"Our oil is in Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Wyoming, New Mexico, Alaska, etc... but all the dipsticks are in Washington, DC."

- Andy Rooney

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Well we finally made it - welcome to the 100th Top Ten Conservative Idiots! This week we've decided to do a look back at the Top 100 Conservative Idiots since the site began two years ago. They're ranked in order by number of appearance (although for entries with the same number of appearances there is no particular order). We've highlighted some of the entries, and we've also added some fun Top Ten facts for your entertainment. Some of the external links have unfortunately died (sorry, not our fault) but that shouldn't make much difference.

By: Paul Corrigan  

President Bush has failed the true test of character. Handed the American presidency, Bush has abused the power bestowed upon him. A man with character uses power discreetly. A moral man chooses patience over war. A man with ethical strength favors the needs of the many over the wants of the rich. A man of character is competent and dependable. Bush fails every one of these tests.

At a time when America is threatened by a radical theocracy abroad, Bush tells us that he is on a mission from God. The American media, following the American Right, points to Bush's faith as a demonstration of his character. The irony is lost on them, but not on the rest of the world. Bush has consistently demonstrated one trait, a disdain for human life. The world fears Bush not because he has character, but because he lacks character.

By: Don Williams  

This nation fought a war against Spain over a century ago because many in the media parroted the government line that Spaniards blew up the Battleship Maine in Cuba. Turns out that most likely was a mistake at best, a big fat lie at worst.

During World War I, Germans were depicted as brutal barbarians who reveled in nailing babies to fences and gouging out their eyes, and World War I was billed as the war to end all wars. Instead, it led directly to World War II, the rise of communism, and the Cold War in the bloodiest century the world has ever known.

Many of today's hawks are too young to remember the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the big fat lie that plunged us into Vietnam in the 1960's. Look it up. Then there was the Iran-Contra affair, a web of lies that helped shape the dismal dilemma we face now. Remember Iran-Contra? That was the covert operation of the Reagan-Bush administration in the 1980's to sell missiles to a radical Iranian government in exchange for its help in freeing American hostages held in Lebanon.

By: Wayne Washington  

Sami Amin al-Arian, the University of South Florida professor charged with being the U.S. leader of a Mideast terrorist group, was an influential figure in Tampa's small Muslim community whose political activism landed him in a photograph with President Bush during the 2000 campaign.

"He was a Bush supporter", said Robert McKee, an attorney who is representing Arian in a legal dispute with the university. "As close as the election in Florida was, Sami may have put him over the top. He got out the vote in the Muslim community in Florida, and now Bush's Attorney General is going after him."

A photograph taken during a campaign stop in the Tampa area shows George and Laura Bush - both smiling - flanked by Arian, his son Abdullah, and three women wearing Islamic scarves. Newsweek magazine published the picture in July 2001.

"Our stake in maintaining the myth and the attendant self-image that we [the press] are doing a great job is every bit as great a fiction as that of the American Congress serving the people. The gravest threat to the truth today may well be within our own profession."

- Carl Bernstein, former Washington Post reporter

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...Four in five Americans expect another terrorist attack in the near future, and the highest percentage of Americans in nearly a decade say the economy is in bad shape. These worries are affecting Americans' feelings about the country and perhaps even their assessments of the President.

The economy is clearly a major problem for the President. Just 38% approve of the way George W. Bush is handling the economy - the lowest percentage since he has been in office.

Perceptions of the economy continue to decline, as they have since the start of the Bush administration; in this poll, 60% think it is in bad shape, while 39% think it is good - the worst evaluation of the state of the economy since September, 1993.

"No one can claim today the path of war will be shorter than the path of inspections."

- French minister Dominique de Villepin

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The Conference Board in New York reported that its Leading Index of Economic Indicators declined by 0.1% in January, after three consecutive months of increases. The Conference Board initially reported that the index was unchanged in January but later said that reported was based on incorrect data.

Meanwhile, the Labor Department said that the number of newly laid off workers filing unemployment claims jumped to a seven-week high of 402,000 last week, up by 21,000 from the previous week, showing that the labor market is still struggling with an uneven economic recovery.

The trade report showed that even in agricultural products, normally a U.S. bulwark, Americans bought more imported wine, cheese, and other foods than American farmers were able to sell abroad - resulting in only the second U.S. trade deficit in farm goods on record.

By: Anna Willard  

"Higher inflation, weaker growth numbers - overall it was not a good combination for the economy", said Henry Willmore, chief U.S. economist at Barclays Capital in New York. "The claims numbers were disappointing as well."

The stock market closed lower, partly because of the gloomy data. The Down Jones industrial average fell 85 points to 7,914. The U.S. dollar also tumbled, hitting a three-week low against the yen. U.S. Treasury securities prices rose with the data, helping to push benchmark 10-year note yields close to their lows of the year.

The U.S. trade gap widened 10.6% to a record $44.2 billion in December as exports floundered and imports surged. The gap trounced expectations for a deficit of $38.8 billion.

By: Laurie Kellman  

In the year after the Sept. 11 attacks, federal prosecutors exaggerated their success convicting would-be terrorists by wrongly classifying three of every four cases originally labeled as international terrorism, congressional investigators said this week.

Overall, almost half of 288 convictions deemed terrorism-related were wrongly classified as such for the 2002 fiscal year that began three weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the General Accounting Office, Congress' nonpartisan watchdog agency, said Wednesday.

GAO concluded that the Justice Department "does not have sufficient management oversight and internal controls in place to ensure the accuracy and reliability of terrorism-related conviction statistics included in its annual performance reports".

Editorial from:  

Plenty of John Ashcroft's former Senate colleagues had misgivings when George W. Bush nominated him to be Attorney General.

They knew him to be more ideological than intellectual, more judgmental than judicious, and altogether more small-minded than what might be hoped for in a candidate for the top domestic Cabinet post.

Yet Mr. Ashcroft has not merely lived up to his colleagues' expectations during his first two years in office, he has wildly exceeded them, as documented in a recent profile by the Sun's Michael Hill.

He is the nation's chief law enforcement officer, but seems intent on bending both the law and the Constitution to his will.

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While diplomatic maneuvering continues over Turkish bases and a new United Nations resolution, inside Iraq, U.N. arms inspectors are privately complaining about the quality of U.S. intelligence and accusing the United States of sending them on wild-goose chases.

So frustrated have the inspectors become that one source has referred to the U.S. intelligence they've been getting as "garbage after garbage after garbage". In fact, Phillips says the source used another cruder word. The inspectors find themselves caught between the Iraqis, who are masters at the weapons-hiding shell game, and the United States, whose intelligence they've found to be circumstantial, outdated, or just plain wrong.

By: Paul Krugman  

Some observers also point out that the administration has turned the regular foreign aid budget into a tool of war diplomacy. Small countries that currently have seats on the U.N. Security Council have suddenly received favorable treatment for aid requests, in an obvious attempt to influence their votes. Cynics say that the "coalition of the willing" President Bush spoke of turns out to be a "coalition of the bought off" instead.

But it's clear that the generosity will end as soon as Baghdad falls.

After all, look at our behavior in Afghanistan. In the beginning, money was no object; victory over the Taliban was as much a matter of bribes to warlords as it was of Special Forces and smart bombs. But President Bush promised that our interest wouldn't end once the war was won; this time we wouldn't forget about Afghanistan, we would stay to help rebuild the country and secure the peace. So how much money for Afghan reconstruction did the administration put in its 2004 budget?

None. The Bush team forgot about it...

By: Bernard Weiner  

What's about to come down over the next several weeks doesn't look hopeful. Bush&Co. are pulling out all the stops - threatening, bribing, cajoling, arm-twisting, bullying - in an effort to smooth the path to war, to give fig-leaf cover to their rush to military onslaught devoid of overt evidence to justify the haste.

There IS going to be a war, you know. Bush&Co. will not have it any other way. The Bush&Co. domestic and global agenda requires it. How can you get your extremist domestic agenda passed unless a frightened Congress and populace rallies around the flag being unfurled in a Mideast desert? How can the U.S. exercise its "benevolent hegemony" of the globe (and totally by coincidence, have effective control of the world's natural resources) unless would-be upstarts get bombed to smithereens, to demonstrate to others that they'd better not make the same mistake of getting in our way? So, it's full speed to Baghdad.

By: Arianna Huffington  

To hell with worldwide protests, an unsupportive Security Council, a diplomatically dubious Hans Blix, an Osama giddy at the prospect of a united Arab world, and a panicked populace grasping at the very slender reed of duct tape and Saran Wrap to protect itself from the inevitable terrorist blow-back - the business of America is still business.

Clearly, our national interest runs a distant second when pitted against the rapacious desires of special interests and the politicians they buy with massive campaign contributions. Oil and gas companies donated $26.7 million to Bush and his fellow Republicans during the 2000 election and another $18 million in 2002. So does it really come as any surprise that Cheney's staff held secret meetings in October with executives from Exxon Mobil, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips - and, yes, Halliburton - to discuss who would get what in a post-Saddam Iraq? As they say, to the victors - and the big buck donors - go the sp-oil-s.

Here's my bottom line: at a time of war, at what point does subverting our national security in the name of profitability turn from ugly business into high treason?

By: John Buell

Iraqis aren't clamoring for a U.S. air attack. Though most Iraqis detest Saddam, hostility doesn't imply eagerness to face an aerial invasion. Guardian columnist Seamus Milne comments: "Even the main U.S.-sponsored organizations such as the Iraqi National Congress and Iraqi National Accord, which are being groomed to be part of a puppet administration, find it impossible directly to voice support for a U.S. invasion, suggesting little enthusiasm among their potential constituency."

Just as the administration disregards most Iraqi voices, so too it is tone deaf to the peace movement. That movement does contain a small minority unwilling to condemn Hussein, just as the anti-Vietnam War movement included a few who flew Vietcong flags and became apologists for Vietcong atrocities. Nonetheless, the great majority of today's protestors regard Hussein as a butcher whose rule must be contested. Indeed, Rice forgets that while the U.S. national security establishment armed Hussein in the eighties and even helped him cover up gas attacks on the Kurds, it was only elements of the Left who opposed his rule.

"Someone has to get into this race and say: 'Hold it! Things are out of control. We must have a fundamental shift in direction!'"

- Dennis Kucinich, in USA Today, Feb. 19, 2003

By: Joe Conason  

Not quite one year ago, I spent a pleasant evening at the Pierre Hotel tasting the world's best bottles of champagne. The occasion was a ceremony and dinner sponsored by the Ordre des Coteaux de Champagne, an organization of growers, vintners and others involved in the production and distribution of that great beverage. For the first time in its history, the society held its annual induction rites in a foreign city. Before they started pouring the vintage bubbly, these chevaliers of Champagne explained why they had decided on this unusual change of venue.

They had traveled to New York to express their solidarity with the United States in the aftermath of Sept. 11. It was a small but affecting gesture by a group of French citizens to their American friends, at some considerable expense, which had nothing to do with commercial motives. (They've never had any trouble marketing their product in New York City.) The memory of that event is particularly vivid now, as our pundits and politicians resume the ritual flogging that recurs whenever France expresses disagreement with U.S. foreign policy. This time, however, the recriminations are uglier and the stakes are much higher than usual. The worldwide goodwill that accrued to the United States - with all that means for the very real war against Islamist terror - is being squandered in an orgy of tabloid bullying and sophomoric xenophobia.

By: Gene Lyons  

...The French have no illusions about Saddam Hussein and would like to be rid of him. But they see no immediate threat. If he can be de-fanged and contained, that would be preferable to risking WWIII.

Most French observers see terrible danger in either of two post-Saddam scenarios: either the U.S. leaves Iraq in chaos and ruins, then bugs out leaving the Europeans holding the bag, as we've basically done in Afghanistan; or we occupy it indefinitely, turning the region into a huge West Bank and insuring an exponential growth of Islamic extremism and al Qaeda terrorism.

What Alain implied but was too polite to say was that if the swaggering puppy Bush was in too big a hurry to seek U.N. approval, he shouldn't have asked. Our allies are democracies, after all, and upwards of 80% of the public opposes invading Iraq. (No doubt reacting to U.S. bullying, an astonishing 87% of the French do.) As millions of anti-war protesters across Europe underscored last weekend, Bush was appointed President of the United States, not France.

By: Bob Herbert  

Say it ain't so, Mr. President.

You might think that with the country gearing up for war this would be the wrong time - absolutely the worst time - to cut federal school aid for the children of men and women in the armed forces.

Nobody would do that, right? Right?

Alas.

Undeterred by the anxiety and hardships faced by youngsters whose parents may be heading overseas, and perhaps into combat, President Bush has proposed substantial cuts in the government's Impact Aid program, which provides badly needed funds to school districts that have a significant number of students from military families.

"We probably need to have tax cuts directed at lower-income Americans, such as payroll-tax reductions. Low-income Americans, in totality, bear a much higher tax burden than wealthy Americans do; therefore, there is a growing gap between the wealthiest and poorest Americans."

- Sen. John McCain

By: Joe Klein  

Last week Bush careened from restrained but persistent evangelism before a convention of religious broadcasters to casual trash-talking with sailors in Jacksonville, FL. "The terrorists brought this war to us - and now we're takin' it back to them", he told the troops, leaning an elbow on the lectern, squinting crosswise at the camera, tossing a breathy Clint Eastwood chuckle. "We're on their trail, we're smokin' them out, we've got 'em on the run." One imagined the French Foreign Minister watching this lunch-hour martial spectacle and choking on his baguette.

The American tradition of wartime leadership seems more subdued. The most memorable images are gaunt and painful: the haunted Lincoln; the dark circles under Franklin Roosevelt's eyes; Kennedy standing alone, in shadows, during the Cuban missile crisis. This is a moment far more ambiguous than any of those; intellectual anguish is permissible. War may be the correct choice, but it can't be an easy one. The world might have more confidence in the judgment of this President if he weren't always bathed in the blinding glare of his own certainty.

By: Anne E. Kornblut  

President Bush yesterday brushed aside massive demonstrations against his Iraq policy as evidence that protesters "don't view Saddam Hussein as a risk to peace", and he promised to defend U.S. interests despite the millions who took to the streets worldwide over the weekend.

Bush insisted he respects the rights of protesters to speak out, but he dismissed the largest anti-war demonstrations since the Vietnam era, with 6 million participants, as unrepresentative of world opinion.

Misguided tax cuts hurt the economy, and diplomatic bungling resulted in our foreign policy crisis.

By: John B. Judis  

With the Cold War's end, many Americans thought we could close our air raid shelters and take the trillions of dollars that had gone into the military and put them into making our lives better by turning toward the pursuit of happiness rather than the defense of our liberty.

And some of that did happen in the last half of the 1990's, during the Clinton-era boom. But only three years into a new century, the United States finds itself plagued by rising unemployment, soaring budget deficits, constricted civil liberties, the threat of terrorist attack, and the prospect of a war with, and occupation of, Iraq. We've gone from the best of times to the worst of times.

We are on a fast train to hell, and the question is when the American people are going to decide they want to get off?

"It is not the duty of the government to prevent citizens from falling into error, it is the citizen's obligation to keep the government from error."

- Justice Robert Black

By: Bridget Gibson  

George Bush and his administration have made this world a much more dangerous place in which to live by their continual saber-rattling, name calling, and treaty destroying ways.

In just over two short years, George Bush has failed to behave in a responsible manner that kept the population of this country secure in the knowledge that diplomats and level heads were occupying the highest offices of our nation. We were told that the "adults were in charge" and that a "seasoned team of experts" would comprise his cabinet. What we have been offered in actuality are Ronald Reagan Iran-Contra retreads and neo-conservative ideologues that lust for the end of the world.

If we do not wake up soon, my fellow citizens, we will have nothing. We will have no constitutional rights, no safety behind our windows covered with duct tape and visqueen, and no security in the knowledge of a planet on which to live.

By: J.G. Schwam  

I am not ashamed to be an American or to speak out against the current government. Nor will any talking head, evil Attorney General, or anyone else ever convince me that by my opposition to an unjust, unnecessary war I should be. Any student of history knows that it is part of every Americans obligation as a free citizen protected by the Bill of Rights to speak out against the government if they do not agree with its policies or actions. It is as far from being un-American or treasonous as anything could be. It is our right and our obligation. America is a nation founded and upheld by dissent. It is our right to do so that has held our nation together longer than any other democracy in modern history.

I am ashamed to see the blatant, disgraceful demonizing of this right and obligation by the Bush White House and their media apologists. They are attempting to paint true patriots, those that stand up and speak up with their brethren for what they believe is right and truly American in the face of their hateful, bigoted words and deeds as treasonous. It is these actions, their hate speak and their attempts to demonize dissenting opinion as un-American that is treasonous. It is such actions that are in themselves seditious.

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