August 27, 2002

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Dear BuzzFlash,

When I see the pictures and read the reports about the police brutality toward peaceful protestors in Portland, Oregon I can’t help but be reminded of Kent State. I know Kent State was a tragedy at least a hundred times more horrifying than Portland, but Kent State is a clear and chilling reminder of just how far a President who is desperate to usurp the will of the people will go. Maybe GW Bush is walking that thin line right now. Maybe the fact that GW Bush allowed Portland police to manhandle with billy clubs a middle-aged woman and pepper spray a baby shows that GW Bush is doing more than just walking the line -- he stepped over it! Because I am a mother I am horrified with the thought of the possibility that the pepper spray could have killed that baby!

Bush’s clear abuse of power in Portland reminds me of the stolen election in Florida and is a chilling reminder of how far GW Bush, Jim Baker, George HW Bush and the rest of the Republicans are willing to go to get what they want. Portland brings back chilling thoughts of Bush/Cheney/Enron-hired rioters intimidating the Miami-Dade Canvassing Board into stopping the counting of thousands of votes and proves GW Bush’s willingness to use physical force. Haunting echoes of GW Bush’s brazenly televised semi-insurrectionary appeals to our United States Military during the recount debacle explain to me further why the better man decided, for the safety of his fellow Americans I'm sure, it would be better for him to concede.

GW Bush’s conduct in Portland reminded me of how I helplessly witnessed the horrific death of my fellow Americans in the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and over a field in Pennsylvania while the Smirking Coward, the supposed rough and tough Republican President, sat among a group of innocent children and read “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” waiting for the most opportune “Karl Rove moment” to make his “statement”! I saw “John Wayne” George with a bullhorn stand on a pile of rubble that once was the World Trade Center, the scene of death for hundreds of New York’s finest, wrap himself in the flag as if he were a hero too and make political hay all for his own benefit. Afterward, I counted the hours, if not minutes until I saw the first Bush “job approval” ratings shamefully displayed for the world to see -- polls displayed irrespectively in spite of the fact that thousands of bodies of those who died, or maybe the bodies of those who were still dying, still lay deep beneath the rubble!

For far too long I have sat here in frustration and anger while I watched, in two years time, the theft of my government, my national treasury, my pension, my Social Security money along with the vile and hateful desecration of my Constitution and its Bill of Rights by GW Bush and his administration of fascists and thugs. I watched in disgust as Republicans and Democrats, who knew all along what W. was up to and even helped facilitate some of these atrocities, “proudly” wear flag pins on their lapels and shamefully sit on their thumbs in silence! I have seen an incompetent, Smirking Coward who was too afraid to fight and/or die for his country when duty called, blow hundreds if not thousands of innocent, half-starved Afghans to smithereens, while still not getting Bin Laden! I see that same incompetent, Smirking Coward threatening to invade Iraq and kill more innocent children and women along with our children in the military, just so he can save his and his daddy’s political skin

Yesterday I sat here and watched George, the guy who claims he is protecting our "freedoms" with his con-job War on Terrorism, conduct a $$$ fund-raiser while many innocent, peaceful and most importantly, legal protestors were sprayed with pepper gas and intimidated with Billy clubs! In Portland I saw George, the guy who says we must remove Saddam from power because he gassed his own people, gas his own people! My God! He even gassed a baby! You should have seen the look in my ten-year old son’s eyes when he realized this!

As for the Democrats, I would like to let them know that with them I am finished! They can stand “shoulder to shoulder” with this coward all they want, but for me Portland has taught me a valuable lesson: I have sat here for far too long! The Democrats can take their “high-road bipartisanship” and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine! The next time HE comes to my town I’m standing “shoulder to shoulder” with my fellow Americans and protesting GW Bush!

Nancy Lynn Nagy TN

Dear Buzz,

In regards to the column by Maureen Dowd., and GW running.

I had a friend who became hooked on running, he started off just running to get fit then started running day & night, then City Bay runs, then marathons then every spare moment he had he ran & ran & ran, it became like a drug to him. If he couldn't run then he became like an addict looking for his next shot. Jumpy, nervous and nasty.

It appears like GW who has a history of drug abuse has replaced one drug for another. Although running can be a great stress release, when it become obsessive then you have a problem.

My friend lost his wife and his business because running became his whole life. He also no longer needed a healthy sex life & couldn't relax with friends around a BBQ or at a movie because he had to be in bed by 10am to get up & RUN. His wife said sex was nonexistent because he didn't need it. Pity Laura Bush.

Sound familiar. GW is an addictive person. Be it alcohol drugs or running. USA you have a big problem. A President with a need for a constant high. Running does it for now. Don't let him break a leg for God's sake or running could be replace with a bottle very quickly.

Regards

Chris from OZ

Dear BuzzFlash,

Betty Loren-Maltese is a Republican! And so was Al Capone! Let's have a field day!

Few deem Cicero ready for reform
A town with a long history of corruption won't change overnight, some residents say, despite the conviction of its tough mayor

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0208250333aug25.story?coll=chi%2Dnews%2Dhed

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

“Saddam would be likely to conclude he had nothing left to lose, leading him to unleash whatever weapons of mass destruction he possesses.” – Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser under President Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, Opinion Journal, August 15, 2002

Dear BuzzFlash,

I always have a unit in my class on The Constitution of the United States of America. I teach students to READ the Constitution and learn about their rights as citizens. I work on helping them to use the Constitution to live by. Now I have a terrible situation to deal with. We have a President who wasn't elected. We have a Supreme Court and Congress who agreed to let him be President. We have a President who didn't even know Ashcroft's name when he first introduced him (Ashcraft, he said!) as a member of his cabinet. And now these two yo-yos have formed a shadow government with no "checks and balances" and are appealing to the Supreme Court to let them hide citizens away where no person can find them for as long as they want for any reason they want. When I wrote to my Senator, my "Democrat" Senator explained that the President did this "shadow government" for our own good, though he should have told Congress about it. Checks and balances? And how would anyone teach a student what is meant by "writ of habeus corpus"?

We have a President who wants to kill the public schools and the teachers unions with "vouchers" and a Court that wants to ingratiate themselves to this President that they placed in office. And we have a President who wants to hold the public school teachers "accountable" for all the stuff they don't teach students and for the students' performance in "critical thinking" on tests. What does the President want us to do with all the "old" copies of the Constitution? Recycle them like we do old textbooks when we re-write history? Where is the "shadow constitution" I'm supposed to be using in my class?

And we have a President who exhorts everyone to "run faster", as he does, since we have a war (undeclared) on. This is supposed to clear our minds, just as it does his.

My mind is clear. I don't think the President is going to like what I tell my students.

Please don't publish my name on this one. I'm afraid I may hear the steps of someone running really fast behind me before I get to teach my unit on The Constitution.

A BuzzFlash Reader

Friends:

Thanks for the address of the NRC. I might invest 37 cents to send them some toilet paper as the president is stupid and has ruined our economy, the environment and so much more and we have a world in great danger because of him.

Best wishes,

David Edovitz Winthrop, (Boston)
Mass.

Dear BuzzFlash,

Recent articles reflect the pulse of the public. The powerfully positive response to Chomsky, Palast, and Moore’s books and book tours is very heartening. ["a handful of books that assail the Bush administration as hypocritical, incompetent, and corrupt has demarcated a groundswell of Americans who desire truth about their leaders..." In ‘Angry White Men’ at www.villagevoice.com].

Heartening. As is the plummeting American citizen [and military] support for DimSon’s attack on Iraq. The "two in 10" saying we should attack without support of our allies indicates the low percentage of Americans - those infused with an oxymoronic ‘War happiness’ - who are still brainwashed by Dubya and his corrupt cabal. [in ‘Poll: Support For Military Action Against Iraq Dropping at ]

As is the "68 percent of analyzed newspaper editorials in NATO countries and Australia opposed military action against Iraq. ... A common theme was that the campaign against Iraq was simply a way to gain control of Iraqi oil, help the U.S. economy and boost [President Bush´s] popularity." [In ‘U.S. plans PR Campaign for war on Iraq" at www.washtimes.com.]

Has the overwhelming objection to attack on Iraq resulted in DimSon backing down? Or is he merely holding out until objections die down so he can strike? [Is that what he means by ‘I’m a patient man’?] Ari Fleisher’s "scold[ing] reporters for focusing on Iraq" at Wednesday’s war room ["It reached an absurd point of self-inflicted silliness...’ www.ap.tbo.com.] is really really stupid. DimSon’s squad are the ones blasting repeated invective against Saddam - their hateful tirades [not media reporting] started this scurrilous discourse. ["President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney call Saddam Hussein the ‘enemy.’ Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld compares him to Adolf Hitler. Bush's national security adviser says the Iraqi president is an ‘evil man’."]

And speaking of the pulse of the people, what happened to the widespread media hype about Dubya’s faux popularity? For months after 9/11, we had our brains bashed with article after article about polls showing his ‘astronomical poll popularity.’ But as Dubya stomps on more and more citizen toes, very few polls are posted - like Gallup’s showing his lowest rating since 9/11 [in "Bush Job Approval Now at 65%" at www.gallup.com]. Why is the media ignoring that?

T Quigly

Re: Suburban Chicago GOP Town President Convicted of stealing $12 million from the town 8/24

Dear BuzzFlash,

Did you notice that the NYTimes never mentioned within the article that the criminals were Republicans (I only knew they were GOP because of your headline). How come when a Democrat is convicted, or even investigated, they always mention that the target is a Dem?

Signed,

An Inquiring Mind

Re: From the 2001 BuzzFlash ChickenHawk Editorial Archives

Dear BuzzFlash,

Who did serve in Vietnam and was awarded a Bronze star: Governor Gray Davis.

Who did not: candidate Bill Simon.

A BuzzFlash Reader

Dear BuzzFlash,

"It's sad that I can't run longer. It's one of the saddest things about the Presidency." -- George W. Bush, quoted in Runner's World magazine.

Three thousand Americans dying on September 11, 2001. Innocent civilians being bombed by US troops in Afghanistan. Postal workers and little old ladies dying of anthrax poisoning found in their mail. Hundreds of thousands of retirement-age workers losing their pension plans, their health insurance, and their future security....we could on and on.

Oh wait, one more item: the fact that George W. Bush is President.

THAT is the saddest thing about the Presidency.

elaine in Petalma

Dear BuzzFlash,

bush's hometown paper: "Budget Horror Show" $200 billion deficit (projected) bush has done to National Treasury what he did to Texas treasury... It WAS your money, bush voters!!

LJBK

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/nation/1547805

Aug. 24, 2002, 9:47PM

Budget projections turn to 'horror show'
Next year could see $200 billion deficit

By BOB DEANS

Cox News Service

WASHINGTON -- President Bush is bracing for some grim budget news on Tuesday, when congressional aides release fresh estimates expected to show the government headed toward a $200 billion deficit next year.

The numbers, to be released by the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office, will set the tone for September spending battles on Capitol Hill, just weeks before midterm elections in November.

Subj: why bush won't intervene in the baseball strike

Dear BuzzFlash,

"...If Bush were to intervene, the media might remind the public how he once used his political connections to buy the Texas Rangers franchise with a minimal investment, got the city of Arlington to raise taxes for a new stadium and then made a huge windfall profit when he and his co-owners sold the team in 1998..."

Liz Taylor

http://www.chron.com/Cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/1546934

Aug. 23, 2002, 8:46PM

Baseball Inc. has its numbers skulduggery, too

By KELLY CANDAELE and PETER DREIER

During the last baseball strike, in 1994, President Clinton made a feeble and unsuccessful attempt to mediate. It's unlikely that President Bush will make the same mistake. Drawn reluctantly into the corporate-reform crusade in the wake of the Enron/WorldCom/Tyco/Arthur Andersen et al scandals, Bush remains a fan of unregulated markets, and Major League Baseball is the least regulated of all industries, the only one exempt from the nation's antitrust laws. If Bush were to intervene, the media might remind the public how he once used his political connections to buy the Texas Rangers franchise with a minimal investment, got the city of Arlington to raise taxes for a new stadium and then made a huge windfall profit when he and his CO-owners sold the team in 1998.

Dear BuzzFlash,

Fwd: umm... why isn't this picture spattered all over everywhere??? Wasn't it bush's (W's) friend Wayne La Pierre (NRA) who called police "Jack-booted goons" ??

Dear BuzzFlash,

I just finished reading the Hunting Of The President. The whole " vast right wing conspiracy" is documented in a scholarly manner. Highly recommend!!

Now about this Iraq invasion. Why hasn't the press figured out that the whole story is designed to dominate the 24 hour news cycle. It's wag the dog time again. Will we invade? When will we invade? Will we use ground troops? The president says yes.. the president says no.. the Republicans say go... the Republicans say no... What??? The Secretary of Defense says we got to do this. Then he says he doesn't know why the press is in such a frenzy??? What??? Can't the press see the Republicans are just crowding out other stories they don't want to talk about?? The stock market, retirement savings, 401k protection, a new 200 billion dollar deficit, Halliburton, Enron. Do I have to write you all a Billy Joel song for cryin' out loud, until you get it??? Jeez this is frustrating!!!!

Mary Going

Subj: Thinning the Forest to Protect Against Forest Fires

BuzzFlash,

Anybody who understands basic science knows that fire is comprised of 3 elements: (1) fuel, (2) oxygen, (3) ignition.

Remove any one of the three and the fire goes out.

A standing forest holds back the wind and does not allow it to go through the trees, Wind blows over the tops of the trees, but the floor of the forest does not have ANY wind blowing. Look at the edges of a logged area and you will see the trunks of the stand exposed. The wind can then whistle through the heart of that forest and ENTER UNDERNEATH the canopy. Add some dry weedy growth caused by tree removal, and some stupid campers, or politically motivated loggers who are unemployed due to the cutbacks in the economy, and you have a conflagration. I believe the logging community in Oregon allowed the Biscuit fire to continue to attract political attention from shrub, et al. Also, it gave them a month's worth of income in an economy that's not doing well at all.

This REMOVAL of fast moving oxygen as a source for fire is nature's way of stopping forest fires. In other words, to stop fires, you must stop logging. Consider the forests that stood for thousands of years WITHOUT BURNING, then comes the loggers, and all the forests are destroyed.

Another thing: When Reagan let Yellowstone burn to the ground, his excuse was that FIRE IS A NATURAL ELEMENT AND WE SHOULD LEAVE IT ALONE AND LET IT BURN, BECAUSE IT WILL MAKE THE FOREST MORE HEALTHY!!!!

Since when did the Republicans change their mind and SAY they want to stop fires? If we don't fight back to save the rain forests, we will all die as a species in the near future, and the forest will grow back anyway.

Cynthia
Washington State

Dear BuzzFlash,

Under what perverse theory do Bush's lawyers and advisers think that he does not need to seek Congressional approval to wage war on Iraq? Perhaps his lawyers did not have to read the Constitution when they went to law school. The intent of the framers could not be clearer. Congress SHALL have the right to declare war and to raise and support armies. This is as others have pointed out a deliberate assignation of power to the body closest to the people who will have to answer to the people for the death of their sons and daughters in a conflict. The President's power as Commander in Chief, which Bush thinks makes him a dictator is very limited in relation to the broad powers of Congress. Indeed the power as Commander in Chief is strictly limited to those instances when the military is "called into service." Obviously the framers contemplated the body calling the military into service would be Congress, as the Continental Congress did during the Revolution. This interpretation is just another attempt by Bush to seize more power than he is legally and constitutionally entitled to. Congress must act to preserve the Constitution.

Dan DeLisio

Dear BuzzFlash,

Perhaps it's just me, but I'm half-expecting to see a link like the following the next time I refresh your home page:

MUST READ: God, Omniscient
Space Aliens, Founding Fathers
Risen From Dead All Warn
Against Attack On Iraq 8/26

I was planning to continue with a few more scintillating parodies of your link text, but after a meal break accompanied by my daily scan through the newspaper, I'm no longer in the mood. I keep running into statements of national character like a Chicago Tribune columnist/editorialist's recent sneer at "countries where war is regarded as a barbaric relic." This kind of rhetoric emanating from prominent public forums reminds me of that late-1960s grafitti WE ARE THE PEOPLE OUR PARENTS WARNED US ABOUT.

Are we truly about to wreak another major torture session on the birthplace of human civilization, this time without even a well-exposed charade (see the red-highlighted text at http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/glaspie.html) for a pretext? The signals never cease to conflict. In any case, it's dubious how much trust we should place in even the clearest signal that the administration intends to back down, given their openly expressed article of faith that, once they've carried out whatever deceptive political maneuvering they need to get away with launching a full-scale war, the rest of us will instantly transmogrify into ardently "patriotic" supporters.

I struggle to distinguish my visceral "instinct" from my rational calculations about what is or isn't going to happen. There's a dreadful certainty to the former, since the only policy continuity this administration has shown thus far is their consistent choice to do whatever is most outrageous and destructive, destructive even to the eventual interests of their supposed true constituency, the American superrich. After all, it's the rich who are making out like (literal in large part) bandits off of a geopolitical status quo which the administration loses no opportunity to destabilize.

As for my cool intellectual appraisal, I'm totally at sea. It's true that the ongoing (and presumably orchestrated) parade of prominent conservative naysayers presents an unprecedented political obstacle to the irresistible force of the administration's apparent will to risk the most devastating geopolitical destruction of all for the sake of a goal whose net benefit the entire rest of humanity regards as dubious at best.

On the other hand, unless it's just my "visceral" self talking, I find it an eerily plausible vision that G. W. Bush will seize this of all moments as Destiny's custom-tailored opportunity for Junior to prove his manhood by overruling Poppy Dearest. Or might this president's "spiritual" mindset lead us to wonder whether the true motivation is to signal the End Times of fundamentalist eschatological lore?

In any case, it's difficult to see how it could be entirely "about oil," given the Arabs' willingness to sell us all we want at a reasonable price (at least so long as we refrain from wreaking genocidal brutality on our suppliers), and given the likelihood of all-out regional conflict bringing devastation to the very oil fields which are supposedly so precious to us.

"The longer that Washington delays in attacking Iraq, the greater are the chances of a new military, strategic and economic alliance being formed in the Middle East and the Gulf to counter US designs in the region."

"[The Bushies] don't seem to have a cohesive message to describe the threat," a U.S. government analyst commented to Reuters' Carol Giacomo. "They seem to be throwing things at the wall to see what might stick and nothing's taking hold."

To highlight the rather extreme risk/benefit ratio, at least in sane terms, I juxtapose recent quotes from, respectively, Asia Times Online (thanks to the indefatigable Ms. Lalumia's world-media roundup) and the Times of London. And I now find that Maureen Dowd's latest collection of breezy postmodern ironies includes the one about the White House portraying Saddam's supposed threat in such vague terms that even Saddam would agree. And as for unwitting irony born of rational indefensibility, there was a Wall Street Journal editorial challenging Gen. Scowcroft's credibility on the basis that he's a "realist."

At the very least, we can assume that the definiteness of the intention implies an equally definite motivation, but it's apparently one the administration wouldn't care to spell out. The "conspiracy theorists" can have a field day speculating as to details, but this inference of an unmentionably anti-public casus belli of some sort wouldn't appear to be a matter of opinion. And it's already plenty.

I'll close in suitably creepy fashion with a quote I browsed to by happenstance during the Iraqi crisis of early 1998:

"My friend, I saw a third dream and this dream was altogether frightful. The heavens roared and the earth roared again, daylight failed and darkness fell, lightning flashed, fire blazed out, the clouds lowered, they rained down death. Then the brightness departed, the fire went out, and all was turned to ashes fallen about us."

The source given is the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest surviving works of human literature. Five thousand years on, and dreams in the region are no less troubled and have proven remarkably stable in content. To close an ironic loop, I recall in this context the current Mesopotamian ruler's own reported dabbling in the literary endeavor.

Dan Kritchevsky

Subj: Like This is a Surprise

Dear BuzzFlash,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61040-2002Aug25.html

Bush Aides Say Iraq War Needs No Hill Vote

>>snip<<

Lawyers for President Bush have concluded he can launch an attack on Iraq without new approval from Congress, in part because they say permission remains in force from the 1991 resolution giving Bush's father authority to wage war in the Persian Gulf, according to administration officials.

Sonny Scott

Dear BuzzFlash,

All through the spring and summer of 2001, right up to 9/11, George Bush hop scotched from one elementary school to another reading books to kids. I don't remember hearing of him going to one school or reading one book to kids since 9/11. Does anyone know if he has darkened the doorway of a K through 6 since then? I am just wondering why it was so important for him to be seen in a school with the kids on a regular basis, and now it isn't. Odd! He may just be too busy figuring out how to go to another war without anyone's permission to read children's books. Still, his attendance dropped way off, in fact altogether over what it was until 9/11.

Sally McDonald

Dear BuzzFlash,

"I'm sure you remember how the last Presidential election was decided by just a few hundred votes in Florida and several other states were too close to call for days after the polls closed. The swing of just a few votes could have meant 'President Albert Gore' instead of President George W. Bush."

Ah, memories. This paragraph from that delightfully desperate GOP fund-raising appeal you've e-mailed to your subscribers reminds me of a point I haven't seen expressed clearly by anyone else (although I admit I haven't read Vincent Bugliosi's book on the election, only the original Nation article from which it was expanded). Suppose we take the Supreme Court majority at its word that that "few hundred votes" margin it confronted is properly regarded as final. And now let's recall that, as a matter of public record, the Republicans gained at least those few hundred votes by violating Florida election law, in particular by the wholesale validation of invalid proxy-ballot applications and the mass disenfranchisement of legitimate voters on the false pretext that they were ex-felons (of which the Jeb Bush Administration's guilty knowledge appears well established by Greg Palast and others).

So doesn't it follow that - in the Court's own terms - the administration "won" the election by means as literally and formally criminal as you please? If so, then we needn't rue the fact that the Supreme Court is legally entitled to rule however it pleases. If it is so entitled, then this very legitimacy is what establishes the unequivocal *illegitimacy* of the Bush Administration on other grounds, and it isn't rhetorical overkill in the least to declare that they belong in the Big House rather than the White House for such definitive "high crimes."

As for the GOP-led mob demonstrations in two Florida counties, which included physical assaults, they may not have played a major role in swinging the election, but we can demonstrate the gravity of these offenses in another way, in fact as a matter of clamorous bipartisan agreement. I call your attention to Title 22 of the United States Code, Section 2656f(d) for a certain official U.S. definition:

"The term 'terrorism' means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents."

Our anti-terrorist heroes. As one final "dot," I seem to recall that our Vice-President and Attorney General both favored a free market in plastic handguns as Senators.

Dan Kritchevsky

Dear BuzzFlash,

I was just listening to Vice President Cheney speak to the veterans of foreign wars and couldn't help but see the breathtaking hypocrisy inherent in his speech. Here is a man who avoided serving his country, has absolutely NO knowledge of how it feels to go to war, saying that the sons and daughters of those in attendance must do the bidding of this administration. He and the other war hawks know full well they, their children and grandchildren will not have to sacrifice their lives, they are protected by their wealth and connections just as they were. Why must there be a sacrifice? One word, OIL! The former CEO of Halliburton standing up there in front of real soldiers promoting a war for oil was disgusting and disturbing. The only bright light is we know they only send out Cheney, the heavy gun, when the Bush administration knows they are losing the confidence of the American people. I can only hope that the erosion of trust in this administration will continue!

Bev

Dear Buzz,

I attended the protest in Crawford on Saturday, and while we weren't billy-clubbed or pepper-sprayed (perhaps because Idiot Boy wasn't at home), our constitutional rights were similarly abrogated. Every (taxpayer-supported) public road leading to the Ranch (at least the four or five we tried) had been blocked and was swarming with police. A helicopter overhead kept tabs on where our caravan headed. We were threatened with arrest after we finally stopped, got out of our cars, and decided to go on foot. I have never felt so strongly that we are indeed living in a fascist police state.

There was almost no coverage of the protest, save for this piece from the local university newspaper: http://www.dailytexanonline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2002/08/26/3d69f22a03aa9

Even it underestimated the numbers at the rally, which were at least 400-500, not 150. It also failed to report that one of the slogans the counter-rally was pathetically shouting: "We must protect our oil companies!" I kid you not.

Truly frightening times...

Julie in Austin

To our sleeping newsmen and a few politicians:

The Chicken-hawk Database

Perhaps you've seen the list. If not, you most certainly should. (link below)

The men in Washington who are opposed to invading Iraq are men who are now or have been in the military service, from Colin Powell on down.

And the men who are primary proponents for launching an un-American first strike against Iraq?....each and every one AVOIDED military service themselves.

President junior, of course, is a deserter. It is a well known fact that he was AWOL his final year. Even his country-club Air Guard duties were too much to bear. There is no statute of limitation on this crime and he can still be arrested and court-martialed for it. (Joint Chiefs: Re-read your military codes. Do your sworn duty. You can stop this shit today!)

Myself, I don't see how the vast group of high-minded politicians who persecuted Bill Clinton because he managed to avoid a war he demonstrated against can look themselves in the face in the mirror each morning and then let dubya have free reign with the most powerful military machine in human history. Why, again just this morning his mouthpiece announced "we don't need no approval from no stinkin' Congress"

Why does official Washington continue to give this man a free ride on everything?! Why do you newsguys ignore it all? I thought you guy's luvvved scandals. Don't your ratings need a boost?

The point of this message is to show you and a few others the stripes on the zebras. The most rabid war-mongers are, to a man, chicken-hawks. Dick Cheney...avoided the draft. Trent Lott. Tom Delay. John Ashcroft. Wolfowitz. All of them. they are ready to send our sons into battle for reasons they can not explain to us. But when it was their time to stand up and be counted...they all had other things to do.

Take a look. It's enough to make you wanna slap somebody. You should play special attention to Tom Delay's excuse. It's a beaut. He claimed he couldn't volunteer for service in Nam cause all the spots were taken up by those brown and black boys.

http://www.nhgazette.com/chickenhawks.html

Steve Warren
San Marcos TX

Dear BuzzFlash,

I'm no military tactician. I've never trained at Fort Bragg or the School of the Americas, although I have studied history, especially the history of revolution, and the military strategies used by the great and failed leaders of this world. So I think I am safe in saying that the strategic situation in which George Bush has placed this country seems designed by someone just begging to start World War III and bring about the Biblical Armageddon that Christian fundamentalists long for.

The first part of this flawed strategy is pretty obvious. It has been pointed out by Brent Scowcroft and Bartcop, among many others. If Saddam has WMD and we back him into a corner, he's likely to use them, the very thing we are supposedly going to war to prevent.

But there is more. Israel has stated that, if attacked, they will retaliate. If Israel retaliates, every Middle Eastern country will line up on Iraq's side, and we are looking at a war of Biblical proportions. During the Gulf War, Saddam fired missiles at Israel trying to provoke it into a response for this very reason. It failed then, but Israel has already stated that it will not sit out the next war.

Knowing this, and knowing the position that Bush has placed us in with his constant talk of regime change, and knowing that the White House (and others) have actually said that if Bush were to back down now and not have get his war on, that he would lose credibility, then I propose that the obvious military and political strategy for Saddam Hussein would be to PROVOKE us into attacking him.

Insane? Not exactly. Bush has been waiting for a good reason to attack. In fact, the press and the public is withholding support for a renewed Gulf conflict because there has been no provocation. Given provocation, previous critics will line up behind the president and the war will go forward.

So why would Hussein dare to provoke an attack? It's simple - so he can drag Israel into the conflict. Once Israel is involved, all the other Arab states will line up behind him. We dare not go to war with the entire Middle East, as a prolonged loss of oil would destroy our fragile economy. So once Israel is involved, we will have to sue for peace or face the possibility of starting World War III. If we sue for peace, Iraq will have beaten us in the eyes of the Arab world, and Hussein will emerge as THE leader of the Middle East.

And all because Bush's rhetoric has placed us in the position of begging for a reason to attack Iraq.

This is called walking into a punch. I sure as hell wish someone in the White House would read The Art of War. We are right where Saddam wants us.

Jeff Crook

Quote of the Day

"Shrouded in ambiguity and cloaked in deep secrecy, this administration continues to suddenly, and sometimes unexpectedly, drop its decisions upon the public and Congress, and expect obedient approval, without question, without debate, and without opposition."

-- Robert C. Byrd, U.S. Senator, (Democrat, West Virginia), June 29, 2002

Chewgababy

Dear BuzzFlash,

Someone posted the following on democraticunderground.com:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=1511&forum=DCForumID60

Yesterday, Stockton reporter Audrey Cooper wrote: "Although a few protest signs may have been visible when Bush's limousine went through the intersection of Fremont and Center Streets, most of those massed against the barricade were flag-waving supporters whose cheers temporarily drowned out protest chants."

I wrote the reporter:

"Are we to infer that anti-Bush protesters were kept at a distance from the center of action but the pro-Bush demonstrators were allowed to be closer? Please clarify."

The reporter wrote back:

"That is what we meant to infer. In both appearances that the president made - in downtown Stockton and at the airport - protestors were kept at bay while Bush supporters and curious bystanders were allowed to get within the presidents sight line.

Yours,

Audrey Cooper
The Record
acooper@recordnet.com

Dear BuzzFlash,

The same VP who said that California's energy problems were caused by insufficient energy capacity now tells us anyone who doesn't want to attack Iraq is using "deeply flawed" logic.

http://my.netscape.com/corewidgets/news/story.psp?cat=51180&id=200208261 445000174355

A BuzzFlash Reader

Dear BuzzFlash,

As I was watching Ari (the egghead) Fleischer giving the relayed Bush speech, something caught my eyes..behind him was a symbol for the white house but yet as I looked closer he was not in the white house, but in crawford. It read: THE WESTERN WHITE HOUSE ...CRAWFORD TEXAS. Please tell me do we now have a white house in crookville, texas. What a waste of taxpayers monies.

A BuzzFlash Reader

Buzz,

Now isn't this a novel concept.....5 time draft dodger Dick Cheney is telling the VFW we need to go to war against Sadam.

Karen

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=544&ncid=703&e=1&u=/ap/2002 0826/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_iraq_24

Subj: Cheney preparing the way for W to use nuclear weapons on Iraq?

Dear BuzzFlash,

Analyze this!

In the same speech today at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Nashville, TN, Dick Cheney said both:

"U.N. weapons inspections would be futile, we must take the battle to the enemy..."

and

"...the elected leaders of this country have a responsibility to consider all of the available options and we are doing so..."

Then he said:

"...US would take whatever action President Bush deemed necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from using his weapons of mass destruction or sharing them with al-Qaida terrorists..."

After completely ruling out the options of weapon inspections and diplomacy, Dick Cheney states that he and the other so-called "elected" officials have a responsibility to consider all of the available options!

Then he drops another little seed which I interpreted to mean that he is preparing the way for GW Bush to use nuclear weapons in the removal of Saddam. "US would take whatever action President Bush deemed necessary..."!

My God! They are boxing Congress into a corner along with the American people and the rest of the world and then they will unleash their nuclear weapons on Iraq and see if anyone dares to stop them.

I'm scared...really scared!

Nancy Lynn Nagy TN

PS He also states that "wars are never won on the defensive...". What was Vietnam, a defensive war? What was WWII????

Further proof that GW Bush and Dick Cheney are out of their minds!

Hey Buzz,

I enjoyed the article about 24 ways that Republicans lie. It took me back to one of my pet peeves.

Of course you remember the debates between Hillary Clinton and Rick Lazio. Lazio grandstanded about negative campaigning during the debate and shoved a document into Hillary's face with an arrogant air. At the same time, Hillary was blind-sided with questions about her husbands infidelities and the "vast right-wing conspiracies" statement (whether she still believed it or not).

It was interesting to watch the Fox gasbags talk about the Lazio incident. They assumed both sides of a potential Clinton response and argued for three days about her assumed response. They drafted feminists to defend her, and the good ol' boy Clinton haters spoke about her lack of courage in her response. etc. etc. etc. ad nauseam.

The amazing thing about it is that Hillary exhibited NO RESPONSE to the incident at all. She never made a statement about it and carried on with her campaign as usual. It was water off of her back. The whole Hillary response issue was a complete fabrication from day one. Once again I felt like I was through the media looking glass... scratching on the mirror and begging to be let out.

Republicans don't even need real events to lie. They regularly invent their enemy.

mtblaze