Donle’s Daily Dispatches
Volume 1 Issue 160 Today’s News and Views Tuesday, June 6, 2006
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Volume 1 Issue 160 Today’s News and Views Tuesday, June 6, 2006 |
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Donle's Daily Dispatches RSS News Feeds Latest news and opinion headlines from NPR, BBC, NY Times, etc. |
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Cost of the War in Iraq
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Update of US Casualties in Iraq: 2476 Update of US Casualties in Afghanistan: 296 Figures provided by the Iraq Coalition Causality website |
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Remember
Who Made This MESS! |
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For Immediate Release June 3, 2006 2500 American Deaths in Iraq are Near: We say, “Not one more.” Call for Peace Now. Press Contacts: Harold P. Donle, Veterans for Peace, Inc. #49, hdonle@insightbb.com 317/698-2450. Heather Allen-Garde, Hoosiers for Peace, heather@hoosiersforpeace.org, 317/202-9302. Jim Wolfe, Indianapolis Peace and Justice Center, jwolfe@butler.edu, 317/255-3857. Members of Veterans for Peace, Chapter 49, Hoosiers for Peace and the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Center are asking Indiana citizens to assemble on Monument Circle in downtown Indianapolis on the day that the 2500th American is reported killed to mark this tragic occurrence. The target date at the current rate of KIAs is on or about Wednesday, June 14th, eleven (11) days from today. This action is to honor the soldiers who have lost their lives in Iraq and their families, and to give our fellow Indiana citizens a visual representation of what 2500 looks like. We are against war because it kills our family members, wreaks havoc on our national treasury, makes the world a more dangerous place, and psychically damages our humanity. Hundreds of Hoosiers have been invited to participate in this event that will combine an installation of 2500 flags to honor the dead and a memorial ceremony to call for an end to war. If the number is reached on a weekday (Mon.- Fri.) the group will gather at 6 P.M and if the number is reached on a weekend the group will gather at 4 P.M. at Veterans Memorial Plaza in downtown Indianapolis. (The Plaza is bounded by Michigan to the south, Meridian to the west, North Street to the north, and Pennsylvania to the west.) At that time, the assembled will a field of flags on Veterans Memorial Plaza. The group will reserve 64 flags to represent the Hoosiers that have been lost in Iraq and they will plant those 64 flags around the base of the obelisk. There will be a period of brief remarks and a memorial ceremony in closing. For more information contact Harold Donle at (317)698-2450.
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Support Our Troops IMPEACH Bush/Cheney |
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Rep. Louise Slaughter's report "America for Sale" (pdf document) |
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Click on Play, then place cursor on Player and right click, select play in Theatre Mode. this is a one hour and thirty-nine minute long movie and well worth watching. - Harold, ed. |
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| Pasta for Peace |
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Hoosiers for Peace requests the honor of your presence… What: Share Sunday Gravy with Local Progressives at Pasta for Peace. Good Food, Stimulating Conversation, Inspirational Music, Film, and Art and a Silent Auction. Did we mention the pasta was shaped like peace signs? To reserve your seat, call 202-9302 or e-mail heather@hoosiersforpeace.org. Seats are limited and going fast. When: June 25, 2006 from 1 to 4 p.m. (with dinner at 2 p.m.) |
Where: Indianapolis Peace and Learning Center (6040 DeLong Rd.) in Eagle Creek Park. Why: Now is the time to spread the word to mainstream America to unite and stand up for peace. Hoosiers for Peace is sponsoring a statewide advertising campaign, which is focused on uniting the community to call for peace. This campaign will cost $14,000. This money will be used to pay for a full-page ad in the Indianapolis Star to ask more than 700,000 Hoosiers to call for peace. To find out more visit www.hoosiersforpeace.org Cost: Adults $20, Children 5-12 $7, Children under 5 eat free. All proceeds will go towards the advertising campaign. Seats are limited, contact Heather for tickets today: 202-9302 or e-mail heather@hoosiersforpeace.org. |
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Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. -- Martin Luther King, Jr. May 7, 2006 Dear Peacemakers, Will you help to spread and encourage peace? With a record number of American soldiers dying in April 2006 and possible military action against Iran becoming daily news, now is the time to spread the word to mainstream America to unite and stand up for peace. Hoosiers for Peace is sponsoring a statewide advertising campaign, which is focused on uniting the community to call for peace. This campaign will cost $14,000. This money will be used to pay for a full-page ad in the Indianapolis Star to ask more than 700,000 Hoosiers to call for peace. We are contacting dozens of organizations to make a proposal to form a coalition to raise funds and send a collaborative message to Hoosiers to Call for Peace. The message is: Call your friends, your family, and your representatives and ask them to support the Call for Peace. Like most Americans, we oppose war based on the following, which will be reflected in the advertisement: A. War Kills. More than 2,400 American Soldiers have died and nearly 1,000 Hoosier soldiers are in harms way. B. War depletes our resources. Billions of dollars are going to sustain war efforts while ordinary citizens struggle for social services. C. War will not make us secure. Studies have shown that the U.S. is no more secure today than it was before 911. Hoosiers for Peace, a website sponsored by Progressive Indiana, requests your support to make this advertisement a success. We will use the advertisement to call for peace. Each group in the coalition working on this project will be listed in the ad. Each group will be asked to raise $1000 by October 1, 2006. Below are some suggestions for fundraising: |
1. Letter Writing Campaign: Contact your family and friends and ask them to support this call for peace. Tell them how many people we can reach and ask them to make a generous donation and spread the word. You may collect the money through your organization or you may refer them to Progressive Indiana. Donations may be sent through our secure online giving by going to www.progressiveindiana.org and click on donate now or log onto www.hoosiersforpeace and click on donate now. Checks may also be made payable to Progressive Indiana and mailed to: Progressive Indiana P.O. Box 55253 Indianapolis, Indiana 46205-0253 2. Host a house party. Go grassroots and organize a pasta dinner or backyard barbecue and ask for a donation from each guest. Play poker and donate half of each pot to the campaign for peace. Have a bake sale through your church or place of employment. 3. Plan a small event. Invite your community to an event and ask for donations for the ad. Small concerts, speakers, and socials are some ideas for these events. Get creative and network! We need at least 14 groups to join the coalition and many more people to join the campaign to help fill in possible gaps. If we join together we can make this happen and we can bring Hoosiers together through this ad. As we Honor the Dead, Heal the Wounded, and call for an End to the War we can stand united for peace. We can make a difference by showing ordinary Hoosiers that there are many people like them working for peace. Please contact us as soon as possible if you would like to participate in this campaign. With a little work and collaboration we can make a large impact on our community. In Peace, Heather Allen-Garde Director, Hoosiers For Peace heatherreneeallen@yahoo.com 317/202-9302 It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it – Eleanor Roosevelt |
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David Korten Butler University June 26, 2006 7pm Reilley Room Atherton Hall Suggested Donation is $5.00
For more information |
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Listen to Air America Radio while reading today's news and views |
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Sign the ACLU's Petition against torture! We demand our country back. |
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The Not Your Soldier Project gives youth the tools we need to stop the military invasion of our schools and our communities. Not Your Soldier Action Camps bring together young people who are heavily targeted by military recruitment. At the camps, youth learn how to take action to fight military recruitment, the poverty draft, and the corporations that profit off of war. In 2006, Not Your Soldier will be hosting a national camp for youth and adult allies. >>Go to the Pick a Camp section to find out more! If you're interested in hosting a regional Not Your Soldier gathering, find out more here. Not Your Soldier National Days of Action are coordinated days of creative, non-violent direct action where youth take leadership and tell recruiters, "We are Not Your Soldiers!" >>Sign up for our action alert e-mail list! Parents: have questions? Check out Info for Parents, and our FAQ's to find out what the camps will be like. copyright 2005 Not Your Soldier. |
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Today's News and Views |
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| June 5, 2006 How a Typical New York Times Article is Really Bushevik Propaganda Disguised as News A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS Okay, okay, let’s get this straight once again. The New York Times is schizophrenic. Its editorial page is liberal, in the old establishment sense of the word, while its news section (despite infrequent expose stories like the NSA domestic eavesdropping one) is generally pro-Bush (although in an understated insidious way). Now, why do BuzzFlash and many other progressive websites make this charge? Because if you read the times carefully day after day, most of its news stories about the White House, Bush and foreign policy subtly reflect the administration perspective and spin, but written as though the NYT is offering up a third party “balanced” perspective. You don’t just need to resurrect the debacle of Judith Miller’s pre-Iraq war farcically badly-sourced reporting or the puff pieces that New York Times White House reporter Elisabeth Bumiller writes about Bush and his staff. You can look at almost any daily “background” piece on the White House and see just how much the New York Times political reporters are an extension of the Bush “spin machine.” To put some meat on the bones of this sad reality, BuzzFlash dissected a recent article from the NYT. Our comments will be in brackets. Click here for the full New York Times story. Before we begin a close scrutiny of the article, it is vital to remember that this is an administration that has been proven to lie daily, brazenly and egregiously. Yet, the New York Times continues to treat White House sources pedaling White House “spin” as purveyors of fact. In short, the very context of this article as conveying a credible scenario should be called into question because it relies on White House sources who wish to remain anonymous, according to the New York Times, for no credible reason, since they obviously are telling flattering details about Bush being “in charge” with the full permission of the White House propaganda apparatus. That is because the sources, from the information in the article, had to be at a very high level (Stephen Hadley or Condeleezza Rice or both), who would not provide such details (or likely “spin” combined with a sprinkling of fact) if it weren’t part of a White House public relations effort to explain the latest White House Iranian gambit. We won’t analyze the entire article, because of the length, but will offer some comments along the way [which you will find in brackets like these]. * * * A Talk at Lunch That Shifted the Stance on Iran [Many newspaper readers glance through headlines in a paper and then only read one or two stories. This NYT headline presents as fact the “anonymous sources” perspective that talk between Rice and Bush did indeed shift the stance on Iran. Two problems with this one. How can the NYT confirm that this “lunch shifted the stance on Iran”? More importantly, has the “stance” really shifted, or is the “stance” (military action) still the same, but the public relations approach to achieving the stance has shifted? The latter is the more likely scenario, but you wouldn’t know it from the headline.] By HELENE COOPER and DAVID E. SANGER WASHINGTON, June 3 — On a Tuesday afternoon two months ago, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sat down to a small lunch in President Bush's private dining room behind the Oval Office and delivered grim news to her boss: Their coalition against Iran was at risk of falling apart. [A rather bold assertion presented as fact by the NYT. How about the word allegedly in here? Or White House sources claim that this is how “it” happened?] A meeting she had attended in Berlin days earlier with European foreign ministers had been a disaster, she reported, according to participants in the discussion. Iran was neatly exploiting divisions among the Europeans and Russia, and speeding ahead with its enrichment of uranium. The president grimaced, one aide recalled, interpreting the look as one of exasperation "that said, 'O.K., team, what's the answer?' " [Here, the NYT adopts the bizarre Bush penchant for running foreign policy based on body language. Note, that Bush didn’t say “'O.K., team, what's the answer?' " This is an anonymous source’s interpretation of Bush’s grimace. Doesn’t the NYT think that this is an odd way to determine foreign policy, from a president’s grimace? Apparently not. Doesn’t the NYT wonder why Bush didn’t actually say something? Apparently not.] That body language [ah, the “leadership” by “body language” school of Bush government is now fully incorporated into an allegedly “factual” news story] touched off a closely held two-month effort to reach a drastically different strategy, one articulated two weeks later in a single sentence that Ms. Rice wrote in a private memorandum. [Private to whom? Did the New York Times see the alleged memorandum?] It broached the idea that the United States end its nearly three-decade policy against direct talks with Iran. [Did it really do that, or did it perhaps indicate that the U.S. would offer to talk with Iran if Iran basically acceded to U.S. demands, which is no different than saying, “give us what we want, and then we’ll talk.” This was the same gambit, more or less, used with Iraq.] Mr. Bush's aides rarely describe policy debates in the Oval Office in much detail. [So, why are they talking to the NYT now? Senior Bush loyalist aides don’t freelance leaks.] But in recounting his decisions in this case, they appeared eager to portray him as determined to rebuild a fractured coalition still bearing scars from Iraq and find a way out of a negotiating dynamic that, as one aide said recently, "the Iranians were winning." [The closest the NYT gets to the reality of this entire story. It’s spin to make Bush appear “in charge” of White House policy in regards to Iran.] Mr. Bush gradually grew more comfortable with offering talks to a country that he considers the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism, and whose president has advocated wiping Israel off the map. Mr. Bush's own early misgivings about the path he was considering came in a flurry of phone calls to Ms. Rice and to Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser, that often began with questions like "What if the Iranians do this," gaming out loud a number of possible situations. [This is an unlikely scenario for the man who read “My Pet Goat” with an elementary school classroom for several minutes after being informed of 9/11, until his handlers were prepared to tell him what to do. But the NYT swallows it hook, line and sinker. Also notice how again a “spin” sentence is presented as fact, “Mr. Bush gradually grew more comfortable with offering talks to a country that he considers the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism, and whose president has advocated wiping Israel off the map.” Is the second part of the sentence the NYT piling on the WH “spin” or do they know that was in Bush’s head? It appears to be an additional point that the NYT added, but may or may not be a factor in the alleged decision making by Bush.] Mr. Bush left open the option of scuttling the entire idea until early Wednesday morning, three senior officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were describing internal debates in the White House. [Why do they need to be anonymous? No senior Bush administration would provide such “spin” without Rove, Bush or Cheney approving. The NYT accepts that “speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were describing internal debates in the White House” is a credible reason to remain anonymous, which it is not in this case, since the WH obviously gave them the green light to talk with the NYT. They are anonymous because if their names appeared in the story, it would confirm it is “spin.” If they remain anonymous, the “spin” in the article appears as if the NYT is reporting fact, instead of calculated WH Bush image building.] He made the final decision only after telephone calls with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and the Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany led him to conclude that if Tehran refused to suspend its enrichment of uranium, or later dragged its feet, they would support an escalating series of sanctions against Iran at the United Nations that could lead to a confrontation. [Again, the NYT is reporting speculation about Bush’s state of mind (whatever there is of it) as fact. This is patently absurd.] Even after Mr. Bush edited the statement [Does the NYT have definitive proof that Bush “edited” the statement? The “Great Decider” is not known for his editing skills or even desire to edit. This is likely, again, “spin” to make him appear in charge of foreign policy and intimately involved with foreign policy decision making down to minute wording of statements. This is highly implausible, given his record.] that Ms. Rice was scheduled to read Wednesday before she flew to Vienna to encourage Europe and Russia to sign on to a final package of incentives for Iran — and sanctions if it turns the offer down — Ms. Rice wanted to check in one more time. She called Mr. Bush. Was he sure he was O.K. with his decision? "Go do it," he was said to have responded. [Finally, the NYT uses the words “he was said to have responded” and not reporting it as if it were fact. It took long enough in the article to make such a qualification. Actually, this sounds like the one piece of information thus far “reported” in this article that might be true. That’s about the extent of Bush’s capabilities: “Go do it.”] She did, but the results remain unclear. Iran has given no indication it
will agree to Mr. Bush's threshold condition, suspending nuclear fuel
production. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Friday that he would oppose
"any pressure to deprive our people from their right" to pursue a peaceful
nuclear program. " Iran will examine the proposal and announce its opinion after that," Mr. Mottaki said. Mr. Bush's aides now acknowledge that the approach they had once publicly described as successfully "isolating" Iran was in fact viewed internally as going nowhere. Mr. Bush's search for a new option was driven, they say, by concern that the path he was on two months ago would inevitably force one of two potentially disastrous outcomes: an Iranian bomb, or an American attack on Iran's facilities. [He hasn’t really adopted a different endgame. As with Iraq, he has just adopted a different public relations strategy. Actually, the two outcomes in the NYT sentence are still the ones that the WH believes in, according to most accounts.] Conservatives, even some inside the administration, are worried that Mr. Bush may be forced into other concessions, including allowing Iran to continue some low level of nuclear fuel production. Others fear that the commitments Mr. Bush believes he extracted from Mr. Putin, Ms. Merkel and President Jacques Chirac of France may erode. But the story of how a president who rarely changes his mind did so in this case — after refusing similar proposals on Iran four years ago — illustrates the changed dynamic between the State Department and the White House in Mr. Bush's second term. When Colin L. Powell was secretary of state, the two buildings often seemed at war. But 18 months after Ms. Rice took over, her relationship with Mr. Bush has led to policies [Exactly what changes in policy are they talking about? We’d like to know, because we haven’t read about them.] that one former adviser to Ms. Rice and Mr. Bush said "he never would have allowed Colin to pursue." [Again, is there really any fundamental change in policy toward Iran here? The Administration is just repackaging their ultimatum. This paragraph is a rather sweeping conclusion by the NYT, and fits in nicely if you consider that Condoleezza Rice was a likely source for this article.] It is unclear how much dissent, if any, surrounded the decision, which appears to have been driven largely by the president, Ms. Rice and Mr. Hadley, with other senior national security officials playing a more remote role. [Given either Rice or Hadley or both were sources for this article, this is a bit self-serving. Furthermore, it’s hard to imagine Bush “driving” this decision. This is just Rice and/or Hadley trying to build up Bush’s “leadership”image.] Both White House and State Department officials say Vice President Dick Cheney, long an opponent of proposals to engage Iran, agreed to this experiment. [Now it is an experiment. We can see the test tube labs all lined up.] But it is unclear whether he is an enthusiast, or simply expects Iran to reject suspending enrichment — clearing the way to sanctions that could test the Iranian government's ability to survive. After the surprise election of Mr. Ahmadinejad last summer, Iran ended its suspension of uranium enrichment, and the United States and Europe won resolutions at the International Atomic Energy Agency to move the issue to the United Nations Security Council. But it took weeks over the winter to get the weakest of Security Council actions — a "presidential statement." [This is written from the White House perspective, but as a NYT factual assessment.] Russia, which has huge financial interests in Iran and is supplying it with nuclear reactors, was particularly reluctant to push the Iranians too hard. At a private dinner on March 6 at the Watergate with Ms. Rice, Mr. Hadley and Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, Mr. Lavrov warned that Iran could do what North Korea did in 2003 — throw out inspectors and abandon the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. That would close the biggest window into Iran's program, making it hard to assess its bomb capability — the same issue that had led to huge errors in Iraq. [That’s not what led to huge errors in Iraq, as the NYT should know better than anyone. This is a factually misleading statement by the NYT. This accepts the White House cover story that errors in intelligence led to the war with Iraq, not lies and a determination to go to war no matter what.] On March 30, Ms. Rice traveled to Berlin for what turned into a fractious meeting with representatives of the other four permanent members of the Security Council and Germany. She questioned what kind of sanctions would be effective. The conversation went nowhere. That led to Ms. Rice's warning to Mr. Bush over lunch, on April 4, that the momentum to confront Iran was disintegrating. Mr. Bush, one aide noted, was receiving special intelligence assessments every morning, some on Iran's intentions, others examining Mr. Ahmadinejad's personality, still others exploring how long it would take Iran to produce a bomb. [Yeah, sure. In August of 2001, Bush received a special intelligence assessment that Al-Qaeda was planning imminent hijackings in America, and he did nothing, promptly going on a month’s vacation. As a result, he blew the chance to prevent 9/11 by not taking special measures to prevent hijackings. Anyone who believes that Bush is reading all this information is on crack.] On Easter weekend [poor lonely Condi], Ms. Rice sat in her apartment and drafted a two-page proposal for a new strategy that pursued three tracks: the threat of "coercive measures" through the United Nations, negotiations with Iran that included what Ms. Rice has called "bold" incentives for Iran to give up the production of all nuclear fuel and a separate set of strategies for economic sanctions if the Security Council failed to act. They were accompanied by a calendar Ms. Rice had marked in three colors tracking the schedule for each of the three tracks, which Mr. Hadley told her was "brilliant, colorful, and completely impenetrable." [Extremely odd statement that the NYT drops in the article without a follow-up. We have a Secretary of State who develops an “impenetrable” plan, according to the now “on record” national security adviser, and the NYT just drops the damning assessment without elaboration.] For the first time, her proposal also raised a question the administration had long avoided: Had the time arrived for the United States to play what she and Mr. Bush, both bridge players, called their biggest card — offering to talk with Iran? [Not much of a card at all, more of a ploy.] She shared the proposal with Mr. Hadley, and then raised it with Mr. Bush in private on May 5 The idea intrigued Mr. Bush, White House officials say, and on May 8, Ms. Rice met with him just hours before flying to New York for a meeting with her European counterparts. She asked him what kind of body language [Back to the Bush “body language” school of diplomacy.] to display at the United Nations meeting. Should she signal that the United States was considering negotiations with Iran? "Be careful," he said, according to officials familiar with the conversation. "I haven't made up my mind." [Hmm, what kind of body language does “I haven’t made up my mind” require?] That same day, an 18-page letter from Mr. Ahmadinejad arrived. It declared liberal democracy a failure, although it also was perceived by many as an effort to reach out and start a dialogue. Ms. Rice and Mr. Hadley read the letter on the flight to New York, but dismissed it. "It isn't addressing the issues we're dealing with in a concrete way," Ms. Rice said that day. Her meeting in New York with her European counterparts turned testy, particularly an exchange with Mr. Lavrov, who was still smarting from a speech by Mr. Cheney denouncing Russia for its increasingly authoritarian behavior. But the discussion, while fractious, convinced her that the only way to break the stalemate was to offer to join the negotiations. [Again, pretty clear evidence that Rice was a source on this story, and that this story is extremely favorable to Rice, who went out of her way to give a favorable impression of Bush.] While Mr. Bush was intrigued, he was intent on secrecy, and so when the National Security Council met on the subject on May 17, he warned against leaks. [We couldn’t stop laughing after reading, Bush “warned against leaks.” Obviously, the NYT saw nothing ironic in this.] The session was notable because Mr. Cheney, who had fought in the first term against engagement with Iran, said the offer might work, largely because it would force the choices back on Iran. And while the council had dismissed the letter, it used the meeting to discuss whether to respond. While Mr. Bush initially told Ms. Rice that others could work out the final negotiations, Ms. Rice told the president that "only you can nail this down," apparently a reference to keeping Ms. Merkel and Mr. Putin on board. Mr. Bush made the calls and got them to agree that if Iran resists, they will move ahead with a range of sanctions. But Mr. Bush, led by Ms. Rice, is taking a significant risk. He must hold together countries that bitterly broke with the United States three years ago on Iraq. And now, he seems acutely aware that part of his legacy may depend on his ability to prevent Iran from emerging as a nuclear power in the Middle East, without again resorting to military force. [A strange final paragraph to a potentially faux news story. Abruptly, the NYT switches into an entirely different tone, now in a few sentences, making a dramatic judgment on the relatively minor White House PR move with Iran. Also, once again, the NYT enters into Bush’s state of mind: “he seems acutely aware that part of his legacy may depend on his ability to prevent Iran from emerging as a nuclear power in the Middle East.” How in the world does the NYT claim to know that Bush is “acutely aware” of his legacy, Iran and the bomb? Really, how can they make this claim? Are they hot wired into his brain? And then there is the subtlety of "without again resorting to military force," which, by implication, supports the notion that Bush invaded Iraq to get rid of WMDs (that weren't there to begin with). The last sentence of the "news" article is the kind of pompous, grandiose statements that the NYT specializes in.] Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Tehran for this article. A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS BuzzFlash Afternote: This NYT story evidences one of the great tragedies of the mainstream media. They work not to upset the White House by revealing the truth in order to preserve access to top insiders like Rice and Hadley. But that access only gives them “spin” stories that are really PR pieces for the Bush White House and the insiders themselves. In short, it’s PR, not journalism. So, what is the access worth if it results in stories as flawed and biased as this one? Nothing, indeed, except misrepresenting the news in both context and fact. © BuzzFlash. |
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Leola McConnell
Liberal Democrat for Governor of Nevada, 2006 |
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The Truth About George W. Bush Here you will find out the little known truth concerning President George W. Bush, Victor Ashe, the current American ambassador to Poland (formerly mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee and Exec. V.P.; C.F.O. of Fannie Mae), and their adulterous-bisexual relationship with a Las Vegas woman in 1984. This situation took place in 1984 in the State of Tennessee. It concerns a 41 year old woman [currently residing in Las Vegas], Victor Ashe and George Bush's encounter in 1984 during the senate debates between Al Gore, Jr., Victor Ashe and Ed McAteer. She was invited to come to Tennessee by Victor Ashe. While attending one of these debates she spoke briefly with Ed McAteer (Senatorial candidate in 1984 who debated alongside Al Gore, Jr. and Victor Ashe, and was responsible in part for the emergence of the Religious Right). Members of the mainstream media (CNN, FOX/news, Chicago Tribune) have known about this Las Vegas woman [well known in the BDSM underground] since September of 2003 yet they have done little if anything to get to the bottom of it. Like Bush's national guard service records they've given him a free pass concerning the what, where and when of his participation in the Texas Air National Guard. We believe if the whereabouts and war-time behavior of Senator Kerry during his tour in Vietnam in the early 70's are matters of importance to the American people [according to Sinclair Broadcasting and Swift Boat Vets for Truth] then the past behavior of this President and his involvement in a homosexual situation with another man in the mid 80's is of equal importance. When this Las Vegas woman told us about her conversation with Ed McAteer we thought it was something that should be looked into. He was being treated for cancer so we had to move quickly to open a dialogue. We believed obtaining a death bed declaration [if it came down to that] of a man of Ed McAteer's stature in the Christian community [he was called the Godfather of the Religious Right] would have held tremendous weight. Ed [finally] coming forward to say what he witnessed or knew concerning this matter would have been unimpeachable. Ed was a staunch supporter of the state of Israel and quietly lobbied for the post of U.S. ambassador to Israel back in 2001 but was turned down for the position by none other than George W. Bush. It seems in George W. Bush's isolated bubble, ambassadorships are rewards set aside for friends and lovers only. We initially contacted Mr. McAteer back in May of this year. He mentioned at that time Victor Ashe's sexual shenanigans were no secret in Tennessee. He seemed resentful of his party's choice to back a 'sodomite' which is why he ran as an independent. Ed was on chemotherapy and it was extremely difficult for him to talk so we deferred until late August at which time his wife [Faye] informed us he wanted to talk further but was under doctors orders to refrain from all strenuous activity. Sadly, Ed McAteer passed away on Oct. 5, 2004, before we could do a follow-up interview, he was 78. For Ed's sake [and that of his family] we hope his departure was natural [God's will], however, the timing of it all seems rather untimely in our opinion. It bares looking into by the Tennessee authorities. When he passed way another writer contacted Faye and she imparted to him that Ed seemed upset upon returning from the debate in Chattanooga back in 1984. Was Ed aware of Victor Ashe and George W. Bush's bisexual behavior? Perhaps that is what upset him so. Unfortunately he didn't get the chance to tell us what he witnessed that night that upset him or if he remembered talking with the Las Vegas woman. The Las Vegas woman was paid $15,000 to arrange sexual liaisons involving bisexual men for George W. Bush (then private citizen) and Victor Ashe (then a Tennessee State Senator). These adulterous bisexual affairs (3 encounters in all-3 different cities) took place in the state of Tennessee during the 1984 senate debates between, Al Gore, Jr., Victor Ashe and Ed McAteer. An African-American woman was invited to participate in this adulterous sexual encounter with George W. Bush and Victor Ashe immediately following the Chattanooga senatorial debate. This woman was paid $1,500. A few years later the Las Vegas woman was detained in Washington D.C. with Victor Ashe by the Metro D.C. police. She was released but Victor was taken into custody. So confident was this woman that Ed would have remembered her [and their meeting] she had finally come forward and was prepared to tell it all. She will swear to the authenticity of what is being imparted here, which is the reason that we built this website so we could get this information out to you. Bush & Co. will no doubt tell the world she's insane, politically motivated thus concocting this for smear reasons. She is of sound mind and body and welcomes all inquires from the mainstream media. This woman deeply laments not having come forward back in 2000 when then Governor Bush was running for the highest office in the land against [ironically] Vice President Al Gore, Jr. Disclosure of George W. Bush's adulterous bisexual behavior will only happen if the American public demand answers. Contact your local news organizations demanding that this truth be revealed and not go the way of his Texas Air National Guard records. Direct all media inquires to thetruthaboutbushin84@yahoo.com |
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| This woman running for governor in Nevada claims she is the author of the above article and the woman who secured the sexual liaisons for Bush. She verified this information with Rhandi Rhodes of Air America. And people called me crazy when I said Bush was a closeted gay. -Harold, ed. | |||
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| But memories of Katrina have faded, and
they're about to try again. The Senate will probably vote this week. So it's
important to realize that there's still a clear connection between tax
breaks for the rich and failure to help Americans in need. Any senator who votes to repeal the estate tax, or votes for a "compromise" that goes most of the way toward repeal, is in effect saying that increasing the wealth of people who are already in line to inherit millions or tens of millions is more important than taking care of fellow citizens who need a helping hand. To understand this point, we need to look at what Congress has been doing lately in the name of deficit reduction. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which was signed in February, consists mainly of cuts to spending on Medicare, Medicaid and education. The Medicaid cuts will have the largest human impact: the Congressional Budget Office estimates that they will cause 65,000 people, mainly children, to lose health insurance, and lead many people who retain insurance to skip needed medical care because they can't afford increased co-payments. Congressional leaders justified these harsh measures by saying that we have to reduce the budget deficit, and there's no way to do that without inflicting pain. But those same leaders now propose making the deficit worse by repealing the estate tax. Apparently deficits aren't such a big problem after all, as long as we're running up debts to provide bigger inheritances to wealthy heirs rather than to provide medical care to children. And the cost of tax cuts is far larger than the savings from benefit cuts. Under current law — what I once called the Throw Mama From the Train Act of 2001 — the estate tax is scheduled to be phased out in 2010, but return in 2011. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, making repeal permanent would cost more than $280 billion from 2011 to 2015. That's more than four times the savings from the Deficit Reduction Act over the same period. Who would benefit from this largess? The estate tax is overwhelmingly a tax on the very, very wealthy; only about one estate in 200 pays any tax at all. The campaign for estate tax repeal has largely been financed by just 18 powerful business dynasties, including the family that owns Wal-Mart. You may have heard tales of family farms and small businesses broken up to pay taxes, but those stories are pure propaganda without any basis in fact. In particular, advocates of estate tax repeal have never been able to provide a single real example of a family farm sold to pay estate taxes. Nonetheless, the estate tax is up for a vote this week. First, Republicans will try to repeal the estate tax altogether. If that fails, they'll offer a compromise that isn't really a compromise, like a plan suggested by Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, that would cost almost as much as full repeal, or a plan suggested by Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, that is only slightly cheaper. In each case, the crucial vote will be procedural: if 60 senators vote to close off debate, estate tax repeal or something close to it will surely pass. Any senator who votes for cloture but against estate tax repeal — which I'm told is what John McCain may do — is simply a hypocrite, trying to have it both ways. But will the Senate vote for cloture? The answer depends on two groups of senators: Democrats like Mr. Baucus who habitually stake out "centrist" positions that give Republicans almost everything they want, and moderate Republicans like Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island who consistently cave in to their party's right wing. Will these senators show more spine than they have in the past? In the interest of stiffening those spines, let me remind senators that this isn't just a fiscal issue, it's also a moral issue. Congress has already declared that the budget deficit is serious enough to warrant depriving children of health care; how can it now say that it's worth enlarging the deficit to give Paris Hilton a tax break? |
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Should we feel guilty? Yes. The sunshine of last weekend, splendid as it was for a cookout, could not eradicate the dark reality that we keep sending our troops into a quagmire. At Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day, the president read a poignant letter that First Lt. Mark Dooley, killed by a bomb last September in Ramadi, wrote to his parents. What Mr. Bush did not say was that now, nine months later, insurgents rule Ramadi. As he spoke at Arlington on Monday, the Pentagon was preparing to announce that 1,500 emergency reinforcements were being sent from Kuwait to Anbar province, home to Ramadi, Haditha and Falluja, to try to stanch the bleeding. There is more than a little something wrong with this picture. The president reiterated his Plan for Victory in Iraq as recently as his appearance with Tony Blair on May 25: "As the Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down." He said then that the Iraqis were "taking more of the fight" and "more territory" and "more missions." The State Department concurred: Iraqi security forces are participating in "more than 80 percent of operations." So let's do the math. According to our own government, more Iraqis are standing up — some 263,000 at latest count. But we are not standing down. We are, instead, sending in more American troops. Where have we seen this shell game before? There was another plan for victory, too, you may recall. On the third anniversary of the invasion, in March, the president celebrated the new strategy of "clear, hold and build" by citing the example of Tal Afar, "today a free city that gives reason for hope for a free Iraq." Last month 17 people were killed by a suicide bomber in an outdoor market there. The Tal Afar mayor has told The Los Angeles Times it will be at least three years before Iraqi security forces can secure his city of 150,000 without American help. To clear, hold and build in, say, Baghdad, with its population of six million, we'd have to throw in countless more troops still. "When you open up the strategy for victory, there's nothing inside," Representative John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat and Marine veteran, argued in a speech last month. What the White House has always had instead of a strategy for victory is a strategy for public relations. That, too, fell under siege over Memorial Day weekend. Call the P.R. strategy "attack, clear and hold": the administration attacks the credibility of reporters covering the war and tries to clear troubling Iraq images from American TV screens so that popular support might hold until a miracle happens on the ground. This plan first surfaced when the insurgency exploded in spring 2004: Ted Koppel was pilloried by White House surrogates for reading the names of the fallen on "Nightline" and Paul Wolfowitz told Congress that "a lot of the press are afraid to travel very much, so they sit in Baghdad and they publish rumors." Upon being told that 34 journalists had been killed in the war up to that point, Mr. Wolfowitz apologized, but the strategy was never rescinded. Mr. Bush routinely chastises the press for reporting on bombings rather than "success" stories like Tal Afar. His new top domestic policy adviser, Karl Zinsmeister, has called American war correspondents "whiny and appallingly soft," and he declared last June that "our struggle in Iraq as warfare" was over except for "periodic flare-ups in isolated corners." That's the news the administration wants: the insurgency is always in its last throes. We'd realize that this prognosis was "basically accurate," Dick Cheney has explained, if only the non-Fox press didn't concentrate on car bombs in Baghdad. Now more than 70 journalists have died in Iraq, more than in any modern war, including two members of a CBS News crew killed in the bombing that injured the correspondent Kimberly Dozier. This tragedy also took place on Memorial Day, which Ms. Dozier was honoring by trying to do one of those Iraq "good news" stories that the administration faults the press for ignoring: the story of an American soldier who, despite having been injured, was "fighting on in memory of those who have fallen," as she had e-mailed colleagues. Once that good-news story died in the bombing, so, one imagines, did the administration strategy of pinning the bad news in Iraq on the reporters who risk their lives to hang in there. Or so, in the name of simple decency, we might hope. Those reporters, at least, have the right to leave. Not so the troops. General Batiste's observation about the "almost surreal" disconnect between the home front and the war is damningly true, even in Washington. As the violence in both Iraq and Afghanistan spiraled before and after Memorial Day, Congress kept its eye on its own ball. In a bipartisan display of honor among thieves, Democrats and Republicans banded together to decry the F.B.I. for searching the office of a Democratic congressman, William Jefferson, who had been accused of hiding $90,000 in questionable cash in his freezer. Even more ludicrously, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales — a man who damaged our troops incalculably by countenancing an official policy of torture — finally threatened to resign on principle. The principle he was standing up for, however, was not the Geneva Conventions but the F.B.I.'s right to raid Mr. Jefferson's office. Contrast these clowns with J. W. Fulbright, a senator who convened hearings to challenge presidents from both parties during Vietnam, changing the nation's course. The current Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, has proudly put on this month's legislative agenda constitutional amendments to stop same-sex marriage and flag burning. "Right now people in this country are saying it's O.K. to desecrate that flag and to burn it," he said on Fox News last Sunday, though it's not clear exactly who these traitors are. A Nexis search turns up only one semi-recent American flag-burning incident — by a drunk and apparently apolitical teenager in Mr. Frist's home state, Tennessee, in 2005. The marriage-amendment campaign will be kicked off tomorrow with a Rose Garden benediction by the president. Though the amendment has no chance of passing, Mr. Bush apparently still thinks, as he did in 2004, that gay-baiting remains just the diversion to distract from a war gone south. So much for the troops. For all the politicians' talk about honoring those who serve, Washington's record is derelict: chronic shortages in body and Humvee armor; a back-door draft forcing troops with expired contracts into repeated deployments; inadequate postwar health care and veterans' benefits. And that's just the short list. Now a war without end is running off the rails and putting an undermanned army in still greater jeopardy. "Today, the Americans are just one more militia lost in the anarchy," Nir Rosen, who has covered Iraq since the invasion, wrote in The Washington Post last weekend. We can't pretend we don't know this is happening. It's happening in broad daylight. We know that "as the Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down" is fiction, not reality. We know from the Pentagon's own report to Congress last week that attacks on Americans and Iraqis alike are at their highest since American commanders started keeping count in 2004. We know that even as coalition partners like Italy and South Korea bail out, we are planning an indefinite stay of undefined parameters: the 104-acre embassy complex rising in the Green Zone is the largest in the world, and the Decider himself has said that it's up to "future presidents and future governments of Iraq" to decide our exit strategy. Actually, the current government of Iraq already is. On Thursday the latest American-backed Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, whom Mr. Bush is "proud to call" his "ally and friend," invited open warfare on American forces by accusing them of conducting Haditha-like killing sprees against civilians as a "regular" phenomenon. If this is the ally and friend we are fighting for, a country that truly supports the troops has no choice but to start bringing them home. |
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RONALD BROWNSTEIN / WASHINGTON OUTLOOKGay Marriage Vote Serves Only to Divide NationRonald Brownstein |
