By: Richard Gephardt  

The President assured Americans then that politics would not play a part in deciding issues of life and death. Which is why when Karl Rove told a Republican party meeting last January that talk of war and terror themes could play to the GOP's advantage in the 2002 elections - or last June, when a computer disk containing a presentation by Mr. Rove revealed a White House political strategy to focus on the war as a way to "maintain a positive issue environment" - I didn't want to believe it. And when Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff, remarked that the White House waited until the start of the election season to promote action in Iraq because "from a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August", I hoped it wasn't true.

But now there's no denying it. President Bush himself has decided to play politics with the safety and security of the American people. It started in New York two days after the one-year anniversary of Sept. 11. Injecting politics into the debate on Iraq, the President told reporters that "if I were running for office, I'm not sure how I'd explain to the American people, say, `Vote for me and, oh, by the way, on a matter of national security, I think I'm going to wait for somebody else to act.'".

Four times in the past week Mr. Bush has echoed these words. On Monday, he went so far as to say that the Democrat-led Senate is "not interested in the security of the American people"...

By: Linda Ford  

So, you're beating the war drums again. You say you want the mothers of America to respond by handing over our sons and our daughters so that you can take them into harm's way. And whose blood will you shed?

The soccer moms who went through 5 years of invitro after selecting which egg would be implanted, who nursed those embryos into barely viable babies who survive in spite of peanut allergies and attention deficit disorders, what my mother called "misbehaving" but what their mothers call disability, these mothers won't let their children walk down the stairs without a helmet. They won't be Iraqi targets, you can count on that. These mothers who would make a federal case out it if anyone dared to discipline their child, these mothers who dressed their children in Baby Versachi and sent them to Miss Minchin's Finishing School, these mothers are not going to simply drop their children off in their SUV's at the recruitment office with cheery kisses goodbye...

By: Paul Krugman  

...First there were those Enron memos. Then the California Public Utilities Commission determined that most of the blackouts that afflicted California between November 2000 and May 2001 took place not because generating capacity was inadequate, but because the major power companies kept much of their capacity off line. Most recently, a judge for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has ruled that El Paso Corporation used its control over a key pipeline to create an artificial natural gas shortage.

But why did energy companies think they could get away with it?

One answer might be that the apparent malefactors are very big contributors to the Republican Party. Some analysts have suggested that energy companies felt free to manipulate markets because they believed they had bought protection from federal regulation - the conspiracy-minded point out that severe power shortages began just after the 2000 election, and ended when Democrats gained control of the Senate.

From:  

Dubya is back with a vengeance this week after curiously failing to crack the chart two weeks ago. He claims the number one, part of the number two, and the number three spots. Way to go, George! The chump-in-charge's behind-the-scenes puppetmaster, Dick Cheney, also manages to grab a slot this week, sneaking in at number four. Holding on behind these world-class idiots we find Katherine Harris's most unlikely fan Candice Brown McElyea (5), unnecessarily irate congressman Joe Wilson (7), and the hilariously hypocritical Bob Richardson (9). It's a fine list this week so enjoy.

"Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events."

- Winston Churchill

Is Bush making a cry for help?

By: Alan Bisbort  

Whether George W. Bush is or was an alcoholic is not the point here. I am taking him at his word that he stopped what he termed "heavy drinking" in 1986, at age 40. The point here is that, based on Bush's recent behavior, he could very well be a "dry drunk". Of course, he may just be an immature bully who will gladly sacrifice thousands of lives to get his way even against the advice of the most respected and mature members of his own party.

Still, Bush's past battles with the bottle are worth pondering at a time like this, one of the most dangerous in the nation's history. When a recovering alcoholic begins to engage in what AA calls "stinking thinking", he or she begins to exhibit the old attitudes and pathologies of their drinking years. These include an increase in anxiety, mild tremors, mild depression, disturbed sleep patterns, inability to think clearly, craving for junk food, irritability, sudden bursts of anger, and unpredictable mood swings. According to AA literature: "Boredom and listlessness may alternate with intense feelings of resentment against family and friends, and explosive outbursts of violence."

Bush said he was a "heavy drinker". But let's not be coy here. Anyone who has ever imbibed heavily over a long period of time knows that "heavy drinker" is the rich man's (or the politician's) code for alcoholic.

"Who is the enemy here? The President of the United States, or Saddam Hussein?"

- Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott

The President's new foreign policy will only anger other countries, and provoke them to take their own "preemptive action".

By: Robert Scheer  

The Bush administration's continued emphasis on developing a Star Wars missile defense system basically endorses a nuclear war-fighting strategy.

Instead of renouncing nuclear weapons as inherently barbaric, as we have done with chemical and biological weapons, this administration is making a shambles of the antiballistic missile and other arms control treaties so we can make better nukes.

If there is an area in which Bush is truly untutored, it is not on the subject of grammar but rather on the historical risk of moral hubris.

Consequently, his administration's answer to all criticisms of his aggressive unilateralism is that the United States is unique, empowered to engage in "a unique American internationalism" - formerly known as imperialism.

The man seems simply incapable of countenancing the notion that this nation can ever do wrong.

By: William Rivers Pitt  

Some will tell you that the sudden, seemingly inexplicable rush to war with Iraq is nothing more or less than a ruse to get economic scandals off the front pages and out of the nightly news cycles. July was a catastrophically bad month for the Bush administration. Every time George spoke on camera, the Dow Jones would melt through the floorboards. The shady, patently illegal dealings of his old company, Harken, were a regular topic for the news talk shows. His Vice President had gone into hiding to avoid subpoenas that would compel him to spill the beans about another criminal enterprise, Halliburton, as well as the ways and means of the back-room corporate dealings which led to the Bush administration's energy plan. Hovering over it all like the raven was Enron, and all the winding financial roads that led from Ken Lay to the Oval Office.

We must face a wretched truth. George W. Bush has allowed, and will continue to allow, a course for war to be charted in order to save his party at the polls in November. At the same time, he has given free rein to the neo-con hawks in his administration to begin a process of total war in the Middle East in order to secure petroleum profits for the foreseeable future. Untold hundreds or thousands of Americans will die in this process, as will tens of thousands of innocent civilians. One can only guess the number of American civilians who will die in their own country at the hands of the terrorists who will doubtlessly attack America again in response to this program.

This is murder for profit, a capitol crime meriting the gas chamber for any American convicted of it in a court of law. Period.

"The President and Vice President need to realize they are public officials at a time of war, not a pair of playboys who can jet-set around every night doing cocktail party fundraisers on the public's dime."

- David Sirota, a spokesman for Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee

"We've seen the most anemic period of economic growth since Eisenhower was President. In 18 months, the stock market lost $4.5 trillion in value; more than two million people have lost their jobs. A wave of corporate scandals has eroded people's fundamental faith in our nation's free markets, and scores of corporations have become bankrupt."

- House Minority Leader Richard Gebhardt

By: Sheila Hartney  

Dick Cheney is a heartbeat away from the presidency. Dick Cheney's own heartbeat is none too reliable at times, so we've been told. But there have been no reports of ill health on his part in recent months. So why does he travel with an ambulance?

He came to Overland Park, KS, on Monday, September 23, 2002, to fund-raise for Adam Taff, who's trying to unseat two-term Democrat Dennis Moore for Congress. Republican fund-raiser in Republican Kansas, big yawn. But what's this? At the very tail of the motorcade which brought him to the Ritz Charles, was an ambulance. Big, white and red, lights flashing, as if racing to a hospital. But it was simply part of the Vice-President's motorcade.

By: Sheila Samples  

What he was trying desperately not to say was "shame on me". I agree with Mark Crispin Miller, author of The Bush Dyslexicon, who believes that Dubbie is incapable of feeling an emotion such as shame. He can't even say it. Nobody in his family has ever said it, and you can make book on the fact that he will not be the first member to break the Bush family "code".

Miller says you can search in vain throughout the archives of Bush family utterances - both scripted and off-the-cuff - and you will not find a single moment of self-criticism, self-doubt, ambivalence, open-mindedness - or even simple curiosity. When faced with the prospect of having to admit even a future error, such as someone could fool him twice, Dub chose instead to flounder around in the tangled mess that is his mind and come up with a song, "Won't Get Fooled Again", by the rock group, The Who.

Some of us aren't laughing. We know that this man (sic) whose shoe size increasingly appears to exceed his IQ is incapable of contrition. He is fixedly convinced of his own infallibility. His pseudofundie-Christian bluster about being called by "History" to rid the Black-and-White world of evil - his claim that only he is capable of rendering infinite justice - is not only shameful, it's insane. Geedub is one hungry little caterpillar upon whom the sublities of the phrase, "Bully Pulpit", are lost...

"In just one year, the President has somehow squandered the international outpouring of sympathy, goodwill, and solidarity that followed the attacks of September 11^th and converted it into anger and apprehension aimed much more at the United States than at the terrorist network - much as we manage to squander in one year's time the largest budget surpluses in history and convert them into massive fiscal deficits."

- President (in exile) Al Gore

By: Helen Dewar  

The Senate voted overwhelmingly today to create an independent commission to conduct a broad inquiry into governmental failures leading up to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, significantly boosting prospects that Congress will set up the panel before it adjourns for the year.

The 90-8 vote, which came less than came less than a week after the Bush administration dropped its opposition to the proposal, reflected a mounting consensus in both parties that the current congressional probe into intelligence failures pointed to the need for a more far-reaching inquiry.

As approved by the Senate, the independent commission would look into problems arising from foreign policy, law enforcement, commercial aviation, financing of terrorist groups, visa procedures, and border control as well as intelligence issues already being investigated by the House and Senate intelligence committees.

"Today the world faces a single man armed with weapons of mass destruction, manifesting an aggressive, bullying attitude, who may well plunge the world into chaos and bloodshed if he miscalculates. This person, belligerent, arrogant, and sure of himself, truly is the most dangerous person on Earth. The problem is that his name is George W. Bush, and he is our President."

- Jack M. Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School

By: Jeremiah Bourque  

With the United States able and willing to declare states to be illegitimate entities at its pleasure, there is no legal, moral, or philosophical barrier to violating borders, treaties, or pledges, since these entities do not, in the strict view of Americans, exist anymore. It is not a matter of unilateralism; it is a matter of navel-gazing, believing that there is only one nation that matters, and in that nation, there is only one man who matters, the President. The power of life or death, freedom or slavery, is to be vested in him, for he is the only one who is wise enough and powerful enough to make the nation whole.

In this system, the President is a substitute for God. Acting in God's name, for God's purposes, he takes in his hands the destiny of the world, shaping it according to his just beliefs and standing in judgement over all nations, deciding if they are to be allowed the fiction that they exist, or if their existence will be wiped away in a flash of blinding light. This man, in his wisdom, judges daily matters of global importance, deciding not only the fate of nations, but of individuals, judging whether they are friend or foe, ally or enemy.

I choose not to name this system, for no name will suffice; we will call this system by what it chooses to be called, for there will soon be no power to call it by any other. Thus, I will call this system of government by the name it chooses for itself: Democracy. On this day, in the 21^st Century, this is what Democracy now is, and has become.

By: Molly Ivins  

"The National Security Strategy of the United States - 2002" is repellent, unnecessary and, above all, impractical. Americans are famous for pragmatism, and we need a good dose of common sense right now. This Will Not Work.

All the experts tell us anti-Americanism thrives on the perception that we are arrogant, that we care nothing for what the rest of the world thinks. Even our innocent mistakes are often blamed on obnoxious triumphalism. The announced plan of this administration for world domination reinforces every paranoid, anti-American prejudice on this earth. This plan is guaranteed to produce more terrorists. Even if this country were to become some insane, 21^st Century version of Sparta - armed to teeth, guards on every foot of our borders - we would still not be safe. Have the Israelis been able to stop terrorism with their tactics?

Not only would we not be safe, we would not have a nickel left for schools or health care or roads or parks or zoos or gardens or universities or mass transit or senior centers or the arts or anything resembling civilization. This is nuts.

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