Deleted
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Clarke
Mar 27, 2004 2:13:23 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Mar 27, 2004 2:13:23 GMT -5
I don't believe he is looking for a position in the Kerry Administration.
But even if he was, even if he is "just" promoting his book, the question still remains: Is he telling the truth?
And I ask you: Do you honestly think invading Iraq was the appropriate response to 9/11?
This Administration still refers to the invasion as their War on Terror. Do you believe that to be true?
Clarke is making two accusations: 1) that the Bush Administration was more concerned with Iraq than al Qaeda and 2) that invading Iraq was the wrong move.
I think both these accusations hit home.
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Clarke
Mar 27, 2004 3:51:42 GMT -5
Post by Gorf on Mar 27, 2004 3:51:42 GMT -5
What hypocrisy! how dare he play on the emotions of those people. Has he no shame? On the topic of being two faced. You ought to spend as much time paying attention to the interesting changes in stances made by both Bush an Cheney over the years. Or in terms of an old joke: When are Bush and Cheney are telling lies? Whenever they open their mouthes to speak.
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Clarke
Mar 27, 2004 4:12:49 GMT -5
Post by Gorf on Mar 27, 2004 4:12:49 GMT -5
On March 6, in a lengthy front-page Times article entitled “Kerry’s Shifts: Nuanced Ideas Or Flip-Flops,” reporter David M. Halbfinger dissects Kerry’s statements on issues such as gay marriage and “defines” Kerry just the way the Republican National Committee drew it up: a waffler who takes both sides of issues. No where in the piece is there any reference to Bush’s history of flip-flopping on issues of grave consequence to the world, such as his promises to curb carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases; his pledges to maintain a balanced federal budget and keep his hands off the Social Security trust fund; and his assurances that he would run a “humble” foreign policy that wouldn’t stretch U.S. forces with “nation-building” tasks
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Clarke
Mar 27, 2004 4:14:33 GMT -5
Post by Gorf on Mar 27, 2004 4:14:33 GMT -5
Global warming represented Bush’s first major flip-flop. In a clear campaign promise on September 29, 2000, Bush proposed regulating carbon dioxide as one of "four main pollutants" released into the environment by the burning of fossil fuels at power plants. Coming as the campaign was entering its final stages, the Bush pledge undercut Al Gore’s advantage among pro-environmental voters. It also boosted Bush’s image as a “compassionate conservative” who could appeal to important suburban swing voters. Even some environmentalists praised Bush’s carbon-dioxide initiative.
But two months after taking office, Bush suddenly jettisoned the carbon-dioxide pledge. Bending to the wishes of the energy industry and its lobbyists, Bush pulled the rug out from under his Environmental Protection Agency director, Christie Whitman. She had believed that Bush meant what he said during the campaign and was stunned to learn in March 2001 that the initiative had been scrapped. [For an insider account of Bush’s maneuver from former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, see Ron Suskind’s The Price of Loyalty.]
The reasons for Bush's change of heart on regulating carbon dioxide pollution have not been widely reported. A pivotal moment came on March 1, 2001, when Haley Barbour, the former Chairman of the Republican National Committee and current governor from Mississippi, sent a memo to Vice President Dick Cheney. At the time, Barbour was a highly paid lobbyist for Southern Company, America's second largest electric utility corporation.
In the memo, Barbour warned "A moment of truth is arriving." Barbour ominously questioned "whether environmental policy still prevails over energy policy." A few days later, Bush had a change of heart on regulating carbon dioxide as one of four pollutants.
According to campaign contributions data, fundraising may have also played a role. In the 2000 and 2004 campaigns combined, Bush has raised more than $1 million from the electric utility industry alone, part of nearly $6 million Bush has raised in both cycles from the energy/natural resources sector as a whole. [FEC data available on openscrets.org]
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Clarke
Mar 27, 2004 4:18:24 GMT -5
Post by Gorf on Mar 27, 2004 4:18:24 GMT -5
Campaign-2000 Bush also has been odds with President Bush over another issue of great consequence: the federal budget. Four years ago, the budget debate revolved around what to do with the federal surplus that had emerged in the final years of the Clinton administration and held open the prospects of a debt-free U.S. government.
Then, the Congressional Budget Office was projecting a $5.6 trillion budget surplus over the 10 years ending in 2011. To Bush, this meant that the American people could have their cake and eat it, too. While planning to pay off the federal debt, Bush also promised a $1.3 trillion tax cut to return some of the money to the taxpayers. Other funds, he said, would be available to add personal investment accounts to the Social Security system.
Whatever would come of these proposals, Bush made an unequivocal pledge not to raid the Social Security trust fund to pay for deficits in other parts of the federal budget. “We’re going to set aside all the payroll taxes for one thing, Social Security,” Bush said in a stump speech four days before the presidential election.
Over a little more than three years, however, the balanced-budget promises have gone by the boards. Bush has pulled more than $350 billion out of Social Security surpluses to pay for discretionary government spending. Overall prospects for the future look even bleaker. With record deficits replacing record surpluses and the Baby Boom generation nearing retirement age, the current Social Security surpluses are expected to join the rest of the federal government in a bath of red ink.
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Clarke
Mar 27, 2004 4:22:23 GMT -5
Post by Gorf on Mar 27, 2004 4:22:23 GMT -5
Possibly Bush’s most striking departure from his rhetoric as a candidate has been in the area of foreign policy.
During the campaign, he called for a “humble” foreign policy and disparaged President Clinton’s interventions to bring stability to international hot spots as fuzzy-headed “nation-building.”<br> Initially, Bush seemed to be following his rhetoric. He chose to disengage from many of Clinton’s initiatives. Bush turned his back on the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, rebuffed South Korea’s efforts to reduce tensions with North Korea, and shifted money and attention away from counter-terrorism projects to iconic Republican initiatives, such as Ronald Reagan’s missile defense system.
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Clarke
Mar 27, 2004 4:23:41 GMT -5
Post by Gorf on Mar 27, 2004 4:23:41 GMT -5
Critics have noted other reversals from Bush’s campaign positions. During the campaign, one of Bush’s favorite lines was that under Clinton, the “military is over-deployed, under-trained and underpaid.”<br> Under Bush, however, the military has been stretched even thinner and has faced administration efforts to trim expected pay raises. The Army Times, an independent newspaper that covers military affairs, reported that Bush tried “to significantly cut the 2004 military pay raise” from 3.7 percent to 2 percent. The Bush administration also got into trouble last year when it tried to cut combat pay and family separation pay for the men and women serving overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Clarke
Mar 27, 2004 4:25:22 GMT -5
Post by Gorf on Mar 27, 2004 4:25:22 GMT -5
As a candidate facing possible defeat in Florida, for instance, Bush rushed to the U.S. Supreme Court to get the justices to make an unprecedented ruling to stop a statewide recount of votes. In December 2000, activist judges making novel legal arguments to protect Bush's interests were just fine. Today, however, Bush is outraged that "activist judges" have ruled that the government shouldn't bar homosexuals from getting married. Stopping vote counts apparently is one thing, while stopping weddings is an altogether different matter.
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Clarke
Mar 27, 2004 4:32:12 GMT -5
Post by Gorf on Mar 27, 2004 4:32:12 GMT -5
Dick Cheney, 3 days before the war started: "I think it will go relatively quickly...Weeks rather than months,"
Bush, 3 days after the war started: "A campaign on harsh terrain in a vast country could be longer and more difficult than some have predicted."
I'm sorry, but the United States government didn't realize that Iraq is "harsh terrain" and a "vast country" 3 days before the war?
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Clarke
Mar 27, 2004 4:36:11 GMT -5
Post by Gorf on Mar 27, 2004 4:36:11 GMT -5
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Clarke
Mar 27, 2004 4:39:51 GMT -5
Post by Gorf on Mar 27, 2004 4:39:51 GMT -5
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Clarke
Mar 27, 2004 5:01:27 GMT -5
Post by Gorf on Mar 27, 2004 5:01:27 GMT -5
Backpedaling on Outsourcing
"It didn't take long for President Bush and his advisers to backtrack from a report released earlier this week that praised the effect job outsourcing has on the economy. On a campaign trip Thursday to Pennsylvania, a state that knows a thing or two about losing jobs overseas, Bush tried to distance himself from his top economic adviser, who said sending jobs abroad is "probably a plus" for the economy. "
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Clarke
Mar 27, 2004 5:09:12 GMT -5
Post by Gorf on Mar 27, 2004 5:09:12 GMT -5
Bush has twice publicly stated that he personally directed the armed forces put on "Defcon III," the highest state of readiness since 1973. Not so, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers gave the order inside the Pentagon only minutes after the building was hit. Also contrary to Bush, civilian agencies executed a terrorism emergency plan without his input. The White House has not responded to written requests from the 9/11 commission to explain the discrepancy.
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Clarke
Mar 27, 2004 5:12:58 GMT -5
Post by Gorf on Mar 27, 2004 5:12:58 GMT -5
Bush has twice told a clumsy joke about the 9/11 attacks to audiences of supporters. "I was sitting outside the classroom, waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on," he said in December 2002. "And I used to fly myself, and I said, 'Well, there's one terrible pilot.'" Never happened. The first collision was, of course, not televised live. Amateur video surfaced many hours after the fact.
Important? No, except that indicates a curious propensity of Bush's to fabricate his personal role in events. A bit odder was the White House insistence that he'd left a Florida classroom within seconds of the second tower's being struck. In fact, he stayed seven long minutes reading a storybook to schoolchildren before being hustled off to Air Force One. There's a videotape from the day.
Once aloft, Bush began a circuitous trip to Washington that included stops at Air Force bases in Louisiana and Nebraska. Vice President Cheney has claimed the Secret Service had warned him of a credible terrorist threat to the president's airplane. The Secret Service says it never happened. Karl Rove told the New Yorker that Bush hunkered down in Nebraska until 4 p.m. due to civilian jets being unaccounted for. Not so, say federal aviation authorities who certified the skies clear four hours earlier.
By themselves, these discrepancies mean little, but they do add up. And why, given the CIA's reportedly frantic warnings of impending Al Qaeda airline hijackings in August 2001, were there no fighter jets armed and alerted to protect New York nor, incredibly, Washington on that terrible day? Questions like these torture victims' families angered by Bush's seeming determination to stonewall his own 9/11 commission.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Clarke
Mar 27, 2004 11:15:42 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Mar 27, 2004 11:15:42 GMT -5
Gorf, you digress.
Back to Clarke. The papers this morning are again full of stories about various Republican attack dogs--mainly Bill Frist today--urging that Clarke's testimony be declassified so it can be proven that he _lied_ under oath.
Once again, they choose to kill the messenger rather than address the message. How does it help this Administration for them to prove Clarke lied FOR THEM?
Address the message: Was the Bush White House pre-occupied with Saddam rather than al Qaeda? Was the invasion of Iraq a personal vendetta rather than having anything to do with the "War on Terror"? Has it not, in effect, made the World a much more dangerous place?
All I want is the Truth. I couldn't care less about all this partisan bulls***. Tell me the goddamned Truth, GW!
I honestly can't begin to figure out how all you Bush supporters can tolerate the fact he does not respect you. That he thinks we are all too dumb to figure out he cannot be honest to save his life.
Like Rumsfeld claiming he never said Iraq was an imminent threat. Oh, yeah? said the reporters. Listen to this.
It's as if they think we are all too lazy to go back and check!
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