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Dubya Jeopardy!

by Maureen Farrell

Last week, I wrote about a Vietnam veteran's depiction of President Bush as a razzle-dazzle game show host, noting, in the end, that this administration has driven us into a never-ending game of Jeopardy. Taking the conceit even further, what would a game of Dubya Jeopardy look like?

The categories would be endless, for starters. Incompetence; Bullying; Disinformation; Rigged Elections; Dry Drunks; Going AWOL; Messianic Complexes; Dubious Associations; Impeachable Offenses -- you name it. Can I have Quagmires for $200, Alex? I'll take War Profiteering for $1000!

"Final Jeopardy" questions could pertain to everything from Armageddon agendas to End of Days star Arnold Schwarzenegger's run for governor. And given that we've been in perpetual Double Jeopardy since Nov. 2000 anyway, categories and questions would bubble to the surface in a veritable scum pond of possibilities. Here's but a sample:

Thuggery

A: After revealing the truth about the enriched uranium from Niger and having his wife treasonously outed as a CIA agent, he said, of the Bush administration's M.O.: "It's a shot across the bow. . . that if you talk, we'll take your family and drag them through the mud as well." [LINK]
Q: Who is former Ambassador Joseph Wilson?

A: This former Senator, commenting on the ways "the president came after [him]," said: "I thought I had done a good job for the people of Georgia. I thought they knew me as someone who had served and sacrificed for the country, as someone who was willing to defend the country 35 years ago ... But the White House and the media image makers turned me into some kind of villain." [LINK]
Q: Who is Vietnam veteran Sen. Max Cleland?

A: After Sen. Charles Schumer accused the Bush administration of Stalinist tactics [LINK], Senate Intelligence Committee member Richard Durbin said: "If any member of this Senate ... questions White House policy, raises any questions about the gathering of intelligence information or the use of it, be prepared for the worst. The White House is going to do this."
Q: What is "attack you" and "question your patriotism?" [LINK]

A: After former Middle East peace envoy General Anthony Zinni openly disagreed with the Bush administration on Iraq, he was told he'd "never be used by the White House again." [LINK]. Bush also advised world leaders that they would experience this, should they oppose his policy in Iraq.
Q: What is "a certain sense of discipline?" [LINK]

A: After President Bush and Texas Rangers owners "bullied and misled" Arlington officials, landowners sued for restitution following this "sordid and shocking" "display of greed and avarice."
Q: What is "the Texas land grab" in which land was confiscated in a "$200 million transfer to Bush and Rangers owners" through an "unprecedented takeover of government power and private property?" [LINK]

Oddities and Ends

A: Uday Hussein had photos of these women on the walls of his private gym.
Q: Who are President Bush's daughters, Jenna and Barbara? [LINK]

A: Two FBI agents met with an Atlanta book store clerk and grilled him about this article, which he had been reading in a coffee shop a few days earlier.
Q: What is "Weapons of Mass Stupidity: Fox News hits a new lowest common denominator?" [LINK]

A: On the morning of September 11, 2001, the CIA was doing this.
Q: What is conducting a simulation of a plane flying into a building? [LINK]

A: Amidst rumors of a Ronald Reagan/Gerald Ford co-presidency, Richard V. Allen says that "George Bush was picked as Ronald Reagan's running mate at the very last moment and largely by a combination of chance and some behind-the-scenes maneuvering." [LINK] Two months after Reagan's inauguration, George Bush almost became president, through John Hinckley's assassination attempt, a fact made stranger by this bizarre coincidence.
Q: What is the report that Hinckley's brother Scott was scheduled to have dinner with Neil Bush the following night?" [LINK]

A: According to the Tampa Tribune, a secret flight carried Saudi Defense Minister's Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz's son from Tampa back to Saudi Arabia on Sept. 13, 2001 due to a "perceived threat" -- even though a ban on air travel was still in effect. [LINK] One year later, the law firm owned by James A. Baker III (President George H. W. Bush's Secretary of State and Carlyle Group partner [LINK]) was hired to defend several Saudis, including Defense Minister Prince Sultan, against a $1 trillion lawsuit filed by these people.
Q: Who are families of September 11 victims? [LINK]

Funny Money

A: In November, 2001 (more than a year and a half before the New York Times covered the story), Greg Palast alerted BBC viewers to this news that "the funders of Al Qaeda fronts include those who have previously funded Bush family business and political ventures" [LINK] -- and that the FBI was reportedly told by the Bush administration to do this.
Q: What is "back off" terrorism investigations regarding the bin Ladens and the Saudis? [LINK]

A: Though Princess Haifa Al-Faisal (the wife of the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan) was under investigation by the FBI for allegedly funneling money to two of the Sept 11 hijackers [LINK] (through a bank associated with Dubya's uncle, Jonathan [LINK]) the White House asserted this.
Q: What is that "[President Bush] believes the Saudi government is a good partner?" [LINK]

A: According to the Boston Herald, "the revolving U.S.-Saudi money wheel" is most evident within President Bush's foreign policy advisers, starting with [this man]."
Q: Who is the president's father, George H.W. Bush? [LINK]

A: In 1992, the FBI investigated accusations that James R. Bath "guided money to Houston from Saudi investors who wanted to influence U.S. policy under the
Reagan and Bush administrations" [LINK] -- with many speculating that the funding for George W. Bush's Arbusto Energy came through Bath from his man.
Q: Who is Salem bin Laden? [LINK]

A: Though Bush told the Wall Street Journal he had "no idea" that this scandal-plagued operation was involved in Harken's financial dealings, WSJ commented on the number of people connected to this "rogue bank" who became associated with Harken "all since George W. Bush came on board."
Q: What is BCCI (The Bank of Bank of Credit and Commerce International, which was also involved in the Iran Contra affair and was deemed by the U.S. Senate to be "one of the largest criminal enterprises in history")? [LINK]

Executive Trickery

A: In a critique that evokes images of Poppy Bush's Iran-Contra days, Pentagon Middle East specialist Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski cited ''a subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-optation through deceit of a large segment of the Congress" [LINK], while Al Gore recently cited six examples of these.
Q: What are the deliberately-crafted "false impressions" Bush cultivated to deceive the nation about his pre-planned war with Iraq? [LINK]

A: Citing John Poindexter's "plans to electronically monitor all Americans" and implement a futures market for betting on terrorist attacks, Sen. Patrick Leahy said, "The problem is more than the fact that Admiral Poindexter was put in charge of these projects. The problem is that these projects were just fine with the Administration until [this occurred]."
Q: What is "the public found out about them?" [LINK]

A: Bush knew that North Korea had been developing nukes, but withheld that information from Congress until after this event, troubling Senators and making them wonder "whether there are other pieces to this puzzle they don't know about."
Q: What is the vote on the resolution authorizing war with Iraq? [LINK]

A: The release of the 9/11 report was slated for January, but was delayed by the White House (who also blocked information on "Saudi Arabia's direct role in the attacks"). Had the report been available in January," however, we most likely would not have done this.
Q: What is gone to war in Iraq? [LINK]

A: In addition to protecting the Saudis, the 28 pages blacked out in the 911 report are, according to Senate Intelligence Committee member Bob Graham, an attempt to do this.
Q: What is "disguise and keep from the American people ineptitude and incompetence, which was a contributing factor toward Sept. 11?" [LINK]

The U.S.- Iraq Fiasco

A: The CIA officer in charge of bringing Iraq's Ba'athist Party to power described it as his "favorite coup," while in the 1980s, the UK and US supplied Saddam Hussein with any weapon he wanted, often "secretly and illegally." This relationship was referred to in Washington as this.
Q: What is the "love affair?" [LINK]

A: U.S. ambassador April Glaspie's 1991 pre-Kuwait invasion meeting with Saddam Hussein was known as the "green light" meeting [LINK], while the Project for a New American Century's drive for war, which began in earnest in 1998 and intensified under George W. Bush's reign, was dubbed this by ABC News.
Q: What is "a blueprint for Iraq War?" [LINK]

A: Before the war, Daniel Ellsberg warned that Bush was "lying us" into war with Iraq -- and using weapons of mass destruction to hide a deeper agenda. [LINK] Newsweek's Christopher Dickey recently said that because Iraq "floats on oil. . . it will take a lot of defending," alluding to the fact that the White House misled Americans about this, too.
Q: What is the length of the U.S occupation in Iraq -- which will likely be "forever"? [LINK]

A: "Somewhere down the line, we became an occupation force in [Iraqi] eyes. We don't feel like heroes any more," Private Isaac Kindblade wrote, echoing complaints David Hackworth hears from soldiers sending hundreds of e-mails a day. [LINK] When soldiers openly complained to ABC News reporter Jeffrey Kofman regarding plummeting troop morale in Iraq, however, Kofman was smeared on the Drudge Report Web site, for being these.
Q: What are "gay" and "Canadian"? [LINK]

A: These news items suggest that problems in Iraq are getting worse.
Q: What are the emergence of highly organized kidnapping gangs [LINK]; the U.S. government's attempt to "buy" foreign troops to occupy Iraq; [LINK] and an anti-U.S. martyr brigade that's at least a million strong? [LINK]

Notable Quotables

A: "The utter collapse of this profoundly criminal Bush conspiracy will come none too soon for people like me, or it may already be too late," this journalist wrote. "The massive plundering of the U.S. Treasury and all its resources has been almost on a scale that is criminally insane, and has literally destroyed the lives of millions of American people and American families. Exactly. You and me, sport -- we are the ones who are going to suffer, and suffer massively. This is going to be just like the Book of Revelation said it was going to be -- the end of the world as we knew it."
Q: Who is Hunter S. Thompson? [LINK]

A: "The fact is that George Bush Sr. continued to supply nerve gas and technology to Saddam even after he used it on Iran and then the Kurds in Iraq" is but one of a list of informed complaints that made this celebrity muse, "I'm an American tired of lies. And with our government, it's mostly lies."
Q: Who is Woody Harrelson? [LINK]

A:This author said: "Bush uses 'evil' as his hot button for the American public. Any man who can employ that word 15 times in five minutes is not a conservative. Not a value conservative. A flag conservative is another matter. They rely on manipulation. What they want is power."
Q: Who is Norman Mailer? [LINK]

A: This political son said (of the Bush administration), "These people are overly reaching, overly aggressive, overly secretive, and just plain corrupt. I don't trust these people."
Q: Who is Ronald Reagan Jr.? [LINK]

A: He wrote: "Even though Bush has refused to make parts of the 9-11 report public, one thing is startlingly clear: The U.S. government had received repeated warnings of impending attacks -- and attacks using planes directed at New York and Washington -- for several years. The government never told us about what it knew was coming."
Q: Who is Village Voice columnist James Ridgeway? [LINK]

Daily Doubles

A: Thanks to his membership in the "special sperm club," George Bush was spared Vietnam duty, made millions on failures, had his AWOL records scrubbed, and according to Greg Palast, did this.
Q: What is had his presidency "signed, sealed and delivered months before anyone entered a voting booth?" [LINK]

A: According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the "scandal over the Bush Administration's manipulation of intelligence data on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction" focused on the role of the White House," but ignored this.
Q: What is "the role of the US media in the propaganda effort that misled the world?" [LINK]

Final Jeopardy

A: Citing a series of "serious mistakes" with "unfortunate repercussions," (as well as "George W. Bush's desire to please the arms and oil industries"), Nelson Mandela concluded that "the attitude of the United States of America is" this.
Q: What is a threat to world peace? [LINK]