And you Sir, are no Reagan
Ronald Reagan's son warns Bush to stop trying to hijack his father's reputation.
The war in Iraq, and the Bush administration’s attitude after September 11, are viewed by Reagan as “terrible”.
“September 11 was a huge opportunity for the Bush administration. When you read accounts of insiders who were close to the top of the administration on September 11, it’s shocking. Within hours of this terrible atrocity they were looking for opportunities to take advantage of it. They turned it into a situation where they could attack Saddam, who had nothing to do with September 11. This wasn’t a wake-up call for them.”
--Ron P. Reagan
'They' vs. 'They'
Here's my problem with what Colin Powell had to say on today's 'ABC This Week':
--Powell: Yes, its getting worse and the reason it is getting worse is that they are determined to disrupt the election. They do not want the Iraqi people to vote for their own leaders in a free, democratic election. And because it's getting worse, we will have to increase our efforts to defeat it, not walk away and pray and hope for something else to happen. [ABC "This Week", 9/26/04]------
The "THEY" Powell is speaking about ARE the people of Iraq.
Yes, there is a problem of outsiders coming in over unproperly secured borders in Iraq to help defend the Iraqis who want the U.S. out. (Bush's "Bring 'em on" taunt and poor planning by the Pentagon have not helped matters at all).
But Mr. Powell cannot sit there with a straight face and say "They do not want the Iraqi people to vote for their own leaders in a free, democratic election."
Iraq is in danger of civil war. A civil war is a power struggle fought between citizens of the same nation. There is no "they" beside the "they".
It all reminds me of Bush's attitude toward America. With his requirement of Americans to sign Loyalty Oaths in order to attend his canned and staged stump speeches, he is seeing us Americans as "they" and "they".
I want a leader who'll treat us as one America.
And would someone please remind the American public (because the media's not doing their job at all) that Saddam Hussein had no connection with 9/11?
What If Bush Wins?
Perish the thought, I know. But it's a possiblity and at the Washington Monthly, there's a panel of sixteen experts who talk about our worst nightmare.
Fear and Laptops on the Campaign Trail
Matthew Klam's New York Times Magazine feature about blogging.
Elizabeth Edwards talks about bloggers here.
I deeply appreciate Billmon's thoughts in today's LA Times about what's happening to the blogging community. Last week, for those readers who may have missed it, I wrote about the way the mainstream media picks up the rightwing-pap from the Drudge headlines and effectively ignores great tips from left bloggers. I had also said: "The [CBS] incident may have garnered new attention toward the blogging community, but those of us who've been blogging a long time (with independence) do not take collaboration with the rightwing nexus lightly."
Bush Is Taking Us Down The Wrong Road
I believe, if Bush is re-elected, that we will see a resurrected draft and a pre-emptive invasion of Iran. An unexpected source has convinced me, and that source is Britain prime minister Tony Blair. He believes a confrontation with Iran is a foregone conclusion. The words come from today's article at the Guardian:
He clearly suspects that Iran is sponsoring some of the insurgency in Iraq -'completely unacceptable,' he says. Iran is now in the cross-hairs of the White House, which will fuel the fears of some that Blair might join more military action with a re-elected George Bush. Will he rule that out?
'It's not a question of ruling it out or ruling it in. There's no point in hypothesising in respect to situations that haven't arisen. No, we don't intend to go around starting conflicts all over the world. But the fact is that I do believe that this global terrorism is the central security threat facing our time.'
That is why he embraces the doctrine of pre-emption.
When we ask whether he regrets that Saddam was not removed earlier, he says 'you would never have had the consent for it. Before 11 September, if you suggested that you should go raid Afghanistan, people, you know, come with the men in white coats. And that is the point, that is the central difference. This a conflict where there isn't a third way, I'm afraid. 'What's changed for me is, post September 11, you no longer wait for the thing to happen. You go out actively and try to stop it. That's the thing that's changed now.'
I'd like to ask Blair and Bush, what have they done in the last four years to secure loose nukes? If 9/11 changed us so drastically, we have surely missed an oceanliner while striking out at a broken raft. Why did Bush wait until now--over three years after 9/11-- to launch a Global Threat Reduction Initiative?
If any Western city on the face of the earth were to be hit with a loose nuke obtained by terrorists in nations with questionable nuclear control apparatus, such as Russia Pakistan, or India, we would all know it was a preventable catastrophe. It would reveal the greatest abandonment of our responsibility to humankind.
Rather than latching on tighter to the failed utopian neoconservative idea of some magical and easily-obtained capitalist Middle East at the expense of ignoring human rights and bitter realities (such as an abundance of dead soldiers), we should prove that we are willing to do things the old-fashioned hard way. We can offer genuine cooperation and good faith. People aren't idiots. They know when our government is sincere and they know when they're being swept up in a wave of moribund one-sided policy. Even in the dense shadow of 9/11, it's still possible to assist the people of the world who long to be free in their societies without willingly destroying the infrastructure of their homelands because someone in their government got in the way of neoconservative Utopia.
The Bush administration has preferred to keep Americans in the dense shadows of 9/11 rather than shedding light of hope upon all men and women. We have never been allowed to heal as a nation. There seems to be nothing for us but the promise of more bloodthirst and vengeance from the Bush administration.
I keep imagining what the world would have looked like, in 2004, with a wise leader in the Oval Office. And then I cry for the people of the world, including my own American people.
I firmly believe, if John Kerry is elected in November, that the light of hope will, at last, begin to shine. We have never been allowed to heal as a nation. We've allowed our anger and fear to drive an unwise leader to overreact. There is blood on our hands.
There is a better way.
I am confident John Kerry will find it.
Blaming Kerry for
Bush blunders
Mindless Media
Chimes In
While Cheney and Bush ramble on and on with their unfounded lies about the ways John Kerry "emboldens" insurgents in Iraq by suggesting we change course and work together with an international institutions, Roger Cohen points out something far closer to the truth:
The Western powers are weakened because they are less united than in many years. That gives the insurgency more leverage.
It's time we put a stop to the media parroting this "Kerry emboldens" lie.
The truth is that Bush emboldens the insurgents by his every action while Bush blames Kerry with his every lying word.
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The Arizona Republic editorial 'plays dumb' by saying Kerry effectively mocked the interim prime minister of Iraq when Kerry stated that Ayad Allawi's positive portrayal of Iraq's condition contradicted Allawi's own earlier, more dismal assessment.
Maureen Dowd has a far more realistic and sophisticated opnion of the situation with Allawi: "..now the president has his own puppet to play with."
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Joe Gandelman has what I consider to be a well-written piece at the Moderate Voice which directly relates to this issue. The following is a quote from Joe's article:
"...talking as a swing voter, I have to flatly say this argument is pushing me away. This is still a democracy. We have elections every four years for the Presidency. NO candidate or party owns the White House or is entitled to it and its policies (even if I agree with them) must be fully debated since that's the nature of a democracy. If a policy is strong enough, it can and will withstand scrutiny.
