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Subj: Spellbound

Dear BuzzFlash:

I must confess that I was mesmerized by Terry McAuliffe's jeremiad against Bush on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday. It's about time; it's really about time we had someone not afraid to fight these Bushies toe to toe. When Michael Moore first raised this "deserter" issue, people like Peter Jennings and Wolf Blitzer simply had a cow, to borrow Bart Simpson's phrase. Now, we have the DNC chairman leveling the same basic charge, unabashed and unapologetically. So, the obvious response by the media should be, once and for all, to actually look into what happened to Bush's Texas air National Guard records. Where are they? Where are the flight logs, duty rosters, etc. This is not the Civil War or the Revolutionary War that we're talking about -- it was barely thirty years ago. These records exist -- anyone who has ever served in the military knows that paperwork is the lifeblood of the military bureaucracy; it's the coin of the realm. Yet somehow, in 2000, the media just brushed over this issue. I guess they were too busy talking about Al Gore's trips to Texas with James Witt or his sighs during the debate. Terry McAuliffe and Michael Moore, however, have now laid down the gauntlet. Let's follow the momentum they've created. Let's keep Ed Gillespie and Karl Rove on the defensive. I think Terry McAuliffe made it unequivocally clear that he is also doing his own " opposition research" on Mr. Bush. Here's another accusation I'd like to see leveled, repeatedly: Bush and Cheney knowingly took this country to war under false pretenses. More than 500 soldiers have died. We have scores of public statements in which Bush, Cheney, Powell and Rice said the WMD threat was direct and imminent. Let's see exactly what they were basing their assessments on. If indeed it is true that the actual intelligence was erroneous, then I guess it makes them pretty stupid for not scrutinizing it very carefully, doesn't it? For example, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, General Curtis LeMay of the Joint Chiefs of Staff mistakenly believed, based upon false reports, that the Soviet Navy had broken through the American blockade. The Joint Chiefs told JFK to launch a missile strike. He refused. Something in his gut told him that there was a snafu; a glitch; something didn't ring true. This is what Presidential leadership is all about. If Bush was "duped" by bad intelligence, let's have a gander at what that intel actually said. If it turns out that the allegedly erroneous intel had all sorts of indicators and red flags written all over it that should have indicated that it was unreliable (for example, if it relied too heavily upon foreign intelligence services), then I guess that makes the administration look pretty darn stupid for swallowing this baloney, hook line and sinker. The current Bush argument about faulty intelligence is a lose/lose scenario for him. Even if he convinces the public and the media that he relied upon bad intelligence, then that still makes him look bad for rushing into war without complete certainty that all his hypotheses had been verified and vetted.

Donald P. Russo, Bethlehem, Pa.

Subj: The Man Who Isn't There

The following excerpts from the February 2004 issue of Texas Monthly magazine are quite significant, in that they relate to the change in George W. Bush after he was appointed president. In his relatively minor capacity as governor of Texas, he was basically a figurehead, as Texans decided long ago they didn’t want their governor to have a lot of power. To have any hope of delivering on his campaign promises to the NRA to pass a concealed gun law and huge tax cuts for the wealthy, he had to get along with the Democrat majority in the legislature. After gaining the White House with a Republican majority in Congress, he became a much different person. He began acting like a third world dictator. And he did change the tone in Washington-for the worse. I believe this is undoubtedly the worst administration since the US became a nation, bar none.

A good article, for a magazine in Texas which is becoming a Repub state, it starts out with a picture of Bush on a milk carton, with MISSING –HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?

Name: Governor George W. Bush

Last seen on: January 20, 2001

Disappeared from Austin, Texas. Claimed to be “a uniter, not a divider.”Promised to change the tone in Washington. If found, please contact the American people.

* * *

The Man Who Isn’t There (requires registration)

By Paul Burka

Even before 9/11, I thought Bush was headed in the wrong direction. I worried that his $1.6 trillion tax cut was excessive, and in one aspect-the repeal of the inheritance tax-a huge mistake. The combination of tax cuts, deficits, and low interest rates is a textbook policy for stimulating the economy. But the repeal of inheritance taxes will do real harm to the country, which is why several Rockefellers and other zillionaires signed an ad in the NYT opposing it. Not only will the repeal harm philanthropy by removing the tax-avoidance incentive for people to create foundations, but it also will remove the barrier to the creation of a permanent aristocracy in this country.

But the Bush policy that baffled me the most was, and is, his administration’s unrelenting attack on the environment. I understand why he wanted to go easy on dirty refineries and power plants: In a recession he wasn’t going to eliminate a single job. But why did he want to spend his political capital on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? Why identify himself as the oil president, an image that has undercut his Iraq policy-especially since the ANWR reserves are barely a drop in the bucket of our energy needs? Why did the administration suspend the last-minute Clinton rule reducing arsenic in drinking water? Who thought that was a good idea? In the end, the administration restored the Clinton reductions, but the PR damage was done.

Then there was his claim to be “a uniter, not a divider.”Right out of the box, the White House got crosswise with Senator Jim Jeffords, a Vermont Republican, over policy and, some say, personal differences; he became an independent and the GOP lost its majority in the Senate. Bush’s relationship with Senate majority leader Tom Daschle was frigid, in contrast to the one he had enjoyed with Democratic leaders back in Texas. The House Republicans and their divider-not-a-uniter leader Tom DeLay were as much opposed to bipartisanship as the Senate Democrats.

Another issue I found troubling was the nexus between religion and politics. I’m a big believer in the First Amendment. I think the Bill of Rights –and the First Amendment in particular –represents the United States’greatest contributions to civilization: free speech, a free press, and a separation of church and state.

All of these concerns loomed large at the time, but they faded into the background on the morning of September 11, 2001. In a democracy, even decisions of war and peace must be made within a political framework. The framework for Bush was that his presidency was adrift before the calamity of 9/11; after the early successes of the education bill and the tax cuts, the rest of his legislative program has stalled. His job approval rating was a lukewarm 50 percent. The political importance of 9/11 for George W. Bush cannot be overstated. It united the nation in tragedy.

Now he had to prove himself again, this time to the world. Here’s what he had to say about the way other world leaders viewed him, in an interview for Bob Woodward’s book Bush at War: “I’m the new guy. They don’t know who I am.”In a letter to his father on October 7, 2001, to thank him for all he had done and to tell him that he had ordered the bombing of Afghanistan. In its conclusion: “I feel no sense of the so-called heavy burden of the office.”There it is: a one-sentence character sketch. Other presidents have agonized over hard choices-but not Bush. Bush is comfortable with the burden of the office because he doesn’t feel them the way others do: He never looks back, never second-guesses himself, never shows weakness, never admits a mistake, and it drives his critics crazy.

I majored in history, and my favorite professor drummed into us the obligation to be judgmental, about the present, as well as the past. So here's what this historian believes. First, when dealing with the rest of the world, America must abide by its basic principles, which, as Lincoln said just before the outbreak of civil war, in 1861, offer “hope to the world for all future time.”He added, “If (the country) can’t be saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful.”Second, the most effective foreign policy for a great power is the one laid down almost one hundred years ago by Theodore Roosevelt: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”

On my personal scorecard, Bush is zero for two. What is especially sad about this is that he had the country overwhelmingly behind him after 9/11. The moment that everything changed came in the 2002 State of the Union address, when Bush identified an “axis of evil:”Iraq, Iran, North Korea. So much for speaking softly. To use that label is to raise the stakes, because how can good (that’s us) tolerate evil? It raises the basic question of whether America should be the world’s moral policeman, ridding the globe of bad guys who pose no imminent threat to us except in what they might do at some future time. In the case of North Korea, it is likely that the “axis of evil”speech created exactly what we feared, spurring that country to resume its nuclear weapons program. And it doesn’t necessarily advance the war on terrorism to wage war on spec against states; indeed, it may cause us to shift our focus from the greater danger to a lesser one. Few things in international affairs are more risky that to view the world as you wish it to be, rather than it is.

What concerns me is whether we can trust the decision-making apparatus around him. In the governor’s office, Bush had advisers and top aides who were totally loyal to him. In the White House, he has advisers and top aides who have a long history of intellectual and ideological loyalty to specific policy positions. This is not to say that they are disloyal, just that they think the way ideologues always thing-that their interests and the nation’s interests (and the president’s) are one and the same. One day after 9/11, the National Security Council met to plan the response. According to Bush at War (which is based on interviews with the principles), one of the first comments was by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, asking why we shouldn’t go after Iraq, as his chief deputy Paul Wolfowitz, famously supported. Colin Powell warned that neither the coalition America was seeking nor the American people wanted a war against Iraq. At first, Woodward writes, Bush worried about diluting the mission against Al Qaeda, but the proponents were relentless-in particular, Cheney, who repeatedly said that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda, two assertions that remain unproved-and they must have known that the boss’s proclivity for boldness would work in their favor.

Dear Buzzies,

We should all write letters to our local papers as much as possible to keep up the drum roll of anger and dissent over Bush policies. These should be in your own words, and may or may not get published....but still we must make the effort. Our lives and the legacy of our Democracy is at stake. Here's one that I sent to the Courier-Journal.

Monday, February 02, 2004

Dear Letters to the Editor,

"What we now know"

We now know there were no WMD in Iraq when we invaded, and there are none now. David Kay said that.

We now know that Saddam had nothing to do with the attack of 9/11. President Bush, Condi Rice and Rumsfeld say that.

We now know that Iraq and al Quaeda..our real enemy.. were not allies , but instead hated each other so that a transfer of WMD to terrorists was extremely unlikely. Osama and his captured top al Quaeda operative Zubeida have said that.

So why do Bush and his legions of Republican letter writers insist that this costly, deadly invasion of a sovereign state thousands of miles away from us, without the sanction of the UN or our powerful traditional allies, and without their financial or military support ( The "coalition of the willing" is a blatant and inconsequential propaganda ploy) is a major triumph of American foreign policy?

It is hypocrisy of monumental proportion, because Bush and the Republicans have always steadfastly proclaimed that :

1) We are not the "policeman" of the world!

2) We will never resort to" Nation Building" as a military goal!

3) Our military is overextended by the Clinton administration, and we have to withdraw our forces from all around the world to be able to defend the US!

How can they support this disastrous quagmire we are in now as a mission to free the peace-loving democracy-craving Iraqi people because they had "WMD program related activities"…(According to David Kay's testimony there are 50 countries that fit that category.), or because Saddam was an evil dictator who murdered his own people. We couldn't have cared less about the gas attacks when they happened in the 1980's, because Saddam was our ally and friend then.

Yours truly,

M.G. Schiller
Louisville, Ky.

Sent to Bill O'Reilly <oreilly@foxnews.com>:

Subj: Irony

Hey Bill,

Loved today's show, it was jam packed with irony. First up the Janet Jackson segment, A boob talking about a boob---sensational! Next your advising that the President should admit he made a mistake on the WMD issue--- funny though I must have missed your apology on the issue as promised many months ago? No WMD and i'll apologize and never trust the administration again was what you said, wasn't it? Oh the IRONY!!!

Keep up the great work, next to the Daily Show, yours is the best parody news program on cable. "News analysis" program--I mean.

thank you,

stevie gardiner
somerdale,nj

PS - Viva la France

Subj: revisiting Marc Ash's words last March 16 - IMPORTANT

Dear Friends,

In the wake of the attention being paid to David Kay's revelation on no wmd ("intelligence failure"), this eve-of-war article by Marc Ash is especially poignant. The situation we're having to watch now is one where ignorance is being claimed as an excuse. The Bush people can never fully worm their way out. We REMEMBER that we knew "war" was totally unjustified on the eve that Bush and Rumsfeld were licking their chops. I took a little time to look at the figures of the injured, maimed, and dead today. And I see Bush saying that he's going to get to the bottom of this. May murderers rot in hell.

Please pass Marc Ash's article around to everyone you can, as a reminder that there were those who DID fight the madness and to remind them that Bush utterly refused to wait, so eager he was to claim the country before we stopped him.

We didn't try hard enough, but we did try.

Lisa

* * *

Massive Human Slaughter By Marc Ash

Subj: GREAT AD FROM MOVEON.ORG.

WINNERS: Congratulations Moveon.Org for a factual, classy ad. I guess Moveon has the last laugh, as CBS is red faced and apologizing today about Janet Jackson's bosom display. Please keep making more great ads.

LOSERS; Conservative Broadcasting Services (or CBS) for making such an unreasonable deal in not broadcasting the above ad, and having to deal with a boob show. I suppose the executives who contribute to the republican party must be wondering how to explain their double standards.

A BuzzFlash Reader

Can You Hear Us Now?

Can you hear us now? I ask that question because apparently you couldn't hear us before. Remember last winter, and into the spring when we were saying, "NO WAR IN IRAQ"? Remember, we said that Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction? We were saying that because we heard the UN weapons inspectors saying that, and we trusted them more than we trusted this administration. We didn't trust the administration, because we had visited the PNAC website and we read about their desire to remove Saddam from power. They wanted to go to war with Iraq for a long time, but they couldn't find a good excuse. We took the effort to research and read. We read and we read, but we saw nothing that would convince us that a war with Iraq was necessary at that time. We also agreed with the majority in the world, as they also said no to an invasion of Iraq.

We knew that it was not Iraq who flew the planes on September 11, 2003. We saw no connection between that event and Saddam. We saw none, and if you had bothered to think and look, you would have seen no connection either. Iraq had never issued a threat to the United States but Osama Bin Laden had. We kept telling you this but I guess you just weren't listening.

Remember during all our protests about the war, you kept saying we were traitors and we weren't patriotic? You said we didn't support our troops and you said a lot of other nasty things about us. Now don't you wonder about what you said to us? Over 500 of our troops and thousands of innocent Iraqis are dead due to a war that should not have occurred. That war that we tried our damnedest to prevent is to this day happening and your President is slowly telling you that the reasons he stated for going to war were false. There were no weapons of mass destruction, Saddam was not involved with the attacks on our soil, and he was not an imminent threat to us in any way. Your President seduced you by using the deaths of the victims of 9-11 as a reason for attacking and killing thousands of people in a country that had nothing to do with the pain of that terrible day.

If you had heard us, if you had listened when we cried to keep our soldiers at home, maybe our soldiers could have stayed at home instead of suffering and dying on foreign soil. Think about all of our soldiers who have died because of this war. Think of all the Iraqi men, women and little children who have died because of this war. Think about the faith you placed in the President, and while you're thinking, think about how he has used you as a pawn to promote a war that should never have been. This President, the one who claims to be a man of God, has abused the faith of the citizens of the United States, and he declared a war that should never have been. Think deeply about that.

Do you remember the day the President landed on the aircraft carrier and implied that the war was over? You relied on him to tell you the truth and he didn't. You cheered because you thought that our troops were coming home, but he didn't tell you the whole story did he? He didn't tell you that an awful lot of our soldiers and Iraqis were yet to die. He didn't tell you that, because if he had, you wouldn't have cheered along with him, would you?

Yes, Saddam will not harm another person for the rest of his life. No, the people of Iraq are not free. They are now in the middle of what appears to be the beginning of a civil war. The US President invited terrorists to come to Iraq and cause more death and destruction. He invited them the day he boasted, "Bring em' on!" He invited them, and it appears they responded to his invitation, because they came. Today they are still coming and the killing continues.

Your President has used his avowed faith to lure you into supporting unnecessary death to many, many people. When these soldiers start coming home and you see boys and men, women and girls who have been injured and maimed due to this war, what will you say to them? What will any of us say to them? The President did not send them to Iraq to protect our freedom because our freedom was never in jeopardy. Iraq was not threatening our freedom. The attackers of 9-11 were not threatening our freedom; they were making a tragic and deadly statement. The attackers of 9-11 died in the attacks. We were not invaded by another country. We were the victims of a terrorist attack.

The only threat to our freedom is the Patriot Act. The terrorists didn't write the Patriot Act and the Act is not patriotic. Any freedoms we may have lost were not taken from us by terrorists. It was because of the terrorists that our freedoms were taken away. We allowed this administration to reel in our freedoms in the name of prevention of another attack. If the terrorists wanted us to be less free, then they got their wish. The President along with the congress and Attorney General Ashcroft took away our freedom. They did what terrorists could not do.

Before the war, the drums for going to war were being beaten pretty loudly, and now the funeral dirge is not being played loud enough. So while there is a lull in the noise I thought I might ask you one more time--Can you hear us now?

pissed off patricia

Subj: And we shall rule the world... Fire Powell, Wolfowitz, Zoellick, and the rest

Click here: New Foreign Aid Body to List 75 Potentially Eligible Countries

Congress has already appropriated $1 bi fy2004, $2.5 bi fy2005, and will ask for $5 bi fy thereafter.... while veterans will be denied overtime pay by Elaine Chao...Veterans will be charged 300% increase in co-pays... and on, and on.. I have heard nothing about this Millenium Corporation, except I stumbled on it looking into Colin Powell and his Iraqi Fulbright Scholars that are coming...

Dianne

Subj: Michael Powell (don't let the door hit you on the way out)

He cannot catch an Anthrax killer...nor do anything else important...

I am wondering what those 8-11-13 years olds were doing watching a football game on a school night....this incident, if I figure right, happened way after prime time!

Shirley........St. Louis

Subj: Kerry Gaining Momentum

I can honestly say that this is the first time in a very long time that I feel Bush will not be a two-term President. More and more Americans are finally realizing how bad a job he has done as President and want him out of office. I can sense the tide turning against Bush with every new primary where John Kerry wins a majority of the delegates. It's about time!

Jeff Morgan
Rochester, MN

Subj: Was Shrub Also A.W.O.L. from BLOUNT's Senate Campaign?

In about all of the A.W.O.L. stories, it is only mentioned that Shrub was working on "a senatorial campaign in Alabama." Meet Winton M. BLOUNT. Despite the fellow's having SOME personal accomplishments, including patron of the arts, his chief claim to fame appears to be boiling down to have been the senate campaign Shrub supposedly was working on during his A.W.O.L year. Wonder why BLOUNT's campaign staff, family, or other associates haven't come forward with personal recollections of Shrub as "campaign manager"? What, was he A.W.O.L. from there, too? And, predictably for the B.F.E.E. ("Bush Family Evil Empire), there is the CA-CHING factor, ties to Saudi Arabia and rebuilding Kuwait after Desert Storm. http://www.nixonfoundation.org/nrc/images/021025bBlount-1.jpg

**************QUOTE**********

http://www.archives.state.al.us/famous/academy/w_blount.html

.... 1968 President, Chamber of Commerce of the United States.

1969-70 Postmaster General of the United States and member of the President's Cabinet.

1970-71 Postmaster General and Chairman of the Board, U.S. Postal Service.

1972 Candidate, U. S. Senate, State of Alabama. ....

http://www.au.af.mil/au/goe/eaglebios/01bios/blount01.htm

.... Winton and his brother Houston started Blount Brothers Construction Company (now Blount International) by digging fish ponds, paving streets, and installing storm drains; a far cry from the complex structures Blount International is known for today. They soon completed their first $1 million contract in Birmingham, Alabama, and in the 1950s the company erected Launch Pad 39A at Cape Canaveral in direct response to Sputnik, an atomic energy plant in Tennessee, a radar and electronics building and flight operations hangar for Lockheed Aircraft, and a portion of the wind tunnel at the Air Force’s Arnold Engineering Development Center in Tennessee. It was from Blount’s launch pad that Apollo 11 lifted off in 1969 on its historic trip to the moon. Blount International also built the huge space environment simulator at Sandusky, Ohio, the New Orleans Superdome, and the nation’s first Atlas intercontinental missile base near Cheyenne, Wyoming. The 1980s saw Blount International flourish with the completion of the world’s largest fixed-price contract, $2 billion, for the King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Following Operation DESERT STORM, Blount International "turned the lights back on" in Kuwait by rebuilding its infrastructure. ....

http://www.nixonfoundation.org/nrc/021025bBlount.shtml

.... Among Mr. Blount's accomplishments was the transformation of the U.S. Post Office Department into the U.S. Postal Service. At the time, Rep. Thaddeus J. Dulski (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Post Office and Civil Service Committee, described Mr. Blount this way: "He has a cast-iron stomach and a skin like a rhinoceros. But he may be the only man who could have brought about postal reform."

*******UNQUOTE*******

John Garza

Subj: Our So-Called President

Dear BuzzFlash:

We live in a never-never land, with a so-called "President," George Walker Bush, who took office (literally) Jan. 20, 2001 after a so-called " presidential election," with "so-called" policies ever since, including....

a so-called "Clear Skies" initiative...

a so-called "no Child Left Behind Act"...

so-called "Medicare reform"...

a so-called "Patriot Act"...

a so-called "energy bill"...

a so-called Veterans administration...

a so-called "Justice Department"...

a so-called "Civil Rights" division...

a so-called "Environmental Protection Agency"...

a so-called "Budget"...

so-called "middle-class tax cuts"...

a so-called "War on terrorism"...

a so-called "2000 Presidential election"...

a so-called "president"...

all from a so-called "elected" government in Washington which is anything but.

Walter

Subj: Super Bowl Aftermath

What's wrong with this picture?

You learn something new everyday. Apparently, flashing a celebrity's breast warrants immediate cries of public outrage, media frenzy, and federal investigation, while all those involved in the incident fall over each other to apologize or disassociate themselves from such a "deplorable" act. Well, we should demand public apologies and investigations for acts that outrage and offend the nation; Bush's unconscionable war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, and the 2000 elections are just a few examples that come to mind. But I'm afraid momentary, partial nudity by a 37 yr. old pop star just doesn't make my list. If we can rally the conscience of our country in response to her strategically-adorned and fleetingly exposed body part, surely we can channel our outrage more effectively at the Bush Administration's indecent and obscene policies-policies that are ravaging America's economy, civil liberties, environmental protection, and stature in the international community. Yet, the public seems to think that our government's forfeit of US credibility and viability as a democracy at home and abroad, its willingness to sacrifice human lives, security and our children's future, are small potatoes next to the obscenity or indecency of famous female anatomy. Obscene? Indecent? Indeed.

Diana Ayton-Shenker
Rhinebeck, NY

Subj: Investigate the Boobs in the White House!

Thought of a Great Slogan or Title for an Article:

Investigate the Boobs in the White House!

:) There I hope I made you either laugh or smile…Peace!

A BuzzFlash Reader

Subj: Who is your choice?

AWOL Bush

or

Hero Kerry

A BuzzFlash Reader

FWI: Peter Jennings "reckless" comments.

Dear Mr. Jennings,

To what source were you referring when you told Gen. Wesley Clark that, "...there are no facts supporting the charge that Bush was absent during his military service?" Here is a "future story" I would like to see ABC News investigate in depth! Surely, you have seen at least one of the investigative reports by the Boston Globe, Washington Post, New York Times, or New Republic on this subject? Check the following link for documentation on some of the details that are known about Bush's record.

If there really is nothing to this story, why doesn't the President release his complete military record just as John McCain did in 2000 when Karl Rove's operatives were circulating rumors that he was mentally unfit to be President due to torture endured as a POW?

I also believe you owe Michael Moore a public apology for your "reckless" comments.

Michael Young
Columbia City IN

Subj: Bush's 'military service and McCain

Sen McCain's comments from Worth the Fighting For, page 11-12

"...I was not an embittered veteran before I entered the War College, nor am I now. But I resent how badly civilian leaders had mismanaged the war and how ineffectually our senior military commanders had resisted their mistakes. Most appalling to me was how Americans had let the least fortunate among us fight the war, while sons of privilege were afforded numerous opportunities to stay home. That was a political decision made not just by the president, Congress, and the services, but by the country as a whole. and I resented the hell out of it. No national endeavor requires as much unshakable resolve as war. Before we enter one, we ought to know that most Americans share the commitment and are prepared to make the personal sacrifices it entails. If only the poor and disadvantaged are expected to fight for us, then the country should belong to them and no one else. the rest of us should meekly live of their goodwill and charity, for they are the ones who have loved our country the most and are most deserving of her blessing..."

On the issue of President Bush's service in the National Guard, people are asking all the wrong questions. When I was a kid I read stories about Baseball Teams that were activated as Reserve/Guard units (so the players wouldn't be shipped overseas) while my brothers got drafted. How about talking about the larger cultural issue.

Gina

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2 OF THE FEBRUARY 5, 2004 BUZZFLASH MAILBAG.