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Bush makes yet another outlandish claim

G. W. Bush today declared in Iowa that that if he's re-elected it would ensure the safety of the U.S.

That's classic Bush: an untruth stated with conviction. Some would say it's a bald-faced lie. Maybe. However, it's possible Bush actually believes what he's saying. Nonetheless, the statement's still untrue insofar as truth is defined as a proposition supported by the facts.

Here are the facts about Bush's policies and how they aren't making us safer:

*The State Department's own report shows that terrorism has increased sharply worldwide since the U.S. invaded Iraq.

*Bush has so over-stretched our military that we are pulling troops away from our nuclear enemy, North Korea and can't use them adequately to fight al-Qaeda or find bin Laden.

*The International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) concluded that the invasion of Iraq has resulted in an al-Qaeda recruiting boon.

*Bush's foreign policies include warm relations with anti-democratic and corrupt nations.

*Bush has slashed funding for anti-chemical weapons projects and even cut FBI funding after 9/11.

*Bush is devastating morale among our troops because of the way he has mistreated them, used them, and slashed veterans' benefits, and soldiers' imminent-danger pay and family-separation allowance.

*Bush's amateurish foreign diplomacy has distanced us from our allies just when we need them to help us fight a global terrorist network.

The Senate Intelligence Committee report: passing the buck and compounding lies

The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee's report states that the Bush administration didn't pressure the CIA to find evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In other words, the report says: Shrub, go ahead and pass the buck--let's blame it all on the CIA being dopes.

But the Democrats on the committee commonsensically disagree, and so do I.

If Bush didn't knowingly mislead America into invading Iraq, but instead just fell for bad CIA intelligence, then:

*WHY did the Bush administration (not the CIA!) set up a secret office in the CIA created to be, in the words of Mother Jones, a "lie factory" that looked for and exaggerated (and possibly invented) only evidence that would further the case for invading Iraq, ignoring and even bullying CIA officials who questioned their so-called findings.

*WHY did the CIA reject Bush administration claims that the threat from Saddam was imminent?

*WHY did Rumsfeld and others thirst right after 9/11 to attack Iraq instead of Afghanistan?

*WHY did Bush go beyond CIA assessment and begin citing specters of destruction like the "mushroom cloud."

*WHY did Bush & Co.--who leave no defense contractor behind--hype the war and think of it as something that had to be sold. Remember what White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card told The New York Times about why the Bush administration was waiting on its PR offensive about invading Iraq until after Labor Day? “From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce a new product in August,”

*WHY did The White House assassinate the character and career of Ambassador Wilson and traitorously blow the cover of the ambassador's wife--an American spy in Muslim Africa--when Wilson found proof that the CIA was citing forged documents. Shouldn't Club Shrub (a.k.a. The White House) have been thrilled? (Ambassador, I'm glad you found this doctored "evidence." We could have been accused of going to war under false pretenses! No, instead Bush told Wilson to Shut up!)

Gen. Wesley Clark (Ret.) blasts Bush war

Gen. Wesley Clark gave the Bush-Cheney administration a broadside from Manchester, New Hampshire yesterday, citing reports that Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former firm, has wasted about $1 billion in taxpayer funds in Iraq. He said, “This is a scandal that needs to be fully opened and exposed.”

He said Bush “launched us into an ill-prepared operation, forcing it through companies like Halliburton, which weren’t ready to do the job, and wasting precious resources that could have saved American lives.” Clark also charged that Bush has misused the Individual Ready Reserve as “a draft” of those “who volunteered to serve [and] successfully completed the voluntary term of service they signed up for."

Clark followed Eleanor Kjellman, a Vietnam veteran whose son is serving in Iraq. Kjellman's accusation against the Bush-Cheney administration was sharp, "They are big on aircraft carrier landings and sneaking into Baghdad at night to serve turkeys to soldiers. But they are working against the soldiers and their families between ‘photo-ops.’”

GOP consulting group head guilty of jamming Democratic phone lines

Has it been noted that all of the conspiracies and dirty tricks we're now becoming aware of from the 2000 and 2002 elections (and already some pertaining to 2004) were done by Republicans? Here's but the most recent revelation according to the Boston Globe:

Allen Raymond, former president of the Alexandria, Va.-based GOP Marketplace LLC
.....
plotted with unidentified coconspirators to jam Democratic Party telephone lines established so voters could call for rides to the polls in Manchester, Nashua, Rochester and Claremont. Manchester firefighters' union phone lines also were affected.

Watch. Less than half of voters, most of whom with claim Christ as their savior, (but, apparently, not a behavioral inspiration or model), will care that this criminality happened. They'll care neither about Bush's Saudi connections; nor the documented lies about Kerry's voting record made by Bush-Cheney '04; nor Katherine Harris' immoral purging of voters from Florida voting rolls. No immorality of thought, word, or deed by Republicans will matter to the 50% of voters who in the name of Christ have let their very faith fall subordinate to political conservatism. They get their news from a biased media, lack a clear sense of the world concerning (including the intellectual history of America's founding), and wallow now in the filth of cognitive dissonance--terrified of being wrong--which blocks from their eyes the light of evidence that they, and we as a nation, have been led astray for four years.