HBO's Bill Maher, Robin Williams and Sen. Joe Biden on "Jeff Gannon" at the Bush White House*

See Video of the Show HERE

If Watergate Happened Now

From a distance, Watergate seems like a partisan affair. But that's because we tend to look at it nowadays through red- and blue-tinted glasses. In truth, President Nixon was forced to resign in 1974 by Republicans in Congress like Barry Goldwater, who realized from the so-called smoking-gun tape that he was a crook. This was after the Supreme Court—led by a Nixon appointee—unanimously ruled against him in the tapes case. 
But imagine if Nixon were president in this era. After he completed his successful second term, I'd have to write a retrospective column like this:
President Nixon left office in 2005 having proved me and the other "nattering nabobs of negativism" wrong. We thought that his administration was sleazy but we were never able to nail him.   Jonathan Alter Newsweek, 6/13/05 Issue MORE

Bush and Enron

While the White House has repeatedly described former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay as simply a "supporter" of George W. Bush, extensive correspondence between the two men paints a far cozier picture of their relationship, according to copies of letters obtained this afternoon (2/15) by The Smoking Gun.  The Smoking Gun MORE

Bush Uses Taxes for Politics*

Wisdom of the Bush Cabinet *

How long can the administration get along with its policies of spinning big lies into truth. . .Note the three most important Cabinet positions. Rice said that it was better to find the weapons of mass destruction than to see a mushroom cloud. "Judge" Gonzales said the Geneva Convention was "quaint" and in effect legitimated the de facto policy of torture. Rumsfeld repealed the "Powell Doctrine" -- only go to war when you have the massive force necessary to win decisively and quickly. . .he thought he could win with 130,000 (unlike at least 200,000 as the army chief of staff insisted) and hence made the current "insurgency" inevitable.The presence of these three towering giants in the administration certainly confirms that the president is confident that he is "right" on Iraq and that he has a mandate from the American people and from God which confirms that he is "right."  Andrew Greeley, Chicago Sun Times 2/25/05  MORE

Bush Fails to Protect U.S.*

The fact is that Mr. Bush, while willing to go to war on weak evidence, hasn't taken the task of protecting America from terrorists at all seriously.  Consider, for example, the case of chemical plants.  Just days after 9/11, many analysts identified sites that store toxic chemicals as a major terror risk, and called for new safety rules. But as The New York Times reported last fall, "after the oil and chemical industries met with Karl Rove ... the White House quietly blocked those efforts."  Nearly three and a half years after 9/11, those chemical plants are still unprotected.  Other major risks identified within days of the attack included the possibility of terrorist attacks on major ports or nuclear plants. But in the months after 9/11, the administration flatly refused to allocate the sums that members of the House and Senate from both parties thought necessary to secure these sites.  Krugman, NY Times, 2/22/05  MORE

The mole, the US media and a White House coup

 Gannon was far from being a harmless distraction. He was writing under a false name and working for a Republican front organisation. . . .When it emerged that Gannon was also linked to gay prostitution websites and might be a gay prostitute himself, the scandal as to how he was allowed daily access to the White House grew even murkier. The American media is now being forced to confront the possibility that Gannon, whose real name is James Guckert, was simply a Republican plant,  The Guardian, 2/20/05  MORE

Bush and the Texas Stud*

How often does an enterprising young man, heralded in press reports as both a reporter and a contributor to such sites as Hotmilitarystud.com, Workingboys.net, Militaryescorts .com, MilitaryescortsM4M.com and Meetlocalmen.com, get to question the president of the United States?
Who knew that a hotmilitarystud wanting to meetlocalmen could so easily get to be face2face with the commander in chief?  It's hard to believe the White House could hit rock bottom on credibility again, but it has, in a bizarre maelstrom that plays like a dark comedy. How does it credential a man with a double life and a secret past?  "Jeff Gannon" was waved into the press room nearly every day for two years as the conservative correspondent for two political Web sites operated by a wealthy Texas Republican. Scott McClellan often called on the pseudoreporter for softball questions  Dowd, NY Times, 2/17/05  MORE

'We've been taken over by a cult'

George Bush thinks this is the right thing.  . .  The body bags are rolling in. It makes no difference to him, because he will see it as a price he has to pay to put America where he thinks it should be. . . .Since we installed our puppet government, this man, Allawi, who was a member of the Mukabarat, the secret police of Saddam, . . .since we have installed him . . . the number of tonnage dropped has grown exponentially each month. We are systematically bombing that country. . .a friend in the Air Force,  he picked up the phone and he said, "Welcome to Stalingrad." We know what we're doing. This is deliberate. It's being done. They're not telling us. They're not talking about it. . . Every four-star General I know is saying, "Who is going to tell them we have no clothes?" . . .Nobody is going to do it. Everybody is afraid to tell Rumsfeld anything. That's just the way it is. Seymour Hersh, quoted by Smirking Chimp, 1/28/05  MORE

Bush Picks Evil Again*

The biggest strike against Mr. Gonzales's [nomination as attorney general] is the now repudiated memo that gave a disturbingly narrow definition of torture, limiting it to physical abuse that produced pain of the kind associated with organ failure or death. Mr. Gonzales's attempts to distance himself from the memo have been unconvincing, especially since it turns out he was the one who requested that it be written. Earlier the same year, Mr. Gonzales himself sent President Bush a letter telling him that the war on terror made the Geneva Conventions' strict limitations on the questioning of enemy prisoners "obsolete." . . Other parts of Mr. Gonzales's record are also troubling. As counsel to George Bush when he was governor of Texas, Mr. Gonzales did a shockingly poor job of laying out the legal issues raised by the clemency petitions from prisoners on death row.   NY Times Editorial, 1/26/05  MORE

Bush's 34 Scandals*

Here are 34 scandals from the first four years of George W. Bush's presidency -- every one of them worse than Whitewater. . .

1.  Memogate: The Senate Computer Theft. . .
2.  Doctor Detroit: The DOJ's Bungled Terrorism Case . .
3. Dark Matter: The Energy Task Force
4. The Indian Gaming Scandal
5. Halliburton's No-Bid Bonanza
6. Halliburton: Pumping Up Prices
7. Halliburton's Vanishing Iraq Money
8. The Halliburton Bribe-apalooza
9. Halliburton: One Fine Company
10. Halliburton's Iran End Run

11. Money Order: Afghanistan's Missing $700 Million Turns Up in Iraq
12. Iraq: More Loose Change

13. The Pentagon-Israel Spy Case
14. Gone to Taiwan
15. Wiretapping the United Nations Peter Dizikes, Salon.com, 1/19/05 MORE

Lying is no Sin for Bush's Minions

It is not surprising that an administration that rose so directly from corporate America would operate the same way. Has anyone, for instance, lost his job for being wrong about weapons of mass destruction or for failing to put enough troops in place to secure Iraq before a deadly insurgency could take hold?  In the Bush administration, you lose your job not for lying but for telling the truth, as the axing of Gen. Eric Shinseki and economic advisor Lawrence Lindsey shows. . . Like Tenet and other architects of the war in Iraq, Gonzales gave the president what he wanted and is now being rewarded for it. Abu Ghraib was indeed a rogue operation, but as the female private with the leash heads to trial, we shouldn't forget for a minute that the real rogues who let it happen are in the administration.  Carlson, LA Times, 1/13/05 MORE

The New Backtier*

Instead of the New Frontier, Karl and W. offer the New Backtier.  Even as a child, I could feel the rush of J.F.K.'s presidency racing forward, opening up a thrilling world of possibilities and modernity. We were going to the moon. We were confronting racial intolerance. We were paying any price and bearing any burden for freedom. We were respecting faith but keeping it out of politics. Our president was inspiring much of the world. Our first lady was setting the pace in style and culture.  W.'s presidency rushes backward, stifling possibilities, stirring intolerance, confusing church with state, blowing off the world, replacing science with religion, and facts with faith. We're entering another dark age, more creationist than cutting edge, .. . .Their new health care plan will probably be a return to leeches. Dowd, NY Times, 11/7/04  MORE

Bush Ejects Republican Soldier*

Depending on what side of the fence people are on, crowd control was at an all-time high or low at the Wachovia Arena in Wilkes-Barre [PA} Township during President Bush's visit Friday.  A 27-year-old registered Republican and member of the U.S. Army, along with three other people around him, was forced to leave the arena before getting inside.  The Wyoming Valley man . . .is being deployed to Iraq in two weeks.  . . "I thought seeing Bush would be enough to sway my opinion one way or the other. After today, it definitely has swayed," he said. . . Not long after showing his own ticket and being told he wasn't part of the "master list" either, the police asked the soldier to leave. He was told the event was for Bush supporters or undecided voters only. . .Until Friday when he left the arena, the soldier was an undecided voter. Now he's voting for Sen. Kerry and volunteering for the Kerry-Edwards campaign  Voice, 10/23/04  MORE

The Bush Family Business: WAR*

Bush's Oedipal Oops *

George Bush is not giving an inch on Iraq. He's toughing out the cascade of confirmation and criticism from his own people about the hyperpower hyperbole that led to an unnecessary war and an unruly occupation. His advisers say it's better for the president to appear out of touch than apologetic. He'd rather seem delusional than deluded.  He can't admit what the Duelfer report says, that Saddam was no threat to the U.S. or any other country. The mushroom cloud was a Fig Newton of Dick Cheney's feverish imagination. That would mean W. didn't fix his father's screw-up, but he screwed up his father's fix. A big Oedipal oops. . .in a vain retroactive attempt to justify his hokum about W.M.D., he had 1200 people working for 15 months - stretching our scarce supply of Arab linguists - to produce 918 pages at a cost of about a billion dollars just to find out that Saddam would have liked to have had weapons if he could have, but he couldn't, so he didn't.  MAUREEN DOWD, NY Times, 10/10/04 MORE

Bush Makes NO Mistakes*

One of the uncommitted voters in the audience sensibly asked President Bush to name three mistakes he'd made in office, and what he had done to remedy the damage. Mr. Bush declined to list even one, and instead launched into an impassioned defense of the invasion of Iraq as a good idea. The president's insistence on defending his decision to go into Iraq seemed increasingly bizarre in a week when his own investigators reported that there were no weapons of mass destruction there, and when his own secretary of defense acknowledged that there was no serious evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.  Even worse, the president's refusal to come up with even a minor error - apart from saying that he might have made some unspecified appointments that he now regretted - underscores his inability to respond to failure in any way except by insisting over and over again that his original decision was right. NY Times Editorial, 10/9/04 MORE

\If Bush Wins*

George W. Bush has never tried to fix the economy in the short term. His focus is on making long-term--and, he hopes, irreversible--changes to taxes and social programs; foreign policy; and the government's capacity to regulate the environment, natural resource use, and corporate behavior.  Bush's top economic priority has always been to cut taxes on the wealthy; as he famously said, the "have-mores" are his political base. The marginal income-tax rate, the estate tax, the tax on dividends, and the proceeds of the profits tax all fell sharply in his first term. His second term could finish the job, shifting the tax base to consumption, perhaps even abolishing the income tax for a value-added tax (as Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert now suggests). Virtually the whole tax burden will then fall on the middle class, on working Americans, and on the poor. James K. Galbraith, Washington Monthly, 9/04  MORE

McCain on RNC Bash*

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has pushed for more civility in this year's presidential race, is warning that the biting, angry attack on Sen. John Kerry by a fellow Democrat at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night might harm President Bush's efforts to woo swing voters.  McCain said the keynote address by Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.) could prove as controversial as a speech by Patrick Buchanan at the 1992 GOP convention in Houston. 
"I think it backfires," McCain said of Miller's rhetorical assault on Kerry. He added that it "makes Buchanan's speech look milquetoast." . . he also has denounced ads by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth criticizing Kerry's military service in Vietnam and his protests against that war. McCain has urged the White House to condemn the ads.  Janet Hook. Chicago Tribune, 9/3/04 MORE
 

Reading the Script

Fox News is for all practical purposes a G.O.P. propaganda agency. A now-famous poll showed that Fox viewers were more likely than those who get their news elsewhere to believe that evidence of Saddam-Qaeda links has been found, that W.M.D. had been located and that most of the world supported the Iraq war.  CNN used to be different, but Campaign Desk, which is run by The Columbia Journalism Review, concluded after reviewing convention coverage that CNN "has stooped to slavish imitation of Fox's most dubious ploys and policies."   . . .On Thursday night, Mr. Kerry's speech was a palpable hit. A focus group organized by Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, found it impressive and persuasive. Even pro-Bush commentators conceded, at first, that it had gone over well.  But a terrorism alert is already blotting out memories of last week.  Krugman, NY Times, 8/3/04

AP Seeks Release of Bush Military Records

The Associated Press asked a federal judge Friday to order the Pentagon to quickly turn over a full copy of President Bush's military service record.  The White House has released partial documentation of Bush's military service in the Texas Air National Guard but has not complied with the news service's Freedom of Information Act request for any record archived at a state library records center in Texas, the AP said in a court filing.  . .  Texas law requires separate record keeping for state National Guard service, and those records should exist on microfilm in Austin, the AP said. . . .``A significant, ongoing controversy exists over the president's military service during the Vietnam War, specifically whether he performed his required service between May and October 1972,'' lawyers for the AP wrote.  There also are allegations that potentially mbarrassing material was removed from Bush's military file in 1997, when he was running for re-election as Texas governor, the AP said.  AP in The Guardian, 7/16/04

Moore's Public Service

There has been much tut-tutting by pundits who complain that the movie, though it has yet to be caught in any major factual errors, uses association and innuendo to create false impressions. Many of these same pundits consider it bad form to make a big fuss about the Bush administration's use of association and innuendo to link the Iraq war to 9/11. . . Mr. Moore's greatest strength is a real empathy with working-class Americans that most journalists lack. Having stripped away Mr. Bush's common-man mask, he uses his film to make the case, in a way statistics never could, that Mr. Bush's policies favor a narrow elite at the expense of less fortunate Americans — sometimes, indeed, at the cost of their lives. Krugman, NY Times, 7/2/04

Bush, Cheney and Plame*

Vice President Dick Cheney was recently interviewed by federal prosecutors who asked whether he knew of anyone at the White House who had improperly disclosed the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer, people who have been involved in official discussions about the case said on Friday. . . The interview of the vice president was part of a grand jury investigation into whether anyone at the White House violated a federal law that makes it a crime to divulge the name of an undercover officer intentionally. . .Mr. Bush has acknowledged that he had met with a Washington criminal lawyer, Jim Sharp, about the possibility that prosecutors might want to interview him about the case. DAVID JOHNSTON, NY Times, 6/5/04

Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 Here they are,. . . the whole corrupt gang who fixed the 2000 election, which began when Bush's cousin John Ellis, a Fox News executive, was instrumental in "calling it" for Bush/Cheney on election night and cowed the other networks into joining in.   From there, Moore sketches out the Texan-Saudi link through the Bin Ladens. This very much involves George Bush Sr, who far from being a retired old gentleman, is a vigorous player in the business and political scene, fully availing himself of the ex-presidential prerogative of receiving intelligence briefings.  Moore has a terrifying and funny sequence when he shows the rabbit-in-car-headlights expression on the president's face when he is told about the second plane hitting the towers while at a children's literacy event. A stopwatch appears in the corner of the screen, as the minutes tick by and the president keeps reading My Pet Goat, not knowing what to do without his advisers to tell him. Peter Bradshaw May 18, 2004 The Guardian

CBS News Video: "Woodward's Book on Bush"

Bush's Fear & Deception*

I mention in the book that there are also reports from journalists back to me that they're fearful of writing these stories. One journalist said because he was afraid he would end up in Guantanamo. . . .I did not put those 16 words in the State of the Union address. Indeed, had the president heeded the report that I and others had submitted, had the vice president heeded what the CIA briefer had told him, had the national security adviser and her deputy remembered the two memoranda and the telephone call relating to this particular subject, that line might not have been in the president's State of the Union address. Either they were derelict or they were deceptive. . .There was a pattern of deception and lying to the Congress of the United States that got us into this terrible war.  Joseph Wilson on NBC's "Meet the Press," 5/2/04

Bushworld*
In Bushworld, we can win over Falluja by bulldozing it. . .
In Bushworld, it's fine to take $700 million that Congress provided for the war in Afghanistan and 9/11 recovery and divert it to the war in Iraq that you're insisting you're not planning. . .In Bushworld, you brag about how well Afghanistan is going, even though soldiers like Pat Tillman are still dying and the Taliban are running freely around the border areas, hiding Osama and delaying elections. . . .
In Bushworld, there's no irony that so many who did so much to avoid the Vietnam draft have now strained the military so much that lawmakers are talking about bringing back the draft. . .In Bushworld, we're making progress in the war on terror by fighting a war that creates terrorists. Maureen Dowd, NY Times, 4/25/04

The Bush $700 Million Diversion*

Senator Robert C. Byrd, the senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said Tuesday that the administration might have broken the law by failing to inform Congressional leaders in mid-2002 of its use of emergency antiterror dollars to begin preparations for an invasion of Iraq.
Mr. Byrd, of West Virginia, said that he was never told of any shift of money, as the measure required. A diversion of $700 million without Congressional approval was reported in "Plan of Attack," a new book by the journalist Bob Woodward.
"If the Woodward allegations are true, then the administration failed to abide by the law to consult with and fully inform Congress," Mr. Byrd said in a statement.  CARL HULSE, NY Times, 4/21/04 

Bush's High Crimes*

BILL MOYERS: Let me go right to page 155 of your book. You write, quote, "The evidence is overwhelming that George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney have engaged in deceit and deception over going to war in Iraq. This is an impeachable offense."

JOHN DEAN: Absolutely is. The founders in the debates in the states-- I cite one. I cite one that I found -- I tracked down after reading the Nixon impeachment proceedings when-- Congressman Castenmeyer had gone back to look to see what the founders said about misrepresentations and lying to the Congress. Clearly, it is an impeachable offense. And I think the case is overwhelming that these people presented false information to the Congress and to the American people.  Now with Bill Moyers, 4/2/04

Bush Treated Differently*

An examination by USA TODAY of all the Bush records released to the public. . . suggests Bush was treated differently from most pilots:

• Bush was accepted into pilot school even though he scored in the 25th percentile on a standardized test.

• There is no record of a formal procedure called a "flying evaluation board," which normally would have been convened once Bush stopped flying in April 1972. . .

• Bush's records do not show he was given another job in the Air Guard once he quit flying. . .

Bush, whose father was in Congress at the time, was selected for Air Force pilot training, a highly competitive process, despite the speeding tickets and automobile accidents. He had also been arrested for two incidents considered college pranks  Dave Moniz and Jim Drinkard, USA Today, 2/16/04 

Colin Powell on "The Powerful and Well-Placed"

"I particularly condemn the way our political leaders supplied the manpower for that war, the Vietnam War. The policies determining who would be drafted and who would be deferred, who would serve and who would escape, who would die and who would live, were an anti-democratic disgrace. I am angry that so many sons of the powerful and well-placed managed to wangle slots in reserve and National Guard units. Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to our country."

- Colin Powell, "My American Journey," 1995
 

THE BUSH 2000 FLORIDA ELECTION RECORD

     See the Video Recaps BELOW:

• Flash Version BBC

• News Night Version

Bush Business Record

The year was 1990 and George W. Bush’s company, Harken, had been altering some accounting figures, nothing extravagant by today’s standards, but not chump change either. His sale occurred just before those numbers were due to be restated.When George sold that stock on June 22, 1990, it was trading at $30.48 a share. The next quarterly report, released a few weeks later, revealed a $23 million loss, causing the stock to end the year at $9.24 a share. The SEC swung into glorious action and launched a two-year faux-investigation of his $848,650 sale. But, with dad in the Oval Office and dad’s friend running the SEC, the investigations found their way into a black hole. The matter never went to trial. George was never indicted and never paid a penalty. CNN did not cover him. Barbara Walters did not interview him. Things were different for Martha Stewart, who saved herself less than $50,000 in a stock sale. She didn’t have a pack of executive-office friends—she had to count on Bill Cosby and Rosie O’Donnell. But, while the media had a field day deciding whether she should be jailed for the maximum ten year sentence or continue
baking cookies, the leaders of America’s greatest frauds remained at large and inculpable, under the leadership watch of that small-time Texan miscreant. Likewise, their former companies were setting up to emerge from bankruptcy for round two.  Nomi Prins, Left Business Observer, April 23, 2004

• [Bush's] sale of his Harken stock prompted an SEC probe into whether he had engaged in insider trading. The probe centered on Bush's sale of all of his 212,140 shares of Harken stock for $4 a share on June 22, 1990, just before the conclusion of a second quarter that produced huge losses. The transaction was to net Bush $835,307, according to the "notice of proposed sale," signed and dated June 22, that Bush was required to send to the SEC as a member of Harken's board. George Lardner Jr. and Lois Romano
  Washington Post, 7/30/99

BUSH LEGAL RECORD

• Arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1976, for driving under the influence of alcohol; pled guilty, paid a fine, and had driver's license suspended for 30 days.

• Texas driving record has been lost and is not available because it was expunged, a result of having his driver license number changed, basically overwriting the old file with all the skeletons in it.

MILITARY

• Joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL for over twelve months; refused to take a drug test or answer any questions about drug use. By joining the Texas Air National Guard, was able to avoid combat duty in Vietnam.    MORE

COLLEGE

• Graduated from Yale University with a low-C average.
  I was a cheerleader.

PAST WORK EXPERIENCE

• Ran for U.S. Congress and lost.

• Began career in the oil business in Midland, Texas, in 1975 by buying an oil company, but couldn't find any oil in Texas. The company went bankrupt shortly after Bush sold all his stock.

• Bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land using taxpayer money. With the help of Bush Sr. and  friends in the oil industry (including Enron CEO Ken Lay), I was elected governor of Texas.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR OF TEXAS

• Changed Texas pollution laws to favor power and oil companies, making Texas the most polluted state in the Union.

• During tenure, Houston replaced Los Angeles as the most smog -ridden city in America.

• Cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas treasury to the tune of billions in borrowed money.

• Set the record for the most executions by any governor in American history.

• With his brother, the governor of Florida, and his  father's appointments to the Supreme Court, I became President after losing by over 500,000 votes.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS PRESIDENT

• The first President in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal record.

• Invaded and occupied two countries at a continuing cost of over one billion dollars per week.

• Spent the U.S. surplus and effectively bankrupted the U.S. Treasury.

• Shattered the record for the largest annual deficit in U.S. history.

• Set an economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any12-month period.

• Set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12-month period.

• Set the all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the U.S. stock market.

• In his first year in office, over 2 million Americans lost their jobs and that trend continues every month

• Members of the Bush cabinet are the richest of any administration in U.S. history. "Poorest millionaire," Condoleeza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.
  Set the record for most campaign fund raising trips by a U.S. President.

• All-time U.S. and world record-holder for receiving the most corporate campaign donations.

• Largest lifetime campaign contributor, and one of his best friends, Kenneth Lay, presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy fraud in U.S. history, at Enron.

• Bush's political party used Enron private jets and corporate attorneys to assure my success with the U.S. Supreme Court during my election decision.

• Protected his friends at Enron and Halliburton against investigation or prosecution.

• More time and money was spent investigating the Monica Lewinsky affair than he spent investigating one of the biggest corporate rip-offs in history.

• Presided over the biggest energy crisis in U.S. history and refused to intervene when corruption involving the oil industry was revealed.

• Presided over the highest gasoline prices in U.S. history.
  Changed the U.S. policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.

• Broke more international treaties than any President in U.S. history.

• First President in U.S. history to have the United Nations remove the U.S. from the Human Rights Commission.

• Withdrew the U.S. from the World Court of Law.

• Refused to allow inspectors access to U.S. "prisoners of war" detainees and thereby have refused to abide by the Geneva Convention.

• First President in history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the 2002 U.S. election).

• Set the record for fewest number of press conferences of any President since the advent of television.

• Set the all-time record for most days on vacation in any one-year period.

• After taking off the entire month of August, Bush presided over the worst security failure in U.S. history.

• Garnered the most sympathy for the U.S. after the World Trade Center attacks and less than a year later made the U.S. the most hated country in the world, the largest failure of diplomacy in world history.

• Set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously protest against me in public venues (15 million people), shattering the record for protest against any person in history.

• First President in U.S. history to order an unprovoked, pre-emptive attack against, and military occupation of, a sovereign nation and did so against the will of the United Nations, the majority of U.S. citizens, and the world community.

• Cut health-care benefits for war veterans and support a cut in duty- benefits for active-duty troops and their families -- in wartime.

• In State of the Union Address, lied about our reasons for attacking Iraq, and then blamed the lies on our British friends.
  First President in history to have a majority of Europeans (71%) view his presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and security.

• Supports development of a nuclear "Tactical Bunker Buster" WMD.

• So far failed to fulfill my pledge to bring Osama Bin Laden to justice.

RECORDS AND REFERENCES

• All records of tenure as governor of Texas are now in Bush Senior's library, sealed and unavailable for public view.

• All records of SEC investigations into insider trading and bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

• All records or minutes from meetings that Bush or his Vice-president, attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
  
  PLEASE CONSIDER THIS EXPERIENCE WHEN VOTING IN 2004.

Bush Record on Terrorism and Iraq

GOP Enables Chemical Terror*

Many chemical plants -- including dozens in New Jersey -- could release toxic clouds that could kill tens or even hundreds of thousands of people in the case of an attack or a major malfunction. Their security became a prime concern of experts after 9/11, but proposed regulations requiring safety measures failed to pass in Congress. In her new book, "It's My Party Too," former New Jersey Gov. Whitman -- who was head of the Environmental Protection Agency as the debate raged in Congress and the Bush administration -- placed the blame squarely at the feet of chemical-industry lobbyists and congressional Republicans. . . "The American Chemistry Council (a chemical-industry lobbying group) fought hard against my efforts," Whitman wrote. . . . There are still no federal regulations requiring chemical facilities to gird against attack.  ALEXANDER LANE, Star-Ledger 1/28/05  MORE

The Bush Administration maintained and strengthened its ties to the Saudi government upon taking office. As the Boston Herald reported, a "revolving U.S.-Saudi money wheel" exists "within President Bush's own coterie of foreign policy advisers." Center for American Progress, 4/2/04

Who authorrized at least 3 flights for 50 Saudi Royals to leave the U.S. two days after 9/11 while other flights were banned?  Response to Judicial Watch FOI request

"He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something.'' Richard Clark, Former George W. Bush Counterterrorism Coordinator.

Why Saddam?" and "Why now?" were never asked. "It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying ‘Go find me a way to do this,’" says O’Neill. “For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap.”  Paul O'Neil, Former George W. Bush Secretary of the Treasury.

In the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI, an internal administration budget document shows. Washington Post

Immediately after 9/11, dozens of Saudi royals and members of the bin Laden family fled the U.S. in a secret airlift authorized by the Bush White House.  Salon

In response to inquiries from CBS News over why Ashcroft was traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines, the Justice Department cited what it called a "threat assessment" by the FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term.  CBS

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, . . .has been hobbled by a series of disputes with the Bush administration over access to documents and other issues.  Washington Post

"[H]aving just been told the country was under attack the commander in chief appeared uninterested in further details. He never asked if there had been any additional threats, where the attacks were coming from, how to best protect the country from further attacks, or what the current status of NORAD or the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Nor did he call for an immediate return to Washington. Instead, in the middle of a modern-day Pearl Harbor, he simply turned back to the matter at hand; the day’s photo op.  James Bamford's "Body of Secrets"

In a status report on its work, the commission [investigating the 9/11 attacks] said various agencies — y the Pentagon and the Justice Department — were blocking requests for vital information and resources. Acting more like the Soviet Kremlin than the America. NY Times Editorial 7/9/03

Of particular concern has been the conflation of al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as a single, undifferentiated terrorist threat. This was a strategic error of the first order because it ignored critical differences between the two in character, threat level, and susceptibility to U.S. deterrence and military action.  Jeffrey Record, Army War College, December 2003

237 misleading statements  UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM — MINORITY STAFF SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS DIVISION MARCH 16, 2004

Bush Record on Torture of Prisoners

Bush says Torture is,  “wrongdoing of a few” 5/9/04 BUT: "The U.S. administration has shown a consistent disregard for the Geneva Conventions and basic principles of law, human rights, and decency," Irene Kahn, Amnesty International's secretary general, said in a printed statement. "This has created a climate in which U.S. soldiers feel they can dehumanize and degrade prisoners with impunity." . . .[ICRC Red Cross} delegates toured the facilities, interviewed prisoners, then developed a series of working papers they presented to coalition authorities highlighting "serious concerns" about the treatment of prisoners under the third and fourth Geneva Conventions. The delegates also repeatedly requested corrective action from coalition authorities, the group said. Drew Brown, Knight Ridder Newspapers, 5/7/04