Attention Fence Sitters: 101 Points to Ponder Before Taking to the Polls

[Guest guest]

http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/04/10/far04036.html

 

October 25, 2004

 

Attention Fence Sitters: 101 Points to Ponder Before Taking to the Polls

 

by Maureen Farrell

 

(Each point has links embedded to further reading on that point. Click

on the address above and go to the site to read them.)

 

" Nixon was a professional politician, and I despised everything he

stood for -- but if he were running for president this year against

the evil Bush-Cheney gang, I would happily vote for him. " – Hunter S.

Thompson

 

Though the country is more polarized than it's been since the Vietnam

War, a palpable sense of " we're in it togetherness " exists below the

rancor and angst. Because of this, the question, " Are you better off

than you were four years ago? " has been replaced with the broader, " Is

the country better off " ?

 

At this particular fork in the road, we have to imagine where each

path might lead. Where will we be five years from now? Twenty years

from now? Should we " stay the course, " even though the course is

headed into a ravine?

 

Of course, the Bush campaign has been trying to scare Americans with

images of wolves, suggesting that this administration will keep danger

at bay. But George Bush has made us decidedly less safe by driving us

deeper into the forrest. Should we reward the man who's steered the

country into a ditch by giving him the keys to the company car?

 

One week from now, our collective futures will be decided. If you're

still undecided, I beg you to consider the following:

 

The last presidential election

 

[ " George Bush's presidency was] signed, sealed and delivered months

before anyone entered a voting booth. " – Investigative reporter Greg

Palast

 

1. Scrubbed voter rolls.

 

2. Disappearing votes.

 

3. Thugs on Enron planes.

 

4. Another debacle in the making.

 

Incompetence prior to 9/11

 

" I don't believe any longer that it's a matter of connecting the dots.

I think they had a veritable blueprint, and we want to know why they

didn't act on it. " — Sen. Arlen Specter

 

5. In addition to the Aug. 6, 2001 PDB entitled 'Bin Laden Determined

To Strike in US,' the president saw a string of reports, including

ones entitled: 'Bin Laden planning multiple operations,' 'Bin Laden

network's plans advancing' and 'Bin Laden threats are real.' "

 

6 " Bush acknowledged that bin Laden was not his focus or that of his

national security team. `I was not on point,' the president said [to

Bob Woodward in Bush at War]. `I didn't feel a sense of urgency.'

Well, how can you not feel a sense of urgency when George Tenet is

telling you in daily briefings, day after day, that a major al Qaeda

attack is coming? "

 

7. " 'Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's

going to happen soon, " Richard Clarke told White House staffers in

July 2001. " For six weeks. . . the U.S. government was at its highest

possible state of readiness. . . By the time Bush received his

briefing at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., on Aug. 6, the government had

begun to stand down from the alert. "

 

8. FBI officials complained after Bush took office, intelligence

agencies were instructed to " 'back off' from investigations involving

other members of the Bin Laden family, the Saudi royals, and possible

Saudi links to the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Pakistan. "

 

9. Former Sen. Gary Hart says he warned Condoleezza Rice " about an

imminent terror attack on two occasions before 9/11. "

 

10. Senator: " incompetence. . . a contributing factor toward Sept. 11. "

 

Incompetence on 9/11

 

" For more than two hours after the Federal Aviation Administration

became aware that the first plane had been violently overtaken by

Middle Eastern men, the man whose job it was to order air cover over

Washington did not show up in the Pentagon's command center. It took

him almost two hours to 'gain situational awareness'. . . " -- Gail

Sheehy, the Los Angeles Times

 

11. Bush's Pet Goat.

 

12. " How much in command was the commander in chief? "

 

13. John Dean: " It seems very probable that those in the White House

knew much more than they have admitted, and they are covering up their

failure to take action. "

 

14. " Why don't we have answers to these 9/11 questions? "

 

15. " FBI rewarding incompetence? "

 

16. " The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until

after the election, and this one names names. "

 

Incompetence in Iraq

 

" Iraq is a terrible mess because of the criminal incompetence of the

Bush national security team, and we are more alone in the world than

ever. " —Thomas Friedman, the New York Times

 

17. Zinni: " In the lead up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I

saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility,

at worse, lying, incompetence and corruption. "

 

18. " As the toll of mayhem inspired by terrorist leader Abu Musab

al-Zarqawi mounts in Iraq, some former officials and military officers

increasingly wonder whether the Bush administration made a mistake

months before the start of the war by stopping the military from

attacking his camp in the northeastern part of that country. " (Shades

of bin Laden's escape?)

 

19 The Bush administration failed to guard Iraq's military and nuclear

sites and, as a result, explosives

 

and nuclear materials have been pilfered. As one writer put it, " your

chances of getting nuked in your jammies have gone way up. "

 

20. Career CIA officer: " America is losing the war on terror, in part

because of the invasion of Iraq. "

 

21. " Iraq war 'helped al-Qaeda recruit.' and " succeeded only in

stimulating terrorism. "

 

22. Brigadier General: " If we continue to proceed the way we are

proceeding with the current strategy, there's going to become a point

in time where the draft could be very necessary. "

 

23. " If Bush is re-elected there are only two possible outcomes in

Iraq " – and neither is good for America.

 

Bush Administration Secrecy

 

" This White House. . . is the most secretive ever to run the United

States. " – Former Nixon counsel John Dean

 

24. " I believe a veil of secrecy has descended around the

administration and I think that's unseemly, " Republican Congressman

Dan Burton remarked, after Bush signed an Executive Order restricting

access to Presidential records.

 

25. Cheney's Energy Task force forced the question, " What are they

hiding? "

 

26. As of Feb. 2003, there were more than 300 rollbacks of the Freedom

of Information Act.

 

27. 9/11 family members said the White House " smothered every attempt

to get to the bottom of the outrageous intelligence failures that took

place on its watch. "

 

28. 'What is your government not telling you'?

 

Deception

 

" Sometimes the truth is so precious it must be accompanied by a

bodyguard of lies. " -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld paraphrasing

Winston Churchill

 

29. Even while publicly making mushroom cloud claims, hawks in the

U.S. government privately admitted that Iraq was not a threat to the

United States.

 

30. Early on, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell both publicly asserted

that Saddam was not capable of attacking America.

 

31. The Pentagon constructed its own " lie factory " to justify a

pre-planned war.

 

32. Paul Wolfowitz skirted the human and monetary costs of the war in

Iraq, causing one lawmaker to note: " I think you're deliberately

keeping us in the dark. "

 

33. The Bush administration relied on " misrepresentation [and]

manipulation " to make its case for Iraq.

 

34. As of Oct. 25, 2004, the White House Web site still contained a

list of Iraq-related whoppers.

 

Trickery

 

" President Bush may not be dumb, but he sure does think the rest of us

are. " – Molly Ivins

 

35. " The Pakistani president, General Pervez Musharraf, struck a deal

with the US not to seize Bin Laden after the Afghan war for fear of

inciting trouble in his own country. "

 

36. " The White House withheld information about North Korea's nuclear

weapons program until after Congress passed its resolution authorizing

war with Iraq. "

 

37. The White House instructed Rep Dick Armey to insert a provision

blocking lawsuits against vaccine makers into homeland security

legislation. " Why would anyone want to save Eli Lilly on our

children's backs? " one mother asked.

 

38. The Bush administration knew that claims about aluminum tubes and

" uranium from Africa " were not true, but " cooked information " made its

way into President's speeches anyway.

 

39. 'The quickest way home is through Baghdad', they told us. So we

took the city, and here we are still, " one staff sergeant complained,

long before troops were forced to stay in the military.

 

Weirdness

 

" First it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to

pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries

provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks.. . . Was this

inaction simply the result of key people disregarding, or being

ignorant of, the evidence? Or could US air security operations have

been deliberately stood down on September 11? " -- Former British

environmental minister Michael Meacher

 

40. " On Sept. 10, Newsweek has learned, a group of top Pentagon

officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning,

apparently because of security concerns. "

 

41. Former FBI translator: " I saw papers that show US knew al-Qa'ida

would attack cities with airplanes. "

 

42. In 2000, the U.S. military conducted exercises to see how many

would perish if a plane flew into the Pentagon and on Sept. 11, 2001

the CIA ran a similar simulation.

 

43. Days after the 9/11 attacks, Bin Laden family members were flown

out of the country.

 

44. " Judicial Watch is aggressively pursuing the disclosure of the

facts and the decision for White House staff, and President Bush as

well, to begin taking Cipro nearly a month before anthrax was detected

on Capitol Hill. "

 

45. Bush knew.

 

Threats to Civil Liberties

 

" It's bombs away for Iraq and on our civil liberties if Bush and his

cronies get their way. " – Helen Thomas

 

46. `Bush gets " f " on Civil Rights.'

 

47. " Patriot Act sequel worse than original "

 

48. School teachers threatened with arrest and tossed out of a Bush

rally for wearing T-shirts that read `Protect our civil liberties.'

 

49. Mother of a slain solider arrested for interrupting Laura Bush.

 

50. Solider tossed out of a Bush rally for befriending a Democrat.

 

51. John Ashcroft's camps.

 

52. `Uncle Sam will soon want your kids.'

 

Threats to Democracy

 

" It's not an overstatement to say that on Nov. 2, the fate of

traditional American democracy will hang in the balance. " – Neal

Gabler, the Los Angeles Times

 

53. " On the issue of war and peace, the United States is no longer a

democracy. "

 

54. `Threats to Democracy at Code Red.'

 

55. Former Reagan official bemoans the " Brownshirting of America. "

 

56. Bush-Connected Clear Channel raises questions about censorship and

the merger of government and the media.

 

57. `Dirty Tricks return to the sunshine state'

 

58. " So even before most of the country votes on November 2, it is

likely that John Kerry will have been denied thousands upon thousands

of votes, well in excess of one or two hundred thousand possibly, due

to a national GOP strategy of voter suppression, intimidation and

dirty tricks, using multiple strategies. "

 

59. 'U.S. spies on chat rooms.'

 

60. Congress kept in dark about Bush's Shadow Government

 

61. `The end of Democracy.'

 

Threats to Core Values

 

" Give us back the America we loved, and your friends will be waiting

for you. " – John Le Carre, the Los Angeles Times

 

62. " Unilateral preventive war is neither legitimate nor moral. It is

illegitimate and immoral. For more than 200 years we have not been

that kind of country. "

 

63. Bush " will go down in history as the first president to try to

write bias back into the Constitution. "

 

64. " [bush's] international policies have been based on the hopelessly

naïve belief that foreign peoples are eager to be liberated by

American armies -- a notion more grounded in Leon Trotsky's concept of

global revolution than any sort of conservative statecraft. His

immigration policies -- temporarily put on hold while he runs for

re-election -- are just as extreme. "

 

65. " Bush has shown an ideological commitment to the literalist

Christian tradition at the expense of the broader view of the larger

religious community. He is the first president not to meet with the

leadership of mainline Christian traditions since George Washington. "

 

66. " The nation's founders, smarting still from the punitive pieties

of Europe's state religions, were adamant about erecting a wall

between organized religion and political authority. But suddenly, that

seems like a long time ago. George W. Bush -- both captive and creator

of this moment -- has steadily, inexorably, changed the office itself.

He has created the faith-based presidency. "

 

67. " How did eight or nine neoconservatives who believed that a war in

Iraq was the answer to international terrorism get their way? How did

they redirect the government and rearrange long-standing American

priorities and policies with so much ease? How did they overcome the

bureaucracy, intimidate the press, mislead the Congress, and dominate

the military? Is our democracy that fragile? "

 

Threats to America's Worldwide Reputation

 

" Never before have so many climbed into the underbelly of U.S. foreign

policy and left holding their noses. " -- The Toronto Star

 

68. 'America's reputation as land of the free looking increasingly

tarnished.'

 

69. " [in] eight out of 10 nations, those polled said - often in

landslide proportions - that they hoped to see Democrat John Kerry

beat President Bush in next month's election. "

 

70. Brits lobby to get rid of George W. Bush.

 

71. Germany has signaled that if Kerry wins, they'd reconsider sending

troops to Iraq.

 

72. " Probably no American president in history has been so universally

hated abroad as Bush. "

 

War Profiteering

 

" Between now and the November election, it's crucial that Americans

come to understand how four generations of the current president's

family have embroiled the United States in the Middle East through CIA

connections, arms shipments, rogue banks, inherited war policies and

personal financial links. " -- Kevin Phillips, the Los Angeles Times

 

73. `Why would Osama bin Laden want to kill Dubya his former business

partner'?

 

74. `The Bush Crony Act'

 

75. " `Bush ally set to profit on war on terror. "

 

76. `Bush and the Saudis Sitten' in a tree'.

 

77. " Donald Rumsfeld, the US defense secretary, sat on the board of a

company which three years ago sold two light water nuclear reactors to

North Korea - a country he now regards as part of the " axis of evil. . . "

 

78. " Nowhere is the revolving U.S.-Saudi money wheel more evident than

within President Bush's own coterie of foreign policy advisers,

starting with the president's father, George H.W. Bush. "

 

79. " Bush Family Values. "

 

80. " Cheney claimed that he supported the U.S. sanctions on Iraq, but

the Financial Times of London reported that through foreign

subsidiaries and affiliates, Halliburton became the biggest oil

contractor for Iraq, selling more than $73 million in goods and

services to Saddam Hussein's regime. "

 

81. " A U.S. grand jury issued a subpoena to Halliburton Co. seeking

information about its Cayman Islands unit's work in Iran, where it is

illegal for U.S. companies to operate. . . "

 

Non-Presidential Behavior

 

" The disdainful smirks and grimaces that many viewers were surprised

to see in the first presidential debate are familiar expressions to

those in the administration or in Congress who have simply asked the

president to explain his positions. " – Ron Suskind, the New York Times

 

82. The reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis. "

 

83. " A blind man in a room full of deaf people. "

 

84. A " shot across the bow. "

 

85. Has Bush lost his reason?

 

Human Rights Abuses

 

" [A] secret U.S. military unit has been `disappearing' people since

December 2001, and America has no idea how irreparably its torture of

Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison has damaged its image in the Middle East. "

– Summary of Seymour Hersh speech

 

86. 'Bush Administration lawyers greenlight torture.'

 

87. The US government has videotapes of boys being sodomized at Abu

Ghraib prison.

 

88. Rumsfeld knew of prisoner abuse and possible war crimes as early

as 2002, but did nothing to stop it.

 

The Religious Right

 

" The outcome [of this election] threatens to transform the U.S. into

an ironfisted theocracy. " – Neal Gabler, the Los Angeles Times

 

89. `Their beliefs are bonkers, but they are at the heart of power: US

Christian fundamentalists are driving Bush's Middle East policy.'

 

90 " The Rev. Jerry Falwell said yesterday that evangelical Christians,

after nearly 25 years of increasing political activism, now control

the Republican Party and the fate of President Bush in the November

election. "

 

91. " It is one of the saddest ironies of our time that as America

tries to calm the fires of theocracy abroad, it should be stoking

milder versions of the same at home. "

 

92. When former Council for National Policy member Pat Robertson

resigned as head of the Christian Coalition, some saw it as a sign. " I

think Robertson stepped down because the position has already been

filled, " Gary Bauer said, referring to President Bush's role as head

of the Religious Right.

 

93. " The only way Americans will have a presidency in which

neoconservatives and the Christian Armageddon set are not holding the

reins of power is if Kerry is elected. "

 

The Home Front

 

" Voters should reject the notion that the current administration

`inherited' a bad economy or was the victim on 9/11 of previous White

House policies. The state in which this nation finds itself can be

traced to a single misfortune: four years of the Bush administration. "

-- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

 

94. " Nearly 2.7 million manufacturing and 1 million

professional-services and information-technology jobs have been lost

since President Bush took office. "

 

95. " Mr. Bush's foreign policy. . . has undoubtedly boosted the cost

of gas and fuel oil to all Americans. "

 

96. " The number of Americans living in poverty increased by 1.3

million last year, while the ranks of the uninsured swelled by 1.4

million, the Census Bureau reported. . . "

 

97. " The Bush Social Security plan poses a major threat to the

economic security of future generations of older Americans. And it

also poses major risks for current beneficiaries. "

 

Weird Science

 

98. " The administration's stem-cell stand is just one of many

examples, from climate change to abstinence-only sex-education

programs, in which the White House has made policies that defy widely

accepted scientific opinion. "

 

99. " George W. Bush will go down as the worst environmental president

in our nation's history. "

 

100. " Under Bush, the decade-long trend of declining abortion rates

appears to have reversed. "

 

And finally. . .

 

" If the past informs the future, four more years of the Bush

Administration will be a tragic period in the history of the United

States and the world. " -- The Nation

 

101. '100 Facts and 1 opinion'

 

 

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Maureen Farrell is a writer and media consultant who specializes in

helping other writers get television and radio exposure.

 

© Copyright 2004, Maureen Farrell