Smearing a Hero

Open Letter To President Bush:

You have brought continuing shame upon our country when you and your denizens, Mr. Cheney, congressmen and senators, attack a true American patriot, Rep. Murtha, the way you have. Even when you back off for fear of retribution from the American citizenry, you turn loose your dogs of hate to smear this retired Marine. Whether a Republican, Democrat or Independent, we the American people are tired of these lying attack tactics that have been used by your administration whenever someone disagrees with you. Shame on the man that calls himself President and acts like Chancellor Hitler.

Intelligent(?) Design Thinking

Letter to the New York Post:

Dear Editor:

I cannot believe the letters that you published in the OnLine edition under the heading Evolution of Education. The letters show that religious fanatics are pushing for intelligent design (creationism in sheeps clothing) and claim that evolution is not true science because it can not be repeated. Brilliant thinking. Guess that means that their belief in Jesus is not true because it is not repeatable and hasn't repeated in 2,000 years. Of course that would be as dumb as claiming that evolution can't be repeated, and I would be lowering myself to their level of ignorance.

Scorecard

Dear Editor:

In defense of their being accused of misleading America into the war in Iraq, either intentionally or unintentionally, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are pointing out the fact that the Clinton Administration had the same intelligence reports that the present administration had. They are absolutely right. But, in the words of a famous radio commentator, let’s look at “The rest of the story.”

President Clinton and his White House staff were smart enough to search for the truth in the intelligence reports they were receiving about Iraq. They did not invade that country. Mr. Bush and company (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Rice, Libby, and Wolfowitz) led us into a pre-emptive, disastrous war in Iraq that still has no end in sight.

Let’s look at the scorecard on America in Iraq:

Clinton: Americans killed-Zero
Americans wounded-Zero
Bush: Americans killed-2,076 and counting
Americans wounded-Over 10,000 and counting.

All this from the “same information” according to Bush and Cheney.

Ignorance?

Letter to the Houston Chronicle

Dear Editor:

In the column of November 16th by Cragg Hines titled Bush flies off to Far East, looking over his shoulder, he writes about Mr. Bush misleading America and the reasons for going to war against Iraq, “Which is worse, that he misled intentionally or unintentionally?”

While I agree with Mr. Hines that these are two very good possibilities, I also think that there is a third possibility that he has overlooked, namely: pure stubborn ignorance. After watching five years of Mr. Bush’s performance in office I think this is a very real possibility.

Who's To Blame?

Dear Editor:

I think we should congratulate and thank the Kansas School Board for their vote to back “Intelligent Design” in the state’s schools. At least now I know I have a higher power to blame for poverty, war, weapons of mass destruction, global warming, and political corruption, to name a few ills in the world. It’s good to know that we humans didn’t “evolve” into stupidity and ignorance; we were created that way with “intelligent design.”

Torture Leak Investigation

Letter to the Washington Post

November 8, 2005

Dear Editor:

So now Majority Leader Sen. Frist (R-TN) and Speaker of the House Rep. Hastert (R-Ill) are off on a new crusade for an investigation into who leaked the story to the Washington Post about the treatment of detainees and the use of so-called "black sites" in Eastern Europe and elsewhere by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Are they interested in the fact that U.S. “black planes” are used to ferry suspects to foreign countries to be tortured? NO! Are they interested in the fact that we as a country are in violation of Geneva Conventions that we are signatories of? NO! Are they interested in the fact that the Vice-President of the United States has lobbied the Senate (and since denied) to give the CIA an exemption to allow it to torture prisoners? NO! Are they interested in the fact that the whole world knows of our two-faced approach to torture that condemns others who do just like we do? NO!

Sen. Frist and Rep. Hastert are only interested in who let the cat out of the bag and made the administration look bad. They don’t care how badly and immorally we treat prisoners at “black sites”. Evidently they just want to take the heat off the investigation that is overtaking the White House involving Libby, Rove, and Cheney. Politics first, morality second.

U.S. Torture

Did everyone hear the news?

Mr. Bush today declared at a news conference in Brazil, "We do not torture."

Last week Mr. Cheney attended a Republican Senate meeting asking them to give the CIA an exemption and allow them to torture enemy terrorists (which they are already doing.)

I've heard of talking out of two sides of your mouth, but the president and vice-president talk out of four sides of their two mouths.

What gets me mad is the fact that they have the gall to think we buy their contradictory words.

US Owes $208 Million to Iraq

Letter to The Washington Post

Dear Editor:

Re: Column by Colum Lynch, US Owes $208 Million to Iraq (Nov. 5, 2005) stated “A U.N.-established international auditing board called on the United States to repay Iraq $208 million in disputed fees for Kellogg, Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary that received nearly $1.4 billion in contracts without having to compete for the delivery of fuel and the repair of Iraq's oil infrastructure.”

Let me see if I understand this. We are spending a billion dollars a week in Iraq (plus whatever the Bush administration is hiding), and the UN wants the United States to cover Halliburton’s rear end and pay for their overcharges? How ridiculous are things getting? Why doesn’t VP Cheney (the torture king) take it out of his pocket for his old friends at Halliburton?

Big Brother Is Watching

The following is an excerpt from a column in today's Washington Post. It shows the danger of some of the hastily drawn sections of the Patriot Act. Bush and company, and their desire to ignore civil rights and privacy and their push for "legal" torture, has made a mockery of what America is supposed to stand for. Slowly but surely we are falling into the era of "Big Brother," and the rest of the world knows. Maybe all those pious evangelicals instead of supporting Bush should start saying "God help us."

The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters -- one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people -- are extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans. Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and confined to classified reports. The Bush administration defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and has offered no example in which the use of a national security letter helped disrupt a terrorist plot.

The burgeoning use of national security letters coincides with an unannounced decision to deposit all the information they yield into government data banks -- and to share those private records widely, in the federal government and beyond. In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed. Late last month, President Bush signed Executive Order 13388, expanding access to those files for "state, local and tribal" governments and for "appropriate private sector entities," which are not defined.
National security letters offer a case study of the impact of the Patriot Act outside the spotlight of political debate. Drafted in haste after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the law's 132 pages wrought scores of changes in the landscape of intelligence and law enforcement. Many received far more attention than the amendments to a seemingly pedestrian power to review "transactional records." But few if any other provisions touch as many ordinary Americans without their knowledge.