February 20, 2006
Just Your Average Week of the Bush Administration Betraying America
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
Sometimes we do question whether the lunatics are running the asylum
in America -- or we are the lunatics.
After all, we take a look back at a week like the past one (and a
few days beyond) and we do start to doubt our sanity.
How can this travesty, betrayal, incompetence, lying and selling
out of our national security continue without any major eruption
of outrage and cries for impeachment and prosecution?
If what happened -- and this is just a few consecutive days of heinous misdeeds
by the Busheviks -- can appear so routine and fail to stir any outcry for defending
our Constitution and our personal safety, maybe we are the crazy ones.
We won't make this a detailed expose, but just print some of the major transgressions
against America that come to mind:
-- The Bush Administration, which claims all its secretive powers in the names
of national security, gives a contract to guard our ports to a Middle Eastern
country with ties to Al Qaeda.
-- Dick Cheney offhandedly reveals to a GOP FOX News propaganda network shill
that Bush secretly gave him the power to declassify information, a power reserved
for the president in the past.
-- Cheney revealed that he was given these enormous powers, granted without
the knowledge of the American people, after it came out that Scooter Libby
claimed Cheney told him to use classified information to "damage" Joe Wilson,
who had exposed a key Cheney lie that was used to sell the war on Iraq.
-- Of course, Cheney was authorizing Libby to out a CIA operative who specialized
in the tracking of the illicit transfer of Weapons of Mass Destruction, allegedly
with a specialization in Iran. So, Cheney defended his allowing the leaking
of classified information to do damage to America by rendering useless a brave
CIA agent who was trying to stop the WMDs from falling into the hands of the "bad
guys."
-- The Justice Department, under orders from the White House, vigorously pursued
discovering who leaked the information that Bush was illegally wiretapping
Americans in order to prosecute them for disclosing "classified information" about
Bush breaking the law.
-- Bush "Boy Toy," Senator Pat Roberts, said that there is no need for his
erroneously named Senate Intelligence Committee to investigate illegal NSA
eavesdropping by the White House because if Bush does it, it's all right with
him.
-- Alberto Gonzales refused to recuse himself from the Department of Justice
plea bargaining with and prosecution of Jack Abramoff, even though it is clear
that Abramoff is signaling he will spill the beans on his relationship to Rove
and Bush and others if he doesn't get his charges and potential sentencing
reduced. It is highly likely that Gonzales knew of Abramoff's relationship
to the White House and his role now, as in the DeLay case, is to make a "Godfather" bargain
with the defendants to ensure that they don't reveal any information that would
implicate Bush, Cheney, Rove or Gonzales. This is called suppressing justice,
not enforcing it.
-- A report by a Republican House panel was unprecedented in its scathing criticism
of how poorly and incompetently the Bush Administration, from the White House
down, responded to Hurricane Katrina. It's unheard of for the GOP rubber stamp
House of Representatives to be so devastatingly critical of Bush. By implication,
it also means Bush and his staff of lackey incompetents lied about what happened
before and after Katrina.
-- Bush's grand plans for democracy in the Middle East continued to take a
sharp turn for the worse -- after hundreds of billions dollars spent and tens
of thousands of Iraqi lives lost and thousands of Americans killed or wounded
-- as religious fundamentalist regimes consolidated control in Iraq, Iran and
Palestine. Meanwhile, Bush is hellbent on making Syria his next failure by
overthrowing the secular -- albeit tyrannical government -- and seeing it, too,
replaced with a fundamentalist, virulently anti-Western regime. It would make
four for four failures in the Middle East for the Bush doctrine. (The
fifth, Afghanistan, is under Islamic law, with only Kabul secure -- and the
rest of the nation has catapulted its heroin production to record levels since
Bush brought "democracy" there.)
-- Kofi Annan called for the closing of Guantanamo after a blistering report
attacked the violation of human rights, including torture, carried out there
under the orders of the Bush Pentagon.
-- Numerous whistle blowers continue to come forward -- many of them Republican
-- to reveal the intentional lies that led Americans to believe the disastrous
war in Iraq was necessary and that torture (including killing people) wasn't
being conducted when it was.
-- Bush's much touted Medicare plan turned out to be a complete fiasco and
deprived many seniors of their much needed medications. Chaos ensued in many
states with high concentration of elderly citizens.
-- Bush continued to drive up the national debt with billions of dollars more
going down the oubliette of the Iraq War, while basic services to Americans
continue to be dramatically reduced or curtailed.
-- Oh, yeah, and Cheney accidentally shoots a man and claims he is above the
rule of law as a law enforcement officer is turned away the night of the shooting "for
national security reasons," according to Cheney flak Mary Matalin.
-- The Republicans in the Senate give ground and let the White House pretty
much have all it wanted in enhanced secretive snooping powers by agreeing to
extend unwarranted anti-Constitutional provisions of the anti-Patriot Act.
Okay, we've got to stop there or we might toss up our lunch.
Suffice it to say, if a foreign government were intent on placing a mole in
the White House and destroying America from within, it couldn't have done a
better job than Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove are doing on their own.
And we should close on this note. Bush was honored by having a bust of the
AWOL, Vietnam-evading Texas aviator installed in the National Guard Museum.
The event took place just before the Pentagon announced that it was going to
slash the size of National Guard Units. This evoked a universal outpouring
of anger from governors around America, because the force reduction would lead
to making their states less safe and cutting into their abilities to respond
to disasters like Hurricane Katrina -- and potential terrorist attacks.
The
reaction to the Bush/Rumsfeld/Pentagon National Guard reductions was exemplified
by the response of Adjutant General Maj. Gen. Jessica Wright in Pennsylvania: "The
state's top National Guard official told lawmakers that a federal proposal
to restructure the Guard would have a sweeping effect on Pennsylvania — eroding
its ability to respond to emergencies, draining the economy and placing a greater
burden on troops and their families."
If anyone reading this news analysis -- highlighting only what came to us off
the top of our head -- can make a case that Bush and his wrecking crew are
NOT destroying America, you know where to find us.
But you have to make it without using the two words, "national security," because the Bush Administration is working daily to undermine our national security through arrogance, incompetence, and a grab for dictatorial powers.
It's all right there in the news. Just connect the dots.
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS