Friday, October 29, 2004

As reported on the Randi Rhodes Show today, the media has remained largely silent on The Wall Street Journal's October 25, 2004 report that President George W. Bush's administration passed up several opportunities to attack and potentially kill terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi before the start of the Iraq war, starting as early as June 2002.  The Journal article expanded on a March 2, 2004 NBC Nightly News report by Jim Miklaszewski last March that has been ignored.  It appeared on NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw just after Zarqawi became known to most Americans.  “People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.   Click here to read the report. How many more October surprises can we handle?  What more will it take to convince Americans to do the right thing on Tuesday? 3:59:06 PM    comment [] NAACP, the taxman cometh. We've all made jokes at one time or another about the taxman paying visits to people who speak out against the government. But in the Bush administration, this actually happens. The IRS is investigating the NAACP -- the group Bush has declined to personally visit as president -- because chairman Julian Bond "condemned the administration policies of George W. Bush" during a speech this summer. [Salon.com] 3:31:55 PM    comment [] About that al Qaqaa satellite imagery. Like magic, the Pentagon produced yesterday a satellite image of the al Qaqaa complex from March 2003, hoping to demonstrate that after the IAEA inspectors left and before Baghdad fell and U.S. soldiers moved into the area there was "activity" at al Qaqaa that could have been explosives being moved out of the facility. (Even though the Minneapolis TV station's video pretty well proves there were explosives there under IAEA seal nine days after the fall of Saddam Hussein.) [Salon.com] 3:30:49 PM    comment [] The White House website (DO NOT GO TO DOT COM!) has "Ask the White House" -- an online interactive forum where you can submit questions to Administration officials and friends of the White House.  This afternoon's chat that is still active right now is hosted by Harriet Miers, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy at the White House. All of the questions have been typical suck up we-love-george ones, or neutral, boring and soft. The responses are pat and canned.  I submitted the following question:  "This is a real question--how can you or anyone else in the Bush Administration look at yourselves in the mirror?"  It was ignored! At least I didn't have to give my name, address, phone number, etc. like I did when I tried to submit a question to The Twins. This is the transcipt of  one of the questions/answers from a session hosted on 10/15/04 by Jim Towey, White House Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiative:  John, from Berwyn, IL. writes: Mr. Towey, Can you share with us any personal prayers you say to help get you through your day? Especially ones dealing with the disconect between words and practices of this administration on issues of social justice, poverty, the death penalty and stewardship of the environment? Many thanks, John Jim Towey Well, John, I am not sure what disconnect you are referring to. Prayer is very important, and I know that the President prays a lot and depends on the prayers of the American people as he tries to do his job as best as he can. 3:17:27 PM    comment [] As previously posted on 10/26, the BBC published information about secret emails prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign's national research director in Washington DC containing a 15-page so-called "caging list". The list was 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida. The emails were incorrectly sent to "someone"@georgewbush.org instead of georgewbush.com.  (Remember Cheney's problem with factcheck.com instead of factcheck.org?)  Georgewbush.org is a satirical but bogus website.  It is NOT the official website of the Bush/Cheney campaign. Well, the georgewbush.org website discoverd the emails when it realized that its website, as many do, has a default mailbox where emails addressed to unrecognized names go to hang out.  If you're interested, click here to read the emails and see the caging list. The purpose of the caging list was to disrupt minority voting in Florida. 2:53:48 PM    comment [] Today's Unfiltered TALKING POINT: Bush is in trouble… An explosive explosives story.. The FBI’s investigation of Halliburton’s no-bid contracts. And Giuliani’s new “support the war, oppose the troops” stump speech. Then there’s that TV ad they “photoshopped” to add more troops to the adoring crowd. In the face of such devastating news, Bush turns to his base, a loyal conglomerate of fundamentalists, right-wingers and billionaires - not your average swing voter. The RNC has mailed out a flyer in Pennsylvania showing John Kerry’s face next to pictures of the burning World Trade Center. And they’re flashing back to the dark days of last century.. when racist voter suppression dominated the political landscape. This Administration is encouraging racism and voter intimidation in order to solidify their base, not encourage swing voters to join the republican party. Bush is in trouble. 11:36:11 AM    comment [] ABC news showed the controversial American al-Quaeda tape last night.  It had been sent to the CIA for verification and the network decided not to air it immediately because a preliminary CIA analysis was unable to determine if it was legitimate.  However, Fox News, claiming it obtained the videotape independently of ABC News (I wonder how that happened?!), aired it first, forcing ABC News to change its cautious position and run it 20 minutes later. 11:25:36 AM    comment [] What took so long?  The FBI is looking into whether Halliburton received preferential treatment when it was awarded a $7 Billion non-competitive contract in Iraq. Dick Cheney’s old company is also being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department on separate charges. 11:13:33 AM    comment [] As first reported by the Randi Rhodes Show yesterday, videotape shot by a Minnesota television crew traveling with U.S. troops in Iraq when they first opened the bunkers at the Al-Qaqaa munitions base nine days after the fall of Saddam Hussein shows what appeared to be high explosives still in barrels and bearing the markings of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The video taken by KSTP of St. Paul on April 18, 2003, could reinforce suggestions that tons of explosives missing from a munitions installation in Iraq were looted after the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. The video was broadcast nationally Thursday on ABC. Read the AP story here. It's also being reported by Reuters, but I haven't seen it yet in any othe national newspapers. Why not? Rumsfeld says the explosives were moved before the US arrived, other honchos are blaming the Russians and Rudy Giuliani blames the US soldiers!  Kerry places the blame where is belongs--on the Bush Administration. 11:04:46 AM    comment []

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