By: Chris Floyd  

The secret policemen snatched the citizen from his house. There were no charges, no warrants, no warnings. They spirited him away to a secret location; no one knew where he had gone, why he'd disappeared. The covert agents grilled him, in secret, for three months. They told him that if he didn't cooperate, he'd be declared an enemy of the state - then they could salt him away in a military prison or the regime's concentration camp and hold him there, without charges, for as long as they wanted.

Then, if they wanted, they could haul him before a military tribunal, try him in secret and, if they wanted, have him executed - with no judicial oversight, no recourse to appeal save one: a plea for mercy from the regime's unelected leader. This usurper, who liked to be known as "The Commander", had given himself the arbitrary authority to strip any citizen of their liberty, and he alone - no court, no council, no legislative body - held the ultimate power of life and death over anyone he thus decreed an "enemy".

After months in secret captivity, the prisoner - a young truck driver with a history of mental problems - broke down. In a secret court session, he confessed to planning a series of crimes against the state...

By: Ed Hanratty  

And, as you're fond of saying, make no mistake - even though I vehemently disagree with your maniacal and haphazard foreign policy, I want nothing less than the safest of situations for all of the boys and girls serving you over there. They are brave and noble for their service, but this does not give you the license to use them as replaceable resources, or pawns in your game. They're people George, not toys. They chose to serve. They didn't chose to play hide and seek from the Texas Air National Guard.

Which brings me to my point. Where do you get off telling the world that the U.S. is well equipped to handle continued and expanded Iraqi uprisings against your occupation, so "Bring them on". Bring them on? Are you kidding me? Openly daring an enemy force to try and remove the U.S. presence in their homeland? What Dungeons and Dragons strategy guide did Karl Rove mistake for The Art of War?

You can not be serious. Not only is this yet another embarrassment that Americans will have to deal with, but it's also incredibly dangerous.

"If the Lord Almighty came down and sat in this chair and agreed to give the President and those on the ground in Iraq the right answers to the next 20 - the next 50 decisions they had to make - we still only have, in my view, a 65% chance of getting it right. That is how complicated Iraq is. That is how difficult this problem is. But it has been made much more difficult, frankly, by the wrong assumptions that were made by the administration."

- Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), on the floor of the Senate, after visiting Iraq

By: Lee Cowan  

A recent survey found that out of the 800,000 people who are homeless in the United States, 200,000 are children in homeless families. This is an increase blamed not only on rising unemployment, but a decrease in affordable housing.

New York City is just one example. The lines for soup kitchens are getting longer and longer. In fact there are now more homeless families in Manhattan right now than during the Great Depression.

"Back in the 80's the typical homeless family was a single mom who was on welfare", said Patrick Markee, of Coalition for the Homeless. "Today we're seeing more and more of the working poor being forced to turn to emergency shelter."

By: Jim McDermott  

On September 11, Americans suffered a horrible trauma, and we still suffer from the psychological fallout of the terrorist attacks. The administration's calculated campaign to raise and maintain fear and anxiety in America has been an effective tool in prolonging the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder caused by 9-11. As the Bush administration builds its military presence in the Middle East, it is upping the psychological ante here at home.

The deputies of the Bush Terror Posse - Donald Rumsfeld, Tom Ridge, and John Ashcroft - are conducting a deliberate campaign to frighten us. One facet of the campaign has, over the last 18 months, persuaded large portions of the population to rush to the stores for water, food, plastic sheeting and, of course, duct tape. The threats of impending danger are on record for the future, the administration seems to be saying. When something happens, you won't be able to say we didn't warn you.

This is just the latest and most egregious step in a fear campaign designed to prepare Americans to do whatever the administration wants us to do.

Editorial from:  

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Laura Bush have been darting across the country these past few weeks raising money for Bush-Cheney '04 Inc. Bush, who broke all precedent in his 2000 bid by opting out of the presidential public-financing system and the spending limits it imposes, is once again pushing the envelope - and the corporate execs, lobbyists, and wealthy individuals he has enriched are sending envelopes back, stuffed with checks. His operatives say he hopes to raise $170 million for next year's primaries - an obscene amount, since he will have no Republican challenger and his Democratic opponents will be held to a $45 million spending ceiling. But they're deliberately lowballing his total. Given the $101 million he raised in 1999-2000 and the unwise doubling (by the reform-hungry McCain-Feingold-Shays-Meehan squad) of the individual donation limit to $2,000, Bush starts with a potential funding base of $200 million or more.

Nothing like this has happened since the robber barons and the trusts united behind William McKinley's 1896 campaign...

"...being against U.S. government policy should not be lazily extended to general anti-Americanism. If you're a U.S. citizen please do not think I bear you any personal ill will (unless you yourself happen to be reading this, George W - which, let's face it, is unlikely, given the absence of pictures). So Happy Independence Day, America; you did a fantastic job throwing off the hereditary monarchy of George III. But now would it be okay if we declared independence from the hereditary presidency of George II?"

- John O'Farrell, in the Guardian, July 4, 2003

By: Arianna Huffington  

While trying to drum up outrage at Saddam earlier this year, the President catalogued a list of his atrocities, including mutilation and rape, and proclaimed: "If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning." But the President's fly-over of Africa's hearts of darkness, riven by mutilation and rape, shows that it's his humanitarian rhetoric that has no meaning. Here is true evil, but next week will instead be dominated by a series of photo-ops with smiling children and platitudes about the virtues of democracy.

If more proof of the hypocritical selectivity of Bush's moral outrage were needed, look no further than the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, when, in the name of liberating the Iraqi people, the White House gladly linked arms with a host of countries its own State Department had castigated for significant human rights violations - including Uzbekistan, Colombia, Georgia, Eritrea, Macedonia, Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia, Azerbaijan, and the Dominican Republic. Given these countries' dismal human rights record, maybe we should have called them the Coalition of the Willing to Torture, Execute, and Rape.

By: John Farmer  

You're troubled that our President could be out sucking up to fat cats in country club settings while poor American kids are getting their butts shot off in Iraq trying to find weapons of mass destruction that Bush said are there in abundance but that no one can find?

Well, get over it. Think of his fund-raising effort as... well, a kind of modern war bond drive. He's a wartime President, isn't he, like FDR? He's got it coming. You doubt that, do you? What are you - some kind of commie symp America hater? Get with it, creep. I'll bet you're probably not even a member of the National Rifle Association, are you? You probably think the Heritage Foundation is a genealogical society. I'll bet you've even got an FBI file.

It's time you got with the new America, the George Bush, John Ashcroft, Don Rumsfeld America. That's the America of secret courts, suspension of habeas corpus, denial of attorney representation, military tribunals, detention without charge and, the essence of real Americanism, tax cuts for the rich.

Editorial from:  

It is encouraging that the Defense and State departments, prodded by a Congress that has taken a belated interest in foreign affairs, have finally acknowledged that the United States needs help from other nations in bringing order to an Iraq that declines further into anarchy by the day. The question is, however, how can Washington persuade nations that it mocked and criticized for failing to join its Iraqi misadventure that they should now descend into this growing quagmire to save America's bacon?

This is indeed a fine mess the White House's desk-bound military geniuses have gotten the United States into, and the American soldiers reduced to sitting ducks as Iraq crumbles are paying the price. Washington needs help from the allies it thought it didn't need and will have to ask for that help, even if it means eating a little well-deserved crow.

By: Stan Goff  

Yesterday, when I read that U.S. Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush, in a moment of blustering arm-chair machismo, sent a message to the 'non-existent' Iraqi guerrillas to "bring 'em on", the first image in my mind was a 20-year-old soldier in an ever-more-fragile marriage, who'd been away from home for 8 months. He participated in the initial invasion, and was told he'd be home for the 4^th of July. He has a newfound familiarity with corpses, and everything he thought he knew last year is now under revision. He is sent out into the streets of Fallujah (or some other city), where he has already been shot at once or twice with automatic weapons or an RPG, and his nerves are raw. He is wearing Kevlar and ceramic body armor, a Kevlar helmet, a load carrying harness with ammunition, grenades, flex-cuffs, first-aid gear, water, and assorted other paraphernalia. His weapon weighs seven pounds, ten with a double magazine. His boots are bloused, and his long-sleeve shirt is buttoned at the wrist. It is between 100-110° Fahrenheit at midday. He's been eating MRE's three times a day, when he has an appetite in this heat, and even his urine is beginning to smell like preservatives. Mosquitoes and sand flies plague him in the evenings, and he probably pulls a guard shift every night, never sleeping straight through. He and his comrades are beginning to get on each others' nerves. The rumors of 'going-home, not-going-home' are keeping him on an emotional roller coaster. Directives from on high are contradictory, confusing, and often stupid. The whole population seems hostile to him and he is developing a deep animosity for Iraq and all its people - as well as for official narratives.

This is the lad who will hear from someone that George W. Bush, dressed in a suit with a belly full of rich food, just hurled a manly taunt from a 72° studio at the 'non-existent' Iraqi resistance.

"I'm tired of listening to Fundamentalist preachers. I want my country back"

- Howard Dean

By: Mike Shannon  

For a man who has never heard a shot fired in anger to stand in a public forum and deliberately goad others to take violent action against the men and women he is directly responsible for is an abomination. How dare he be so callous? How dare he be so hypocritical? How dare he be so stupid?

Laughing at his mangled syntax, absurd malapropisms, and ever growing litany of linguistic creations of Frankensteinian proportions is one thing. When offered on topics of a purely political nature such remarks are merely the window to a very underdeveloped intellect. But when he is speaking in an official capacity as Commander-in-Chief of the American Armed Forces, and as such every word he says directly impacts the very lives of thousands of people, such incompetency cannot be permitted or tolerated.

By: Daniel Meltzer  

Did Mr. Bush know there was at least a reasonable doubt about the presence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq? Did he knowingly lie to the American people when he said there wasn't? Law professor and former Nixon White House counsel John W. Dean III has written that such a deliberate deception would, under the Constitution, constitute a "high crime" and, as such, an impeachable offense.

Unless Iraqi WMD of significant quantity are found soon, or unless compelling evidence is presented to prove the President was deceived by his advisers, Mr. Bush, if we are the nation of laws we claim to be, would appear to be in serious trouble.

In his presidential oath, Mr. Bush swore to uphold the honor of his office. Lying to Congress to justify a war - one that has to date killed nearly 200 Americans and thousands of Iraqi civilians, wounded many thousands more, and jeopardized America's position as a force for peace and justice in the world - would constitute a very high crime.

If not now, when? If not for this, then for what?

"If Iraq is in possession of weapons of mass destruction, they are in violation of international law. If they aren't, then we are in violation of international law."

- Scott Ritter, former U.S. Marine and UNSCOM weapons inspector in Iraq

From:  

The nation's unemployment rate shot up to 6.4% in June, the highest level in more than nine years, in an economic slump that has added nearly a million people to jobless rolls in the past three months.

Businesses slashed 30,000 jobs just last month, with cuts heavily concentrated on factory assembly lines, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

The 0.3% point increase from May's 6.1% rate was the largest month-to-month rise since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. That surprised analysts who predicted a smaller rise, to 6.2%. The last time the overall rate was higher was in March 1994.

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."

- Plato

By: Bob Herbert  

The act, one of the last major domestic reform measures of the New Deal, gave Americans the 40-hour workweek and a minimum wage (which began at 25 cents an hour in the late 1930's). It wiped out grueling 12-hour days for many workers and prohibited the use of child labor in interstate commerce.

The act's overtime regulations have not been updated since 1975, and part of what the administration is proposing makes sense. Under existing rules only workers earning less than $8,060 a year automatically qualify for overtime. That would be raised to $22,100 a year.

But then comes the bad news. Nearly 80% of all workers are in jobs that qualify them for overtime pay, which is time-and-a-half for each hour that is worked beyond the normal 40-hour week. The administration wants to make it easier for employers to exempt many of those workers from overtime protection by classifying them as administrative, professional, or executive personnel.

"There are some who feel like that conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring them on. We have the force necessary to deal with the situation."

- Pretender-in-Thief Bush, to reporters at the White House, July 2, 2003

By: Jay Bookman  

Yes, life is good at the top. They get rich if the stock goes up. They get rich if the stock goes down. They get rich if they stay with the company. They get rich if they leave. They get rich if the company makes a profit. They get rich if it goes bankrupt. As the Xerox and other cases demonstrate, they even get rich if it turns out it was all done with smoke, mirrors, and an auditor who agrees to look the other way.

A generation ago, a typical executive might be paid 40 times what the average worker in a company was paid. Today, the figure is more like 400 times the average company income, and rising quickly. That change cannot be explained by changes in the economy. Top executives did not suddenly become that much more important or talented.

What changed was the culture.

At Miami fundraiser, President Bush says he "inherited" an economy already in recession.

By: Dana Milbank  

With the start of his reelection campaign in the past two weeks, President Bush has revived his pastime of blaming his predecessor, Bill Clinton, for the economic recession.

"Two-and-a-half years ago, we inherited an economy in recession", he told donors at a Bush-Cheney '04 reception yesterday in Miami. He has raised the same accusation in fundraising appearances since mid-June in Washington, Georgia, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

It's a good applause line for a crowd of red-meat political supporters. The trouble is it's a case of what the President has called, in another context, revisionist history. The recession officially began in March of 2001 - two months after Bush was sworn in - according to the universally acknowledged arbiter of such things, the National Bureau of Economic Research. And the President, at other times, has said so himself.

"There is convincing proof that Bush Inc. lied and knew they were lying [about Saddam's possession of WMD's]. They claimed that Saddam had a nuclear program and was trying to build the bomb. However, after the invasion they did not secure or guard Iraq's major nuclear research facility at Al Sawaitha. There is only two rational reasons for that failure: 1. Grossly incompetent idiots in control of the military mission, or 2. They didn't bother to secure it because they knew they had been lying about Iraq's nuclear program in the first place."

- Iguazulu, from the Smirking Chimp forum

By: Frida Berrigan  

In the weeks leading up to the war on Iraq, TV screens across America were crowded with images of U.S. soldiers readying for upcoming battles with a crazed dictator who would stop at nothing. One clip after another showed U.S. soldiers racing to don $211 suits designed to protect them from the chemical and biological attacks they would surely suffer on the road to ousting Saddam Hussein.

But these grim forecasts were wrong. Despite the advance hype, Hussein's dreaded arsenal was not the biggest threat to Americans on the battlefield in Iraq. In fact, it was no threat at all.

The real threat - not only to U.S. troops but to Iraqis as well - may prove to be a weapon scarcely mentioned before, during, or after the war: depleted uranium.

By: Renana Brooks  

In an article in the Jan. 16 New York Review of Books, Joan Didion highlighted Bush's high degree of personalization and contempt for argumentation in presenting his case for going to war in Iraq. As Didion writes: "'I made up my mind', he had said in April, 'that Saddam needs to go.' This was one of many curious, almost petulant statements offered in lieu of actually presenting a case. I've made up my mind, I've said in speech after speech, I've made myself clear. The repeated statements became their own reason."

Poll after poll demonstrates that Bush's political agenda is out of step with most Americans' core beliefs. Yet the public, their electoral resistance broken down by empty language and persuaded by personalization, is susceptible to Bush's most frequently used linguistic technique: negative framework. A negative framework is a pessimistic image of the world. Bush creates and maintains negative frameworks in his listeners' minds with a number of linguistic techniques borrowed from advertising and hypnosis to instill the image of a dark and evil world around us. Catastrophic words and phrases are repeatedly drilled into the listener's head until the opposition feels such a high level of anxiety that it appears pointless to do anything other than cower.

"If Blacks vote in great numbers, progressive Whites win. It's the only way progressive Whites win. If Blacks vote in great numbers, Hispanics win. When Blacks, Hispanics, and progressive Whites vote, women win. When women win, children win. When women and children win, workers win. We must all come up together. We must come up together."

- Rev. Jesse Jackson, from his 1984 convention speech

By: Bruce S. Ticker  

For the three decades of my working life, it has been an experience to be a middle-class white guy pitted against low-income racial minorities.

I need a new challenge - to be pitted against upper-income white guys who are pitted against nothing more than the wait to collect their inheritance and all kinds of built-in privileges that derive from being born into a wealthy, influential family.

That's what affirmative action is really about. While struggling white folk and poor black people fight among themselves for society's crumbs, those in power divide and conquer us, and perhaps even sit back and have a hearty laugh.

From:  

Welcome to the Top Ten Conservative Idiots, No. 116. Ann Coulter leaps straight to the top of the chart this week with the shocking news that Joe McCarthy was right all along. Yowser! Meanwhile the White House (2) continues to desperately clutch at WMD straws, Sonny Perdue (3) disses Maynard Jackson, and Darrell Issa's (4) dubious past is revealed. Elsewhere, Donald Rumsfeld (6) thinks that democracy is a bad idea, Antonin Scalia (7) doesn't like homosexuals (big surprise), and George W. Bush (10) fails to hit a camel in the butt, but does managed to bag a few sheep. Enjoy.

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