- Dave Letterman and his LIST OF TEN writers would be in
awe. The list of ten yields to the list of TWENTY. CURIOUS GEORGE has been
BUSY!
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- As we approach the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist
attacks, it might be useful to see how far an ordinary citizen's knowledge
has progressed one year on. So here, in the way of a summing-up, based
on journalistic documentation, is a list of things we Americans have learned
since last September -- some of which might prove useful in the run-up
to the November elections.
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- 1. We've learned that Bush & Co.'s "war on terrorism"
has morphed from finding and destroying those responsible for the 9/11
mass-murders (15 SAUDIS) to a worldwide campaign to install a Pax Americana,
by force if necessary. In other words, neo-imperialism, reminiscent in
many ways of the old Roman Empire or, closer to our own time, the British
Empire.
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- 2. We've learned that Bush & Co. has no desire to
rethink any of its policies abroad, the same policies that isolate it and
that generate hatred, suspicion and terrorism in so many regions of the
globe. Rather than reconsider its policies, or try to accomplish its ends
through diplomacy and alliances and cultural/economic initiatives, in its
arrogance it continues to bully and threaten others, insult its European
and other allies, disregard international treaties and courts, engage in
unilateral actions without regard to the national interests of others,
and, in general, simply throw its massive weight around. The prevailing
attitude seems to be: We are the one Superpower, get used to bending to
our will.
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- 3. We've learned that Bush's national-security leadership
was alerted months ahead of 9/11 (and, it has admitted, no later than August
6) that a major air attack from al-Qaida was in the works, along with the
likely targets, but did nothing to try to prevent those attacks or warn
anyone about them. Caught in their own lies, they blame "the system,"
especially elements in the FBI, for "not connecting the dots."
More than 3000 Americans died as a result of this malfeasance.
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- 4. We've learned that plans already were in the works
prior to 9/11 for the evisceration of Constitutional guarantees of due
process of law. The White House hustled the so-called USA PATRIOT Act through
a frightened Congress in a patriotic blur, just a few days after the attacks,
with few, if any, of the legislators having had time to read the final
version.
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- 5. We've learned that prior to September 11, the Bush
Administration was negotiating with the Taliban about a pipeline desired
by a U.S.-led energy consortium that would cross through Afghanistan. When
the Taliban balked, the U.S. negotiators told them they either could accept
a "carpet of gold" or face a "carpet of bombs." The
Taliban backed away from the deal and refused to hand over Osama bin Laden;
shortly after the terror attacks of 9/11, the U.S. began bombing in Afghanistan.
The devotion of BUSH to OIL/GAS/ENERGY/ENRON type agendas are not laudible.
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- 6. We've learned that now with the Taliban having been
overthrown, and a U.S.-friendly regime installed in Kabul, the pipeline
project is back on track, designed to carry energy supplies across Afghanistan
from the Caspian Sea area to near India. Hamid Karzai, the new leader of
Afghanistan, formerly was a consultant on the payroll of the pipeline folks;
likewise, the new U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan.
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- 7. We've learned that Bush & Co.'s Homeland Security
Act includes programs that bear an amazing resemblance to totalitarian
programs from the fascis/communist end of the spectrum: getting the military
(restricted heretofore to activity outside the U.S.) involved in domestic
policing, signing up neighborhood and block snoops to work for the central
government, investigating what books citizens are checking out and buying,
denouncing those deemed insufficiently patriotic or suspicious because
of their views, etc. Remind you of Stalin's Russia, Castro's Cuba, Hitler's
Third Reich, the Stasi of East Germany? (There also are prototypes of patriotic
youth leagues being tried out in cities, which could become a national
program.) A kind of martial-law coming to a neighborhood near you. (Not
odd as The Gehlen Org spawned Bush way back when, in his early OSS days,
that is NAZI spies brought here to work in CIA) Once a Nazi always a Nazi,
I guess.
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- 8. We've learned that Ashcroft/Bush are shredding Constitutional
due-process guarantees in their move toward total control: already they
have compromised attorney-client privilege, removed habeus corpus protections,
locked up folks with no charges, secreted citizens at military installations
which puts them out of reach of the judicial system, violated privacy in
rifling through personal telephone and email communications, etc. etc.
When the ambiguously-worded PATRIOT Act was first brought up, Ashcroft
and Bush told us not to worry, promising that these rules would affect
only non-citizens. Since that time, American citizens have been handled
in similar fashion. Coming to a neighborhood near you.
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- 9. We've learned much about the dangers of religious
fundamentalism in Islam, but we've also learned about dangers posed by
our own religious fundamentalists -- eager for a Christian theocratic society,
symbolized most recently by a Secret Service agent scrawling on a Muslim
suspect's refrigerator "Islam Is Evil, Christ Is King" -- and
the extraordinary power they wield within the Bush Administration, represented
most openly by John Ashcroft, who in frame-of-mind resembles a Taliban
mullah.
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- 10. We've learned that the FBI, focusing now on foreign
terrorists, doesn't seem energized with the same zeal to catch domestic
terrorists, such as abortion-clinic arsonists -- and especially the anthrax-dispenser.
Though the FBI seems to know that the anthrax villain probably worked at
a government bio-lab, nobody has been arrested, or even targeted as a prime
suspect. (THEY TELL US that after going thru his trash bin, no powder was
found, So all bets AND THE GUY...are off the hook,) It may not be likely,
but the unsaid is finally being asked: Could this dangerous terrorist actually
be working for the government? HUH? OUR GOV kill a Nat'l Enquirer reporter
who'd written up the BUSH gals as doped up trash? NAHHHHHHHHHHHHH. The
White house Used as a personal vendetta? C'mon!
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- 11. We've learned that the HardRight of the Republican
Party has taken control -- of the House leadership, of the Supreme Court,
of the White House, of much of the conglomerate-owned media -- and has
demonstrated its willingness to do nearly anything to maintain that power.
(Only the courageous defection of Sen. Jim Jeffords from GOP ranks is standing
in the way of HardRight total control of all three branches of government.)
More and more truly objectionable HardRight judges are being nominated
by Bush in an e ffort to stack the judiciary for decades to come. This
by a man who lost the election by more than half-a-million votes, coming
into his White House residency, with no popular mandate, only because his
supporters on the Supreme Court installed him there.
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- 12. We've learned that to break the momentum of the HardRight,
all energy for the upcoming November elections (less than 90 days away,
let us not forget) must be expended in electing Democrat candidates and
defeating Republican ones. The objective conditions are just not ripe yet
for anything more than trying to move the country back toward the middle
of the political spectrum. We progressives more in tune with the Greens
(Green candidates are being supported secretly in many states by the Republicans,
to try to defeat Democrats) will have to wait. The difference between Democrats
and Republicans may seem small to Greens and others, but, as we've learned
in a painful way under Bush&Co., that difference is immense when it
comes to foreign and domestic policy and its actual effects on real people,
here and abroad.
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- 13. We've learned that Cheney is up to his ears in Halliburton
irregularities, and may well be liable for indictment for participating
in financial fraud. In addition, we've learned that Cheney, who was the
head of the task force that came up with a corporate-friendly rather than
a consumer-friendly energy policy, has refused to turn over to Congress
the requested documents that will reveal how that policy was arrived at
and which industry leaders (other than Enron's Kenny Boy) helped shape
it.
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- 14. We've learned that Bush knew in advance, as a member
of the Harken Audit Committee, that Harken Oil was going to release negative
financial news, and he was a true insider, who knew that his Poppa's war
on IRAQ (like the next week), would cancel the Harken Drilling contracts.
Curious George and sold his shares before that, reaping a fortune. He may
be liable for indictment for insider-trading and other Harken irregularities.
(Even if Bush and Cheney are not indicted, they are the last people on
earth who should be speaking about corruption in the corporate financial
world, as these hypocrites benefitted from that very corrupt system. As
did most of Bush's corporate-derived cabinet.)
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- 15. We've learned that Bush & Co. were mightily opposed
to any reform of corporate financial reporting, but when more and more
companies were caught in such corrupt practices and the mood of the country
shifted -- mainly because so many folks, especially seniors, lost huge
chunks of their pensions and portfolio holdings when the Stock Market tanked
as a result of investors' losing confidence in the numbers provided by
corporations -- they jumped on the bandwagon and pretended they were reformers
all along. In the background, they are trying to help their corporate supporters
water down, and otherwise get around, the new rules. To that end, Bush&Co.
have appointed Harvey Pitt and Larry Thompson, two tainted corporate types,
to head up the "investigations" of corporate wrongdoing. Break
out the whitewash and let the FOXES paint the bloody HENHOUSE!
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- 16. We've learned that Bush & Co., having placed
its chips on Ariel Sharon, continues to have no real desire for a just
peace in the Middle East. All it wants is for the area to be quiet and
controlled (thus giving carte blanche to the Israeli Army's police-state
occupation and oppression), so that it can continue its plans for overthrowing
Saddam Hussein in Iraq. And, of course, there has been no declaration of
a State of War by the Congress, neither against Afghanistan nor against
Iraq, and no real debate about the wisdom of a war against Saddam -- even
when the top brass at the Pentagon and in Great Britain have expressed
their opposition to such military adventurism.
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- 17. We've learned that there will be no peace now in
the Middle East because the U.S. is not fully engaged in the peace process,
also because neither extreme in the area wants peace: Sharon thrives on
war and brutality, Hamas needs Sharon's bloody policies to justify its
campaign of terror. There are signs that moderate Palestinians finally
are starting to speak out in favor of a peaceful solution, and there are
plenty of land-for-peace Israelis (supported by many liberal Jews in the
U.S.), so the outlines of a peace are out there. But until the U.S. and
U.N. make the commitment to separate the warring extremists and arrange
an equitable treaty both Israel and the Palestinians can live with -- secure
borders for Israel (and an end to suicide bombing), a viable state for
the Palestinians, abandoning of the settlements by Israel, reparations
for Palestinians who lost their homes and property -- there will be only
more bloodshed. And more fertile ground for new generations of terrorists,
in the Middle East and elsewhere in the Islamic world.
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- 18. We've learned that Bush & Co. has been a total
disaster for the environment, in every way: from reneging on its campaign
promise to cut carbon-dioxide and other greenhouse emissions, to backing
away from higher fuel-efficiency in cars (we could cut our dependence on
foreign oil 20% just by increasing fuel efficiency by 5%), to giving breaks
to corporate polluters all across the country, to permitting increased
arsenic levels in the water, thumbing nose at Kyoto conference, etc. etc.
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- 19. We've learned that Secretary of State Colin Powell
-- who sees the world in something other than simplistic black-and-white,
us-versus-them dichotomies -- is a man imprisoned in the Bush Cabinet,
forced to alter his principled opinions in the service of Bush & Co.'s
stupidly aggressive and ultimately self-defeating foreign policies. Powell,
a moderate conservative, looks like a raving progressive when measured
against his masters. He should resign but probably won't. That would take
NIXONIAN shame which he has none of, having an IQ of 80
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- 20. We've learned that the tax-cuts provided to the most
wealthy are not only payoffs to the corporate sector that provides support
for Bush & Co. By locking in those tax cuts for ten years (and with
humongous chunks of the budget spent on the "war on terrorism"),
Bush & Co. have ensured that innumerable social programs that aid the
less well-off will be cut or eliminated. In short, a rollback of New Deal/Great
Society programs, so hated by the HardRight. (The HardRight movement to
detach prescription drugs for seniors fr om the Medicare program, and,
especially, to privatize Social Security -- even in the face of recent
stock-market disasters -- is part of this same desire.)
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- Even after all the above shorthand summaries, no doubt
I'm leaving out lots of Bush & Co. dirt, but this list can provide
a starting point, and a handy compilation of enough low and high crimes
and misdemeanors to warrant their removal from power, either through the
ballot box or by resignation or impeachment.
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- Finally, as we enter August, we know that one of two
things will happen in the summer-doldrums, with the Congress on vacation:
Either Bush & Co. will start its Iraq war and carry out more under-the-radar
attacks on important American social programs, or the media, bereft of
their usual Beltway stories, will use the down time to engage in hard-hitting
investigative reporting that will reveal in even more stark relief the
machinations of Bush & Co. illegalities and other scandalous behavior.
But, given the corporate nature of our corporate-owned media, don't count
on it. Instead, we'll probably be flooded with this summer's Condit-like
sex scandal. ___
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- Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., has taught American politics and
international relations at Western Washington University and San Diego
State University; he was with the San Francisco Chronicle for nearly 20
years.
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