Guns or Butter?

Dear editor:

In testimony to a Congressional committee on Tuesday, Navy Admiral Michael Mullen, President Bush’s nominee to be Chairman or the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the U.S. will be in Iraq for “years not months” and a Pentagon official said the war was costing even more than expected. In separate testimony to the House Budget Committee, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England said next year’s war expense will be more than the administration’s request for $141.7 billion. This request did not include next year’s costs for the extra 30,000 troops sent in as part of “the surge,” nor the need of more money to build and deliver mine-resistant vehicles to repel insurgent attacks. When all added together the cost will be over $150 billion, or about $3 billion per week. It also will bring the current cost of the war to over three quarters of a trillion dollars, with no end and increasing costs in sight.

There has always been a discussion of spending federal money for “guns or butter,” and it is time not only to judge that question, but how do we do this? Where will this money come from? Who will pay the bill down the road, and what will be the interest costs for this unfathomable borrowing?

The federal Technical Review Panel of the Medicare Trustees Report has stated that Medicare was safe until 2021, at an annual rate of $218 billion. Three quarters of this huge, and growing cost, could be covered by that $150 billion spent on Iraq, without cutting benefits for the elderly.

And what about the growing need of Social Security and our growing senior population?

This is not a matter of political party or conservative versus liberal, it is an American problem faced by all of us. Whether we agree or disagree with the president on the war in Iraq, we have to make a choice about the financial condition of our country and its future in this troubled world. We no longer can afford to make the choice of “guns over butter,” but rather must get our house in order so this republic can survive. If a citizen of this country spent money on what they want as opposed to need, he or she would face bankruptcy. Is that what we want for America? Do we want to dump our elderly on the street because we can’t afford to pay Social Security? Do we want to leave our senior citizens without medical care because we can’t afford the Medicare program?

The answer to these scary questions is obviously NO. But we can’t talk about it anymore and we cannot afford the financial luxury of this war. We must get all Senators and Congressmen to stop pandering to their party and the lobbyists and start saving America. Not only does charity begin as home, but so does responsibility.

Figures Lie and Liars Figure

Dear editor:

There is an old saying in the financial world, “Figures lie and liars figure.” This explains the art of taking bad financial news of a corporation and turning the ‘truth’ around to make reports look good. It is the slight of hand used by magicians to distract you from the bad news by finding an insignificant item to make failure look like success. It is a method used quite often and is meant to convince investors and the money market that management is doing a credible job and we should continue to give them our support. After all, look at what they are doing for us.

Sound familiar? Of course. It is a tactic used every day by politicians, from local to national ones. Only when used in politics, it is called ‘spin.’ Congressman or Senator took their family on a vacation to a foreign land at the expense of the government or a lobbying firm? Call it a fact-finding mission. Failed badly to convince a foreign head of government of your position on an important world matter? Tell the news people that “we had a good heart to heart discussion and both agreed that we need to work on our common problems.” Commonly used spins that are only the tip of the iceberg. But today I heard the best and most sickening one of all.

There was a news report from an “unidentified source” in the government, who wasn’t authorized to talk on the matter (aren’t they all?) who pointed out that American deaths in Iraq for the month of July, thanks to the president’s troop surge, were down from the previous month by 29%. This meant that there were 30,000 more troops on the ground and fewer deaths. Wonderful news? Not really. As a famous radio commentator always said, “Here is the rest of the story.”

July 2007 was the deadliest month of July in the almost five years of the war. The actual increase from July 2006 to July 2007 was over 67%. For 2004 and 2005 the increase in each year versus 2007 was actually 33%. And comparing 2003, the year of our “Mission Accomplished,” the increase for 2007 was 50%. As a matter of fact, for the first seven months of 2006 as compared to the first seven months of this year, the increase in American fatalities is 63%. Hardly wonderful news.

Is the purpose of these statistics meant to just make Washington reports look bad? Of course not. The purpose is for America to see the truth without the leaked “unidentified source” spin and to show how the administration’s “figures lie and liars figure.”

President's Colonoscopy

It has been reported today (July 20) that the president will spend the weekend at Camp David, and while there will undergo a colonoscopy. Supposedly this is being done based upon the fact that in earlier tests doctors had found a few precancerous polyps. Of course the real, unstated reason for this procedure is that they are in search of his brain.

HOLOCAUST NOT AN ABERRATION

For those who claim the Holocaust was an aberration of Nazi Germany and has nothing to do with both ancient and Christian history fail to acknowledge what has truly happened over the course of human history. No minority has ever faced such a history of prejudice and slaughter in the name of religion, not Christians, African Americans, Palestinians, Muslims or others who claim their own “Holocaust.” It is amazing that Jews still exist after thousands of years of subjugation.

The Pharaohs enslaved (Jews) in Egypt, the Assyrians grabbed their northern kingdom (Israel), Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia destroyed the rest of their kingdom (Judah) and carted off ten thousand valuable Jewish captives into “Babylonian Exile,” the Greeks and Persians oppressed and despised them, the Romans deprived them of their homeland in Palestine and dispersed them all over the ancient world, Muslim fanatics periodically descended upon them, Christian crusaders slaughtered thousands of them before embarking on their holy mission, the Inquisition expelled them from Iberia, the Catholic church and many of its “saints” called them the sons of the devil and called for their death,vPoles and Russians viciously massacred them in genocidal pogroms, and the Germans consummated this long harvest of hate by annihilating six million of them in the Holocaust.

The Shoah (Holocaust) was not just a bump in modern history as many claim, and anti-Judaism still exists. Just look at the Middle East and Europe today. You have to live and feel it to understand it.

Bush and Churchill

In 1921, after the fateful Cairo Conference that set up the Arab countries that we know of today, Winston Churchill spoke to Parliament, describing the new country (Iraq) that he helped design. This worldly gentleman stated, “Our object and our policy is to set up an Arab government and to make it take the responsibility, with our aid and our guidance and with an effective measure of our support, until they are strong enough to stand alone, and so to foster the development of their independence as to permit the steady and speedy diminution of our burden.”

Our president, “Bush of Arabia,” who thinks of himself as the modern day Churchill, keeps a bust of the respected, old gentleman in his office at the White House. And here he is, almost a century later saying the very same things while evidently facing the very same failure. Of course he first essentially destroyed the Iraq that Churchill created at that conference. He did this along with over 3,600 American troop lives, to date.

No matter how you look at it, Bush ain’t no Churchill.

Tony Snow and Chutzpah

Dear editor:

Tony Snow, speaking for President Bush, has stated that the Democrats, especially the Clintons have a lot of “chutzpah” talking about the amnesty granted to Scooter Libby, based upon the pardon by President Clinton at the end of his term to Mark Rich. For those of you who don’t know everyday Yiddish let me explain that the word means “brazen gall” or “effrontery.” Funny, I didn’t know Tony was Jewish and spoke the language. And if anything, Mr. Snow comes off like the little boy who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and justified it by crying out “but Bobby next door did it.” Childish? You bet.

Let’s get a few things straight. Even though the pardon shouldn’t have happened, Mark Rich served time in prison before being pardoned. Scooter will not serve a day. Bill Clinton turned to the Justice Department and attorney Scooter Libby for advice. Mr. Bush didn’t turn to anyone for advice except, we can assume, Dick Cheney, Scooter’s boss and mentor.

And if Tony Snow wants to use Yiddish, the everyday language of Jews, he should realize his boss, Mr. Bush with his actions the last six years is “nischt a mensch” (not an upright, honorable, trustworthy person.) And his excuses for his boss places him in the same category.

Loss of "Fast Track Authority"

David Broder is a columnist for the Washington Post and in today's edition of the paper wrote about the loss of "fast track authority" for the president in signing trade deals with other governments. He brought out the understandable point that sometimes the president needs this authority, but understands that congressmen and senators are feeling the heat at home and that is the reason for the loss of this presidential authority. He stated that this loss was a mistake and that our representatives sometimes should do what is best for the country and not what their constituents force them to do for re-election. I wrote the following to him:

Mr Broder-

I agree with you that sometimes the representatives in the congress and the senate have to do what is best for the country and not always react to the demands of their constituency. But, to me the main cause of the president losing so much of his authority for trade agreements is that the country, and their representatives, have lost faith and trust in the man who sits in the White House.

Too much has gone wrong in the past six years, including the ill advised and questionable invasion of Iraq, the utmost secrecy in the administration, the overuse of politics and favoritism as a basis for filling positions in both Iraq and here in the country, the cost of the war in human lives and money, the loss of civil liberties and rights, the immigration problem, and the utter dislike of Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rove, Mr. Gonzales, Mr. Rumsfeld (gone), Ms. Miers (gone), Mr. Wolfowitz (gone), Chief Justice Roberts, and finally Mr. Bush. That's just too much for the public to swallow, and senators and congressmen know that. Mr. Bush has dug his own grave and "We the People" are tired of paying the price for those arrogant mistakes.

Stupidity or Lying???????

Dear editor:

As a child I was always taught, as most of us were, to respect our elected leaders and have faith in what they told us. Sometimes we disagreed with their reasons and desires, but they were assumed to know more than we did. This was especially true of our president. Good or bad, Democrat or Republican, Liberal or Conservative, he was our president and had to have our respect. This has always been true for me, all the way from Roosevelt to Clinton. Did they always do the right thing 100% of the time? Of course not. But I trusted their words as always being truthful. That is until now.

Yes, we all now know that we entered the Iraq war under questionable circumstances, but I would like to think that it was an error in judgment rather than bending the truth to suit the administration’s purposes. But continuing that pre-emptive war is becoming another story, and one which involves the so-called “benchmarks” set out by President Bush. These “benchmarks” were the justification for the surge in American troops that he had approved. One of those important “benchmarks” for success in Iraq was to be when the Iraqi government passed legislation on oil revenue sharing. The following are actual quotes by him on the subject.

In January 2007 he said: “To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country’s economy, Iraq WILL PASS legislation to share revenues among all Iraqis.”

In February 2007 he said: “They’re in the process of FINALIZING A LAW that will allow for the sharing of all revenues among Iraq’s peoples…making it clear to the Iraq people that they have a stake in the future of their country by having a stake in the oil revenues.”

In March 2007 he said: “As we help the Iraqis secure their capital, their leaders are also beginning to meet the benchmarks they have laid out for political reconciliation. Last month, Iraq’s Council of Ministers APPROVED a law that would share oil revenues among Iraq people.”

In April 2007 he said: “The Council of Ministers recently APPROVED legislation that would provide a framework for an equitable sharing of oil resources.”

In May 2007 he said: “The Council of Ministers has APPROVED legislation that would provide a framework for equitable sharing of oil resources. We strongly believe…that a good oil bill will help unite the country.”

In June 2007 the tune changed a bit and he said: “At home, most of the attention has focused on important pieces of legislation that the Iraq Parliament MUST PASS to foster political reconciliation…including laws to share oil revenues…I speak to the Prime Minister and I speak to the Presidency Council quite often, and I remind them we expect the government to function, and to pass law.”

In July 2007 Tony Snow, Mr. Bush’s spokesman, said that Mr. Bush: “had phone calls with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the three members…They do report that they have now transmitted to the council of representatives, their legislature, the oil law, and are HOPING QUITE SOON to have a related piece of legislation, one that has to deal with the distribution of oil and hydrocarbon revenues, before the legislature quite soon.”

Two days later it was reported that attempts to pass a key oil law sought by the U.S, were snarled once more by deep differences among Iraq’s Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish leaders, delaying parliament debate despite the prime minister’s claims of a breakthrough. The influential Sunni organization, the Association of Muslim Scholars, issued a fatwa, or religious edict blasting the bill as “religiously forbidden” and warned that those who back it “anger God for usurping public money.”

But the Kurds also objected, fearing concessions had been made to the Sunnis. The Kurdistan Regional Government warned it would oppose the bill if it made “material and substantive changes” to an outline agreed upon during weeks of negotiations.

Meanwhile, the Shiite party loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, which opposes too much decentralization, outright rejected the draft, saying it “left nothing to Iraq’s unity.”

I know that Mr. Bush cannot control the Iraqi Parliament and its many sectarian and religious parties, but he went out of his way to convince America, repeatedly from January thru June that everything was a done deal and had PASSED. Now was that an accident, bad information, bending the truth again, or out and out plain untruths (I won’t say lies)? Whatever it was it sure shakes the faith of one who was raised on “My president good or bad.”

Scooter Libby Fiasco

Shadow President Cheney has once again told his little boy, Dubya, how to run the business of the United States, and arranged for the commutation of the prison sentence for his buddy Scooter Libby. And am I mad? You better believe it. I thought we were a nation of law that NOBODY is above.

Not only has the shooter of a fellow hunter turned the White House and the administration into a secretive place, he has also taken away our rights granted by the Constitution, twisted the nation’s law to fit their warped sense of right and wrong, and been responsible for the death of almost 3,600 Americans in Iraq by attacking Iraq. Our administrative branch of government has set itself above the law and no longer represents the people.

It is up to the voters of the United States to rise up with one of the few rights it has left and vote for anyone, either Republican or Democrat, who will fight against these dangerous enemies of America. We must not allow this to continue. Hold their feet to the fire of election or kick them out of office NOW.