Fornits
General Interest => Tacitus' Realm => Topic started by: thepatriot on April 13, 2004, 11:52:00 AM
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They're in favor of liberating Iraq, and opposed to it. And that's just one senator from Massachusetts." Now that John Kerry is the presumptive Democratic nominee, Republicans are sure to focus the spotlight on his history of flip-flops. Kerry did vote for the Patriot Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, and the war in Iraq, even though he constantly trashes the Patriot Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, and the war in Iraq. He voted against the Defense of Marriage Act, which limited marriage to a man and a woman, but he now says marriage should be limited to a man and a woman. (Although he also points out that he once attended a gay wedding.) And those are just the better-known issues on which Kerry has "evolved."
Is this the only candidate the DNC could come up with??? I am not a Bush fan by any means but this guy is as full of shit as the rest on Capitol Hill
He says he is for Joe six pack american, you should see the properties this guy owns,
1.Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania (Assessed value: $3.7 million)
2. Ketchum, Idaho ski getaway/vacation home (Assessed value: $4.916 million)
3. Washington, D.C - Georgetown area (assessment: $4.7 million)
4. Nantucket, Massachusetts waterfront retreat on Brant Point (Assessed value: $9.18 million)
5. Boston, Massachusetts - Beacon Hill home (Assessed value: $6.9)
6. oh, and he sold this estate in Italy to activist actor George Clooney, just before announcing his running for president. I guess he thought it might not sit well with the common man. ($7.8 million)
other foreign property ownership by John Kerry is unknown... because he denied repeated requests for this information.
But why should he be any different than any other politician. Lets face it unless you have the $$$$$
no Regular guy of the people could ever be considered a viable candidtae for office.
All I am saying is no matter the party affiliation facts are that capitol hill is the Rich Boys Club.
None of them can relate to Joe Sixpack.
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Kerry is Coke, Bush is Crack by Paul Street
John Kerry is pretty hard for any leftist to take. There's the painful conflict between his super-privileged, Harvard pedigreed background and his comically stiff attempts to sound like a working peoples' populist. There's the recurrent obsessive campaign reference to glory days in Vietnam, when he "served" two tours of "duty" in a mass-murderous United States invasion - a vicious superpower assault on a small peasant nation that was conducted with so many atrocities that Kerry became an antiwar activist. There's Kerry's related imperial refusal to acknowledge tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghan victims in his critique of George W. Bush's foreign policy (see Kerry's statement "George W. Bush: Mission Still Not Accomplished," available online at http://www.johnkerry.com/features/mission/ (http://www.johnkerry.com/features/mission/)). There's his call for a "muscular" U.S.-led "internationalism," unilateralist when "necessary," enunciated in a disturbing campaign tract titled A Call to Service, which exhibits the same sickeningly selective use of history and the same revolting national narcissism that permeate the speeches of Bush the Second.
Then there's his recent policy record, a monument to the long rightward drift of what passes for Democratic Party "liberalism" in the United States. This record includes support for the punitive Clinton-Gingrich "work-first' version of "welfare reform," which stripped disadvantaged children and mothers of entitlement to cash assistance on the vicious theory that the capitalist labor market is the best institution to meet the basic needs of the nation's most vulnerable people and families. Kerry backed the all-too-bipartisan "No Child Left Behind Act," which assaults the nation's embattled, under-funded public schools with a new battery of reactionary standardized testing mandates but fails to provide the resources necessary to boost achievement measured by any standard. He signed on to Congress' pathetic surrender of its own constitutional war powers to give a Bush II a free hand in Iraq. He voted for the paranoid, neo-McCarthyite Patriot Act, a terrible threat to justly cherished U.S. civil liberties passed under the false pretenses of fighting terrorism. He backs globalization on the toxic U.S-imposed corporate-neoliberal model, meaning state protection for U.S. multinational corporations and savage, so-called "free market" discipline for the majority of non-affluent nations and people at home and abroad.
After saying all this, it might seem anomalous to say that I will almost certainly vote for Kerry and encourage others on the left to do the same. No, Kerry doesn't deserve my support. He gets it nonetheless for two unpleasant reasons that have nothing to do with fairness. The first reason is the horror known as the Bush administration. The second is the sheer impossibility of electing a president to Kerry's left under current U.S. circumstances.
But "Bush Heavy" is Really Heavy
It is fashionable among some on the left to say that the difference between Kerry and Bush II is analogous at best to the slight variation between "Coke and Pepsi" (see John Pilger, "Bush or Kerry? Look Closely and The Danger is the Same," New Statesman, March 04, 2004, available online at http://www.zmag.org/ (http://www.zmag.org/) content/ showarticle.cfm?SectionID= 33&ItemID=5083). This formulation contains no small measure of truth. Kerry most definitely is imperial, corporate-capitalist Coke. Call him "Bush-Lite," if you like. He's committed to the same basic underlying system of authoritarian corporate domination, domestic inequity, and racist/national-narcissist U.S. imperialism that sparks the real Bush - let's call him "Bush-Heavy" - to new heights of arrogance and criminality at home and abroad.
The analogy breaks down, however, with Bush II. Dubya's White House is neither Coke nor Pepsi. It is the American imperial plutocracy on crack cocaine, smoked with a Christian fundamentalist pipe and cooked on an at-least partially fascist stove. Eliot Weinberger captured some of what I mean last fall, noting that the current White House "is, quite simply, the most frightening administration in modern times, one that is appalling both to the left and to traditional conservatives. This junta is unabashed in its imperialist ambitions; it is enacting an Orwellian state of Perpetual War. It is dismantling, or attempting to dismantle, some of the most fundamental tenets of American democracy; it is acting without opposition within the government, and is operating so quickly on so many fronts that it has overwhelmed and exhausted any popular opposition." (Eliot Weinberger, "What Happened to America?," Covert Action Quarterly, no. 75 [Fall 2003], p. 2). As I wrote last October:
During its narrowly and illegally attained reign, the Bush White House has overseen the loss of more than three million American jobs - a new record. The poverty rate has risen for both of the years for which we have complete data during the Bush administration, with 1.7 more Americans pushed below the federal government's notoriously inadequate poverty level in the second of those years (2002). In the face of this mounting need, which results to no small extent form its policies, the Bush administration has transformed a federal budget surplus into a massive, record-setting deficit that promises - and is consciously designed - to cripple government's capacity to meet the needs of all but the privileged few for an untold number of years. It has advanced gargantuan tax-cuts for the already wealthy, starving government's ability to provide ever-more-necessary social programs and services and even "homeland security" while feeding a military machine and an imperial campaign that increases the likelihood of future terrorist attacks.
It has launched an illegal, unnecessary, expensive, and bloody war of occupation that has massively alienated world opinion and squandered the sympathy the world felt for Americans in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks. The occupation has dramatically failed to live up to the White House's grandiose promises and cost the lives of at 300 American troops, two thirds of whom have died since Bush declared the end of major hostilities on May 1, after landing on a conveniently placed offshore aircraft carrier in what The New York Times called "a powerful Reaganesque finale to a six-week war." It has failed to turn up any substantive evidence to support the Bush administration's hysterical, distorted claims about the threat supposedly posed by Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" and Saddam's supposed connection with extremist Islamic terror networks - mysterious menaces never taken seriously anywhere outside the United States.
Meanwhile, the Bush Team has conducted the most dangerous assault on domestic United States civil liberties to occur in half a century. It has taken the practice of political deception to new heights, so that tracking the systematic mendacity of the current White House - seen in a spectacular accumulation of false and duplicitous statements about far more than just Iraq - is a nearly exhausting enterprise (for a useful compendium, see David Corn, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception [Crown Publishing, September 2003]). It all stands in grotesque conflict with cherished principles of the Republic, including the Declaration of Independence's claim that governments "derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." Building on that revolutionary ideal, the Constitution required the federal government, representing "We the People of the United States," to work to "establish justice," "promote the general welfare," "provide for the common defense," and "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." It codified charter civil liberties the Bush team is seeking to rollback, in the name of unity against external danger.
"Bush Heavy" is really heavy.
Telling Testimony From a Key Insider: "Hard To Imagine Another President Making That Choice"
Would a Democratic (Al Gore) White House have used 9/11 as an excuse to invade Iraq, a nation that had nothing to do with the jetliner attacks? Some on the "Coke/Pepsi" left seem to think so, a judgment based on the Democrats' all-too-real history of out-hawking the more explicitly imperialist Republicans and the likelihood that a Democratic White House would have faced significant right wing and related media pressure to attack Saddam. The judgment is probably wrong, however, thanks in part to the certain absence of such influential dark post-9/11 actors as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz from a Democratic administration. For these and other key players in the Bush II White House and Pentagon, the invasion of Iraq was a key objective since before Bush II's inauguration.
Consider the telling testimony of the former key Bush-Dark high state operative Richard Clarke, Bush II's former counterrorism czar. Clark is a registered Republican and career White House civil servant under Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, one of very few national security experts retained from the first Bush administration. His recently released book Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror makes for fascinating reading. During an opening chapter showing that he essentially ran the federal government's initial response to 9/11, Clarke relates his troubled amazement at Bush II, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz's bizarre determination to respond to 9/11 by leaping beyond the genuine threat (al Qaeda) and attack "not a country that had been engaging in anti-U.S. terrorism but one that had not been, Iraq," (Clarke's words). He finds it "unconscionable" that Bush II and Cheney - who Clarke considers to be a "right-wing ideologue" - decided to "manipulate public opinion" (Todd S. Purdum, "An Accuser's Insider Status Puts The White House on the Defensive," New York Times, March 23, 2004) after 9/11 to advance "a hell-bent war policy" that ignored and deepens the real terrorist threat to Americans. A longtime Washington insider and a veteran of three presidencies, Clarke finds it - listen carefully - "hard to imagine another president making that choice."
He also gives us reason to wonder if 9/11 would even have occurred under a Democratic White House in the first place. The Bush administration, he shows, ignored numerous specific warnings about likely al Qaeda attacks, including urgent admonitions from the outgoing Clinton administration.
Clarke's dark reflections are accompanied by disturbing recollections of Bush himself trying to "intimidate" top White House officials (including Clarke) into disregarding actual evidence and blaming Iraq for 9/11. They come from a mature, conservative, and highly successful, indeed legendary top national security bureaucrat who shares most of the basic imperialist premises behind modern U.S. foreign policy. Clarke is one of Weinberger's "appalled" "traditional conservatives" - albeit an amazingly well-placed one who knows from incredibly close experience that Bush II is a right-wing threat to democracy of no small order.
"Bush Heavy" is really quite heavy.
Domestic Clarity
The differences between Bush II and Kerry (or almost any other Democratic candidate in 2000 or 2004) are clearesr in the domestic realm. It is impossible, for reasons acknowledged, to be certain that a Democratic White House wouldn't be in the middle of a bloody imperialist foreign policy fiasco (if not an invasion of Iraq) of its own making. We can be quite sure, however, that such a White House would not have introduced Bush II's disastrous, super-plutocratic, and hyper-regressive tax cuts. It would not have intervened against affirmative action at the University of Michigan and it would not be appointing a series of dangerously sexist, racist and anti-civil-libertarian justices to the federal judiciary. It would not be pushing for the crass elimination of overtime protections for workers, advancing privatization of Medicare and Social Security, and seeking the rollback of nearly every environmental regulation it could target. It would not be reaching out to the crypto-fascist Bubbas of the Bible Belt by advancing the stomach-turning project of a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage. It would not be seeking to permanently bankrupt and eliminate nearly all social programs that serve anyone but the super-privileged few - the real and hardly "conservative" Bush II agenda, which seeks nothing less than the shredding of the American social contract.
"Bush Heavy" is heavy indeed.
Cocnentrated Power, God, and the Specter of One-Party Hegemony
Those on the left who want to believe that the differences are insignificant - a position that Ralph Nader rejects, it is worth noting - should tell it to the most truly disadvantaged Americans on the receiving end of the Republicans' worst policies. They should realize that the (yes) all-too- "small" differences between the two finalists in the United States' latest quadrennial presidential (yes) Wealth Primary are (yes) sadly all-too relevant in a system of supremely concentrated and interlocking private, public and military power such as exists in the U.S., with grave implications for all of humanity: in such a system, Noam Chomsky notes, such variations "can translate into large outcomes." They might reflect that a Kerry White House would not be led by a Christian-fundamentalist, crypto-fascist moron - a truly complete "asshole" (as Hugo Chavez has observed) - who appears to believe that his poorly-informed "gut"-level decisions reflect the wishes of God and the spirit of Jesus Christ Our Lord. This last difference is not to be taken lightly given the awesome earthly power granted to those who occupy the oval office. Another factor not to be taken lightly is the specter of single-party Republican control of all three branches of U.S. government for the next generation (see Robert Kuttner, "America as a One-Party State," American Prospect, volume 15 [February 2004], available online at http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/print/V15/ (http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/print/V15/) 2/kuttner-r.html) - a very real threat full of chilling implications in every area of American policy at home and abroad. But then perhaps some among the "Bush is Pepsi, Kerry is Coke" cadre are "backlash" theorists, believers in the toxic and dangerous notion that the way to make things better is to make them incredibly worse.
Circumstances, Choices, and Root Canal
The "Coke-Pepsi" argument would be stronger, of course, if the U.S. left had the slightest prospect of electing their sort of president in the near future. Any credible and honest assessment shows that no such opportunity even remotely exists. Under current U.S. conditions, which include a carefully crafted, corporate-plutocratic/polyarchic "Winner Take All" candidate-selection process that makes successful third-party campaigns next to impossible, the chief immediate electoral role that a genuinely leftist presidential candidate (a Nader) can play is to enhance the victory prospects for the more reactionary, repressive, and reckless of the two business parties.
"I don't like being told," a Howard Dean activist wrote me last winter, "that I have to vote for one of the two business parties." Too bad. As Karl Marx once wrote, "men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given, and transmitted from the past." After asking the activist why he thought Howard Dean was outside the corporate-political duopoly, I responded that I don't like being told that I have to go in for a root canal. I go in anyway because the alternative is just too awful.
Of course, any good dentist will tell you that Coca Cola will rot your teeth, setting you up for root canal and worse. That's why corporate-Coke Kerry is nothing like a solution for what ails the rotting teeth of American democracy. But the solutions - anything but mysterious - are not forthcoming between now and next November. We are left with Mick Jagger's reminder that "you can't always get what you want but if you try sometimes you just might find, you get what you need."
Right now we need to get George W. Bush off the center stage of world history. It doesn't get much more basic than that, does it?
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe. -- My First Summer in the Sierra , 1911, page 110.
John Muir
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Not far enough left....how far is enough??
If they found a copy of Marx in his pocket would that be far enough?
I don't know , other than neither one is good for the country. These two bone heads don't give us much choice, unless you actually believe in Ralph Nader for candidtae :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
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marx....hmm yes
marxism would be a start....true communisim has yet ot exsist..joy peace and loveDon't worry about temptation--as you grow older, it starts avoiding you.
-- Old Farmer's Almanac
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Kaydee Kaydee Kaydee, you are being Facitious right??
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I don't believe joy peace and love are part of the communist manifesto.
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:razz:
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
-- Albert Einstein
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Switching gears during this very dangerous, unstable time in the world would be a big mistake. The Bush Administration may have some serious problems but the reality is, electing a new president, secretary of state, defense et al would create chaos at a time when we can ill afford to drop our guard. Sooner or later, Iraq will be a soverign nation, which I suspect will be right about the time N. Korea rears it's ugly head. I just don't have enough confidence in Kerry as the Magic Bullet and feel it is best to keep Bush in power as the lesser of the 2 evils.
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although I will agree that switching gears during a war is a situation best to be avioded I do not feel comfortable with this administration.
I think Bush both of them in office will just lead to more and more war, more and more military action in places where it is not needed, global "domination" games and things of that nature while real threats breed right under our noses case in point North Korea. I would hate for a 9/11 parallel to be drawn there.
that would suck for lack of a better phrase. while Bush is over in Haiti Iraq Afaganistan....X Y Z and everywhere else for us to get completely snuffed by North Korea and Ashcroft to say some shit like Americans were blinded to North Korea. Uh no...lets get with the program here, containment..preemtion deterrence do somethingMarihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice.
--Hearst newspapers nationwide, 1934
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Ashcroft needs to go, he should never have been appointed Attorney General of the United States of America in the first place. We got rid of that flake Janet Reno only to end up with a pentacostal nutball. What does it take to weed these incompetent bozos out of office? I don't like Bush's born again politics one bit but I think the lessons this administration is learning are vital to fighting the war on terrorism -- not on U.S. soil, but in the host country of the terrorists (e.g. IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN), which was the goal of the Bush Adminstration. Kerry has no real experience as a leader, he is the democrats only option for politicizing terrorism and taking back the White House. I will not vote for Kerry.
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so you are voting for Bush....? there is really only 2 regardless of what we would love to think
if he gets another term you are looking at 3 supreme court justices that he gets to nominate that's a whole lotta religion up in the court
Roe v Wade will be overturned
can you imagine that? civil rights (whatevers left) gone
thats reason alone to vote kerry in
Under the benign influence of our republican institutions, and the maintenance of peace with all nations whilst so many of them were engaged in bloody and wasteful wars, the fruits of a just policy were enjoyed in an unrivaled growth of our faculties and resources.
James Madison
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On 2004-04-13 18:33:00, Anonymous wrote:
" What does it take to weed these incompetent bozos out of office?"
It takes weed....lots and lots of weed. :lol: :lol:
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I know ... the thought of religion taking hold within the highest court of the land is a scary thought. But for me, believing as I do that 9-11 was just a sign of what's to come (more terrorists attacks against Americans on U.S. soil), I feel strongly that Kerry is not qualified to be Commander in Chief. I also don't like his flip-flop politics. At least with Bush, what you see, is what you get, and the world knows that he is not afraid to use force when necessary. What pisses me off is the wussy French, Germans, and Russians who because they "sold out" long ago to Saddam Hussien, can not lend their own military might and money toward controlling terrorism in the Middle East. Begging the United Nations to let America defend ourselves was a joke. 3,000 people dead and we are supposed to ask for permission to protect more Americans from dying? Bullshit.
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On 2004-04-14 10:03:00, Anonymous wrote:
"I know ... the thought of religion taking hold within the highest court of the land is a scary thought. But for me, believing as I do that 9-11 was just a sign of what's to come (more terrorists attacks against Americans on U.S. soil), I feel strongly that Kerry is not qualified to be Commander in Chief. I also don't like his flip-flop politics. At least with Bush, what you see, is what you get, and the world knows that he is not afraid to use force when necessary. What pisses me off is the wussy French, Germans, and Russians who because they "sold out" long ago to Saddam Hussien, can not lend their own military might and money toward controlling terrorism in the Middle East. Begging the United Nations to let America defend ourselves was a joke. 3,000 people dead and we are supposed to ask for permission to protect more Americans from dying? Bullshit. "
Well said my friend
:nworthy: :nworthy:
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But.....
are we going to put yet another puppet government in place that will turn on us in a few years.
We are the ones who put Saddam in power in the 1st place.
We didn't need to sell out to him. We owned him at one point.
Clancy's Law: The perceived role of governments is to deploy ever increasing resources to the attainment of ever diminishing end results.
--Home Page (http://ozinfo.com/)
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Saddam Hussein
After becoming President in January 1989, Prescott Bush's son, George Herbert Walker Bush - father of our current President - authorized a series of programs that not only armed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein but also provided him with technology that assisted in his development of chemical weapons like Sarin gas, and biological weapons, which he still possesses. Apologists for Bush (the elder) say that, after the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s left the region unstable, he was just trying to establish a new balance of power. Not so. Bush directives and policies, including relationships with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the Banca Nacional del Lavoro (BNL) were directly and deliberately responsible for creating the army the U.S. fought in 1991.
A story by Russ W. Baker, in the March/April issue the Colombia Journalism Review (CJR), provided the most compelling overview of Iraqgate that I have seen.
"ABC News Nightline opened last June 9 with words to make the heart stop 'It is becoming increasingly clear,' said a grave Ted Koppel, "that George Bush, operating largely behind the scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam's Iraq into the aggressive power that the United States ultimately had to destroy"
"Why, then, have some of our top papers provided so little coverage?" Baker poignantly asks.
" The result: readers who neither grasp nor care about the facts behind facile imagery like The Butcher of Baghdad and Operation Desert Storm. In particular, readers who do not follow the story of the Banca Nacional del Lavoro, which apparently served as a paymaster for Saddam's arms buildup, and thus became a player in the largest bank-fraud case in U.S. history.
"Complex, challenging, mind-boggling stories (from Iran-Contra to the S&L crisis to BCCI) increasingly define our times: yet we don't appear to be getting any better at telling themÉ
"Much of what Saddam received from the West was not arms per se, but so-called dual-use technology -- ultra sophisticated computers, armored ambulances, helicopters, chemicals, and the like, with potential civilian uses as well as military applications. We've learned that a vast network of companies, based in the U.S. and abroad, eagerly fed the Iraqi war machine right up until August 1990, when Saddam invaded Kuwait.
"And we've learned that the obscure Atlanta Branch of Italy's largest bank, Banca Nacional del Lavoro, relying partly on U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed loans, funneled $5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989. Some government-backed loans were supposed to be for agricultural purposes, but were used to facilitate the purchase of stronger stuff than wheat. Federal Reserve and Agriculture department memos warned of suspected abuses by Iraq, which apparently took advantage of the loans to free up funds for munitions. U.S. taxpayers have been left holding the bag for what looks like $2 billion in defaulted loans to Iraq.
"In fact, we now know that in February 1990, then Attorney General Dick Thornburgh [appointed by George H.W. Bush] blocked U.S. investigators from traveling to Rome and Istanbul to pursue the case
"As New York Times columnist William Safire argued last December 7, Iraqgate is uniquely horrendous: a scandal about the Systematic abuse of power by misguided leaders of three democratic nations [The U.S., Britain, and Italy] to secretly finance the arms buildup of a dictator."
While Democrat Henry Gonzales, Chairman of the House Banking Committee during the period, stood as the lone voice from the wilderness in raising alarms about Bush's obvious corruption, the rest of the Congress sheepishly ignored all the signs demanding immediate action. Gonzales' voice reportedly fell silent after his empty car was machine-gunned in a Washington suburb in what passed for a drive-by shooting.
The CJR continues: "Meanwhile, The Village Voice published a major investigation by free-lancer Murray Waas in its December 18, 1990 issue "That American troops could be killed or maimed because of a covert decision to arm Iraq,' Waas wrote, "is the most serious consequence of a U.S. foreign policy formulated and executed in secret, without the advice and consent of the American public"
The L.A. Times, on Feb 23, 1992, dug deep enough to find secret National Security Decision Directives by the Bush Administration in 1989 ordering closer ties with Baghdad and paving the way for $1 billion in new aid. The Times' series, co-authored with Waas, emphasized that, "buried deep in a 1991 Washington Press piece - that Secretary of State James Baker, after meeting with Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz in October 1989, intervened personally to support U.S. government loans guarantees to Iraq."
Baker's CJR report also noted, "On October 3, the [Wall Street] Journal reported [BNL official Christopher] Drogoul's assertion that the director general of Iraq's Ministry of Industry and Military Production had told him, We are all in this together. The intelligence service of the U.S. government works very closely with the intelligence service of the Iraqi government.' Three weeks later, the Journal reported that [Henry] Gonzales Ôproduced a phone-book-sized packet of documents' showing the involvement of U.S. exporting firms The documents mentioned one which designed parts for Iraq's howitzers and was financed through BNL"
In the wake of highly suspicious anthrax outbreaks in Florida, just miles from where several of the WTC suicides pilots trained, we add one final note. In his 1998 book "Bringing the War Home" author William Thomas writes, " Under that same [weapons transfer] program, 19 containers of Anthrax bacteria were supplied to Iraq in 1988 by the American Type Culture Collection company, located near Fort Detrick, MD, the site of the US Army's high security germ warfare labs."
The Carlyle Group, the Bushes and bin Laden
The warnings about the Carlyle Group, the nation's 11th largest defense contractor, and the Bushes came long before the World Trade Center attacks. The Carlyle Group is a closely held corporation, exempt, for that reason, from reporting its affairs to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Little is known of what it actually does except that it buys and sells defense contractors. As of October 4, 2001, it has removed its corporate web site from the World Wide Web making further investigation through that channel impossible. Its Directors include Frank Carlucci, former Reagan Secretary of Defense; James Baker, former Bush Secretary of State; and Richard Darman, a former White House aide to Ronald Reagan and Republican Party operative.
On March 3, 2001, just weeks after George W Bush's inauguration, the conservative Washington lobbying group Judicial Watch issued a press release. It said:
"(Washington, D.C.) Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes government abuse and corruption, called on former President George Herbert Walker Bush to resign immediately from the Carlyle Group, a private investment firm, while his son President George W. Bush is in office. Today's New York Times reported that the elder Bush is an "ambassador" for the $12 billion private investment firm and last year traveled to the Middle East on its behalf. The former president also helped the firm in South Korea.
"The New York Times reported that as compensation, the elder Bush is allowed to buy a stake in the Carlyle Group's investments, which include ownership in at least 164 companies throughout the world (thereby by giving the current president an indirect benefit). James Baker, the former Secretary of State who served as President George W. Bush's point man in Florida's election dispute, is a partner in the firm. The firm also gave George W. Bush help in the early 1990's when it placed him on one of its subsidiary's board of directors.
"This is simply inappropriate. Former President Bush should immediately resign from the Carlyle Group because it is an obvious conflict of interest. Any foreign government or foreign investor trying to curry favor with the current Bush Administration is sure to throw business to the Carlyle Group. And with the former President Bush promoting the firm's investments abroad, foreign nationals could understandably confuse the Carlyle Group's interests with the interests of the United States government," stated Larry Klayman, Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel.
"Questions are now bound to be raised if the recent Bush Administration change in policy towards Iraq has the fingerprints of the Carlyle Group, which is trying to gain investments from other Arab countries who [sic] would presumably benefit from the new policy," stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton."
Judicial Watch noted that "even the Clinton Administration called on the Rodham brothers to stop their business dealings in [The former Soviet Republic of] Georgia because those dealings started to destabilize that country."
Since the WTC attacks the Wall Street Journal has reported (Sept. 28, 2001) that, "George H.W. Bush, the father of President Bush, works for the bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia through the Carlyle Group, an international consulting firm." The senior Bush had met with the bin Laden family at least twice in the last three years - 1998 and 2000 -- as a representative of Carlyle, seeking to expand business dealings with one of the wealthiest Saudi families, which some experts argue, has never fully severed its ties with black sheep Osama in spite of current reports in a mainstream press that is afraid of offending the current administration.
The Nation, on March 27, 2000 - in a story co-authored by David Corn and Paul Lashmar - wrote, "In January former President George Bush and former British Prime Minister John Major paid a social call on Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdullah" This story confirms at least one meeting between the elder Bush and Saudi leaders, including the bin Ladens. That the bin Ladens attended this meeting was confirmed in a subsequent September 27, 2001 Wall Street Journal (WSJ) story. The January 2000 meeting with the bin Ladens was also later confirmed by Bush (the elder's) Chief of Staff Jean Becker, only after the WSJ presented her with a thank you note sent by Bush to the bin Ladens after that meeting.
James Baker visited the bin Ladens in 1998 and 1999 with Carlyle CEO Frank Carlucci.
The WSJ story went on to note, "A Carlyle executive said that the bin Laden family committed $2 million through a London investment arm in 1995 in Carlyle Partners II Fund, which raised $1.3 billion overall. The fund has purchased several aerospace companies among 29 deals. So far, the family has received $1.3 million back in completed investments and should ultimately realize a 40% annualized rate of return, the Carlyle executive said.
"But a foreign financier with ties to the bin Laden family says the family's overall investment with Carlyle is considerably larger"
In other words, Osama bin Laden's attacks on the WTC and Pentagon, with the resulting massive increase in the U.S. defense budget have just made his family a great big pile of money.
More Bush connections appear in relation to the bin Ladens. The WSJ story also notes that, "During the past several years, the [bin Laden] family's close ties to the Saudi royal family prompted executives and staff from closely held New York publisher Forbes, Inc. to make two trips to the family headquarters, according to Forbes Chairman Caspar Weinberger, a former U.S. Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration. We would call on them to get their view of the country and what would be of interest to investors.'"
President G.H.W. Bush pardoned Weinberger for his criminal conduct in the Iran-Contra scandal in 1989.
Our current President, George W. Bush has also had -- at minimum -- indirect dealings with Carlyle and the bin Ladens. In 1976 his firm Arbusto Energy was funded with $50,000 from Texas investment banker James R. Bath who was also the U.S. investment counselor for the bin Laden family. In his watershed 1992 book, "The Mafia, The CIA and George Bush," award winning Texas investigative journalist Pete Brewton dug deeply into Bath's background, revealing connections with the CIA and major fraudulent activities connected with the Savings & Loan scandal that took $500 billion out of the pockets of American taxpayers. A long-time friend of George W. Bush, Bath was connected to a number of covert financing operations in the Iran-Contra scandal, which also linked to bin Laden friend Adnan Khashoggi. One of the richest men in the world, Khashoggi was the arms merchant at the center of the whole Iran-Contra scandal. Khashoggi, whose connections to the bin Ladens is more than superficial, got his first business break by acting as middle-man for a large truck purchase by Osama bin Laden's older brother, Salem.
Another key player in the Bush Administration, Deputy Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage, left his post as an Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration after a series of scandals connected to CIA operatives Ed Wilson, Ted Shackley, Richard Secord and Tom Clines placed him at the brink of criminal indictment and jail. Shackley and Secord are veterans of Vietnam operations and have long been linked to opium/heroin smuggling. The Armitage scandals all focused on the illegal provision of weapons and war materiel to potential or actual enemies of the U.S. and to the Contras in Central America.
Armitage, a former Navy SEAL, who reportedly enjoyed combat missions and killing during covert operations in Laos during the Vietnam War, has never been far from the Bush family's side. Throughout his career, both in and out of government, he has been perpetually connected to CIA drug smuggling operations. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in a 1995 Washington Post story, called Armitage, "my white son." In 1990, then President Bush dispatched Armitage to Russia to aid in its "transition" to capitalism. Armitage's Russian work for Bush has been frequently connected to the explosion of drug trafficking under the Russian Mafias, which became virtual rulers of the nation afterwards. In the early 1990s Armitage had extensive involvement in Albania at the same time that the Albanian ally, Kosovo Liberation Army was coming to power and consolidating its grip, according to The Christian Science Monitor, on 70% of the heroin entering western Europe. [See FTW Vol. II, No 2 - April 24, 1999]
Armitage and Carlucci are both Board Members of the influential Washington think tank, the Middle East Policy Council.
The connections continue with Vice President Dick Cheney. Amongst the multitude of oil pipeline construction running through the new war zone is one project - according to a Sept. 19, 2001 Wall Street Journal story - a joint venture in which the bin Laden family joined with the construction firm H.C. Price. A researcher named "Phoenix," writing for the Internet news site Rumor Mills News Agency located at http://www.rumormillnews.com (http://www.rumormillnews.com), reported that Price subsequently changed its name to Bredero Shaw, Inc. and is now owned by a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation, Dresser Industries. It was Dresser industries that gave George H.W. Bush his first post war job in 1948. A check of the relevant corporate web sites has confirmed this.
Vice President Dick Cheney, who served as Secretary of Defense during Desert Storm, directing the campaign against Saddam Hussein, was Halliburton's CEO until last year's election.
And, according to a 2000 story from Harper's Magazine, in 1990 our current President, through a position as a corporate director of Caterair, owned by the Carlyle Group - at a time when the bin Laden's were invested in Carlyle - had additional connections to the bin Laden family. In addition, on March 1, 1995, when George W. Bush was Texas governor and a senior Trustee of the university, the University of Texas Endowment voted to place $10 million in investments with the Carlyle Group. As to how much of that money went to the bin Ladens we can only guess. But we do know that there is a long tradition in the Bush family of giving money to those who kill Americans.
Now, as the people of America are beginning to awaken to what is really being unleashed upon them, as a few brave souls are asking who's going to get all the money the Bush Administration is "borrowing" from government coffers and who's going to pay for it - the above history is more than ominous.
Considering that during the 1980s, under the pretext of fighting a Sandinista regime in Nicaragua that never once launched an attack on the U.S., these same people oversaw an explosion in U.S. cocaine consumption that went from 80 metric tons in 1979 to 600 metric tons in 1989 - considering that the CIA trained and equipped death squads that tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of people from Guatemala to Panama - considering that these same people have brutalized Iraq, leaving portions of it radioactively contaminated by depleted uranium for the next 4 billion years and causing a fivefold increase in the number of childhood leukemia cases amidst a starving population, one can only wonder what they will produce for the world now given the context of the World Trade Center attacks.
For the community to have 10% to 25% of its men unable to vote or unable to access credit or other privileges of citizenship for the rest of their lives in some states creates a permanently diminished
group within society.
Jeremy Travis, Urban Institute
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don't lock the doors bar the windows and be right in the house with the scariest person of them all.
It really puzzles me to see Marijuana connected with Narcotics - Dope and all that crap?it's a thousand times better than whiskey - it's an Assistant - a friend.
Louis Armstrong
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Countrys we help usually do turn on us, hey Clinton sold satellite and missle technology to China that he never should , in fact it was boarder line treasonous. Wait til we see the total out come of that, we havent yet but we will and it won't be pretty.
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Clintion did that to try to avoid a re-instatment of the arms race, one of the few things I actually agree with. Bush is moving in the opposite direction. Did you read that stuff up there thats not helping!
The last struggles of a great superstition are very frequently the worst.
--Andrew Dickson
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I was watching GW last night on tv talking about how the world is a safer place by virtue of all of the US/UN military actions because free people are hopeful people.
That's a nice theory. It sounds good. It appeals to the best intentions and tradition of Ameican love of liberty. But it just doesn't pan out that way in reality. Is No Korea free, hopeful and happy? How about Vietnam? What about Haiti and Nicaragua and Bolivia? Or any country or region in w/ our military has tried to effect liberty by way of carpet bombing and political assasination.
Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will [America's] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
--John Quincy Adams, Speech to the U.S. House of Representatives [July 4, 1821]
I think he was onto something there!
Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.
--James Madison
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A lot of what you expressed is true, but speaking on North Korea, where I spent 6 of 16 months there in Panmujon on the DMZ. They are not happy they are opressed because of their government. We are there to protect South Korea at their goverments request.
North Korea president Kim Jong-il is a sick man that will eventually try to make a name for himself by lobbing bombs in South Korea or Japan, he is a time bomb waiting to explode. When things like that happen our country is typically called by goverments to get involved. If we turned our backs closed our borders and refused to play , there would be a out cry from the UN, NATO and other countrys for our help. we have pushed our way into many situations uninvited..true but more so at the invitation and or request of others.[ This Message was edited by: thepatriot on 2004-04-14 11:55 ]
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Yeah, well the Butcher of Bagdhad is going to face trial for unspeakable crimes against countless people in his own country. His murdering, raping sons got blown to smithereens and that is a hell of a victory compared to Clinton's bombing of Afghanistan which severly injured a camel and blew up an aspirin factory.
Second, Clinton should have been tried for treason for doing what he did with the Chinese, along with Gore, for taking soft money.
No saints in politics, that's for sure, but at this point in the game, it is imperative that Americans stand united, because divided we will surely fail.
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On 2004-04-14 14:54:00, Anonymous wrote:
it is imperative that Americans stand united, because divided we will surely fail.
Every seven years or so, lemmings breed w/ remarkable success and their numbers are increased by orders of magnitude. Every seven years, some certain number of the ones at the head of the pack decide it's a good idea to find out if lemings can fly yet and they throw themselves over a cliff. Every damned time, the lemings behind them remain united behind their leader and prove, once again, that lemings can't fly.
Standing united is only a good idea when you're united behind a worthy cause. If you think the people who brought us Social Security should be entrusted w/ ruling the world, by all means stand united behind the US Federal Government, whatever they decide to do. I think they're headed in the wrong direction and it is not only the right, but the responsibility for all good Americans to withhold support when our selected leaders are doing the wrong thing.
The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.
--Thomas Jefferson
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Patriot, I think the only hold Kim Jong-il ever had on No. Korea was the perceived need to protect No. Korea from the horrors of American "aid" as they experienced it in the `50's.
What would Kim Jong-il be but a spoiled little rich playboy w/o the treat of Western Imperialsim to rally his people against? What would Büsh be in the coming election (but dog food) w/o the terrorist threat to rally behind?
As de dawg chases his tail, all this business about war and nation building is for wealthy, insular lunatics who will never bury a son due to their high minded plans. The rest of us should quit supporting their delusions and get back to the business of living the ideals embodied in our Constitution right here at home.
The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.
-- Muhammad Ali
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As long as there are people in the world willing to kill in the name of Allah or any other God they worship, there will be terror.
The pre-emptive strike on Iraq was tactically correct, for the obvious reason that this nation could not afford another "sucker punch" claiming tens of hundreds (if not thousands) of lives.
What happens next is anybody's guess but I for one, have no intention of voting for an unproven leader like Kerry.
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Kerry is a decorated vietnam veteran he is not exactly ignorant to the world
is George Bush?
hmmm I think they are still trying to figure out where he was AWOL Just because you do not take an interest in politics, doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.
PERICLES (430 BC)
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On 2004-04-14 20:42:00, kaydeejaded wrote:
"Kerry is a decorated vietnam veteran he is not exactly ignorant to the world
is George Bush?
hmmm I think they are still trying to figure out where he was AWOL Just because you do not take an interest in politics, doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.
PERICLES (430 BC)
"
The following was sent to a Marine chat net by a retired Marine Master Sergeant who was in S-2, 3rd Bn, 1st Marines, Korea in 1954. It calls into serious question John Kerry's military actions in Vietnam. We present it to give our readers another perspective to the media's one-sided "war hero" adulation, and to open his actions to the light of public discourse. -- The Editors.
"I was in the Delta shortly after John Kerry left. I know that area well. I know the operations he was involved in well. I know the tactics and the doctrine used, and I know the equipment. Although I was attached to CTF-116 (PBRs) I spent a fair amount of time with CTF-115 (swift boats), Kerry's command.
Here are my problems and suspicions:
(1) Kerry was in-country less than four months and collected a Bronze Star, a Silver Star, and three Purple Hearts. I never heard of anybody with any outfit I worked with (including SEAL One, the Sea Wolves, Riverines and the River Patrol Force) collecting that much hardware that fast, and for such pedestrian actions. The Swifts did a commendable job, but that duty wasn't the worst you could draw. They operated only along the coast and in the major rivers (Bassac and Mekong). The rough stuff in the hot areas was mainly handled by the smaller, faster PBRs.
(2) He collected three Purple Hearts but has no limp. All his injuries were so minor that he lost no time from duty. Amazing luck. Or he was putting himself in for medals every time he bumped his head on the wheel house hatch? Combat on the boats were almost always at close range. You didn't have minor wounds, at least not often. Not three times in a row. Then he used the three Purple Hearts to request a trip home eight months before the end of his tour. Fishy.
(3) The details of the event for which he was given the Silver Star make no sense at all. Supposedly, a B-40 was fired at the boat and missed. Charlie jumps up with the launcher in his hand, the bow gunner knocks him down with the twin .50, Kerry beaches the boat, jumps off, shoots Charlie, and retreives the launcher. If true, he did everything wrong.
(a) Standard procedure when you took rocket fire was to put your stern to the action and go balls to the wall. A B-40 has the ballistic integrity of a frisbie after about 25 yards, so you put 50 yards or so between you and the beach and begin raking it with your .50's.
(b) Did you ever see anybody get knocked down with a .50 caliber round and get up? The guy was dead or dying. The rocket launcher was empty. There was no reason to go after him (except if you knew he was no danger to you just flopping around in the dust during his last few seconds on earth, and you wanted some derring-do in your after-action report). And we didn't shoot wounded people. We had rules against that, too.
(c) Kerry got off the boat. This was a major breach of standing procedures. Nobody on a boat crew ever got off a boat in a hot area. EVER! The reason was simple: If you had somebody on the beach, your boat was defenseless. It coudn't run and it couldn' t return fire. It was stupid and it put his crew in danger. He should have been relieved and reprimanded. I never heard of any boat crewman ever leaving a boat during or after a firefight.
Something is fishy.
Here we have a JFK wannabe (the guy Halsey wanted to court martial for carelessly losing his boat and getting a couple people killed by running across the bow of a Japanese destroyer) who is hardly in Vietnam long enough to get good tan, collects medals faster than Audie Murphy in a job where lots of medals weren't common, gets sent home eight months early and requests separation from active duty a few months after that so he can run for Congress. In that election, he finds out war heroes don't sell well in Massachsetts in 1970, so he reinvents himself as Jane Fonda, throws his ribbons in the dirt with the cameras running to jump start his political career, gets Stillborn Pell to invite him to address Congress and has Bobby Kennedy's speechwriter to do the heavy lifting. A few years later he winds up in the Senate himself, where he votes against every major defense bill and says the CIA is irrelevant after the Berlin Wall came down. He votes against the Gulf War (a big political mistake since that turned out well), then decides not to make the same mistake twice so votes for invading Iraq -- but that didn't fare as well with the Democrats, so he now says he really didn't mean for Bush to go to war when he voted to allow him to go to war.
I'm real glad you or I never had this guy covering our flanks in Vietnam. I sure don't want him as Commander-in-Chief. I hope that somebody from CTF-115 shows up with some facts challenging Kerry's Vietnam record. I know in my gut it's wildy inflated."
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Why is it that the Democrat power-brokers hope Kerry DOESN'T win the election? Because Hillary Clinton has a better chance of winning the presidency in 2008 if Bush is re-elected.
Think about it, Kerry is only where he is because of the size of his campaign fund war-chest. The real favorite of the Democratic Party is Senator Clinton. If Kerry wins and manages not to make any major mistakes, Clinton won't stand a chance.
:smile:
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Man this guy's scary. Polls this weekend (3/20) had Bush and Kerry at 48% each, and when Nader was facctored in, I think it was something like 48% Bush, 43% Kerry and 5% Nader.
John Kerry says he is strong on defense, BUT
He voted to kill the Bradley Fighting Vehicle
He voted to kill the M-1 Abrams Tank
He voted to kill every Aircraft carrier laid down from 1988
He voted to kill the Aegis anti aircraft system
He voted to Kill the F-15 strike eagle
He voted to Kill the Block 60 F-16
He voted to Kill the P-3 Orion upgrade
He voted to Kill the B-1
He voted to Kill the B-2
He voted to Kill the Patriot anti Missile system
He voted to Kill the FA-18
He voted to Kill the B-2
He voted to Kill the F117
In short, he voted to kill every military appropriation for
the development and deployment of every weapons systems
since 1988 to include the battle armor! for our troops.
With Kerry as president our Army will be made up of naked
men running around with sticks and clubs.
He also voted to kill all anti terrorism activities of
every agency of the U.S. Government and to cut the
funding of the FBI by 60%, to cut the funding for
the CIA by 80%, and cut the funding for the NSA by 80%.
But then he voted to increase OUR funding for U.N
operations by 800%!!!
Is THIS a President YOU want?
Voting history can be accessed through Senate records
Here's more...
Former US Navy Lt. Kerry has the veteran vote
after he answers these questions:
LIKE MOST Vietnam War Veterans and Cold War Veterans, I am willing to forgive and forget. In fact, since former LCDR John McCain has forgiven the Vietnamese commies, I surely have no right to carry around anger about the Vietnam War and how it ended. But as you keep bringing it up in every speech you make "I am a Vietnam War Veteran" and "I won the Silver Star" I must ask a few questions. As we are both US Navy Vietnam War veterans and you were a commissioned officer and I was a petty officer I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, so please answer the following and I will quietly and respectfully listen to your answers;
Question number 1--Will you like President Bush release your service and medical records? Or do you want to hide the fact that you were only scratched and got 3 purple hearts to cut your combat zone tour to only 4 months? If you don't want to answer the question, simply lift up your shirt sleeve and show us a scar or two. What? No scars at all but 3 Purple Hearts permitted you and you demanded that your tour of duty be cut short by 2/3rds? Regulations require that to be awarded the Purple Heart you must be treated by a Medical Officer but that your "wounds" were so slight (if any) that you never saw a Medical Officer. One of your shipmates says that a wound was "self inflicted." You say in every speech that you are a "Vietnam War Veteran" and that President Bush only served in the National Guard and imply that the President is a draft dodger. But isn't it true that you are a FAILED draft dodger, having asked your draft board for a one year deferment so you could visit Paris and when they refused you, you joined the Navy. And while in the Navy didn't you take swift boat duty because you thought you would see little or no action. However, AFTER you were assigned, Admiral Zumwalt put those units into more direct combat roles.
Question number 2--Did you receive a Silver Star for chasing and killing a Vietnamese who was already wounded (or already killed) by another swift boat crewman? Did you get the Silver Star based on the Action Report that you wrote and the "action" that you alone witnessed? If you get a Silver Star for killing an enemy, wouldn't every soldier, sailor and marine who killed an enemy soldier also be entitled to wear a Silver Star? If you killed a wounded and helpless Vietnamese isn't that murder and not combat? Isn't what you did-the same act as what Lt. Calley committed- and he faced a court martial and was convicted? Your gunner's mate says that you were a coward and ran from the enemy. Another says that you've abandoned your shipmates until you needed them to dress up your campaign 35 years after the war.
Picture: Former US Navy Lt. John Forbes Kerry, directing mass demonstration in April 1971 in Washington DC, viewed by the world and encouraging our enemies as American servicemen were dying daily in Vietnam.
Didn't you throw your Silver Star back at the US Government in protest for our fight against worldwide communism. You've said that those were your medals...then you said they were someone else's medals...then you said that you threw your RIBBONS but NOT your medals and now we see your self awarded "Silver Star" proudly on display in your office. Is the Silver Star on display one that you bought at the gedunk (ship's store) or did you lie to us about throwing your medals away? Isn't your self awarded Silver Star for putting a bullet into a fleeing wounded (or already dead) enemy and your three Purple Hearts for self admitted scratches that took you out of action for ONE DAY an insult to every veteran?
Question number 3--While a US Navy commissioned officer did you commit a court-martial offense by repeatedly disobeying orders and putting your unarmoured swift boat and its crew in danger by beaching it in combat, killing unarmed civilians and children and/or killing wounded and helpless enemy combatants? What did Admiral Zumwalt mean when he said "I don't know if I should give Lt. Kerry a medal or a court martial for all the civilians he's killed. I want to put a straight jacket on Lt. Kerry." If you were Commander in Chief but had no "boss" would you also act out of control but have no one to put you in a "straight jacket?"
Question number 4--After your active duty in the Navy did you fulfill your Navy Reserve obligations or ignore them and devote all your time to anti American demonstrations which emboldened our enemy to eventually win the war? Because you encouraged our enemy when American fighting men were still in the field, can you give us a number of how many American soldiers, sailors and Marines you are responsible for killing? Why does LTC Oliver North say, "John Kerry has blood of American soldiers on his hands."
Question number 5 When you returned from Vietnam, you labeled all other Vietnam Veterans war criminals. You made these claims under oath. Were you lying then, or are you lying now? You attended your first pro Viet Cong rally and marched under the communist flag on October 15, 1969 when you were still on active duty in the US Navy. Would you call that treason? Were you wearing your US Navy dogtags, carrying a US Navy ID card and still obligated by the oath you took to "support and defend the United States" as you encouraged our enemy to continue to kill our soldiers, marines and sailors on the battle fields of southeast Asia?
Question number 6 You associated yourself with Hanoi Jane Fonda, an avowed Communist who supported North Vietnam. Hanoi Jane stated that our prisoners were LYING when they claimed to have been tortured by the Vietnamese. Do you believe former LCDR John MCCain to be a liar?
Question number 7 Have you condemned Jane Fonda and asked her not to support your campaign? In his 1985 memoir about the war, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap wrote that "if it weren't for organizations like Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Hanoi would have surrendered to the U.S." The Department of Justice was set to charge Jane Fonda with treason, but the President stopped that action so the country could heal after our Vietnamese allies were slaughtered. Was the Justice Department set to charge you with treason as well? What did Hanoi Jane mean when she called you "a hero?" Did she mean you were an American hero for killing Vietnamese civilians? Or, did she mean that you are a Viet Cong or Communist Vietnam "hero" for helping them win the war. Picture: Kerry sitting behind "Hanoi" Jane Fonda at antiwar rally.
Question number 8 You wrote a book entitled The New Soldier where the cover MOCKS the Iwo Jima memorial with scruffy men "raising" an upside-down United States flag.
7,000 Marines DIED at Iwo Jima including three from the famous photo you Mock. Do you care to apologize to the 7,000 families of those Marines? During the Vietnam War why did you encourage American soldiers and sailors to desert in your book THE NEW SOLDIER and in your speeches. As our Commander in Chief would desertion during wartime be "ok" with you?
Question number 9 You have stated that going into the National Guard was like running off to Canada. Tens of thousands of Guardsmen served in Vietnam, several thousand gave their lives...do you care to apologize? Didn't you try to avoid Vietnam service by asking for a one year vacation from the draft board so you could go to Paris in the hopes the war would be over by the time you returned to your county at war? Lt. Bush flew a F102. Many of the men who flew F102s were killed in them. Would you care to explain how risking your life to fly a fighter plane is cowardly--explain this to the widows and their children? The F102 was tasked with meeting and shooting down Soviet bombers coming to the USA by flying over Canada to destroy US cities and military installations. Surely as Lt. Bush would shoot them they would be trying to shoot and kill Lt. Bush. Please explain the cowardice in Lt. Bush's military service? In your mind is engaging the enemy "over Canada" the same as "fleeing to Canada?" Also, wasn't Lt. Bush risking his life in the early 1970's when you were at the very same time "protesting" the war, encouraging our enemies and calling us sailors, soldiers and veterans "war criminals?"
Question number 10 You have stated you would turn the decision on deployment of US troops over to the United Nations and OPPOSED the death penalty even for terrorists who murder Americans. How would you win the war on terrorism given your stated positions? You state that you voted for the war but now state that you were only voting for the "process" of the UN putting pressure on Iraq. Please show us in the vote the word "process." Also explain why 99 other US Senators could not find the word "process" in the bill they voted on. Finally, please explain how we are to believe anything you say, or ever said, and how you are a member of our "band of brothers" after you called us all war criminals and after you gave aid and comfort to our enemy while still in the US Navy and betrayed all soldiers, sailors and Marines who served their country honorably? Picture: Author, USS Yorktown, USS Kearsarge
at Yankee Station off coast of North Vietnam 1968, 1969
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Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who has called for full-disclosure of rivals' tax returns, now faces growing pressure to release his wife's records.
But in a Tax Day controversy, Teresa Heinz Kerry is personally determined to keep her returns out of public view -- at any cost!
"This is my life, my business, not John's," Mrs. Kerry recently explained to a campaign staffer, a top source tells the DRUDGE REPORT. "I think it is very important to keep the privacy zone. There is a tradition of this."
GHOST OF FERRARO
Top Kerry campaign staffers fear Heinz Kerry will not be able to hold back calls for a public release, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
Staffers have been studying the '84 presidential campaign, when former Dem VP Candidate Geraldine Ferraro conceded release of her husband's tax returns, but only after an excruciating media fight!
Ferraro said that when she asked her husband, John Zaccaro, to release the returns his reaction was, "I won't tell you how to run the country and don't you tell me how to run my business."
Asked by reporters why Zaccaro was opposed to releasing his tax return, she said, "He feels his business interests would be affected."
That summer, a NEW YORK TIMES editorial hit Ferraro for refusing to disclose her husband's returns: "Disclosing tax returns, as originally promised, would not amount to telling Mr. Zaccaro how to run his business."
HEINZ ASSETS USED TO BOOST CAMPAIGN
In December '03, Kerry announced that he loaned his campaign $6.4 Million by mortgaging a share of a Boston home he jointly owns with his wife.
Teresa Heinz Kerry paid cash for the Beacon Hill mansion in January 1995.
But according To Kerry's own 1994 senate personal financial disclosure [signed May, 15, 1995], Kerry's own personal net worth was somewhere between a negative $130,000 to positive $34,995.
The current loan on the house carries an annual interest payment of $200,000, records show, more than Kerry's $158,000 Senate salary.
Kerry's campaign insists he intends to pay off the 30-year mortgage himself.
"Sen. Kerry is a man who has considerable assets," spokesman Michael Meehan explains.
But Kerry's own financial disclosures show no assets sufficient to pay the loan -- or even a way to keep up with the interest payments!
KERRY: CLEAR THE AIR
Besides a blurring of Heinz-Kerry assets, the campaign is also wresting with past quotes made by Kerry himself.
In his 1990 Senate race, Kerry asked his challenger to "clear the air" by releasing tax returns.
"I think people want to know whether someone they possibly might send to Washington to represent them in the Senate is someone who pays their fair share of taxes,'" Kerry said. "Why is James Rappaport hiding his tax returns?" Kerry asked. "Why is it some people can live up to that standard and he can't? It seems to me that he ought to be able to release those returns and clear the air...
"Why doesn't he just release them? What is he hiding?"
And at the height of last year's primary race, Kerry vowed that "openness" would be the "hallmark" of his administration.
"As president, openness will be the hallmark of my administration, not some talking point... The highest office in the land requires the highest level of openness for the American people."