I was never able to finish this, but for what it's worth
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Why I'm Voting For John Kerry
by Keith Daniels
Until the middle of this year, I was a registered independent. I have never voted in any party's primary elections, and although I would identify myself as a liberal because of my opinions on social issues and the environment, I would like to think of myself as a moderate when it comes to the debate on the respective roles of government and the so-called private sector. During the 2000 primaries, I told many people that I planned to vote for John McCain if he won the Republican nomination. Like the majority of voters, I cast my ballot for Al Gore in November of 2000, but neither he nor then Governor of Texas George W. Bush got me particularly excited one way or the other. If one interprets voter turnout as a sign of interest it appears many Americans shared my lack of passion; a mere 51% of eligible voters turned out to the polls.
Even after the Supreme Court stopped the recount in Florida and thus gave the electoral college victory to Mr. Bush, I still had modest hope, initially, for his Presidency. He portrayed himself in that campaign as a social moderate, a compassionate conservative, and a uniter, not a divider. He said that although America is pre-eminent, it must be humble in the way in which it deals with the world, criticizing President Clinton (and by association, Vice-President Gore) for their attempts at nation-building in Haiti, Somalia, and the Balkans. To be sure, I knew his tenure would be an unmitigated disaster for the environment, considering the fact that he, and practically every other member of his team, has long financial ties to oil, gas, and other polluting industries, and it has been. But I anticipated that the first years of the new millennium would be, frankly, a little dull.
September the 11th, 2001, as Bush himself likes to say, changed everything. On that day and in the days after, we saw no liberals, no conservatives, no Republicans, and no Democrats. We were united, momentarily, and most of the civilized world was united in solidarity and sympathy with us. On that day I received a call at work from a British woman, a complete stranger, who cried into the phone and told me that she was praying for us. The headline of the liberal French newspaper Le Monde on September 12th read Nous Sommes Tous Americains (We Are All Americans), and every day for a week thereafter it reprinted a full page of New York Times articles in English. Flowers were laid, spontaneously, at the gates of the American Embassy in Paris.
Bush showed his true colors then, and the roots of both his supporters' admiration for him and his detractors' antipathy stem from his actions in the months after that horrible day. I am not a person who believes that war is never necessary, and I was glad in those days that we had a President who would, to put it simply, bomb somebody. So when he stood in the rubble of the World Trade Center with one arm around a weary firefighter, and the other holding a bullhorn, and said the people who knocked these buildings down will hear from all of us soon!, it appealed to what I was feeling at the time.
But there were signs from the Bush Administration in those days of a world view that would in hindsight become disturbing, then alarming. In a press briefing on September 26th, then White House spokesman Ari Fleischer responded to questions about the remarks of TV comedian Bill Maher by saying all Americans... need to watch what they say, watch what they do. This is not a time for remarks like that, there never is. The USA Patriot Act, a 342 page law granting sweeping and unprecedented new powers to the Federal Government, was passed on October 25th, just six weeks after the attack. On November 6th,, President Bush held a news conference in which he offered the false dichotomy you're either with us or against us. Then in January, during his State of the Union address, he spoke of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as belonging to what he called an Axis of Evil.
I would like to have been able to write a piece of this sort in John Kerry's favor without mentioning his opponent, but I cannot. When faced with only two choices, neither choice can be fairly measured by comparison with the ideal, but by the other choice. This is simple logic. You cannot measure by comparison with the ideal if the ideal is not an option. Therefore the ideal must, regrettably, be set aside as irrelevant to the discussion at hand. My goal in writing this is to demonstrate that George W. Bush, first and foremost, deserves to be fired from his job as our President, and that Mr. Kerry is a more than acceptable replacement. President Bush has exploited the war on terror cynically and politically. He has used with us or against us rhetoric to cast loyal political opposition as tantamount to treason, and the war on terror as an excuse to subvert the norms and traditions of American democracy, the rule of domestic and international law, and to further his own radically partisan agenda. He has repeatedly valued the views of radical Christian fundamentalism and the lobbyists for polluting industries over the findings of science, endangering the health of ordinary people and the very planet. His extreme partisanship, his ignorance of science and rationality, and his contempt for honest and open debate, has marred his decision-making ability so gravely that it has led to recklessness and incompetence, and made the war on terror immeasurably more difficult to win.
Democracy
George W. Bush represents neither the improvement nor the continuity of American democracy in its traditional form. He calls himself a uniter, not a divider, but his administration shows open contempt for honest dissent, the fundamental basis of our government. The three branches of our government were not set up to agree, but intended to conflict. The nature of our government virtually guarantees compromise. George W. Bush, whose incredibly narrow victory in the 2000 election would by long-standing precedent necessitate a more moderate stance, does not compromise. The Founding Fathers knew that tyranny and corruption were the inevitable products of human nature when given too much power. This is as true in the 21st century as it was in the 18th. Yet Bush has gathered powers to himself and subverted checks at every opportunity. He seems to consider disagreement with him at worst unpatriotic, at best an irrelevant inconvenience that must be undermined or avoided. Witness his reaction to any attempt by the Congress to fulfill its Constitutional mandates of oversight and investigation such attempts are met by the Bush Administration with stonewalling, secrecy, and outright hostility. So combative, secrecy-obsessed, and airtight is the current White House that its only recent historical analogue is Nixon's administration, and even former senior officials of that era, most notably Nixon legal counsel John W. Dean, have noted the alarming Nixonian parallels.
Bush has held fewer press conferences -- the only forum in our society where a President can be questioned -- than any President in modern history, and the implication of course is that he doesn't want to answer tough questions before the American people. Journalists who venture skepticism of the administration are shut out. Helen Thomas, a 50-year press veteran who has reported on every President since Kennedy and is known as the First Lady of the Press, described the current press corps under Bush as having rolled over and played dead. In a 2004 interview she disclosed Bush's press conference procedure Bush has a seating chart and he knows who he is going to call on. He picks the people. He's been told to not call on me because I am going to ask a very tough question. Another observer called this the most cowed press corps in history.
The same fate awaits any member of his administration who breaks rank just ask Richard Clarke, Colonel Douglas Macgregor, Rand Beers, General Jay Garner, Richard Haass, General Eric Shinseki, or Paul O'Neill. Just ask former Ambassador Joseph Wilson what happens when you publicly embarrass the Bush Administration his wife's identity as a CIA operative was revealed to arch-conservative columnist Robert Novak by what Novak described as a senior administration official, and her career was ruined. When minority Democrats in Congress use the only options available to them to prevent their branch from becoming a mere rubber stamp for the Administration, they are called obstructionists in a tone which equates the term with the lower forms of filth. When the judiciary dares to contravene his policy, he rails publicly against activist judges who dare object to his prerogatives.
There exists a circle the wagons mindset in this administration: politics is war, and no one on his side is to be held accountable. Forgotten in this is any understanding of the reasons those inconvenient checks and balances were put into place to begin with, nor any notion that the people are owed a government whose workings are transparent and whose elected functionaries are accountable. Bush has said that he doesn't read the newspaper, and believes that the most objective sources I have are people on my staff. Contrast this with the lesson of history that those close to someone in power are quite willing to tell them only what they want to hear and Thomas Jefferson's famous statement that he would rather have newspapers without government than government without newspapers. It appears that this mindset of circular reinforcement contributed greatly to the failure of the Bush Administration to anticipate and plan for the aftermath of the Iraq War they discussed it only amongst those who agreed, and those who warned them of the impending danger were marginalized. It appears that the Bush Administration's tell us what we want to hear attitude led to their inordinate trust in now debunked intelligence provided by Iraqi defectors led by a man named Ahmed Chalabi, who has since come under investigation as a possible Iranian spy.
John Kerry demonstrates faith in the Constitutional basis of our government. He has spent practically his entire life working inside it. Kerry is, despite Republican assertions to the contrary, a moderate willing to discuss reasonable compromise, willing to reach across the aisle, and open to the will of the people. I guarantee you he reads the newspaper. These are good things. George W. Bush's indictment of these traits in Kerry is in itself indicative of Bush's nature as a radical partisan. Kerry does not consider his political opponents his enemies. He demonstrates none of Bush's contempt for debate, in fact he seems to relish it often playing the part of devil's advocate in discussions among his advisers. As a young man he took his dissent to the streets, he voiced it before members of Congress and on national television. He blew the whistle on what he saw as the government's misconduct during the Vietnam War. As a Senator he steadfastly conducted important investigations into government misconduct even when they implicated influential members of his own party. He has a long history of willingness to work with members of the opposing party in a bi-partisan manner. There is little doubt that a Kerry Administration would be vastly more open to debate, more open to the press, more understanding of the beneficial aspects of the legislative process, and more tolerant of protest. Even those who disagree with Kerry can at least be assured that he hears their concerns, something that cannot be said for Bush.
Justice and the Rule of Law
Under Bush, for the first time since the shameful internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, American citizens have been detained indefinitely without charges ever being filed against them, and held in secret locations without access to communication with lawyers or their families. All that is required is that the President declare you an enemy combatant. The USA Patriot Act signed into law by President Bush expands the powers of law enforcement in every direction. Under the act, the FBI now needs no longer to show reasonable suspicion that its searches are related to criminal activity, and there is only token judicial oversight of these powers. The government needs no evidence or proof, but merely a broad certification by a judge that the search falls under the statutes' powers and the judge has no authority to reject the application. Under the Patriot Act, the FBI can obtain your financial, medical, commercial, and personal records, search your property, wiretap your phone, and monitor your computer activities, all in complete secrecy. You need not be notified that you are under investigation, and the record holders which turn over information about you are under gag orders not to disclose this fact to you or anyone else.
The Bush administration claims the threat of terrorism makes this a necessity, but thus far the vast majority of known cases under the Act have concerned non-terrorism-related activity. The House Judiciary Committee has demanded several times that the Justice Department under Bush-appointee Attorney General John Ashcroft answer questions about how it was using its authority under the Act, and the Justice Department has refused to describe in detail how it was implementing the law, even classifying certain information so that it cannot be obtained by the public. We have seen how this is in keeping with the Bush Administration's contempt for the Constitution. Many of the most dangerous aspects of the Patriot Act are due to expire in 2005. President Bush has called for their unconditional renewal, and has given his support to a proposed Patriot Act II which would expand the government's power even further.
The Patriot Act was passed by a 98-to-1 vote in the Senate while the ruins of the World Trade Center were still smoking, and many Senators have complained that they had not even been allowed the time to read the entire law before a vote on it was ramrodded through the Congress. John Kerry proposes amending many of the provisions of the Patriot Act to increase judicial oversight and protect the civil liberties of American citizens; President Bush has threatened to veto any such amendment. When a New York district court ruled a portion of the Patriot Act unconstitutional, Ashcroft responded by pledging to appeal the decision, saying We believe the act to be completely consistent with the United States Constitution. He describes criticism of the Act as breathless reports and baseless hysteria.
The Bush Administration views international law as a tool to be used when it suit its goals, and as an obstacle to be circumvented when it objects to U.S. Policy. The Bush Administration used the litany of United Nations resolutions against Iraq as a justification for war, arguing that the United States was merely enforcing international law. This justification conveniently ignores the fact that, under international law, pre-emptive war is illegal. In fact, the Secretary-General of the United Nations has ruled that the Iraq War was, in fact, illegal. This is a part of a broader unilateralist mindset within this Administration. The Geneva Convention, which the United States ratified the first version of in 1882, guarantees the humane treatment of prisoners of war. In Article 17 of the 1949 Convention it states:
"No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind."
Article 89 reads:
"In no case shall disciplinary punishments be inhuman, brutal or dangerous to the health of prisoners of war."
Such humane treatment of prisoners is emotionally irksome to many Americans when the prisoners involved are members of organizations which do not extend the same courtesy to captured American prisoners, but a more realistic, rational view is necessary. Torture has long been known not to be a reliable method of extracting useful information. Those subjected to it will often say anything to end their suffering -- witness the regular confession of victims of the medieval Spanish Inquisition during torture to all manner of impossible or unlikely crimes. Even if the tortured do not offer a false confession, torture destroys any chance of comradery and trust between the interrogator and his subject, a condition which is necessary for the extraction of useful information. The Bush Administration disavowed this knowledge, seeking opinions from its lawyers that justified the use of torture against suspects of terrorism in American custody. This mindset led directly to the known abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the known and alleged abuses of prisoners of war in Afghanistan, and the alleged mistreatment of prisoners of war housed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. These abuses consisted of deliberate torture: beatings, dogs, sexual humiliation, fear of death and harm, and even death in some cases which are still under investigation.
Furthermore, such abuses undermine the moral credibility of the United States to criticize other nations when they fail to uphold human rights. They jeopardize the safety of American soldiers in enemy custody during future conflicts between nation-states, when enemies mindful of the recent past will treat American soldiers as they perceive we would treat their own.
The Bush Administration: has made the U.S. the only one of 178 nations not to implement the Kyoto Protocol on Global Warming, has rejected the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, has no plans to ratify the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, has rejected the Convention on the Rights of the Child, has abandoned a United Nations draft accord which would enforce the 1995 Biological Weapons Convention, intends to scrap the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and is expected to reject the 1997 Land Mine Ban treaty. He has rejected the creation of the International Criminal Court, the first permanent international body to prosecute war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity. Contrary to the Bush Administration's party line, these withdrawals have little to do with terrorism.
The withdrawal of the United States from international law began well before 9/11/01, indeed it began practically from the moment Bush took office. The 9/11 attacks merely provided the pretext by which the neo-conservatives in the administration could accomplish their long-standing goals. A paper drafted in September of 2000 by Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush (brother of George W.), and Cheney's Chief of Staff, Lewis Libby, entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century stated The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.
The only impression other nations, including some of our oldest and most trusted allies, can receive from such actions is that the United States will not be held to any standard but its own convenience. International law only applies to other countries in the Bush Administration's view. In recent days Bush has taken to mocking Kerry's use of the phrase global test during their debates, saying "When our country's in danger the president's job is not to take an international poll. Bush sums up what he calls the Kerry Doctrine this way "He said that America has to pass a global test before we can use troops to defend ourselves."
The full text of what Kerry actually said is immensely revealing of Bush's mindset, considering his criticism of it. As Kerry explicitly said, his meaning was not that the United States should go hat-in-hand before the world and meekly seek permission to defend itself. In fact, he said:
"The President always has the right, and always has had the right, for [a] pre-emptive strike.... But if and when you do it, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people, understand fully why you're doing what you're doing, and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."
So it's more than a global test. It's a truth test. Should the government of the United States have to be able to justify, not only to the world but to its own people, its decision to go to break international law and go to war pre-emptively? Bush says, unequivocally, no. Kerry, on the other hand, says yes. Yes, you do have to have a legitimate reason to go to war. Yes, you do have to justify to your actions to your own people, and you have to be able to prove that the reasons behind the war were honest and clear.
John Kerry wants to hold America, the most powerful nation in the world, to the highest standards of truth and justice. John Kerry understands that, even if we would like to, even if it is less convenient for us in the short-term, we cannot stand alone among the nations of the world. Only working together, in close cooperation and coordination, can the nations of the world eliminate terror. Only working together can the innumerable problems facing the world, today and in the near and distant future, be finally solved.
Science and the Environment
Science and George W. Bush are strangers in the night, exchanging wary glances. It's no secret that his religious faith, fundamentalist protestant Christianity, is a central facet of his character and decision making. He advertises this fact boldly, considering it part of his appeal. When asked by journalist Bob Woodward whether he had consulted his father, former President George H.W. Bush, before ordering the invasion of Iraq to begin, he responded He is the wrong father to appeal to for advice. The wrong father to go to, to appeal to in terms of strength. There's a higher Father that I appeal to." It is clear, then, that George W. Bush considers a one-way conservation with God more influential than the advice of a former President, Vice President, head of the CIA, ambassador to the United Nations, veteran of World War II, and not to mention also his own father, even on a question as critical as whether to send American forces into combat, and the United States into war. He told the Houston Post in 1993 that, as the reporter paraphrased it, "heaven is open only to those who accept Jesus Christ." According to the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, Bush told Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazen during their meeting in June of 2003 God told me to strike at Al Qaeda, and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did. During a 2004 meeting with a group of the Amish in Pennsylvania he told those assembled "I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job." During the 2000 debates, he stated that his favorite political philosopher was Jesus Christ. He kicked off his 2000 South Carolina campaign with a speech at Bob Jones University, a private religious college which at the time held a ban on interracial dating, and which has told homosexual alumni that they are not welcome on campus. Bush made no mention of either subject, instead telling the audience there 'I look forward to publicly defending our conservative philosophy.
The Bible defines faith, in Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1, as being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This definition is the precise opposite of science. Faith asks you to believe what you can't see, and have no way to confirm. Science demands that even what appears obvious be checked and tested within an inch of its life. Faith demands that you don't question. Science insists that you do question; in fact, the scientific method requires you to try to disprove what you hope to be true.
Faith can extend beyond religion. There is faith in a political ideology, faith in a philosophy, faith in a certain course of action. George W. Bush's actions in every sphere are characterized by faith, by a belief in what he hopes to be true, not by a scientific analysis of reality. Take tax cuts, for example. Tax cuts are an article of faith for Bush. To him, they're the perfect solution in all situations. Things are good? Tax cuts! Things are bad? Tax cuts! He has cut taxes four times during the last four years, all while rapidly increasing spending, resulting in the largest projected budget deficit in the history of the United States. Even leaving out defense spending, entitlements, and homeland security, discretionary spending has increased an average of 8.2% per year under Bush, twice as fast as under Bush 1, three times as fast as Clinton, and four times as fast as Carter, according to the Washington Monthly and the government's own reports. A study by the libertarian Cato Institute concluded that Bush is the mother of all big spenders, and that he spends like Carter and panders like Clinton. The reality is that if you want to cut taxes, you have to also cut spending, or you will make higher taxes in the future inevitable. The Bush Administration denies even this basic logic.
Bush's faith extends to other matters as well, even to the public health. He appointed Dr. David Hager, an OB/GYN who believes that the birth control pill should not be prescribed to single women, to chair the Food and Drug Administration's panel on women's health policy. The FDA has since refused to approve the Morning-After Pill, which amounts to a large dose of the regular birth-control pill and prevents a woman from becoming pregnant (and thus is not an abortion) in the event it is taken with 72 hours of sexual intercourse, as an over-the-counter medication as it is sold in almost every other industrialized nation because of the expediency with which it must be taken.
This decision over-ruled the recommendation of the FDA's own scientific advisory panel. An internal agency memo noted staff have expressed the concern that this decision is based on non-medical implications of teen sexual behavior, or judgments about the propriety of this activity. [Emphasis mine.]
For the head of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, Bush appointed former Republican Representative Dr. Tom Coburn, a man who regularly rails against what he calls the homosexual agenda and who once sponsored a bill which would have required those infected with the disease to notify their local government.. Despite the fact that education about the use of condoms has proved time and again to be the most effective means of halting the spread of the disease, Coburn favors a form of abstinence-only education with excludes any discussion of other methods of protection. Independent researchers have found that no reliable evidence exists that abstinence-only education is effective, yet Bush has spent $270 million on such programs. The fact is, abstinence does prevent pregnancy and all sexually-transmitted diseases. Abstinence-only education, however, does not. This faith-over-facts approach has also led the Bush Administration to withdraw funding from international family planning organizations which even mention abortion, and to abstinence-until-marriage programs receiving fully one-third of all U.S. anti-AIDS funding in Africa and elsewhere. New Bush regulations also prevent such groups from publishing anything "sexually suggestive" such as teaching how to put on a condom properly using a demonstration model of a penis. Information about the effectiveness of condoms has also been pulled from the government website for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The information which replaced it instead emphasized condom failure rates and the effectiveness of abstinence.
Most Americans have heard something about the controversy over stem cell research. John Kerry, the late Christopher Reeve, Nancy and the junior Ronald Reagan, and the vast majority of scientists have all advocated its expansion. George W. Bush is hearing none of it, because of his belief that embryonic stem cell research requires the destruction of life to create a stem cell. This is in line with the view of many fundamentalist Christians, who hold that stem cell research is akin to abortion. So what are stem cells, and how are they obtained? Stem cells are the first cells a growing embryo consists of, generic cells which transform into every other type of cell in the human body. They are donated with consent from fertilized embryos left over from procedures such as in vitro fertilization and very early-stage abortion, embryos which would be discarded otherwise. Such cells, if harnessed, have the potential to cure many human diseases and conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, diabetes, spinal cord injury, heart disease, stroke, arthritis, cancer, and burns. President Bush approved funding for their research, but limited the funding to those lines of stem cells already in existence. At that time, the Bush Administration stated that more than 70 stem cell lines were available to scientists, when in fact National Institutes of Health Director Elias Zerhouni found that there were only 11 currently available.
Ushkow, Mike: "Turnout Ups, Downs", Dec/2001
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2519/is_10_22/ai_81223464
Gallup Poll: "Views of Bush Reach New Heights of Polarization", 10/21/04
http://www.gallup.com/poll/content/login.aspx?ci=13735
Center for Politics and Public Affairs: "The New Political Zeitgeist", 8/5/04
http://politics.fandm.edu/040805_zeitgeist.html
CNN: "Transcript: Vice President Gore and Governor Bush Participate In Presidential Debate", 10/3/00
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/debates/transcripts/u221003.html
WNYC NPR: "On the Media", 5/4/02
http://www.wnyc.org/onthemedia/transcripts/transcripts_050402_paris.html
World Press Review: "We Are All Americans", 9/12/01
http://www.worldpress.org/1101we_are_all_americans.htm
New York Newsday: "May God Bless America", 9/15/01
http://www.nynewsday.com/ny-george14,0,4921343.story
White House.Gov: "Press Briefing by Ari Fleischer", 9/26/01
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010926-5.html
Berkeley Daily Planet: "Library Bristles At Patriot Act', 4/25/03
http://www.berkeleydaily.org/text/article.cfm?issue=04-25-03&storyID=16539
CNN: "You are either with us or against us", 11/06/01
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/11/06/gen.attack.on.terror/
White House.Gov: "President Delivers State of the Union Address", 1/29/02
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html
Guardian Unlimited: "Retreat into a substitute reality", 10/2/04
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/comment/story/0,14259,1318185,00.html
MIT News Office: "Journalist Helen Thomas condemns Bush Administration", 11/6/02
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/fsawi/mit.html
The Bryan-College Station Eagle: "Journalist Cronkite warns against potential war", 10/28/02
http://www.theeagle.com/aandmnews/102802cronkite.htm
The Progressive: "Helen Thomas Interview", Aug. 04
http://www.progressive.org/august04/intv0804.html
Financial Times: "Maverick colonel blames US army's 'sycophantic' culture and heavy-handedness for failures in Iraq", 6/9/04
http://financialtimes.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=THE+AMERICAS%3A+Maverick+colonel+blames+US+army%27s+%27sycophantic%27+culture+and+heavy-handedness+for+failures+in+Iraq&expire=&urlID=10690622&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.ft.com%2Fs03%2Fsearch%2Farticle.html%3Fid%3D040609000149&partnerID=1741
Leslie Stahl interview with Richard Clarke, 3/21/04
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/60min_StahlClarke_transcript.html
Guardian: "General sacked by Bush says he wanted early elections", 3/18/04
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1171880,00.html
Washington Post: "Former Aide Takes Aim at War on Terror", 6/16/03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62941-2003Jun15?language=printer
USA Today: "Ex-Army boss: Pentagon won't admit reality in Iraq", 6/3/03
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-06-02-white-usat_x.htm
Asia Times: "Loss of key aide another setback for Powell", 6/7/03
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EF07Ak01.html
New York Times: "What I Didn't Find In Africa", 7/6/03
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0706-02.htm
CNN: "O'Neill: Bush planned Iraq invasion before 9/11", 1/14/04
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/10/oneill.bush/
Salon: "Joseph Wilson vs. the right-wing conspiracy", 7/26/04
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/07/16/wilson/
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3156166.stm
The Nation: "An Interview With Joseph Wilson", 4/30/04
http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?pid=1413
Guardian Unlimited: "Scorned general's tactics proved right', 3/29/03
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,925140,00.html
CBS News: "Gen. Zinni: 'They've Screwed Up', 5/21/04
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/21/60minutes/main618896.shtml
Salon: "How Ahmed Chalabi Conned the Neocons", 5/4/04
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/05/04/chalabi/
CNN: "Sources: Chalabi told Iran that U.S. broke its code", 6/2/04
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/06/02/chalabi.iran/
Miami Herald: "Bush doesn't read the paper", 10/16/03
http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/columnists/7027902.htm
Washington Post: "Key Part of Patriot Act Ruled Unconstitutional", 9/30/04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59626-2004Sep29.html?nav=rss_technology/techpolicy
CNN: "Federal judge rules part of Patriot Act unconstitutional", 1/26/04
http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/01/26/patriot.act.ap/
CNN: "Justice document: Patriot Act provision never used", 9/17/03
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/09/17/ashcroft.patriot/index.html
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http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6131670/
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http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=12263&c=206
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http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/lawofwar/geneva04.htm
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http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/july01/2001-07-27-bush-treaties-usat.htm
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http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0810-05.htm
Miami Herald: "Bush Wants to Dump Treaties", 7/10/01
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0720-03.htm
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http://www.sundayherald.com/27735
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http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/Empire/Bush.asp
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6158694/
John Kerry.com: "Strength and Security for a New World"
http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/national_security/
CBS News: "Woodward Shares War Secrets", 4/18/04
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/15/60minutes/main612067.shtml
Miami Herald: "U.S., allies face rising antiwar sentiment", 3/17/04
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/nation/8204190.htm?1c
Agence France Presse: "Anti-American Sentiment Rising in Asia", 5/19/04
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0519-06.htm
USA Today: "Anti-American sentiment a worry", 2/27/04
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/summer/2004-02-27-usoc-concern_x.htm
CNN: "Rising anti-American sentiment could slam tech sector", 2/19/03
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/02/19/fortune.ff.globalization/
Associated Press: "Religious edicts, anti-American sentiment likely fueling bombings around the world", 4/6/04
http://www.thebatt.com/news/2004/04/06/News/Religious.Edicts.AntiAmerican.Sentiment.Likely.Fueling.Bombings.Around.The.World-652060.shtml
Slate: "Go to Hell - The Gospel according to George W." 7/24/99
http://slate.msn.com/id/32438/
Washington Post: "Road Map in the Back Seat?", 6/27/03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37944-2003Jun26?language=printer
Lancaster Online: "Bush quietly meets with Amish here; they offer their prayers"
http://lancasteronline.com/pages/news/local/4/7564
Boston Globe: "At Bob Jones U., A Disturbing Lesson About the Real George W. Bush", 2/9/00
http://www.commondreams.org/views/020900-101.htm
TIME: "Jesus and the FDA", 10/5/02
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,361521,00.html
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Why I'm Voting For John Kerry
by Keith Daniels
Until the middle of this year, I was a registered independent. I have never voted in any party's primary elections, and although I would identify myself as a liberal because of my opinions on social issues and the environment, I would like to think of myself as a moderate when it comes to the debate on the respective roles of government and the so-called private sector. During the 2000 primaries, I told many people that I planned to vote for John McCain if he won the Republican nomination. Like the majority of voters, I cast my ballot for Al Gore in November of 2000, but neither he nor then Governor of Texas George W. Bush got me particularly excited one way or the other. If one interprets voter turnout as a sign of interest it appears many Americans shared my lack of passion; a mere 51% of eligible voters turned out to the polls.
Even after the Supreme Court stopped the recount in Florida and thus gave the electoral college victory to Mr. Bush, I still had modest hope, initially, for his Presidency. He portrayed himself in that campaign as a social moderate, a compassionate conservative, and a uniter, not a divider. He said that although America is pre-eminent, it must be humble in the way in which it deals with the world, criticizing President Clinton (and by association, Vice-President Gore) for their attempts at nation-building in Haiti, Somalia, and the Balkans. To be sure, I knew his tenure would be an unmitigated disaster for the environment, considering the fact that he, and practically every other member of his team, has long financial ties to oil, gas, and other polluting industries, and it has been. But I anticipated that the first years of the new millennium would be, frankly, a little dull.
September the 11th, 2001, as Bush himself likes to say, changed everything. On that day and in the days after, we saw no liberals, no conservatives, no Republicans, and no Democrats. We were united, momentarily, and most of the civilized world was united in solidarity and sympathy with us. On that day I received a call at work from a British woman, a complete stranger, who cried into the phone and told me that she was praying for us. The headline of the liberal French newspaper Le Monde on September 12th read Nous Sommes Tous Americains (We Are All Americans), and every day for a week thereafter it reprinted a full page of New York Times articles in English. Flowers were laid, spontaneously, at the gates of the American Embassy in Paris.
Bush showed his true colors then, and the roots of both his supporters' admiration for him and his detractors' antipathy stem from his actions in the months after that horrible day. I am not a person who believes that war is never necessary, and I was glad in those days that we had a President who would, to put it simply, bomb somebody. So when he stood in the rubble of the World Trade Center with one arm around a weary firefighter, and the other holding a bullhorn, and said the people who knocked these buildings down will hear from all of us soon!, it appealed to what I was feeling at the time.
But there were signs from the Bush Administration in those days of a world view that would in hindsight become disturbing, then alarming. In a press briefing on September 26th, then White House spokesman Ari Fleischer responded to questions about the remarks of TV comedian Bill Maher by saying all Americans... need to watch what they say, watch what they do. This is not a time for remarks like that, there never is. The USA Patriot Act, a 342 page law granting sweeping and unprecedented new powers to the Federal Government, was passed on October 25th, just six weeks after the attack. On November 6th,, President Bush held a news conference in which he offered the false dichotomy you're either with us or against us. Then in January, during his State of the Union address, he spoke of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as belonging to what he called an Axis of Evil.
I would like to have been able to write a piece of this sort in John Kerry's favor without mentioning his opponent, but I cannot. When faced with only two choices, neither choice can be fairly measured by comparison with the ideal, but by the other choice. This is simple logic. You cannot measure by comparison with the ideal if the ideal is not an option. Therefore the ideal must, regrettably, be set aside as irrelevant to the discussion at hand. My goal in writing this is to demonstrate that George W. Bush, first and foremost, deserves to be fired from his job as our President, and that Mr. Kerry is a more than acceptable replacement. President Bush has exploited the war on terror cynically and politically. He has used with us or against us rhetoric to cast loyal political opposition as tantamount to treason, and the war on terror as an excuse to subvert the norms and traditions of American democracy, the rule of domestic and international law, and to further his own radically partisan agenda. He has repeatedly valued the views of radical Christian fundamentalism and the lobbyists for polluting industries over the findings of science, endangering the health of ordinary people and the very planet. His extreme partisanship, his ignorance of science and rationality, and his contempt for honest and open debate, has marred his decision-making ability so gravely that it has led to recklessness and incompetence, and made the war on terror immeasurably more difficult to win.
Democracy
George W. Bush represents neither the improvement nor the continuity of American democracy in its traditional form. He calls himself a uniter, not a divider, but his administration shows open contempt for honest dissent, the fundamental basis of our government. The three branches of our government were not set up to agree, but intended to conflict. The nature of our government virtually guarantees compromise. George W. Bush, whose incredibly narrow victory in the 2000 election would by long-standing precedent necessitate a more moderate stance, does not compromise. The Founding Fathers knew that tyranny and corruption were the inevitable products of human nature when given too much power. This is as true in the 21st century as it was in the 18th. Yet Bush has gathered powers to himself and subverted checks at every opportunity. He seems to consider disagreement with him at worst unpatriotic, at best an irrelevant inconvenience that must be undermined or avoided. Witness his reaction to any attempt by the Congress to fulfill its Constitutional mandates of oversight and investigation such attempts are met by the Bush Administration with stonewalling, secrecy, and outright hostility. So combative, secrecy-obsessed, and airtight is the current White House that its only recent historical analogue is Nixon's administration, and even former senior officials of that era, most notably Nixon legal counsel John W. Dean, have noted the alarming Nixonian parallels.
Bush has held fewer press conferences -- the only forum in our society where a President can be questioned -- than any President in modern history, and the implication of course is that he doesn't want to answer tough questions before the American people. Journalists who venture skepticism of the administration are shut out. Helen Thomas, a 50-year press veteran who has reported on every President since Kennedy and is known as the First Lady of the Press, described the current press corps under Bush as having rolled over and played dead. In a 2004 interview she disclosed Bush's press conference procedure Bush has a seating chart and he knows who he is going to call on. He picks the people. He's been told to not call on me because I am going to ask a very tough question. Another observer called this the most cowed press corps in history.
The same fate awaits any member of his administration who breaks rank just ask Richard Clarke, Colonel Douglas Macgregor, Rand Beers, General Jay Garner, Richard Haass, General Eric Shinseki, or Paul O'Neill. Just ask former Ambassador Joseph Wilson what happens when you publicly embarrass the Bush Administration his wife's identity as a CIA operative was revealed to arch-conservative columnist Robert Novak by what Novak described as a senior administration official, and her career was ruined. When minority Democrats in Congress use the only options available to them to prevent their branch from becoming a mere rubber stamp for the Administration, they are called obstructionists in a tone which equates the term with the lower forms of filth. When the judiciary dares to contravene his policy, he rails publicly against activist judges who dare object to his prerogatives.
There exists a circle the wagons mindset in this administration: politics is war, and no one on his side is to be held accountable. Forgotten in this is any understanding of the reasons those inconvenient checks and balances were put into place to begin with, nor any notion that the people are owed a government whose workings are transparent and whose elected functionaries are accountable. Bush has said that he doesn't read the newspaper, and believes that the most objective sources I have are people on my staff. Contrast this with the lesson of history that those close to someone in power are quite willing to tell them only what they want to hear and Thomas Jefferson's famous statement that he would rather have newspapers without government than government without newspapers. It appears that this mindset of circular reinforcement contributed greatly to the failure of the Bush Administration to anticipate and plan for the aftermath of the Iraq War they discussed it only amongst those who agreed, and those who warned them of the impending danger were marginalized. It appears that the Bush Administration's tell us what we want to hear attitude led to their inordinate trust in now debunked intelligence provided by Iraqi defectors led by a man named Ahmed Chalabi, who has since come under investigation as a possible Iranian spy.
John Kerry demonstrates faith in the Constitutional basis of our government. He has spent practically his entire life working inside it. Kerry is, despite Republican assertions to the contrary, a moderate willing to discuss reasonable compromise, willing to reach across the aisle, and open to the will of the people. I guarantee you he reads the newspaper. These are good things. George W. Bush's indictment of these traits in Kerry is in itself indicative of Bush's nature as a radical partisan. Kerry does not consider his political opponents his enemies. He demonstrates none of Bush's contempt for debate, in fact he seems to relish it often playing the part of devil's advocate in discussions among his advisers. As a young man he took his dissent to the streets, he voiced it before members of Congress and on national television. He blew the whistle on what he saw as the government's misconduct during the Vietnam War. As a Senator he steadfastly conducted important investigations into government misconduct even when they implicated influential members of his own party. He has a long history of willingness to work with members of the opposing party in a bi-partisan manner. There is little doubt that a Kerry Administration would be vastly more open to debate, more open to the press, more understanding of the beneficial aspects of the legislative process, and more tolerant of protest. Even those who disagree with Kerry can at least be assured that he hears their concerns, something that cannot be said for Bush.
Justice and the Rule of Law
Under Bush, for the first time since the shameful internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, American citizens have been detained indefinitely without charges ever being filed against them, and held in secret locations without access to communication with lawyers or their families. All that is required is that the President declare you an enemy combatant. The USA Patriot Act signed into law by President Bush expands the powers of law enforcement in every direction. Under the act, the FBI now needs no longer to show reasonable suspicion that its searches are related to criminal activity, and there is only token judicial oversight of these powers. The government needs no evidence or proof, but merely a broad certification by a judge that the search falls under the statutes' powers and the judge has no authority to reject the application. Under the Patriot Act, the FBI can obtain your financial, medical, commercial, and personal records, search your property, wiretap your phone, and monitor your computer activities, all in complete secrecy. You need not be notified that you are under investigation, and the record holders which turn over information about you are under gag orders not to disclose this fact to you or anyone else.
The Bush administration claims the threat of terrorism makes this a necessity, but thus far the vast majority of known cases under the Act have concerned non-terrorism-related activity. The House Judiciary Committee has demanded several times that the Justice Department under Bush-appointee Attorney General John Ashcroft answer questions about how it was using its authority under the Act, and the Justice Department has refused to describe in detail how it was implementing the law, even classifying certain information so that it cannot be obtained by the public. We have seen how this is in keeping with the Bush Administration's contempt for the Constitution. Many of the most dangerous aspects of the Patriot Act are due to expire in 2005. President Bush has called for their unconditional renewal, and has given his support to a proposed Patriot Act II which would expand the government's power even further.
The Patriot Act was passed by a 98-to-1 vote in the Senate while the ruins of the World Trade Center were still smoking, and many Senators have complained that they had not even been allowed the time to read the entire law before a vote on it was ramrodded through the Congress. John Kerry proposes amending many of the provisions of the Patriot Act to increase judicial oversight and protect the civil liberties of American citizens; President Bush has threatened to veto any such amendment. When a New York district court ruled a portion of the Patriot Act unconstitutional, Ashcroft responded by pledging to appeal the decision, saying We believe the act to be completely consistent with the United States Constitution. He describes criticism of the Act as breathless reports and baseless hysteria.
The Bush Administration views international law as a tool to be used when it suit its goals, and as an obstacle to be circumvented when it objects to U.S. Policy. The Bush Administration used the litany of United Nations resolutions against Iraq as a justification for war, arguing that the United States was merely enforcing international law. This justification conveniently ignores the fact that, under international law, pre-emptive war is illegal. In fact, the Secretary-General of the United Nations has ruled that the Iraq War was, in fact, illegal. This is a part of a broader unilateralist mindset within this Administration. The Geneva Convention, which the United States ratified the first version of in 1882, guarantees the humane treatment of prisoners of war. In Article 17 of the 1949 Convention it states:
"No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind."
Article 89 reads:
"In no case shall disciplinary punishments be inhuman, brutal or dangerous to the health of prisoners of war."
Such humane treatment of prisoners is emotionally irksome to many Americans when the prisoners involved are members of organizations which do not extend the same courtesy to captured American prisoners, but a more realistic, rational view is necessary. Torture has long been known not to be a reliable method of extracting useful information. Those subjected to it will often say anything to end their suffering -- witness the regular confession of victims of the medieval Spanish Inquisition during torture to all manner of impossible or unlikely crimes. Even if the tortured do not offer a false confession, torture destroys any chance of comradery and trust between the interrogator and his subject, a condition which is necessary for the extraction of useful information. The Bush Administration disavowed this knowledge, seeking opinions from its lawyers that justified the use of torture against suspects of terrorism in American custody. This mindset led directly to the known abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the known and alleged abuses of prisoners of war in Afghanistan, and the alleged mistreatment of prisoners of war housed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. These abuses consisted of deliberate torture: beatings, dogs, sexual humiliation, fear of death and harm, and even death in some cases which are still under investigation.
Furthermore, such abuses undermine the moral credibility of the United States to criticize other nations when they fail to uphold human rights. They jeopardize the safety of American soldiers in enemy custody during future conflicts between nation-states, when enemies mindful of the recent past will treat American soldiers as they perceive we would treat their own.
The Bush Administration: has made the U.S. the only one of 178 nations not to implement the Kyoto Protocol on Global Warming, has rejected the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, has no plans to ratify the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, has rejected the Convention on the Rights of the Child, has abandoned a United Nations draft accord which would enforce the 1995 Biological Weapons Convention, intends to scrap the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and is expected to reject the 1997 Land Mine Ban treaty. He has rejected the creation of the International Criminal Court, the first permanent international body to prosecute war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity. Contrary to the Bush Administration's party line, these withdrawals have little to do with terrorism.
The withdrawal of the United States from international law began well before 9/11/01, indeed it began practically from the moment Bush took office. The 9/11 attacks merely provided the pretext by which the neo-conservatives in the administration could accomplish their long-standing goals. A paper drafted in September of 2000 by Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush (brother of George W.), and Cheney's Chief of Staff, Lewis Libby, entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century stated The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.
The only impression other nations, including some of our oldest and most trusted allies, can receive from such actions is that the United States will not be held to any standard but its own convenience. International law only applies to other countries in the Bush Administration's view. In recent days Bush has taken to mocking Kerry's use of the phrase global test during their debates, saying "When our country's in danger the president's job is not to take an international poll. Bush sums up what he calls the Kerry Doctrine this way "He said that America has to pass a global test before we can use troops to defend ourselves."
The full text of what Kerry actually said is immensely revealing of Bush's mindset, considering his criticism of it. As Kerry explicitly said, his meaning was not that the United States should go hat-in-hand before the world and meekly seek permission to defend itself. In fact, he said:
"The President always has the right, and always has had the right, for [a] pre-emptive strike.... But if and when you do it, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people, understand fully why you're doing what you're doing, and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."
So it's more than a global test. It's a truth test. Should the government of the United States have to be able to justify, not only to the world but to its own people, its decision to go to break international law and go to war pre-emptively? Bush says, unequivocally, no. Kerry, on the other hand, says yes. Yes, you do have to have a legitimate reason to go to war. Yes, you do have to justify to your actions to your own people, and you have to be able to prove that the reasons behind the war were honest and clear.
John Kerry wants to hold America, the most powerful nation in the world, to the highest standards of truth and justice. John Kerry understands that, even if we would like to, even if it is less convenient for us in the short-term, we cannot stand alone among the nations of the world. Only working together, in close cooperation and coordination, can the nations of the world eliminate terror. Only working together can the innumerable problems facing the world, today and in the near and distant future, be finally solved.
Science and the Environment
Science and George W. Bush are strangers in the night, exchanging wary glances. It's no secret that his religious faith, fundamentalist protestant Christianity, is a central facet of his character and decision making. He advertises this fact boldly, considering it part of his appeal. When asked by journalist Bob Woodward whether he had consulted his father, former President George H.W. Bush, before ordering the invasion of Iraq to begin, he responded He is the wrong father to appeal to for advice. The wrong father to go to, to appeal to in terms of strength. There's a higher Father that I appeal to." It is clear, then, that George W. Bush considers a one-way conservation with God more influential than the advice of a former President, Vice President, head of the CIA, ambassador to the United Nations, veteran of World War II, and not to mention also his own father, even on a question as critical as whether to send American forces into combat, and the United States into war. He told the Houston Post in 1993 that, as the reporter paraphrased it, "heaven is open only to those who accept Jesus Christ." According to the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, Bush told Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazen during their meeting in June of 2003 God told me to strike at Al Qaeda, and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did. During a 2004 meeting with a group of the Amish in Pennsylvania he told those assembled "I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job." During the 2000 debates, he stated that his favorite political philosopher was Jesus Christ. He kicked off his 2000 South Carolina campaign with a speech at Bob Jones University, a private religious college which at the time held a ban on interracial dating, and which has told homosexual alumni that they are not welcome on campus. Bush made no mention of either subject, instead telling the audience there 'I look forward to publicly defending our conservative philosophy.
The Bible defines faith, in Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1, as being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This definition is the precise opposite of science. Faith asks you to believe what you can't see, and have no way to confirm. Science demands that even what appears obvious be checked and tested within an inch of its life. Faith demands that you don't question. Science insists that you do question; in fact, the scientific method requires you to try to disprove what you hope to be true.
Faith can extend beyond religion. There is faith in a political ideology, faith in a philosophy, faith in a certain course of action. George W. Bush's actions in every sphere are characterized by faith, by a belief in what he hopes to be true, not by a scientific analysis of reality. Take tax cuts, for example. Tax cuts are an article of faith for Bush. To him, they're the perfect solution in all situations. Things are good? Tax cuts! Things are bad? Tax cuts! He has cut taxes four times during the last four years, all while rapidly increasing spending, resulting in the largest projected budget deficit in the history of the United States. Even leaving out defense spending, entitlements, and homeland security, discretionary spending has increased an average of 8.2% per year under Bush, twice as fast as under Bush 1, three times as fast as Clinton, and four times as fast as Carter, according to the Washington Monthly and the government's own reports. A study by the libertarian Cato Institute concluded that Bush is the mother of all big spenders, and that he spends like Carter and panders like Clinton. The reality is that if you want to cut taxes, you have to also cut spending, or you will make higher taxes in the future inevitable. The Bush Administration denies even this basic logic.
Bush's faith extends to other matters as well, even to the public health. He appointed Dr. David Hager, an OB/GYN who believes that the birth control pill should not be prescribed to single women, to chair the Food and Drug Administration's panel on women's health policy. The FDA has since refused to approve the Morning-After Pill, which amounts to a large dose of the regular birth-control pill and prevents a woman from becoming pregnant (and thus is not an abortion) in the event it is taken with 72 hours of sexual intercourse, as an over-the-counter medication as it is sold in almost every other industrialized nation because of the expediency with which it must be taken.
This decision over-ruled the recommendation of the FDA's own scientific advisory panel. An internal agency memo noted staff have expressed the concern that this decision is based on non-medical implications of teen sexual behavior, or judgments about the propriety of this activity. [Emphasis mine.]
For the head of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, Bush appointed former Republican Representative Dr. Tom Coburn, a man who regularly rails against what he calls the homosexual agenda and who once sponsored a bill which would have required those infected with the disease to notify their local government.. Despite the fact that education about the use of condoms has proved time and again to be the most effective means of halting the spread of the disease, Coburn favors a form of abstinence-only education with excludes any discussion of other methods of protection. Independent researchers have found that no reliable evidence exists that abstinence-only education is effective, yet Bush has spent $270 million on such programs. The fact is, abstinence does prevent pregnancy and all sexually-transmitted diseases. Abstinence-only education, however, does not. This faith-over-facts approach has also led the Bush Administration to withdraw funding from international family planning organizations which even mention abortion, and to abstinence-until-marriage programs receiving fully one-third of all U.S. anti-AIDS funding in Africa and elsewhere. New Bush regulations also prevent such groups from publishing anything "sexually suggestive" such as teaching how to put on a condom properly using a demonstration model of a penis. Information about the effectiveness of condoms has also been pulled from the government website for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The information which replaced it instead emphasized condom failure rates and the effectiveness of abstinence.
Most Americans have heard something about the controversy over stem cell research. John Kerry, the late Christopher Reeve, Nancy and the junior Ronald Reagan, and the vast majority of scientists have all advocated its expansion. George W. Bush is hearing none of it, because of his belief that embryonic stem cell research requires the destruction of life to create a stem cell. This is in line with the view of many fundamentalist Christians, who hold that stem cell research is akin to abortion. So what are stem cells, and how are they obtained? Stem cells are the first cells a growing embryo consists of, generic cells which transform into every other type of cell in the human body. They are donated with consent from fertilized embryos left over from procedures such as in vitro fertilization and very early-stage abortion, embryos which would be discarded otherwise. Such cells, if harnessed, have the potential to cure many human diseases and conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, diabetes, spinal cord injury, heart disease, stroke, arthritis, cancer, and burns. President Bush approved funding for their research, but limited the funding to those lines of stem cells already in existence. At that time, the Bush Administration stated that more than 70 stem cell lines were available to scientists, when in fact National Institutes of Health Director Elias Zerhouni found that there were only 11 currently available.
Ushkow, Mike: "Turnout Ups, Downs", Dec/2001
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2519/is_10_22/ai_81223464
Gallup Poll: "Views of Bush Reach New Heights of Polarization", 10/21/04
http://www.gallup.com/poll/content/login.aspx?ci=13735
Center for Politics and Public Affairs: "The New Political Zeitgeist", 8/5/04
http://politics.fandm.edu/040805_zeitgeist.html
CNN: "Transcript: Vice President Gore and Governor Bush Participate In Presidential Debate", 10/3/00
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/debates/transcripts/u221003.html
WNYC NPR: "On the Media", 5/4/02
http://www.wnyc.org/onthemedia/transcripts/transcripts_050402_paris.html
World Press Review: "We Are All Americans", 9/12/01
http://www.worldpress.org/1101we_are_all_americans.htm
New York Newsday: "May God Bless America", 9/15/01
http://www.nynewsday.com/ny-george14,0,4921343.story
White House.Gov: "Press Briefing by Ari Fleischer", 9/26/01
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010926-5.html
Berkeley Daily Planet: "Library Bristles At Patriot Act', 4/25/03
http://www.berkeleydaily.org/text/article.cfm?issue=04-25-03&storyID=16539
CNN: "You are either with us or against us", 11/06/01
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/11/06/gen.attack.on.terror/
White House.Gov: "President Delivers State of the Union Address", 1/29/02
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html
Guardian Unlimited: "Retreat into a substitute reality", 10/2/04
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/comment/story/0,14259,1318185,00.html
MIT News Office: "Journalist Helen Thomas condemns Bush Administration", 11/6/02
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/fsawi/mit.html
The Bryan-College Station Eagle: "Journalist Cronkite warns against potential war", 10/28/02
http://www.theeagle.com/aandmnews/102802cronkite.htm
The Progressive: "Helen Thomas Interview", Aug. 04
http://www.progressive.org/august04/intv0804.html
Financial Times: "Maverick colonel blames US army's 'sycophantic' culture and heavy-handedness for failures in Iraq", 6/9/04
http://financialtimes.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=THE+AMERICAS%3A+Maverick+colonel+blames+US+army%27s+%27sycophantic%27+culture+and+heavy-handedness+for+failures+in+Iraq&expire=&urlID=10690622&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.ft.com%2Fs03%2Fsearch%2Farticle.html%3Fid%3D040609000149&partnerID=1741
Leslie Stahl interview with Richard Clarke, 3/21/04
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/60min_StahlClarke_transcript.html
Guardian: "General sacked by Bush says he wanted early elections", 3/18/04
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1171880,00.html
Washington Post: "Former Aide Takes Aim at War on Terror", 6/16/03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62941-2003Jun15?language=printer
USA Today: "Ex-Army boss: Pentagon won't admit reality in Iraq", 6/3/03
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-06-02-white-usat_x.htm
Asia Times: "Loss of key aide another setback for Powell", 6/7/03
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EF07Ak01.html
New York Times: "What I Didn't Find In Africa", 7/6/03
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0706-02.htm
CNN: "O'Neill: Bush planned Iraq invasion before 9/11", 1/14/04
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/10/oneill.bush/
Salon: "Joseph Wilson vs. the right-wing conspiracy", 7/26/04
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/07/16/wilson/
BBC News: "Profile: Joseph Wilson", 10/1/03
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3156166.stm
The Nation: "An Interview With Joseph Wilson", 4/30/04
http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?pid=1413
Guardian Unlimited: "Scorned general's tactics proved right', 3/29/03
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,925140,00.html
CBS News: "Gen. Zinni: 'They've Screwed Up', 5/21/04
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/21/60minutes/main618896.shtml
Salon: "How Ahmed Chalabi Conned the Neocons", 5/4/04
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/05/04/chalabi/
CNN: "Sources: Chalabi told Iran that U.S. broke its code", 6/2/04
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/06/02/chalabi.iran/
Miami Herald: "Bush doesn't read the paper", 10/16/03
http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/columnists/7027902.htm
Washington Post: "Key Part of Patriot Act Ruled Unconstitutional", 9/30/04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59626-2004Sep29.html?nav=rss_technology/techpolicy
CNN: "Federal judge rules part of Patriot Act unconstitutional", 1/26/04
http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/01/26/patriot.act.ap/
CNN: "Justice document: Patriot Act provision never used", 9/17/03
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/09/17/ashcroft.patriot/index.html
MSNBC: "Ruling weakening Patriot Act likely to be challenged", 9/30/04
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6131670/
American Civil Liberties Union: "Surveillance Under the USA PATRIOT Act".
http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=12263&c=206
The Avalon Project of Yale Law School "Laws of War: Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded on the Field of Battle (Red Cross Convention); August 22, 1864", 1998.
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/lawofwar/geneva04.htm
USA Today: "Critics decry Bush stand on treaties", 7/26/01.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/july01/2001-07-27-bush-treaties-usat.htm
Boulder Daily Camera: "Rejecting Treaties is a Bush Convention", 8/10/02
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0810-05.htm
Miami Herald: "Bush Wants to Dump Treaties", 7/10/01
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0720-03.htm
Sunday Herald: "Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President"
http://www.sundayherald.com/27735
Global Issues.org, "The Bush Doctrine of Pre-emptive Strikes; A Global Pax Americana", 4/24/04
http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/Empire/Bush.asp
MSNBC: "Bush Rips Kerry on 'Global Test' Remark"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6158694/
John Kerry.com: "Strength and Security for a New World"
http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/national_security/
CBS News: "Woodward Shares War Secrets", 4/18/04
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/15/60minutes/main612067.shtml
Miami Herald: "U.S., allies face rising antiwar sentiment", 3/17/04
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/nation/8204190.htm?1c
Agence France Presse: "Anti-American Sentiment Rising in Asia", 5/19/04
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0519-06.htm
USA Today: "Anti-American sentiment a worry", 2/27/04
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/summer/2004-02-27-usoc-concern_x.htm
CNN: "Rising anti-American sentiment could slam tech sector", 2/19/03
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/02/19/fortune.ff.globalization/
Associated Press: "Religious edicts, anti-American sentiment likely fueling bombings around the world", 4/6/04
http://www.thebatt.com/news/2004/04/06/News/Religious.Edicts.AntiAmerican.Sentiment.Likely.Fueling.Bombings.Around.The.World-652060.shtml
Slate: "Go to Hell - The Gospel according to George W." 7/24/99
http://slate.msn.com/id/32438/
Washington Post: "Road Map in the Back Seat?", 6/27/03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37944-2003Jun26?language=printer
Lancaster Online: "Bush quietly meets with Amish here; they offer their prayers"
http://lancasteronline.com/pages/news/local/4/7564
Boston Globe: "At Bob Jones U., A Disturbing Lesson About the Real George W. Bush", 2/9/00
http://www.commondreams.org/views/020900-101.htm
TIME: "Jesus and the FDA", 10/5/02
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,361521,00.html
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
One thing we can agree on, however... I can't wait for this election to be over either.