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The Dark Side
Frontline aired a 90 minute episode tonight entitled [The Dark Side], about Cheney’s covert internecine manipulations of intelligence to redirect war on terror efforts from fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan to support for a war against Saddam Hussein. Beautiful production values, as always, but biased: no interviews with any of the principals they address including Cheney, Tenet, Wolfowitz, Powell and only about 3 seconds from John Yoo, an architect of the expansion of presidential powers — but plenty of air time for Administration critics Joe Wilson, David Kay and others. No mention — at all — of any rationale for the war that rested on larger strategic goals of reshaping the political landscape in the Middle East, rather the war in Iraq is presented as a way for Cheney and Rumsfeld to settle old scores against Saddam and the CIA. Still, over the 90 minutes, a story becomes clear enough — the intelligence about threat from Iraq was twisted beyond recognition. Tellingly, they point up that more than once, right after 9/11 and just before the Administration decided to push ahead on Iraq, President Bush didn’t defer wholly to Cheney and Rumsfeld but looked to the CIA for guidance and acted on the information provided. Perhaps, if Tenet had been a stronger man, things might have been different.
In [yesterday's post] I bemoaned the frailty of people in the face of uncertainty, that drives them to rush to judgement before they should. It didn’t address those who don’t want to know the truth, or see it as an obstacle, and merely use information as a means to an end. As someone that figuratively and somewhat literally grew up in psych labs, the thought of conciously distorting knowledge in the effort at pursuing an end — particularly one that will require the ultimate sacrifice of others — is particularly abhorrent.
Posted in Blather, Politics 06/20/06 | 
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I am so ashamed that I wasted my vote on george war bush. What was I thinking? Why did I let my right wing extremist, neo-conservative, neo-evangelical thinking get in the way of exercising sound personal judgment? Growing up, I was led to believe that the republican party was a grass roots party of the people & for the people. In retrospect, it is clear that the last 3 presidents produced by the republican party were nothing more then the rich man’s rich man hiding under the disguise of the overly misused term, “conservative”. The economic dark ages of reagonomics fleeced the middle and lower classes of this county simply to benefit the rich and wealthy. George warmonger bush has quietly shifted this country back to those economic dark ages. Bush inherited a strong economy and squandered that real quick. And even though 9 -11 did happen, none of bush’s reckless decisions are in any way justified by that day in history. It is clear that he never had any real salient foreign & domestic policies when he became president in 2000. Now we have 4 more years of neoconservative republican lies and a growing body count overseas. When are people going to wake up to the truth that neoconservative political philosophy does not work for anyone but the rich and wealthy at the top? When are people in the USA going to wake up to the fact that neoconservative republican political philosophy does not even cross paths with reality?
Anyone who believes george war bush’s lies about promoting democracy in these middle eastern Islamic states is living in serious denial of reality. Those who believe bush’s lies are simply easy pickins and victims of logical fallacies. Historians and political scholars realize that to impose such changes on another country takes decades and that is only if it seriously adopted. Also, the very definition of democracy is not something that the United States has any claim of ownership. Even some communist states think that what they have is democracy. If we ever actually do get out of Iraq, nothing will have changed and nothing will have been gained. The American people have never been given a specific objective in Iraq or a clear definition of exactly what victory in Iraq is from the president. Invading Iraq never had anything to do with, WMD, freeing the Iraqi people or making Americans safer and secure. Statements about WMD, Freeing Iraq or Making America Safer are nothing more then a marketing spin used to hide the ugly truth and make the lies palatable to the American public and justifiable to the red necks who voted for him. Bush likes to make statements such as “It’s worth the price” but he never says just what exactly “it” is. If he really believes that, then he should put his money where his mouth is and send his little party animals to go fight in Iraq. The republican party claims to be for smaller less wasteful government but the current administration is responsible for the waste of more money, resources and human lives then any past democrat presidency. I have a hard time sleeping at night knowing that the blood of Americans and innocent civilians is on my hands and the hands of those who voted for george warmonger bush. The real legacy of the bush cabinet is going to be one characterized by lots of wrongful deaths, lots of money and resources wasted, unnecessary tax increases for our children and grandchildren and the unnecessary destruction of various social programs that good decent people count on.
Thanks to bush and his power hungry cabinet who all want to control congress, the senate & the supreme court, the USA is now a third world country with a disappearing middle class. Neoconservative agenda is to make the USA just like Mexico with the top 2% all rich and the rest of us poor. Now that I know that invading Iraq was all about oil and nothing more, all the senseless deaths of Americans and Iraqi civilians takes on a whole new meaning. It would appear that even the constitution means nothing to bush and his cronies. It has been reduced to something to be twisted and manipulated by neoconservative agenda to make the rich richer and screw over the rest of us. Now that the USA owes all these hundreds of millions of dollars to countries like China, Germany, Russia & Japan, I wonder which language I need to learn for the day when these countries come to collect…
Comment by Dracula — June 23, 2006 @ 2:44 pm
This is a global attack on all workers by the mob you are refering to the laws have gone more antisocial chipping away with power from the unions etc the governments are not there for the good of the people they fuck the people
Comment by peter halleen — June 25, 2006 @ 6:55 am
The comment left by ‘Dracula’ rings more truthfully than anything I’ve read about Bush’s war to avenge his father’s assassination attempt and W’s cronies in months. Either in the mainstream media or blogs.
This ‘blood for oil’ war has been underpinned by lies since it’s inception and Bush’s lack of contact with reality was expressed years ago on an aircraft carrier deck in his Halloween suit.
The American people had a chance in 2004 to reverse or mitigate the damage but sadly chose to stay with ‘the devil they “think” they know’
rather than change horses in midstream. (How’s that for mixing metaphors?)
I’m terrified to contemplate what he’ll do in the lame duck portion of his term.
Comment by Jack Manger — July 17, 2006 @ 4:43 pm