Applejack Contradicts Himself

Applejack on March 11:

3365 PM: Applejack [Quote] -- 7:42am -- Wed, Mar 11, 20 pst
Applejack
... [Biden] Voted for the war in Iraq

----

Applejack on March 9:

6271 PM: Applejack [Quote] -- 3:28pm -- Mon, Mar 9, 20 pst
The word ''War'' isn't in the resolution authorizing Bush to use military force in Iraq, so it wasn't a vote for the war by Hillary or Biden.

Applejack Nukes Claim that HRC Voted for War

7881 PM: Applejack [Quote] -- 3:42pm -- Sun, May 12, 19 pst
CLINTON: Look, I think that the decision to go to war in Iraq was a mistake. And I have said that my voting to give President Bush that authority was, from my perspective, my mistake.

Bush's Iraq Letter

Yes, Bush  blamed Iraq for the 9/11 attacks and put it in writing in a letter to congress.

Dear Mr. Speaker: ( Dear Mr. President: )

Consistent with section 3(b) of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243), and based on information available to me, including that in the enclosed document, I determine that:

(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither (A) adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq nor (B) likely lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and

(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Sincerely,

GEORGE W. BUSH



http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/03/19/sprj.irq.letter/index.html

Applejack Accidentally Tells the Truth

8419   PM:   Applejack   [Quote]     -- 8:50am -- Wed, Feb 13, 19 pst
Actually she [Hillary]  voted for the Resolution authorizing Bush to use military force in Iraq

UN Inspectors in Iraq

Yes, Saddam DID allow UN inspectors into Iraq. This report from "The Washington Post" notes that Bush urged UN inspectors to leave. Most readers understand, the inspectors would NOT be urged to leave Iraq were they not allowed to enter Iraq.



"The United Nations ordered its inspectors and humanitarian personnel out
of Iraq, and Bush urged foreign nationals to leave the country
immediately."



https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/03/18/president-tells-hussein-to-leave-iraq-within-48-hours-or-face-invasion/ff737af4-5d31-446a-9860-869f2bc6478e/?utm_term=.25c81d77a7e4



https://tinyurl.com/ydgrtfjs

US Troops Behead Iraqi Children

Yes, the US DOES behead children.

 '''I don't know where Fatima and my mom were. Siham got hit. She died. I saw Zohra's head gone. I lost consciousness,'' said Moza, covering her mouth with the end of her headscarf. '

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51694-2004May24_3.html

'''One of them was my daughter,'' Nawaf told The Associated Press. ''I found her a few steps from the house, her two-year-old son Raad in her arms. Her one-year-old son, Raed, was lying nearby, missing his head.'' ' -

http://archive.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2004/05/21/iraqi_survivors_recount_us_tent_shelling_after_wedding_party/

No Iraq/Al Qaida Link

Right wingers STILL claim Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks and was working with al Qaida. They ignore the facts. According to a Pentagon-sponsored study, it just didn't happen.

"WASHINGTON — An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/03/10/29959/exhaustive-review-finds-no-link.html#storylink=cpy"

Back to Top

Press Sold the War

Another interesting Media Matters piece. This one talks about press complicity in Bush's selling of his war.

Back to Top

"Get Over It"

When the USSC in December of 2000 stopped the counting of the votes in Florida, effectively handing the White House to the loser, Bush supporters told us, "Get over it." Shortly after taking office, Bush took a vacation, ignored a memo warning him of bin Laden plans to strike inside the US, and the nation watched in horror as over 3000 were murdered on 9/11.



"Get over it."



Then, Bush told us he'd hit "the trifecta," and he trumped up a bogus war against Iraq -- sending over 4000 of our troops to die over weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist.



"Get over it."



Where was our Washington press corps during all of this? They played along with Bush the whole time. They played along during the press war against Gore in 1999 and 2000. They played along during the recount in Florida. They played along when the recount commissioned by the press found that Gore had won in Florida -- lying to us -- and helpfully explaining how Bush had "won" if we don't count all the votes.



"Get over it."



They played along in Bush's build up to war, revising history -- telling us in 2002 that Saddam had "kicked out" UN inspectors from Iraq -- after reporting to us in 1998, that it was the UN who ordered the inspectors out of Iraq.



"Get over it."



Then, comes the swift-boating of Kerry in 2004. The press knew the swift-boaters lied, but they played along anyway. After all, Kerry was too "French," and he might even undo the big tax breaks the millionaire press pundits enjoyed under Bush.



"Get over it."



Now comes the primary of 2008. The press plays along, helpfully explaining to us that McCain is a "straight-shooter" and a "maverick." Don't worry about his flip-flops or about his gaffes.



"Get over it."



CNN tells us what a "gracious" and well "intended" guy Obama is -- ignoring his campaign's  playing the race card in their effort to defeat Clinton. The press pretended instead, that it was Clinton who played the race card.



"Get over it."



The press decided the outcome in 2000, and they decided the outcome of the Democratic primary in 2008.

'At the same time, says Lowry, "the press hates Hillary. There's real glee over the prospect of being done with the Clintons."' - Source - Howard Kurtz, Media Reporter, Washington Post



“Am I feeling bitter? You bet. Not because Hillary Clinton seems more likely than not to lose — I can live with that pretty easily — but because of how she's likely to lose. Because the press doesn't like her.” – Kevin Drum, Washington Monthly



"More than six years ago, long before Hillary Clinton began running for president, the Philadelphia Inquirer magazine reported that, according to an MSNBC colleague, Matthews had said of Clinton: "I hate her. I hate her. All that she stands for.""



‘’The media's apparent belief that it is acceptable to say any damn thing they want, true or false, as long as they say it about the Clintons, has become known as the "Clinton Rules of Journalism."’’

"Get over it."



Well, no. I won't get over it. I didn't get over it in 2000; I didn't get over it in 2004, and I'm not going to get over it in 2008 either. The press destroyed Gore's chances in 2000, just as they destroyed Kerry's in 2004, and Clinton's in 2008; and I fear that they'll also turn on Obama and destroy his chances later this year after they "get over" the "thrill" that French-kissing him now sends up their collective leg.

"It's part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama's speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often." - Chris Matthews - February 13, 2008

Boys and girls, is this the kind of reporting we want deciding the future of our nation? Not for me. I, for one will not "Get over it."

Back to Top

War for Oil

McCain's on record verifying that we are in Iraq because of oil:

''My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will - that will then prevent us - that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East. ''

 

Back to Top

Why Bush Must Go - By George McGovern

Why I Believe Bush Must Go
Nixon Was Bad. These Guys Are Worse.
By George McGovern
Washington Post; Sunday, January 6, 2008; Page B01

As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president.

After the 1972 presidential election, I stood clear of calls to impeach President Richard M. Nixon for his misconduct during the campaign. I thought that my joining the impeachment effort would be seen as an expression of personal vengeance toward the president who had defeated me.

Today I have made a different choice.

Of course, there seems to be little bipartisan support for impeachment. The political scene is marked by narrow and sometimes superficial partisanship, especially among Republicans, and a lack of courage and statesmanship on the part of too many Democratic politicians. So the chances of a bipartisan impeachment and conviction are not promising.

But what are the facts?

Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly "high crimes and misdemeanors," to use the constitutional standard.

From the beginning, the Bush-Cheney team's assumption of power was the product of questionable elections that probably should have been officially challenged -- perhaps even by a congressional investigation.

In a more fundamental sense, American democracy has been derailed throughout the Bush-Cheney regime. The dominant commitment of the administration has been a murderous, illegal, nonsensical war against Iraq. That irresponsible venture has killed almost 4,000 Americans, left many times that number mentally or physically crippled, claimed the lives of an estimated 600,000 Iraqis (according to a careful October 2006 study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) and laid waste their country. The financial cost to the United States is now $250 million a day and is expected to exceed a total of $1 trillion, most of which we have borrowed from the Chinese and others as our national debt has now climbed above $9 trillion -- by far the highest in our national history.

All of this has been done without the declaration of war from Congress that the Constitution clearly requires, in defiance of the U.N. Charter and in violation of international law. This reckless disregard for life and property, as well as constitutional law, has been accompanied by the abuse of prisoners, including systematic torture, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

I have not been heavily involved in singing the praises of the Nixon administration. But the case for impeaching Bush and Cheney is far stronger than was the case against Nixon and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew after the 1972 election. The nation would be much more secure and productive under a Nixon presidency than with Bush. Indeed, has any administration in our national history been so damaging as the Bush-Cheney era?

How could a once-admired, great nation fall into such a quagmire of killing, immorality and lawlessness?

It happened in part because the Bush-Cheney team repeatedly deceived Congress, the press and the public into believing that Saddam Hussein had nuclear arms and other horrifying banned weapons that were an "imminent threat" to the United States. The administration also led the public to believe that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks -- another blatant falsehood. Many times in recent years, I have recalled Jefferson's observation: "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

The basic strategy of the administration has been to encourage a climate of fear, letting it exploit the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks not only to justify the invasion of Iraq but also to excuse such dangerous misbehavior as the illegal tapping of our telephones by government agents. The same fear-mongering has led government spokesmen and cooperative members of the press to imply that we are at war with the entire Arab and Muslim world -- more than a billion people.

Another shocking perversion has been the shipping of prisoners scooped off the streets of Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other countries without benefit of our time-tested laws of habeas corpus.

Although the president was advised by the intelligence agencies last August that Iran had no program to develop nuclear weapons, he continued to lie to the country and the world. This is the same strategy of deception that brought us into war in the Arabian Desert and could lead us into an unjustified invasion of Iran. I can say with some professional knowledge and experience that if Bush invades yet another Muslim oil state, it would mark the end of U.S. influence in the crucial Middle East for decades.

Ironically, while Bush and Cheney made counterterrorism the battle cry of their administration, their policies -- especially the war in Iraq -- have increased the terrorist threat and reduced the security of the United States. Consider the difference between the policies of the first President Bush and those of his son. When the Iraqi army marched into Kuwait in August 1990, President George H.W. Bush gathered the support of the entire world, including the United Nations, the European Union and most of the Arab League, to quickly expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The Saudis and Japanese paid most of the cost. Instead of getting bogged down in a costly occupation, the administration established a policy of containing the Baathist regime with international arms inspectors, no-fly zones and economic sanctions. Iraq was left as a stable country with little or no capacity to threaten others.

Today, after five years of clumsy, mistaken policies and U.S. military occupation, Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism and bloody civil strife. It is no secret that former president Bush, his secretary of state, James A. Baker III, and his national security adviser, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, all opposed the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.

In addition to the shocking breakdown of presidential legal and moral responsibility, there is the scandalous neglect and mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe. The veteran CNN commentator Jack Cafferty condenses it to a sentence: "I have never ever seen anything as badly bungled and poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans." Any impeachment proceeding must include a careful and critical look at the collapse of presidential leadership in response to perhaps the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.

Impeachment is unlikely, of course. But we must still urge Congress to act. Impeachment, quite simply, is the procedure written into the Constitution to deal with presidents who violate the Constitution and the laws of the land. It is also a way to signal to the American people and the world that some of us feel strongly enough about the present drift of our country to support the impeachment of the false prophets who have led us astray. This, I believe, is the rightful course for an American patriot.

As former representative Elizabeth Holtzman, who played a key role in the Nixon impeachment proceedings, wrote two years ago, "it wasn't until the most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) -- and argued that, as Commander in Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override our country's laws -- that I felt the same sinking feeling in my stomach as I did during Watergate. . . . A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law -- and repeatedly violates the law -- thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors."

I believe we have a chance to heal the wounds the nation has suffered in the opening decade of the 21st century. This recovery may take a generation and will depend on the election of a series of rational presidents and Congresses. At age 85, I won't be around to witness the completion of the difficult rebuilding of our sorely damaged country, but I'd like to hold on long enough to see the healing begin.

There has never been a day in my adult life when I would not have sacrificed that life to save the United States from genuine danger, such as the ones we faced when I served as a bomber pilot in World War II. We must be a great nation because from time to time, we make gigantic blunders, but so far, we have survived and recovered.

anmcgove@dwu.edu

Back to Top

Cheney on Iraq

"It's a quagmire," Cheney says - if we invade Iraq. "How many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?"

Back to Top

Bush Mis-Placing Money in Iraq

Any way you cut it, folks, Bush's misadventure in Iraq has been a total disaster:

"A financial review carried out by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction (SIGIR), looking into large Iraqi Relief and Reconstruction Fund projects, has revealed that most of the $1.2 billion in funding that the U.S. State Department provided to DynCorp International to train Iraqi police is unaccounted for, CNN reported on Tuesday."

Back to Top

US Military: Bush/Cheney 'Out of Control'

Military historian, Gabriel Kolko, is the author of "The Age of War: The United States Confronts the World," and "The Anatomy of War." This is from a recent online interview:

"Many in the US military think Bush and Cheney are out of control. They are rebelling against Bush and Cheney. Washington Post reporter Dana Priest recently said in an interview that she believed the US military would revolt and refuse to fly missions against Iran if the White House issued such orders."

Back to Top

US Army Captains - Time to Get out of Iraq

Twelve former US Army captains write in the Washington Post about what they see going on in Iraq. How long before Limbaugh calls them "phony soldiers"?

"Today marks five years since the authorization of military force in Iraq, setting Operation Iraqi Freedom in motion. Five years on, the Iraq war is as undermanned and under-resourced as it was from the start. And, five years on, Iraq is in shambles.

As Army captains who served in Baghdad and beyond, we've seen the corruption and the sectarian division. We understand what it's like to be stretched too thin. And we know when it's time to get out. "

Back to Top

Invasion of Iraq a "Disastrous Mistake"

Seems Bush's efforts to wage a "war on terror" is "fueling Al Qaeda," rather than making them less of a threat.

From the New York Times:

"LONDON (Reuters) - Six years after the September 11 attacks in the United States, the "war on terror" is failing and instead fueling an increase in support for extremist Islamist movements, a British think-tank said on Monday."

Back to Top

Bush Played into bin Laden's Hands

Bush fell into trap set by bin Laden. Read about it in the LA Times:

"Osama bin Laden's plan was to get the U.S. to overreact and overreach itself. With the invasion of Iraq, Bush fell slap-bang into that trap."

Back to Top

War Is Illegal - Richard Perle

War hawk, Richard Perle admits Bush's war is illegal.

"International lawyers and anti-war campaigners reacted with astonishment yesterday after the influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal."

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1089158,00.html

Back to Top

Bush: Iraq Attacked Us on 9/11

Bush can't help but lie. It's apparently his nature. Will anyone in the press call him on it? I doubt it.

''The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that's why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home.''

Back to Top

Bush WH in Panic Mode

A very wise old international union official once told me that the republicans are simply incapable of governing. This report from ABC seems to confirm that sage bit of wisdom.

"ABC News has been told the White House is in "panic mode" over the recent defections of Republican senators on the president's stay-the-course policy in Iraq.

Senior Bush administration officials are deep in discussion about how to find a compromise that will "appease Democrats and keep wobbly Republicans onboard," a senior White House official told ABC News. "

Back to Top