Reckless Debt Spending, Terrible War Planning, and Osama Bin Laden Running Around Free Top Our List Of Why Republicans Don't Deserve the Presidency

Is there anyone left in America that really still thinks George W. Bush has been a good president?

That the last eight years were better than the eight years under Clinton?

In case people have forgotten – Clinton handed Bush a balanced federal budget and a surplus of $559 billion. After eight years of reckless spending and tax cuts, Bush is ready to leave office with the federal deficit at $9.7 trillion dollars. This doesn’t even include the cost for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or the money we’re about to shell out to Wall Street and the financial markets.

The reality is that Bush’s tax cuts are an illusion. He increased spending with borrowed money. But eventually – like all loans – you have to pay it back.

This irresponsibility alone should put to the rest the notion that Republicans are fiscally responsible. It just isn’t true. Over the course of the last 50 years, the country has done better economically under Democrats than under Republicans. You don’t have to the do the number crunching – the L.A. Times has done it for you.

Isn’t this reason enough not to vote Republican in November?

Well, if you’re one of the stubborn ones, here are four more reasons why Republicans simply don’t deserve the White House for the next four years.

The Iraq War

Lest we forget: here’s why we went to war in Iraq:

“(The Iraqi regime) possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. It has given shelter and support to terrorism, and practices terror against its own people,” said George W. Bush in 2002. You can read the full text of his speech outlining why we needed to invade Iraq here. Be warned: it is scarily misguided.

Of course, after the invasion which has killed more than 4,000 U.S. troops, wounded more than 30,000 U.S. troops, and killed upwards of 90,000 Iraqi civilians, we have discovered that Iraq had never supported Al Qaeda, wasn’t even close to producing nuclear weapons, and didn’t have a single chemical or biological weapon.

Oops!

We’d better make another fabricated connection to 9/11! Vice President Dick Cheney did so repeatedly and continued to say Iraq had strong ties to Al Qaeda even after the 9/11 Commission found “no collaborative relationship” between Iraq and al Qaeda.

So why exactly did we invade Iraq? I’m not sure if we’ve ever gotten a real answer. But it has cost us more than $580 billion so far.

The Financial Meltdown

Not only was the first bailout package for Wall Street killed by the Republicans revolting against the policies of their own party, but it was the Republicans who lead the charge for the massive deregulation of the financial sector that is at the root of the problem.

Bush appointed Henry Paulson as U.S. Treasurer. Paulson is the former CEO of Goldman Sachs and has surrounded himself with other Wall Street insiders from his days at Goldman. They were slow to react to the mounting evidence that investment banks and other financial institutions were on the brink of collapse (Bush, in fact, was expressing confidence in the strength and stability of the markets as late as September 15).

Bush’s tepid response (it took him days to finally address the American people once the collapse became evident) is only slightly less ridiculous than McCain, who called the fundamentals of the economy sound on the day when the stock markets plummeted and banks went out of business. Then McCain overreacted by suspending his campaign and his debate with Obama – and then, of course, he did neither. Then he called for firing SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, even though he doesn’t have that authority (even as president).

Talk about a man in the throes of indecision and panic.

Perhaps this is why most people think the Republicans are to blame for the crisis. A new CNN poll has Americans 2-1 pointing the finger at Republicans rather than Democrats.

New Orleans

The city of New Orleans remains pocked with devastation from Hurricane Katrina three years later. In fact, the city hasn’t fully recovered and may never as the neglect from the federal government continues unabated.

You may recall that Bush didn’t think the hurricane merited ending his vacation early and that he didn’t tour the destruction until three days later – and then he went to Biloxi, Mississippi and talked about rebuilding Trent Lott’s porch and how he used to get drunk in New Orleans.

The federal government ignored New Orleans pleas to strengthen the levees as the storm was bearing down on it. Then the government bungled the recovery efforts – from providing shelter to getting food and water to victims. McCain called Bush’s handling of the disaster “disgraceful” back in April, yet he voted against a $21 million recovery package for the city and other areas hit by Katrina.

Bin Laden

Remember him? He’s allegedly the terrorist mastermind that murdered about 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001 by orchestrating a deadly plot to fly airplanes into our institutions (a plot that Bush was warned about several months before it happened – yet he did nothing).

Bin Laden is the man who supposedly destroyed the World Trade Center Towers. The man who we are told planned the attack that had a commercial aircraft takeout a section of the Pentagon.

Yet, he’s a free man – and apparently an avid videographer.

How is it possible that Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress voted to divert soldiers, money, and resources away from finding Bin Laden in Afghanistan in order to invade Iraq – which had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11?

It’s remarkable that Bush said in September of 2006 that capturing Bin Laden was “not a top priority” for the United States. Huh?

Why?

We really don’t have answers, but there are questions about Bush’s personal and family connections to Osama Bin Laden’s family. This may be the best reason why Republicans don’t deserve another term in office. They have betrayed those killed in 9/11, but not making the capture of their alleged murdered the number one priority of the administration.

Read More of Our Essays:

Blame the X$#% Media!

Addicted to Convenience

The Danger of Bottled Water

Labels: Bush, Essay, Politics, President

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Labels: Bush, Election, Essay, Media

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By Rev. Colson Crosslick

Picture a society:

• Where gays, lesbians, and she-males are treated the same as heterosexuals and can be married at any City Hall.
• Where the government gets into the healthcare business and starts paying for everyone who is sick to be treated – no matter if they can afford it or not!
• Where our job-creating, money-machine corporations are forced to pay higher taxes.
• Where hard-working rich people are penalized for their success by being forced to pay a higher percentage of taxes than the middle class and the poor.
• Where the in-roads Christianity has made into infiltrating government are eliminated and we go back to separating church and state.
• Where our warriors in Iraq return to our shores shame-faced because the war has been shutdown.

If we don’t tread carefully the nightmare scenario above could well become a reality. That’s because that bleak picture could happen to our great nation if we are foolish enough to elect a Democrat to the office of the presidency. Democrats in this day and age are the commies of the the 20th century.

So far I haven’t been overly impressed with the collection of Republicans vying to fill Bush’s enormous shoes – but I will caution voters that any of them would be better than Hillary Clinton (a she-beast closet lesbian if I’ve ever seen one), John Edwards (a greedy hick lawyer who hates businesses), and Obarka Obamaslama (who is probably related to at least a dozen Muslim terrorists).

In my mind former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee comes closest to presidential timber. He’s a man who I wouldn’t mind kneeling next to in church. So I’m going to cast my vote for him (yet I’m seriously considering just writing in a vote for Bush). The rest of Republican pack isn’t so bad – with the except of Mitt Romney, who is a member of a dangerous religious cult that blasphemers Jesus Christ and the holy tenets of Christianity. Romney should be shunned until he dies and finds himself face to face with Satan.

But the real problem is our own laws. The 22^nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prevents a president from sitting in power for more than two terms. This is a mistake and our Congress should be trying overturn or vote this law out of practice. There’s little doubt that George W. Bush deserves a third term.

There’s been lots of unfounded criticism of Bush in the radical leftwing media such as the New York Times, TIME magazine, and the Wall Street Journal, but there is little disagreement among thinking people that Bush has been one of the greatest presidents in history. I think most reasonable people agree that one of the great tragedies of the 2008 election is that Bush isn’t on the ticket. In my opinion there is little doubt this great leader would be re-elected in a landslide.

On the whole, the Bush legacy is nothing short of awe-inspiring. He is responsible for bringing Christians flocking back to government (putting God back where he belongs!). He has been an ardent supporter of stopping liberals and minorities from having abortions, murdering cut-throat criminals, and starting wars with unstable despots and terrorist states. He has also given back hundreds of millions of dollars to corporations and the wealthy – which for years were unfairly taxed by liberals.

He also stopped efforts at universal healthcare – which is a disastrous idea and one that brings the United States closer to communism. But perhaps his most amazing achievement has been his relentless pursuit of terrorists – no matter where they hide. So what if he hasn’t caught Osama bin Laden! He helped assassinate Saddam Hussein and has captured and imprisoned hundreds of Muslim thugs (and whisked them away into secret prisons where they can’t do any harm).

Bush has been a supporter of education – and believes that all children should learn to read and write. It’s been the linchpin of his domestic policy and we’ve seen huge improvements in public education as a result (despite what many ungrateful, overpaid teachers say).

I understand that the 22^nd Amendment probably won’t be eliminated, but it should be bypassed on this occasion. George W. Bush’s business is unfinished and my fear is that some Democratic do-gooder like Clinton or Obamaslama will be voted into office and start screwing things up. Do we really want healthcare for everyone? Do we really want to end the war in Iraq?

So vote Huckabee – or write in the name of our mightiest of presidents: George W. Bush. He can't win -- but it would be a powerful message to his inferior replacement!

(The Rev. Colson Crosslick is pastor of the Pretty Good Shepherd Church in Ripsaw, Arkansas. In the past, he has called for a ban on liberals from running for public office. He also writes the regularly appearing column Under God's Right Arm for DaRK PaRTY.)

The Reverend's 5 Reasons to Oppose Gay Marriage here

Labels: Bush, Politics, Under God's Right Arm

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"But all in all, it's been a fabulous year for Laura and me." —summing up his first year in office, three months after the 9/11 attacks, Washington, D.C., Dec. 20, 2001

History, of course, will be the final judge. And history will likely bitch slap George W. Bush down to the level of Millard Fillmore and Warren G. Harding. There’s seems to be little doubt any more that the 43^rd president of the United States will be remembered as one of the worst in history.

Polls show Bush’s approval ratings sinking to historical low levels (hovering around 35 percent). Let’s forget for a moment Bush’s inability to articulate coherent thoughts, his questionable reading skills, his election year corruption in Florida, or his pandering to corporate interests.

One could argue that those blunders and beliefs are part of Bush’s flawed character – the result of being a pampered, rich boy with little interest in education. How else to explain how a wealthy 50-something managed never to travel overseas until he was elected president?

What will really topple the Bush presidency into the dustbin of history are his crimes – four of them all told (and any of them could technically be reason enough to pursue impeachment). There’s no excuse for any of them – they were outright, deliberate prevarications against all of us and together they have eroded the nation’s ethical standing and weakened our global reputation.

Here are Bush’s four primary crimes:

The War in Iraq

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." —Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004

The crime: Lying and inducing the United States into war (in violation of Title 18 U.S. Code, Section 371)

Bush and his chief enabler, Vice President Cheney, lied to the American people and the U.S. Congress about the threat Iraq posed to the country. They did this to justify an illegal invasion of Iraq. The lies include, but are not limited to:

• Iraq had a thriving nuclear weapons program and was close to building a nuclear missile

• Iraq had 100 to 500 tons of chemical weapons stockpiled throughout the country

• Iraq had close ties to the al-Qaeda terrorist organization and even trained al-Qaeda agents in bomb making

• Iraq tried to buy uranium for its nuclear weapons program from Africa

Reckless Endangerment of U.S. troops

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." —Washington, D.C., Dec. 19, 2000

Bush and his military commanders endangered the lives of U.S. soldiers in two ways: poor planning (especially in the aftermath of battlefield operations in Iraq) and failure to properly equip soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The poor planning has been acknowledged by Bush himself. The evidence can be found in the mounting causalities in Iraq among U.S. military personnel (now more than 3,000 killed and 21,000 wounded) and Iraqi civilians (which could arguably be more than 100,000 killed). The operation has cost taxpayers more than $1 trillion.

But the real crime was sending U.S. troops into harms way without bulletproof vests or properly armored vehicles. More than two years into the war in Iraq and U.S. troops were still being forced to search for scrap metal in order to reinforce their vehicles against roadside bombs. According to USA Today, soldiers were digging through landfills in 2004 to find pieces of metal and scrap iron.

Torture

"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." —Washington, D.C., March 13, 2002

The most disturbing images coming out of the Bush presidency will be the torture photographs from Abu Ghraib. The image of the Iraqi man standing on a box with a black sheet and pointed black hood on his head and wires snaking out from his hands has a good chance of becoming the lasting symbol of the Bush administration.

Bush and his cronies have also sought to water-down the definition of torture held by the United Nations and has whisked terrorist suspects to places like Pakistan so that they may be “questioned” in nations without laws against torture.

As a result, Bush is guilty of violating the Federal Torture Act (Title 18 of U.S. Code, Section 113C) and U.N. Torture Convention and the Geneva Convention.

One could also argue that Bush is guilty of “torture” by ordering hundreds of terrorist suspects held in military prisons without being charged with crimes, without access to due process and without credible legal representation.

Spying on Americans

"I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job." — to a group of Amish he met with privately, July 9, 2004

This may be Bush’s biggest offense and the one Americans seem least concerned about. Yet our president violated the law by ordering the National Security Agency to conduct electronic surveillance on innocent citizens without a warrant. It is required – by law (and its practically a rubber stamp process) to get a court order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review.

Without the warrants, Bush is guilty of violating Title 50 U.S. Code, Section 1805.

Labels: Bush, Crimes, Essay, Impeachment, Iraq, Politics, President, Spying, Torture, Troops

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Glenn’s blog, one of the most read in the world, lead to a book called “How Would a Patriot Act?” released in May, 2006. Glenn has written for American Conservative magazine and appeared on a variety of television and radio programs, including C-Span's "Washington Journal," Air America's "Majority Report" and Public Radio International's "To the Point." His reporting and analysis have been credited in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Salon, Slate and a variety of other print and online publications.

DaRK PaRTY caught up with Glenn shortly after the mid-term elections to discuss the last six years of the Bush administration, 9/11, and the war in Iraq.)

DaRK PaRTY: After 9/11 you were a big supporter of President Bush and the War on Terror, including the invasion of Afghanistan. But since then you have become one of the administration's harshest critics. What happened to cause such a turn around?

Glenn: The first event which caused me to begin seriously questioning the administration's wisdom and motives was the lawless detention of Jose Padilla, the U.S. citizen arrested on U.S. soil and then imprisoned incommunicado, with no charges being brought, for the next 3 1/2 years. When the administration argued that it had the power to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely without even so much as charging them with a crime, it was obvious that this administration was quite radical and seeking to expand its powers in unprecedented ways.

The invasion of Iraq, particularly when it turned out that the WMDs were entirely nonexistent, underscored not just the administration's insincerity but also its ineptitude. Its ongoing insistence that things were going well there when it was glaringly obvious that the opposite was true made me conclude that they had no regard for the truth and no connection to reality. And the revelation that they were breaking the law by eavesdropping on Americans with no warrants, followed by the President's insistence that he would continue to do so because he has the power to act outside of the law, led me to conclude that the administration simply does not believe in the founding principles of our country and poses a grave threat to those principles..

DP: The invasion of Iraq went from being a populous war to one that may cause the downfall of the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress. You supported the war at first, but have since become very critical of the decision. Why did you support the war early on and what do you think the solution in Iraq is at this point?

Glenn: It is not accurate to say that I supported the war at first. Howard Dean was the first political candidate to whom I ever donated money and that was in 2002 and the beginning of 2003, when he was, far and away, the most vocal and aggressive advocate against the invasion.

I was ambivalent about the war, but ultimately accepted the administration's claims that there was no doubt that (a) Saddam had chemical and biological weaopns and (b) had an active nuclear program. I gave them the benefit of the doubt, believing that such a massive fraud -- they were so categorical that he possessed WMDs -- was beyond their capacity to perpetrate.

I lived in New York for 15 years beginning in 1991 and was in Manhattan on 9/11 and was sympathetic to the idea that a more proactive, anti-Islamic-extremist foreign policy was needed. But I also thought it was clear that there were serious risks to the invasion that were being obscured and that the administration, aided by the media, had created a climate where real dissent and the scrutiny that it entails were precluded. That is why I donated to and supported Dean's candidacy, because I thought it was vital that there be a real adversarial force to the administration's arguments in favor of the war.

DP: As a lawyer, you have great insight and respect for the rule of law. In your book "How Would a Patriot Act?" you eloquently argue that the Bush administration has violated the tenets of the Constitution. What do you think have been the administration's biggest abuses?

Glenn: The detention of U.S. citizens (not just Padilla, but also Yaser Esam Hamdi) with no trial, combined with the administration's claim (which they still maintain) that they have the power, is probably the single most severe betrayal of our country's principles that one can fathom. That is a power which not even the British King possessed, at least not since the Magna Carta.

But the greatest abuse is the administration's general theory of executive power -- that the President has the unilateral and unconstrained power to act in all areas relating to defense of the country, which includes both foreign and U.S. soil, against both foreign nationals and U.S. citizens, and that nothing -- not the American people through their Congress nor the courts applying the law -- can constrain him in any way. That is the defining power of a King. It is what the founders waged war and created a Constitution in order to prevent. And it is the power that this administration not only argues it possesses, but has exercised aggressively and enthusiastically in numerous ways.

DP: What do you think it says about the character of the United States that its citizens have let their civil liberties to be eroded without much of a fight?

Glenn: I don't think Americans are particularly aware of the true nature of the administration's conduct, in large part because the media has so profoundly failed in its role to inform them.

The NSA wiretapping scandal was never presented as what it was -- a law-breaking scandal, a scandal about whether the President has the power to act outside of the law -- but rather as a scandal about whether the President should be able to eavesdrop on terrorists without court approval. The Padilla case was barely talked about at all; I guarantee most Americans are unaware that the Bush administration has imprisoned U.S. citizens on U.S. soil for years without giving them a trial, charging them with a crime, or even allowing them to talk to anyone on the outside, even including a lawyer.

The founders envisioned that citizens would stay informed about what their government was doing by an adversarial media, which would expose governmental deceit and inform citizens if things were going awry with their government. For numerous reasons, many systematic, the media simply do not do that and, as a result, Americans are largely uninformed about the truly radical nature of this administration. Nonetheless, Americans have come to the conclusion on their own that the President is dishonest and corrupt, and that is why his popularity has collapsed and, with this last election, so, too, has his presidency.

DP: You write one of the most read political blogs in the country "Unclaimed Territory." What drew you to the Internet and blogging in the first place and what role do you think blogs played in turning public opinion against Bush policies and the war in Iraq?

Glenn: I began reading blogs during the run-up to the war, in 2002, and found that the blogosphere was the only place where truly critical thinking and informative analysis could be found. Most of the mainstream media was enthralled to the President and his chest-beating war rhetoric. It made them feel strong and safe and powerful, and in exchange, they sacrificed their critical faculties in order to be accepted by this war movement.

The blogosphere was borne out of dissatisfaction with media punditry, and so bloggers were, by definition, more forceful and critical thinkers. The highest level political debates were unquestionably taking place in the blogosphere, and I began my blog in order to participate in those discussions. It is hard to quantify the influence of blogs in turning the public against the war, but blogs clearly play a significant role in keeping the media honest, in forcing them to be critical of government claims and not mindlessly convey information given to them from their favorite sources in the government. More critical reporting by the media of the war effort -- "critical" in both senses of the word - is, more than anything, what led Americans to realize just how duped they were and just how destructive this invasion and occupation has been.

Read our essay on the Iraq War here

Read our essay on the Bush Administration here

Labels: 5 Questions, Bush, Glenn Greenwald

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