Tag: Congress

There was nothing off the cuff or accidental about Karl Rove’s statement Wednesday night in which he smeared liberals as being supporters of terrorists because they do not support the war in Iraq.

The comments were intended to light the firestorm that has ensued. Rove knew how the reaction would play out: Liberals would be outraged, conservatives would smirk with satisfaction and the media would report it all pretending it doesn’t know a lie from the truth.

Rove also knew that there is an embedded false element to his bombast (of course) that could cause his whole statement to blow back in his face, in the unlikely even the media – or, God knows, the Democrats – were to notice it.

It is very simple: Liberals weren’t the only ones who opposed the war. In fact, many very well known Republicans oppopsed the war. Some even supsect the elder President Bush believed that taking out Saddam was ill advised. Speaking ostensibly for himself, Bush’s friend and factotum Brent Scrowcroft said as much publicly before the invasion.

Here is a quick round-up of the antiwar conservatives whom Karl Rove, speaking for President George W. Bush, smeared by inference with his invective against Americans who opposed the war in Iraq:

Pat Buchanan, writing in American Cause on Wednesday (June 22, 2005): “From President Bush’s Axis of Evil speech in January 2002 to the invasion in March 2003, some of us argued vehemently and ceaselessly against going to war. We saw no connection between Saddam Hussein and 9-11. We saw no threat from a nation unable even to shoot down a single U.S. plane during 40,000 sorties in the previous decade. We warned that an occupation of Iraq would create our own Lebanon. And so it has.”

William F. Buckley, writing in the New York Times on June 29, 2004,the “godfather of the conservative movement, said, “If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war.”

Bob Novak stated his position against the war several times on CNN’s Crossfire.

Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser under Presidents Gerald Ford and George Bush Sr., said “Don’t attack Saddam. An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counter terrorist campaign we have undertaken.”

Rep. John J. Duncan, (R-TN), speaking on the floor of the House of Represenatives on May 19, 2005: “There never was anything conservative about the war in Iraq. I said from the start that it would mean massive foreign aid, huge deficit spending, and that it was not far to place almost all the entire burden of enforcing U.N. resolutions on our taxpayers and our military. Conservatives have traditionally been the biggest critics of the U.N., and the worst part of all, of course, is all the deaths.All to bring do not an evil man, but one whose military budget was 2/10ths of 1 percent of ours and who was no threat to us whatsoever.”

Dick Armey, former Majority Leader (R-TX) in the House of Representatives, quoted in the New York Times on August 9, 2002, said: “I don’t believe that America will justifiably make an unprovoked attack on another nation. It would not be consistent with what we have been as a nation or what we should be as a nation.”

Charley Reese, according Rep. Duncan, a staunch conservative… wrote that a U.S. attack on Iraq: “is a prescription for the decline and fall of the American empire. Overextension � urged on by a bunch of rabid intellectuals who wouldn’t know one end of a gun from another � has doomed many an empire. Just let the United States try to occupy the Middle East, which will be the practical result of a war against Iraq, and Americans will be bled dry by the costs in both blood and treasure.”

Paul Craig Roberts, according Rep. Duncan, who was one of the highest-ranking Treasury Department officials under President Reagan and now a nationally-syndicated conservative columnist, wrote: “an invasion of Iraq is likely the most thoughtless action in modern history.”

James Webb, according Rep. Duncan, a hero in Vietnam and President Reagan’s Secretary of the Navy, wrote: “The issue before us is not whether the United States should end the regime of Saddam Hussein, but whether we as a nation are prepared to occupy territory in the Middle East for the next 30 to 50 years.”

Tom Pauken, a Vietnam veteran who served as a Reagan Administration official and the chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, in a speech at the Foreign Policy Conference in Chicago,in the spring of 2005: “Have we seriously considered the human and material costs to our nation of the pursuit of a foreign policy that seeks to impose our values on the rest of the world? Have we really understood the long term consequences of the abandonment of our traditional view that American foreign policy should be guided by what is in our national interest..?”

Justin Raimondo, an anti-war conservative, who edits the site Antiwar.com, wrote on March 22, 2003, that he had been included in a derisive article about antiwar conservatives written by President Bush’s former bitch-boy, David Frum, an uber patriotic American who is Canadian, that was published on March 19, 2003, in the National Review Online (the article has been removed from the server):

[Frum wrote,] “You may know the names of these antiwar conservatives. Some are famous: Patrick Buchanan and Robert Novak. Others are not: Llewellyn Rockwell, Samuel Francis, Thomas Fleming, Scott McConnell, Justin Raimondo, Joe Sobran, Charley Reese, Jude Wanniski, Eric Margolis, and Taki Theodoracopulos.”

We are guilty, says Frum, of nothing less than sedition:

“They have made common cause with the left-wing and Islamist antiwar movements in this country and in Europe. They deny and excuse terror. They espouse a potentially self-fulfilling defeatism. They publicize wild conspiracy theories. And some of them explicitly yearn for the victory of their nation’s enemies.”

PlanetOut:

Opponents of marriage rights for same-sex couples in California began a petition drive Thursday to put a broad constitutional ban against gay marriage on next year’s ballot.

In addition to denying marriage licenses, the proposed amendment would take away many marriage-like privileges currently extended to same-sex couples registered as domestic partners. In addition, state and local governments would no longer be allowed to extend health benefits to domestic partners of gay or lesbian workers.

“The language of the proposed amendment is breath-taking in its hostility and sweep,” said Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. “The amendment is the most extreme and mean-spirited of any previously submitted anywhere else in the nation.”

Florida’s non-staff-driven senator, Bill Nelson, continues to demand better protection for our troops. According to the Palm Beach Post:

Nelson, D-Fla., a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a letter Monday to Rumsfeld following reports the Marines last week recalled 5,227 defective vests.

“I am very disappointed to learn that defective body armor was accepted by the Department of Defense and then issued to our Marines in Iraq,” Nelson wrote in his letter.

The Marine Corps defended the decision to use the vest, produced by the Pompano Beach-based Point Blank Body Armor Inc., even though they did not fully meet the specifications for blocking bullets.

Although the vests failed a 9mm standard outlined in the contract, they met a lower 7.62mm standard set by the National Institute of Justice, said Marine Corps Capt. Jeff Landis.

Point Blank Body Armor seems to be the Halliburton of bullet-proof vests, and its leader, David H. Brooks, very like a certain Dick. Between insider stock sales and huge bonuses and “reimbursements,” the Defense Dept. might as well deposit the checks to his personal account. The Miami Herald reported on Point Blanks� parent company, DHB (nice personal touch) in April.

DHB’s stock surged to an all-time high of $22.53 on Dec. 23 after announcing it landed a $190 million contract to supply protective vests to the Army�

Within days of the contract’s announcement, company executives began reporting a boatload of stock sales. The biggest seller was Chairman and Chief Executive David Brooks, who sold almost 9.5 million shares worth $185.9 million in December, according to Bloomberg News�

[Independent analyst Dennis Nielsen] said he was more alarmed by disclosures in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last month. Brooks, for instance, took home a $2 million bonus last year, double the figure of 2003 and three times his 2004 salary of $675,000.

�DHB charters a jet owned by Brooks’ children to fly company executives and directors. It paid the company and unrelated vendors more than $850,000 for trips last year. The company also pays Brooks $25,000 a month for the cost of his Florida residence�

Just as the company was about to scare off investors permanently, it launched a new strategy: hire retired military.

Newsday for May 4:

In a move aimed at bolstering its image on Wall Street, protective body armor maker DHB Industries Inc. yesterday named as its new president�Larry Ellis, 58, who retired from the Army 10 months ago after a 35-year career that included combat service in Vietnam and the command of some 14,000 Army troops in Bosnia�

His appointment comes one day after Westbury-based DHB announced it had hired another former high-ranking Army officer, Ishmon F. Burks, as the company’s executive vice president for investor and media relations. Burks was a decorated colonel.

Sounds like someone needs to decide where this company is headquartered. Maybe they�ll follow Halliburton�s lead and pick a nice island in the Caribbean next.

But speaking of calling in former military when you need to appear to have integrity, look who the White House, aka Karl Rove, is thinking of running in the 2006 Florida senate race.

Opinion Journal, made available free by Sayfie Review reports:

“General [Tommy] Franks is rumored to be exploring the political terrain for a possible challenge to Florida’s Democratic Senator Bill Nelson…Though a Franks spokesman recently waved off reporters with a “no comment”�

“The White House may be…convinced that General Franks would win by hitting a political sweet spot of his own: thousands of active and retired military personnel who vote in Florida.”

But former astronaut Nelson continues to defy the Republican pigeonhole of Democrats. A poll reported in the Florida Times-Union, commissioned by the Duval County (Jacksonville) Republican Party in January, shows Nelson looking strong.

The poll was taken as Nelson fought to keep the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy, based in Jacksonville, from being scuttled, and gave Nelson a favorability rating of 56 percent. When you consider that Jacksonville is what people mean when they say that in Florida, the further north you go the further south you get, that�s pretty good numbers. No wonder Rove is sweating.

The first CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll since President Bush’s “news” conference on April 28 shows that former Andover cheerleader has failed again to rally the American public behind his plan to phase out Social Security. In fact, while 81 percent of the respondents agreed that the program is broken, only 35 percent liked the President’s approach. The poll also showed that Bush received an over-generous 48 percent approval for his job performance.

The news conference came after the President campaigned for his plan to end Social Security for 60 days at staged events packed with his supporters in mostly Red state venues. The White House hoped the events showcasing the President would gin up positive coverage on local news channels, but this plan apparently backfired.

What is difficult to calculate is how many viewers of local news coverage came to see Bush’s plan for what is – an attempt to make the Social Security safety net disappear in order to gain partisan advantage. Republicans don’t give a damn if we end up with millions of elderly Baby Boomers living in cardboard boxes in 20 years. Their stated goal is to end the two party system in the United States. By destroying Social Security, they will remove it as a reliable arrow in the Democrats’ quiver of political issues.

These are the same craven political masterminds who sent us to war in Iraq primarily to ensure that Bush would be a “war president” and thus win reelection in 2004, and who are about to destroy the parliamentary rules of the US Senate, thus laying waste to the last institution of civility in our republic, in order to pack the courts with Talibani judges who can be relied upon to roll back civil rights.

Democrats – and especially the MSM – dare not speak the truth about the Gops’ true goals lest they be labelled “librul” by corrupt conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and Tom DeLay and millions of their dittohead followers. And that factor, the demonization of the word “liberal” by the Right, may be the neatest trick of all. Shunning the liberal label has become so reflexive that it forces the Republicans’ opponents and their watchdogs to censor themselves, without any means for reprisal.

As one who never bought the Bushies’ hogwash in the run-up to the war in Iraq, the only piece of the puzzle that made me doubt my instincts that the Bush team – Bush, Cheney, Powell and Rice – were simply lying about the reasons the reasons for going to war was the strange case of the whole-hearted support they received from British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

He’d seemed a like sensible guy during the Clinton years – almost a Britsh version of President Clinton, sharing the same ability to state his case convincingly and to connect with his audience. How could this apparently otherwise savvy politician buy into the lies, so much so that he was dubbed “Bush’s Poodle” in the British press?

I still can’t answer that one. But now it is clear he went farther than simply buying into the lies:

The Prime Minister was warned it could be illegal for Britain to attack Iraq. Not liking the advice from his lawyers, he pretended that advice was different in public, and persuaded them to change it in private.

We can add this noxious fact to the others we already knew. He lied about a non-existent threat to this country from Saddam Hussein. He lied about weapons of mass destruction which were not there.

And it is clear from all that has happened since this unwise adventure that life for most Iraqis is actually worse as a result, not better as he claimed it would be and still pretends that it is.

It is difficult to imagine a more wretched catalogue of falsehood and incompetence – exposing our soldiers to possible prosecution, debasing the parliamentary process, suborning the intelligence services so that they became propaganda agencies, bullying civil servants into bending the truth, then spending billions on false pretences and, above all, bringing about the deaths of innocent civilians and of British servicemen.

Yet here we are in the midst of an Election, and the man responsible, incredibly, is ahead in the polls and likely to cruise to a third successive victory.

Welcome to our world, mate!

Michael Kinsley has said that in Washington, a “gaffe” is when a politician slips up and tells the truth in an public interview. Last week, Republican Sen. Jim Jeffords made just such a gaffe when he told a Vermont NPR interviewer that he believes Pres. Bush and his followers would declare war on Iran to put another Bush family member in the White House.

“I think it was all done to get oil,” Jeffords said of invading Iraq. “And the loss of life that we had, and the cost of it, was to me just a re-election move, and they’re going to try to live off it. Probably start another war, wouldn’t be surprised, next year. Probably in Iran.”

“Do you think that’s likely?” VPR host Bob Kinzel asked.

“I probably shouldn’t even talk on it, I just feel so bitter about the thinking that’s gone on behind them, and the reasons they go to war and went to war,” Jeffords replied. “But I feel very strongly that they are looking ahead, and that there will be an opportunity to go into Iran and try to get their son elected president. I don’t know, but you do it each time they (are) going to have a new president. I’m very, very (Jeffords chuckles). Oh, well, I better be quiet.”

Good letter to the editor in a local paper:

Editor: Mr. Bush proposes to do for Social Security what he did for Iraq – destroy its structure and shift its assets over to his corporate buddies. Also analogous to Iraq – this is to be done because of a crisis that does not exist, and he doesn’t care how many people get hurt.