated Press-Ipsos poll found. Both are the lowest levels yet for the survey, started in December 2003.

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=709885

Public Opinion Watch
by Ruy Teixeira
May 25 , 2005

Like Ouch, Man

If Maynard G. Krebs, beatnik extraordinaire, worked down at RNC headquarters, that's what he'd likely be saying about the latest round of public polls.

Newly released data from the latest Pew Research Center poll include the following dreadful approval ratings for Bush: 43 percent approval/50 percent disapproval overall; 42 percent/43 percent on the environment; 38 percent/46 percent on foreign policy; 37 percent/56 percent on the Iraq situation; 35 percent/57 percent on the economy; 31 percent/49 percent on energy policy; and 29 percent/56 percent on Social Security.

The Pew analysis of the poll notes that the biggest factors (based on a regression model) driving Bush's poor overall approval rating are the public's negative views of his handling of the economy and of the Iraq situation.

jim spencer
Lawmakers want in on the Secret

By Jim Spencer
Denver Post Columnist
DenverPost.com

Finally, people with clout have used the right description for the Bush administration's reaction to the so-called Denver Three.

Coverup.

In a letter sent Thursday to the head of the U.S. Secret Service, Colorado Reps. Mark Udall and Diana DeGette and Sen. Ken Salazar asked to meet with agency officials "in the next week" to find the name of the man who forced Karen Bauer, Leslie Weise and Alex Young from President Bush's March 21 Social Security forum in Denver before the president arrived at the taxpayer-financed event.

"It has been nearly three months since three individuals were removed from President Bush's Social Security town hall in Denver," Udall, DeGette and Salazar wrote to Secret Service Director M. Ralph Basham. "Each of us has called on the Secret Service to conduct an investigation to determine if the individual who removed these three persons unlawfully posed as an agent or a law enforcement official. Even though the Secret Service has conducted an investigation, the American people still do not have answers.


{more at}

http://www.denverpost.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/print_article.jsp?article=2793636

There's also a recent poll showing that the US Military is our most trusted institution ... you know, that same military that the MSM likes to say flushes Korans down the toilet

The same poll shows that Dubya's approval rating is still above the Supreme Court and is twice the rating of the Congress and the Senate and way above the media. When you consider the constant vituperation in the press that the president has suffered for 3 and a half years, Bush ain't doin' bad, all things considered. Not bad at all!!

I'd like to see how Howard Dean would stack up in a poll about now

Even John Edwards said that Dean doesn't speak for the Democratic Party.

So ... the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee does not speak for the Democratic National Committee?

And...the Dems are paying for that?

LOL.

<Dems have hit rock bottom...again>

http://blog.oneamericacommittee.com/article.pl?sid=05/06/06/2117240&section=&mode=nested&tid=1

We Agree: Working Americans Let Down by the Republican Party
on Monday June 06, @05:15PM

From John Edwards:

What a flap has arisen over a disagreement about the way something is said! I was in Nashville over the weekend, thanking the good people of Tennessee who supported the Democratic presidential ticket this year, when I was asked whether I thought that it was fair to say that people who were Republican hadn't done a good day's work. Of course, I didn't think so, and I said that. I don't think our DNC chair, Howard Dean, would put it that way again if asked either.

I disagreed with him, and I said so. And, I want to be clear, I would have to say so again if I were asked again. I said a lot of good things about Howard's outreach program and invigoration of the internet as a communication and fundraising tool, but no one wrote about that. Instead the headlines blared that I disagreed with Howard. And then the flap arose: A chasm! A split! A revolt!

Instead, how about: Nonsense!

We are both talking about the Republicans and their failure to address the needs of working people. We both agree with this basic truth: This Republican president and this Republican majority are not doing what they should be doing for working people in this country. That's a core belief we need to fight for. And what's more, we agree that we - all Democrats and all working people - should be complaining, criticizing, and generally speaking out about this critical failure of the Republican party and offering our positive vision for America. And we have.

Howard and I have been saying the same thing about this for years. Hear that? The same thing. For years. Have I ever put it some way that Howard wouldn't agree with? Probably. And he put it in a way, once, just the other day, that I can't agree with, since I come from a place where hard-working people, who are better served by the agenda and passion of the Democrats, somehow still vote Republican. But Howard and I are committed to a 50-state strategy that will reach out to those voters, in North Carolina, and in Kansas, and in Tennessee, across this country and tell the truth about what is happening in this country to their jobs, to their health care, to their forests and streams, to their vision of what this country is and should be.

This President is not fighting for our jobs. His administration has on numerous occasions said that the out-sourcing of American jobs is good for this country. Well, it may be good for Wall Street, but it is lousy on Main Street. If he thinks that jobs moving overseas is good for us, why would he ever fight for American jobs?

Our labor laws have seen weak enforcement during the time we have had this Republican administration in place. Companies that skirt this country's labor laws have gotten a slap on the hand, and even that has come too slowly. Efforts to allow workers to choose whether to unionize have not been protected in the way that they should, and the mutually beneficial bargain between labor and management that made this country the greatest economic power in the world has been broken, all while the Republican administration and Republican majority stand idle, with their hands dug deep in their pockets.

Those working people I grew up with that I talked about earlier live where I lived, in our rural communities, which is exactly where this Republican president wants to cut broadband extension, firefighter grants and investment and market access programs that will protect our rural jobs. The manufacturing extension program, which helps small manufacturers everywhere stay profitable - and therefore open, gets little support from this President. How are our towns going to remain vital with policies that ignore them? Where will the sons and daughters in our rural communities have to go to find jobs?

And this President has made choices that, if enacted by the Republican majority in Congress, will deny the opportunity to learn the skills for a new job to an untold number of Americans. Vocational and adult education would be cut by 89%. He wants to drastically cut adult education and retraining programs that allow American workers to better their skills either to get ahead or to get a new job when theirs leaves for overseas.

And if you happen to be a working man or woman in the United States military, this Republican president doesn't support loan forgiveness for your student loans or top quality health care when you get out of the military.

The safety net is eroding. The ladder has been pulled up. This is not new. For more than two decades, the Republican Party has talked about an agenda that addresses concerns of working people while they have passed an agenda that serves the goals of the wealthiest among us. Howard and I know that these are the wrong choices for America. We won't always use the same words. But we will always fight the same fight: for the dignity, the respect, and the rights of those who built this country, the working people in America.

Your friend,

John

A briefing paper prepared for British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers eight months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq concluded that the U.S. military was not preparing adequately for what the British memo predicted would be a "protracted and costly" postwar occupation of that country.
The eight-page memo, written in advance of a July 23, 2002, Downing Street meeting on Iraq, provides new insights into how senior British officials saw a Bush administration decision to go to war as inevitable, and realized more clearly than their American counterparts the potential for the post-invasion instability that continues to plague Iraq.

In its introduction, the memo "Iraq: Conditions for Military Action" notes that U.S. "military planning for action against Iraq is proceeding apace," but adds that "little thought" has been given to, among other things, "the aftermath and how to shape it."

Two Years Before 9/11, Candidate Bush was Already Talking Privately About Attacking Iraq, According to His Former Ghost Writer
by Russ Baker

HOUSTON -- Two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade·.if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."

Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. "Suddenly, he's at 91 percent in the polls, and he'd barely crawled out of the bunker."

{continued at}

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1028-01.htm

http://www.catch.com/comments/39090_0_17_0_C/

Stockpiles o' lies

From The Atlantic Monthly's interview with Paul Wolfowitz (subscription req'd):

{Int = Interviewer W = Wolfowitz}

Int: "You were one of those who was most emphatic prior to going into Iraq that Saddam had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction."

W: "I don't think so."

Int: "I can quote you."

W: "Okay."

I read him a line from an op-ed article under his byline in the British newspaper The Independent for January 30, 2003: "There is incontrovertible evidence that the Iraqi regime still possesses such weapons." Wolfowitz had spoken in the same terms on numerous occasions.

Int: "'Incontrovertible evidence' is a pretty strong way of putting it," I said. "How did you feel when you found out they didn't have such weapons?"

W: "Well, I don't think they don't," he said. "You say it turned out they didn't. By the way, read me the quote again."

I did so. Wolfowitz said he needed to go back and review his prior statements.

Int: "But clearly you believed they had stockpiles of such weapons?"

W: "You are putting the word 'stockpiles' in," he said.

He was right: "stockpiles" was my word.

So, there you have it. Even Wolfie never believed Saddam had "stockpiles" of WMD's. He was right.

ADDENDUM: This article was a collection of five different, never-before-published interviews that Neil Bowden conducted with Wolfie in 2004 and 2005. The above exchange took place on September 15, 2004.

Finn d'Abuzz wrote:

What we have here is yet another effort by the Left to do unto Bush what they believe was done unto Clinton.

That is definitely not the case. If impeachment is needed it would be because of Bush's illegal war. That's petty to say that it's about payback.

It is foolish to suggest that an impeachment process that flowed from this memo was not politically motivated. If there is a legitimate reason to pursue the impeachment process, the Dems should have had it. This memo doesn't present a legitimate reason.

Kerry would be a fool to pursue impeachment with this current congress because they are just as corrupt as Bush. If he's smart he'll wait until 2006 when the democrats win back both houses. Then we can look into impeachment and start to repair the damage caused by this out of control administration.

Nothing partisan in this comment, but you're right that there isn't even a chance of an impeachment process unless and until the Dems win back control over congress.

Out of curiosity, what is the damage caused by this Administration, and how might the Dems repair it?

This president has done nothing but harm since he's been in office. It has nothing to do with Clinton. And here we are again talking about Clinton when the issue is about Bush. You Neocons can't debate without saying the name Clinton. Find a new argument...

You're right that this is not really about Clinton, but it is about what was done to him by the Right and a desire on the part of the Left for political payback. I wonder if you truly believe that only the Republican impeachment of Clinton was politically motivated, while any effort by the Democrats to do likewise to Bush is based solely on their concern for the nation and the rule of law.

2001: Powell & Rice Declare Iraq Has No WMD and Is Not a Threat

During the run-up to the 2003 attack on Iraq, we were repeatedly told by US leaders that Iraq absolutely, positively had weapons of mass destruction [read more]. The country was an immediate threat not only to its neighbors but to the entire world. It had the capability of launching WMDs within 45 minutes.

In August 2002, Cheney insisted: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."

...

In February 2003, Powell said: "We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more."

But two years earlier, Powell said just the opposite. The occasion was a press conference on 24 February 2001 during Powell's visit to Cairo, Egypt. Answering a question about the US-led sanctions against Iraq, the Secretary of State said:

{more at, including the video link}

http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/powell-no-wmd.htm

For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.

Paul Wolfowitz
Vanity Fair interview
May 28, 2003

What a Tangled Web We Weave . . .
. . . when first we practice to deceive!


Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.

Dick Cheney
Speech to VFW National Convention
August 26, 2002

{continued at}

http://billmon.org/archives/000172.html