Connections
War and Peace

Bush Awol?

Bravo to non-partisan Lieutenant General William E. Odom, also former director of the NSA, and Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the Army’s senior intelligence officer. Today he delivered a courageous radio address enititled "Bush has gone AWOL."

Read there entire address here:

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/28/820

or listen to it by
clicking here

Enboldening the Enemy

The Republican administration keeps saying that speaking out against the war and the administration "emboldens the enemy." Nothing could be further from the truth. Actually it does just the opposite. Consider for a moment that we learned that the majority of people in another country was against their administration's hawkish decisions. Would we feel more or less inclined to drop bombs on these people? Speaking out actually tells them we are not all warmongers and that many of us want peace. These creates softer feelings toward our people and not harder. Only one thing "emboldens" and enemy: killing them and their families. That makes people pretty mad from generation to generation.

Dick Cheney will not stop

This week Dick Cheney appeared on Rush to in front of 20 million listeners to continue his misinformation campaign about Iraq. He again tried to make a connection between Al Qaida and Iraq that never existed. Here are his words:

"Rush, remember Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist, Al Qaida affiliate...he went to Baghdad, took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq; organized the Al Qaida operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene, and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June. ... This is Al Qaida operating in Iraq. And as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq."
Of course Republican run Senate Intelligence Committee report found, “Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and that the regime did not have a
relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi.”
In addition, of course, Zarqawi had no relationship with Al Qaida but was an enemy to Bin Laden.
Why won't he stop saying these things? His attempts to tie 9/11 with Al Qaida with Saddam still haven't stopped.
"If we're successful in Iraq," he told Russert in September of 2003, "we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9-11."
It is now clear that Cheney knew this wasn't true before the war. For more on this man's history of deceit, read Sperry's article
"Tricky Dicky" here, or Bradley's "Top 10 Cheney lies" from the Debates here.
Remember when Cheney
Claimed Iraq Was Providing WMD Training To Al-Qaeda Months After Source Recanted? Read here.
Or read "Cheney claimed there was a link" here, listing many times Cheney claimed Saddam was in bed with Al Qaida.
Or read the article by Isakoff and Hosenball from MSNBC called
"Rewriting History" here.
Why does he keep doing this? Because it works. He's speaking to a Republican base that will believe anything the administration says without checking for facts. You see, if these facts aren't true, then the foundation set up by the administration for invasion of Iraq crumbles, even among Republicans. But it is already crumbling. Finally. Interestingly Cheney's approval rating In Jan was only 16% which means even the Republican base has turned their back on him. If so, why does Rush keep having him on?

Trip to Syria

The speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi, did it exactly right this week. One of the suggestions on this website from the beginning is that if we are to overcome the terrorist threat, it needs to come from within the ranks of conservative Muslims. Enlisting help from conservative Muslims that do not directly support terrorism is the smartest thing any leader could have done. It is no surprise that the Republican administration frowned on such a visit. Interestingly enough, Iran also released their British prisoners during her visit as an "Easter gift." Bravo Nancy.

It was oil after all

With all of the shock over the win of the Democrats in the election, little reported was the statements made by the President the weekend before the election. After years of denying that our war in Iraq was over oil and calling anyone unpatriotic for implying so, the President turned the tables and used the idea as part of his repeated stump speeches saying, " You can imagine a world in which these extremists and radicals got control of energy resources and then you can imagine them saying 'we're going to pull a bunch of oil off the market to run your price of oil up unless you do the following...'" In other words, fighting in Iraq for oil has now moved from being an unpatriotic idea to becoming a platform plank. Of course the Iraqies knew it all along. 95% of Iraqies polled still believe the entire invasion was about oil to begin with.

Rick Santorum

Fox News and Rick Santorum got on their bandwagon this week actually trying to claim that we found WMDs in Iraq. Of course what we found was inert chemicals and and shell housings buried and left over from the war between Iraq and Iran. Pentagon spokesmen confirmed that we already knew about these. Santorum, in a hurry to try to save his failing run for the Senate this year, was only too eager to jump in with the faulty intelligence before it had gone through the proper investigative channels. Read the story at MSNBC's website (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13480264/)

Executive power

Bill Frist, Senate Majority leader was being interviewed yesterday by Chris Matthews on Hardball and they were discussing the new resolutions in the House and Senate being debated regarding terrorism. The resolutions basically state that Americans must support the war on terror until it is over. In light of growing tension in Iran, Matthews asked Frist point blank if the President now had authority to invade Iran without approval of congress. Frist refused to answer. The President claimed power to invade Iraq based on approval of Congress to go after Saddam specifically the year before. But now, the "war on terror" resolutions seem to be giving the executive even greater power. As long as they can claim an invasion is "terror related" the President can declare war from now until the end of time. Not since the phrase "clear and present danger" was twisted to increase executive authority, has anything given the President so much power. Did the constitutional authors foresee this when they said that only congress can declare war? With the number of American dead approaching the exact number that actually died on 9/11 in the twin towers, how much will Americans put up with to maintain their "way of life?"