Bushapalooza - 4/13 Press Conference

[Xenu]

North American format for video; Europe uses PAL.

And France uses SECAM, which I know very little about. I do love that computers triumph over all.

[lukpac]

April 15, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST

Head Spook Sputters
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

If only Osama had faxed an X-marks-the-spot map to the Crawford ranch showing the Pentagon, the Capitol, the twin towers and the word "BOOM!" scrawled in Arabic.

That might have sparked sluggish imaginations. Or maybe not.

Only a couple of weeks after the endlessly vacationing President Bush got his Aug. 6, 2001, briefing with the shivery headline "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," the C.I.A. chief, George Tenet, and other top agency officials received a briefing about the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui after his suspicious behavior in a Minnesota flight school. And that had another shivery headline: "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly."

"The news had no evident effect" on prompting the C.I.A. to warn anyone, according to the drily rendered report of the 9/11 commission's staff, which faults the agency for management miasma and Al Qaeda myopia, citing a failure to make a "comprehensive estimate of the enemy."

Asked by the commission member Timothy Roemer about whether he had shared this amazing news at a Sept. 4 meeting with Condi Rice, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Clarke — the meeting on Al Qaeda that Mr. Clarke had been urgently begging for since January — Mr. Tenet said no. Asked if he had ever mentioned it to Mr. Bush in August, during a month of "high chatter and huge warnings," Mr. Tenet said no.

The Man Whose Hair Was Allegedly on Fire told the commissioners that he had not talked to the president at all in August. Mr. Bush was in Texas, and he was in Washington. Or he was on vacation, and the president was in Texas. Quel high alert.

After the hearing, Mr. Tenet had an aide call reporters to say he had misspoken, that he had briefed the president twice in August, in Crawford on Aug. 17 for a morning briefing he deemed unexceptional and again in Washington on Aug. 31.

I'm not sure whether Mr. Tenet — a mystifyingly beloved figure even though he was in charge during the two biggest intelligence failures since Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs — has a faulty memory, which is scary. Or if he's fuzzing things up because he told the president more specifics than he wants to admit. But in a town where careers are made on face time with the president, it's fishy that the head spook can't remember a six-hour trip to Crawford for some.

In a commission staff report, there is a stark juxtaposition of Sandy Berger's approach before the millennium and Condi Rice's before 9/11.

"Berger, in particular, met or spoke constantly with Tenet and Attorney General Reno," the report said. "He visited the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. on Christmas Day 1999 to raise the morale of exhausted officials."

Condi and her deputy, Steve Hadley, did not stoop to mere domestic work. "Rice and Hadley told us that before 9/11, they did not feel they had the job of handling domestic security." They left that up to Dick Clarke to broker, the same guy Dick Cheney said "wasn't in the loop."

Maybe Condi's confusion about her job — that it entailed national security as well as being the president's foreign policy governess and workout partner — explains why so many critical clues went into the black holes of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A.

After the Bay of Pigs, President Kennedy spoke to newspaper publishers and said: "This administration intends to be candid about its errors. For as a wise man once said, `An error does not become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.' . . . Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed — and no republic can survive."

Compare Kennedy with Mr. Bush, who conceded no errors and warned that any Vietnam analogy with Iraq — in this acid flashback moment when 64 U.S. troops were reported to have died last week and when McNarummy is forcing up to 20,000 troops to stay in Iraq — "sends the wrong message to our troops and sends the wrong message to the enemy."

He reiterated that his mission is dictated from above: "Freedom is the almighty's gift to every man and woman in this world."

Given the Saudi religious authority's fatwa against our troops, and given that our marines are surrounding a cleric in the holy city of Najaf, we really don't want to make Muslims think we're fighting a holy war. That would only further inflame the Arab world and endanger our overstretched military, so let's hope that Mr. Bush's reference to the almighty was to Dick Cheney.  


E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com

[Rspaight]

As I suspected, the poll numbers didn't move much after the press conference -- still a statistical dead heat. I am beginning to think that there's not much either side can really do -- good or bad-- to budge the numbers significantly. The election is going to be decided by stuff that happens -- the June 30 Iraq handover, the economy, terror activity, the 9/11 report, and so on. The way those things break might be what decides it. That's kind of refreshing in a way.

Frighteningly, Bush's approval ratings went up a litte. I guess about half the American people want an incoherent theocratic crusader as President.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Preside ... g_Poll.htm

Ryan

[Patrick M]

Frighteningly, Bush's approval ratings went up a litte. I guess about half the American people want an incoherent theocratic crusader as President.

Of course.

"They seek the death of Jews and Christians and every Muslim who desires peace over theocratic terror."

Yet:

"Freedom is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman in this world."

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Presidential_Tracking_Poll.htm

It's good to see Pete "I like *white* snow" Coors doing well:

http://www.corporations.org/coors/article.html

[Rspaight]

"Freedom is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman in this world."

I'm not sure exactly why, but after reading that again I thought it was a good time to have a gander at these numbers:

Code: Select all

Religion                   Membership      % of World

Christianity               2,015 million   33% (dropping)
Islam                      1,215 million   20% (growing)
No religion                  925 million   15% (dropping)
Hinduism                     786 million   13% (stable)
Buddhism                     362 million    6% (stable)
Atheists                     211 million    4%
Chinese folk rel.            188 million    4%
New Asian rel.               106 million    4%
Tribal Religions, Animism     91 million    2%
Other                         19 million   <1%
Judaism                       18 million   <1%
Sikhism                       16 million   <1%
Shamanists                    12 million   <1%
Spiritism                      7 million   <1%
Confucianism                   5 million   <1%
Baha'i Faith                   4 million   <1%
Jainism                        3 million   <1%
Shinto                         3 million   <1%
Wicca                        0.5 million   <1%
Zoroastrianism               0.2 million   <1%


Ryan

[lukpac]

So "no religion" is you believe in God/a creator/etc but don't subscribe to anything organized? What about agnostics? What is "no religion" dropping in favor of?

[Rspaight]

According to the site, "no religion" means:

Persons with no religion, agnostics, freethinkers, humanists, secularists, etc.

I guess it counts everyone that doesn't necessarily *dis*believe in a God/Supreme Being/Creator/Prime Mover/Supernatural Force but has no particular conception of such a thing. (As opposed to atheists, who *believe* in the *non*-existence of all those things.) I would imagine that our friend Deism might fall into the "no religion" category as it asserts the existence of a Creator but assigns no particular dogma to it, but it probably would live in its own category if it had enough adherents today to make the list.

As far the second question goes, I don't know, but Islam's the only thing they note is growing.

Ryan

[lukpac]

Whitehouse.gov has video. It's clear enough on broadband that you can see the magic moire pattern tie.

Ryan

PS - I won't even touch the irony of his wearing what on NSTC TV appeared to be a "rainbow tie."

Just saw this on TiVo. Wow, that's bad.

[Patrick M]

I would imagine that our friend Deism might fall into the "no religion" category as it asserts the existence of a Creator but assigns no particular dogma to it, but it probably would live in its own category if it had enough adherents today to make the list.

The founding fathers were Deists:

http://www.postfun.com/worbois.html

Or were they?

http://www.wallbuilders.com/resources/s ... ourceID=29

[Rspaight]

I think the point that the "wallbuilders" miss is that many of the 18th century Deists were Christians who became unconvinced of the divinity of the Bible. Most still viewed Jesus as a example to be followed and saw much value in the Bible, but to equate them with today's fundamentalists is pretty naive.

They liked Jesus, but had little use for the bureaucracy and edicts of the Church. They felt that each individual needed to figure out these things for themselves using the tools of nature, science and reason, hence the emphasis in the "wallbuilders" quotes on primacy of education.

In dictionaries like Websters, Funk & Wagnalls, Century, and others, the terms "deist," "agnostic," and "atheist" appear as synonyms.

That's categorically untrue, and any dictionary claiming that is sloppy. Atheism posits *no* God, Deism believes in a God we cannot comprehend, and agnosticism claims we can't know if there's a God or not. Certainly not the same thing.

Thomas Paine, in his discourse on "The Study of God," forcefully asserts that it is "the error of schools" to teach sciences without "reference to the Being who is author of them: for all the principles of science are of Divine origin." He laments that "the evil that has resulted from the error of the schools in teaching [science without God] has been that of generating in the pupils a species of atheism." Paine not only believed in God, he believed in a reality beyond the visible world.

There's no contradiction with Deism here. In fact, it's textbook (no pun intended).

The reader, as do many others, claimed that Jefferson omitted all miraculous events of Jesus from his "Bible." Rarely do those who make this claim let Jefferson speak for himself. Jefferson own words explain that his intent for that book was not for it to be a "Bible," but rather for it to be a primer for the Indians on the teachings of Christ (which is why Jefferson titled that work, "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth"). What Jefferson did was to take the "red letter" portions of the New Testament and publish these teachings in order to introduce the Indians to Christian morality. And as President of the United States, Jefferson signed a treaty with the Kaskaskia tribe wherein he provided—at the government's expense—Christian missionaries to the Indians. In fact, Jefferson himself declared, "I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus." While many might question this claim, the fact remains that Jefferson called himself a Christian, not a deist.

Again, nothing is contradictory here. Jefferson was interested in spreading the *teachings* of Jesus, not the supernatural mysticism of Jesus.

Alexander Hamilton was certainly no deist.

I'm not aware that many claim he was.

James Madison trained for ministry with the Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon, and Madison's writings are replete with declarations of his faith in God and in Christ. In fact, for proof of this, one only need read his letter to Attorney General Bradford wherein Madison laments that public officials are not bold enough about their Christian faith in public and that public officials should be "fervent advocates in the cause of Christ."

Clearly, the "wallbuilders" just can't grasp the concept that you can believe in "God" and find value in the teachings of Christ without going in for the whole theological ball of wax.

Ryan

[Patrick M]

http://takebackthemedia.com/com-buchanan-4-13-04.html

'I AM NOT A COMMUNICATOR' NO, UM, 'I AM NOT A TRUTH-TELLER' UH, GOSH 'I AM NOT A SENSITIVE HUMAN BEING'

TBTM Commentary By John Buchanan

It was reminiscent of Richard Nixon's meltdown in the spring of 1974, in his infamous 'I am not a crook' response to a scathing query from Dan Rather, at a Watergate press conference staged at a National Association of Broadcasters convention in Houston. As he sweat profusely from his brow, and fumbled for a response, Nixon brought himself down in a fashion worthy of Shakespeare's King Lear.

When asked whether he would apologize to the American people for his administration's failure to protect them on 9/11, George W. Bush evaded the question and failed to give a genuine answer. When asked whether he had made mistakes since 9/11, he evaded the question and failed to give a genuine answer. When pummeled by the final question, from the usually ignored National Public Radio correspondent, he evaded the question and failed to give an honest response.

Instead, what the American people, the world, the Iraqi people, the families of the victims of 9/11 and his ill-advised 'preemptive' invasion saw, in plain view, was arrogance, plain and simple.

But the phony cowboy swagger with which he strode to the podium survived the hour intact - and for it, George W. Bush will lose his job at the polls in November if he is not impeached before that.

Along with the Big 3 questions already referenced, he also refused to admit that he had lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and exaggerated Saddam Hussein's danger to the U.S.

Instead he reverted, in his moment of Nixonian duress, to an old lie. Months after admitting publicly that there was 'no evidence' to link Saddam to Al Qaeda, he resuscitated his old, false claim anew and characterized Hussein as 'a major ally' of Al Qaeda.

After his own CIA had admitted on the record that there was no evidence of any relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, he invoked the fallen nation as 'the central theater in the war on terror.' He failed to admit that there were no terrorists in Iraq until he invaded the country and ignited a post-9/11 brushfire of new Islamist hatred for America.

With arrogance worthy of Lear, when asked whether he was willing to 'risk his job' for his convictions about continuing his disastrous war in Iraq, he stated, briskly in one of the few moments where he showed any real signs of life, that he would not lose his job, that the American people would 'understand' what he is trying to do and get the message.

A few minutes later, in the wake of repeated questions about his falling poll numbers and declining public support for his Iraqi adventure to profit Halliburton, Dyncorp and the rest of the war profiteer predators that form the basis of his 'neocon' support base, he walked into the left hook of the 'communication' question from NPR.

Somewhere from the bleak cosmological dimension where fallen public officials take silent refuge after death, Richard Nixon must have been smiling, for he, like we the people, had just witnessed one of the most embarrassing, dishonest and self-destructive public performances in history by a sitting President of the United States - referring under stress to Donald Rumsfeld as 'Secretary of State' and fumbling for words while he stared lamely off toward the gilded ceilings of the White House East Room.

One can only wonder what Karl Rove, Condoleezza Rice and Andy Card must have thought from their seats, where they huddled alongside one another and watched as their boss finally let us see his true nature.

He clearly has no solution to the Iraqi crisis, he painted himself into a corner by guaranteeing that the June 30 deadline for the handover and power to unnamed members of 'the Iraqi people' would be met at all costs, and, in the end, he tried to make the innate force of the bully pulpit substitute for character or simple honesty.

He rarely looked us in the eye. He knew better.

Finally, he showed what millions of Americans have known since the 2000 election - that he is unfit for office. Now it is time for us to make sure he gets that message.

God willing, Bush will join Nixon among the most infamous and incorrigible liars in the history of the U.S. Presidency, and we the people will be spared from four more years of a war criminal and Constitutional tyrant.

John Buchanan is a journalist and investigative reporter who resides in Miami Beach, Florida. He can be reached by e-mail at jtwg@bellsouth.net.

[Patrick M]

As I suspected, the poll numbers didn't move much after the press conference -- still a statistical dead heat.

Bush 51, Kerry 46

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicsel ... ypolls.htm

[Rspaight]

Which are almost exactly the same numbers CNN/USA Today had at the end of March - Bush 51, Kerry 47. The numbers aren't moving (outside the margin of error) for either candidate.

http://www.pollingreport.com/wh04gen.htm

The Rasmussen daily tracker still shows a dead heat.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Preside ... g_Poll.htm

Ryan

[Patrick M]

http://www.poisonskin.com/pocketproduct ... fault.asp#

[Rspaight]

After a while, that thing starts to sound like the soundtrack to BushPorn.

Ryan