The present administration is currently getting more and more into trouble for “sexing up” intelligence reports, either distorting them or making them up out of whole cloth, in order to further a political and ideological agenda. The intelligence community has taken a hard hit for these political incursions into what must, for the sake of national security, be a non-partisan endeavor. This naturally does not faze the Bush administration, which has shown no hesitancy to shred our national resources in order to get their goodies.

So it should come as no surprise that the Bush people have been even busier “sexing up” another vital source of information, that being the scientific research done by government agencies.

Want an abstinence-only sex education program due to your political and religious beliefs, even though it has proven a failure? No problem. All you have to do is stack a key panel with your own ideologues, censor information that disagrees with your beliefs, and re-write the rules for measuring success so that your program “achieves” it.

Your education policy is not as successful as others that you oppose? The answer is simple. Send out an order to censor any and all information presented to the public that “runs counter to administration priorities” (actual quote), including all information that does not support the president’s plans or is counter to his philosophy.

You don’t like drug treatment, despite the fact that it has been found to be “7 times more cost effective than domestic law enforcement method, 10 times more effective than interdiction, and 23 times more effective than the ‘source control’ method“? No sweat. Just require all members of the nation’s council on drug abuse to pass a litmus test. If they don’t support faith-based programs, if they support abortion rights (that’s not an error, they ask that for some reason), or if they have not voted for Bush–then give them their walking papers. The candidates you have left after this filtering process will miraculously find that science supports exactly what you want it to. Simple!

A recent report from a ranking member of the House Committee on Government Reform tears into the Bush administration for its malfeasance in subverting science to serve political ends–and this is just what has come out so far. Not that it should come as a surprise–we’ve known Bush has been cooking the books since he got into office–but this report details some of the abuse quite nicely.

On February 5 of this year, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a presentation at the U.N., documenting what the Bush administration was pushing as “the smoking gun” that would prove the case to invade Iraq. The evidence was, according to Powell, overwhelming and ironclad.

This article at CommonDreams.org takes apart that speech item by item and demonstrates how it was just as much a collection of lies as Bush and Cheney had been spouting for the many months before.

A few comments on truthfulness in government: we have standards that are ridiculously low. A senator can be against issue A on Monday, receive a large contribution from a lobbyist who profits from issue A on Tuesday, then be all for issue A on Wednesday–and cannot be arrested for bribery. Why not? Because the law–written by lawmakers like him–essentially says that we must know the state of mind of the senator to charge him with a crime. In other words, in order for him to be arrested, he has to declare, on the record, that he changed his vote because he received money or favors.

If the same standards were applied to other crimes, the effects would be ludicrous. People could trade on inside information, and avoid prosecution simply by claiming that their stock buy had nothing to do with the hot tip they received. Police officers could openly take ‘contributions’ to a police officer’s retirement fund, and then just ‘happen’ to let the ‘contributors’ go free after having committed an offense. For these reasons, the “state of mind” defense is not often allowed. [Note that it is most used for crimes we feel are obscene but still are greatly unchecked, such as rape (“gee, I thought she was struggling and screaming ‘no’ as a game”) and discrimination (“I just happened to hire all the white people and none of the blacks; it had nothing to do with color”).]

But the state of mind loophole is open wide for politicians, and therefore we get rampant, blatant bribery. I recall one instance where Clinton accepted money from a black caucus, and met with them–but then decided to not do what they asked. When he did this, politicians from both sides of the aisle openly decried his decision. Bribery is so ingrained in politics that politicians will cut into one of their kind simply because he did not take a bribe!

At least with bribes, the cost is usually financial. It is worse when the cost is counted in lives. And so we come back to the Bush administration’s lying for the war in Iraq. Can they get away with the blatant lies simply by claiming, “gee, we really and truly believed all that stuff that turns out to be fabricated and false”? Can the ‘state of mind’ argument be used to excuse massive and obvious fraud to the people, which cost the nation hundreds of billions of dollars in addition to so many lost lives?

In a just world, this would not be the case. But this is not a completely just world. So our young soldiers die, and they kill a great many more. And the liars keep on reaping the rewards.

David Socha, 17, was arrested for making a bomb / hijacking threat on a flight from Boston to Hawaii via San Francisco at the beginning of the month. He was arraigned in court on felony charges and faces 20 years in prison and a $10- to $50,000 fine for his crime.

What was his crime?

Inside his luggage, on top of some clothes, he left a note for anyone who hand-searched his bag: “F— you. Stay the f— out of my bag you —-sucker. Have you found a —- bomb yet? No, just clothes. Am I right? Yea, so f— you.”

Not exactly the most cooperative stance to take with airport security, to be certain. However, take a close look at the note. If you read it carefully, you’ll notice that it is not a bomb threat. Obviously, Socha did not at all like the idea of strangers pawing through his luggage, and felt impelled to let them know about it. But the note did not in any way imply there was a bomb in his luggage–in fact, it implied that there was not a bomb in his luggage.

But he was arrested anyway. I can think of only two reasons: (a) the inspectors wildly over-reacted to the word “bomb” appearing in any context whatsoever, or (b) the inspectors were insulted by the note and decided to make an example of the young man. Either way, the inspectors were irresponsible, and are wasting a great deal of taxpayer money with this farce.

More insidiously, some news reports misquoted the note, reporting it as asking, “Have you found the bomb yet?” [emphasis added]. The alteration turns the note from an annoyed outburst to an illegal threat. Furthermore, the stories in the press quote poeople completely uninvolved in the case in ways that seem to incriminate the youth, such as WCVB’s assertion that unaffected travelers “showed little sympathy for Socha” (they were given the altered note text to judge him on), or The Boston Globe’s cliched quote of a neighbor saying, and I am not making this up, “I’m surprised, I thought he was a good kid.” They further incriminated the boy by quoting an official as saying, “Putting a false bomb threat in your luggage is not something we take lightly.” Again, there was no bomb threat.

Now, I would be the first one to advise someone not to make bomb jokes in an airport. I would never attempt even the slightest bit of levity when flight security is involved. But, I mean, come on. This goes way too far, and does nothing to serve the interests of security. Sure, it was a dumb thing done by a teenager, but the reaction was far out of proportion to the crime. There are few enough tax dollars being spent on domestic security (Bush has yet to take such funding seriously, instead going after real threats like Hussein’s amazing disappearing WMD program), let’s not waste them on petty vindictiveness like this.

We all know that Fox News is outrageous. We all know that it is just to the right of Attila the Hun. Still, it sometimes is surprising just how asinine they can get.

Next month, comedian and political satirist Al Franken (author of Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations) is due to release a new book entitled “Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.” But if Fox News, the prime target of this book’s criticism, has its way, the book will never see the light of day.

You see, Fox News, in 1995, registered the words “fair and balanced” as a trademark of their network. Never mind that the trademark “fair and balanced,” in describing Fox News, is about as accurate as “cute and cuddly” is in describing a school of piranha fish. Forget that Franken’s book is so clearly a parody of Fox News that only complete morons* would mistake it for anything else. Fox News is hell-bent on stopping this book from revealing to the public that Fox News is (gasp!) not unbiased.

(*Come to think of it, maybe Fox News has a point. After all, complete morons do watch the network in rather large numbers.)

Let’s remember, folks, that Fox News is the same network that, when American citizens participated in legal protests over what we now know was a sham of a war, taunted those same protesters on their streaming ticker-tape banner with jibes such as “Who won your right to show up here today? Protesters or soldiers?”, “How do you keep a war protester in suspense? Ignore them,” and “Attention protesters: the Michael Moore Fan Club meets Thursday at a phone booth at Sixth Avenue and 50th Street.” Not precisely “balanced” or “fair.” This is the same network that jumped the gun in Florida by proclaiming Bush the winner without enough data to justify the call–a call made, coincidentally, by a first cousin of George W. and Jeb Bush, the consultant Fox News chose to call the race in that state. But you don’t need to hear these and countless other pieces of evidence to see the blatant bias–all you need to do is turn on the channel–if you can stomach it–and watch them with an unbiased eye.

So now Fox News is suing Al Franken for using Fox’s trademark to “blur and tarnish” the network. Well, duh. It’s a satire, you dummies. What do they expect, praise? And let’s not let the hypocrisy slip by–this is a network that depends on freedom of the press, which protects satire, especially political satire. Fox News wants to sue Franken for that when they themselves satirize law-abiding citizens in their streaming banner?

But this is not surprising–we have seen all too much hypocrisy from the right in recent days. Take, for example, the claim that conservatives are all for the basic principles of upholding the rights of the individuals (e.g., to keep and bear arms) and the states (e.g., to have precedence in deciding issues over the federal government), and then compare it to the almost feral attack on individual rights (e.g., reproductive rights, right to privacy) and state rights (e.g., to choose how they count votes) when it suits them politically. Or take the fact that the right is pouncing on the California recall with glee on the basis that Gray Davis took a surplus and turned it into a deficit–while Bush did the same thing, far more his fault than Davis’, and to an almost unbelievably further extent–but there is no call whatsoever from these same people to hold Bush responsible, much less unseat him.

Not to stop at the standard traits of political bias and hypocrisy, Fox News reached deep inside itself to extract sheer idiocy and character assassination. In an attack that is not satire, Fox News is apparently, in the text of their court claim, calling Franken a “parasite” as well as “either intoxicated or deranged.” I swear to God, I am not making this up.

As for me, I am pre-ordering this book from Amazon. Join me.

UPDATE: Franken has recently responded to Fox’s action, saying he is not worried about the suit, considering the laws regarding satire. (Indeed, this could even help him out, considering the publicity involved.)

“And by the way,” he added, “a few months ago, I trademarked the word ‘funny.’ So when Fox calls me ‘unfunny,’ they’re violating my trademark. I am seriously considering a countersuit.”

In a new Gallup Poll, we find that 78% of probable voters in California said that they take Schwarzenegger’s candidacy seriously, and 48% said that there is a good or very good chance they will vote for him.

There are a few little problems with these numbers, though.

First, nobody has the slightest clue of how Schwarzenegger plans to do a better job as governor, what his policies would be, or what actions he would take while in office (aside, of course, from delivering the steady stream of one-liners he is known to shoot out). It is pretty clear that his popularity has nothing to do with his politics–hardly an encouraging sign for California. We would be voting purely as a popularity contest, with few voting because they thought he would actually do a good job. When asked how he would deal with the budget crisis, Schwarzenegger replied that he would tell us later–a less-than-reassuring echo from the campaign of George W. Bush.

Second, the poll numbers come from questions people don’t often regard in detail. For example, people see that the poll says 78% of probable voters (73% of registered voters) feel he “should be taken seriously” (CNN quote), but few people indeed see that the whole question asked by pollsters was “Arnold Schwarzenegger as a candidate who deserves to be taken seriously, (or do you regard) Arnold Schwarzenegger’s candidacy as a joke?” The second option, “do you think it’s a joke?” makes a HUGE difference in the answer. Given those two options, I am amazed that 19% to 23% thought it was a joke–hell, I am against him and don’t think he should be taken too seriously as a politician, but I don’t think his candidacy is a joke, either. Given those two possible answers, I would have interpreted the question to be about Schwarzenegger’s seriousness, not whether he should be taken seriously.

If the question had simply been “Should he be taken seriously as a candidate, or do you feel he is not qualified for the job?” then the response would have been very different. It is a very poorly written question, and yet it is the most often quoted of all the numbers.

Gallup did ask if “Arnold Schwarzenegger would do a better job or a worse job than someone who had a career as an elected public official”; here we see a slightly more credible result, where 52% said he would do a better job.

A better question, however, would have been, “do you think that Arnold Schwarzenegger has the professional qualifications to serve in a government position.” But that question was not asked. I would bet you that those responding in the positive would fall well below 50% if it were.

In an ironic twist, while the Bush administration still cannot find even the barest hint of chemical or biological weapons in Iraq, here at home, in Alabama, the government is beginning to destroy parts of our chemical weapons stockpile, set to burn many tons of Sarin, VX and mustard gases. More than 8000 tons have already been burned, and the U.S. still has the largest WMD stockpile in the world.

Iraq, we must remember, is not the only country that has ever had a WMD program and the tendency to invade other countries…

A new poll out by the Pew Center shows Bush’s popularity falling to 53% from 58% in July. This drop is in line with Bush’s popularity pattern, which is a steady decline in ratings until a crisis emerges.

By looking at the graph showing Bush’s popularity since he took office (see “Uh-Oh“), this tendency is very clear. If one follows the line, Bush is due to drop below 50% within the next month, and perhaps as low as 40% by the end of the year.

It has just been reported that the appeals to call off the recall vote have been dismissed; the vote is now on for October 7th.

Various long-term strategies have emerged from the Republican party over the past many years. First it was stealing the language; remember “the L-word”? It sounded silly, but look at all the liberals who call themselves “progressives” nowadays. I felt sick every time a liberal politician fervently denied being a liberal, as if it were some kind of malady; they bought into the language control. Remember the memo to GOPAC from Newt Gingrich, in which Republican politicians were instructed to use specific language when referring to themselves and to Democrats? When speaking of GOP candidates and policies, they were told to use words like “active,” “moral” and “empower”; when speaking of Democratic politicians and their policies, they were told to use words such as “radical,” “abuse” and “decay.”

The came the scandal-mongering. When Clinton came into office, the charge to smear him in every and any way possible came on full-force, and every allegation, rumor and hint of scandal was met with Republican talking heads calling for special prosecutors (see David Brock’s account of the debacle). Feeling burned over having suffered special prosecutors for such trivial things as violating and weakening our foreign policy by selling arms to Iran to pay off hostage takers, GOP dirty trick committees made sure that Clinton was investigated for serious offenses, such as boffing an intern.

Now, the GOP has a new strategy: if you want to gain a political office, but there’s the inconvenient obstacle of a duly elected Democrat occupying the job, then do everything you can to take the office by force.

In an effort to weaken the presidency for a GOP takeover in 2000, Republicans forced an impeachment vote over Clinton’s lying about an affair under oath in a ginned-up sexual harassment case funded and run by Clinton’s political enemies. Then in 2000, when Bush lost the election, the GOP jumped into full gear to steal the election for Bush, sending staff workers to Florida to impersonate irate Floridians, stopping vote counts at every turn, and finally getting the Supreme Court to (s)elect Bush against precedent and against states’ rights policies so beloved by the right wing, voting Bush into office 5-4, strictly along political lines.

And now we have the recall in California, an attempt to steal the governorship of the union’s most populous state by throwing money and political gamesmanship into the ring. Bush tried to characterize this coup d’etat as “the people’s choice.” If you know anyone naive enough to believe that this is a democratic process driven by the popular will, then please send me their email address; I have thirty million dollars in a bank in Nigeria and I need their help.

The process began this February, when a group called “People’s Advocate” started a drive to recall Davis. By May, the drive was going nowhere fast. In steps Darrel Issa, a self-styled “staunch conservative.” Issa, now a Representative from San Diego, made his fortune selling car alarms, and has a rather questionable past record involving car theft. But he also has tons of money (he says he is worth $100 million), and he started making six-figure contributions to the recall effort. That jump-started it, and Issa kept coughing up cash (now more than a million dollars, with $1.5 million in total funding the drive) until enough signatures were collected.

And now we have the celebrity factor–Arianna Huffington and Arnold Schwarzenegger have entered the race as serious contenders (I don’t think anyone is really taking Gary Coleman or Larry Flynt too seriously, and let’s not even talk about Gallagher). Furthermore, there is a big political soap opera developing as legal challenges to the recall effort fly through the courts, while a double-whammy ballot (one vote on whether or not to recall, and another vote on who is elected to replace Davis if the recall goes through) which will be closely watched for any butterfly-ballot irregularities, to be certain. And remember, this vote will be a plurality–the one with the most votes wins, even if it is below 50%.

In case you’re thinking that this is no big deal–after all, it’s just a governorship–just remember the difference that was made by having Jeb Bush in office in Florida. Aside from using the power of the office to campaign for Bush, Republicans took advantage of the political authority of key positions in the state to hand the state to George W.; Katherine Harris alone, by “erroneously” kicking tens of thousands of Floridians off the voting lists–most of them African-Americans and Democrats–as “suspected felons,” cost Gore thousands of legitimate votes, far more than enough to shift the election to Bush, even if the other massive irregularities that all just happened to favor Bush are discounted. Had Republicans not held the governorship of Florida, then Gore would be president as we speak. You can bet your bottom dollar that this fact is not lost on the GOP as it tries to steal the governorship of California in time for the 2004 election campaign. Imagine the glee of the far right if they could use the publicity of having Schwarzenegger in office campaigning for Bush, as Republican staffers and appointees undermine the voting process as they did so thoroughly in Florida.

Having control of California, Texas, Florida and New York will help Bush steal win the next election far more easily.

So if you live in California and are not a registered voter, then register; if you are registered, then vote, and vote down the recall.

Also mark in your vote for Huffington, just in case. She’s cool.

Rule of thumb #47: if someone claims that others are engaging in revisionist history, it is almost without doubt that the accuser is the one doing the revising.

“This nation acted to a threat from the dictator of Iraq. Now there are some who would like to rewrite history — revisionist historians is what I like to call them.”
–George W. Bush, June 16, 2003

“…we gave [Saddam Hussein] a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region.”
–George W. Bush, July 14, 2003

“Revisionist History” is hardly a new accusation; Republicans have been using it for a few decades now, whenever they want to repaint history to go with their policy. Unfortunately, the term is catching. The New York Times published an editorial about how revisionists are trying to show how dropping the A-bomb on Hiroshima was a bad thing. Imagine that.

Bush’s Popularity

Take a look at the chart on the right. It comes from the Gallup Organization, showing Bush’s popularity over the last two and a half years. It doesn’t take a genius to see the pattern here: in his natural state, Bush slowly but steadily loses popularity over time; the only times he gains popularity is in a time of national crisis. Note the sudden surges in September 2001, and March 2003. Also note that his popularity is less about him than it is about crises, and the American people throwing in support in times of fear. Compare this with the chart below showing Clinton’s popularity throughout his own eight years; note that Clinton’s popularity did not hinge on crises, and that it displayed a general upwards trend, despite a concerted, lengthy smear campaign run by his political enemies.

Bush’s record is far more worrisome, however. Bush, despite his assertions to the contrary, spends a great deal of money on surveys to see where public opinion stands in regard to him. No one could be blind enough to not see that war, mayhem, and fear mean votes for Bush and his agenda. And it is impossible to miss that assured downward slide during peacetime. At this rate, Bush’s popularity will be at low enough levels on election day 2004 that he would likely lose the election, given the Democrats put someone electable on the ballot.

Clinton’s Popularity

So… who’d like to start a pool to guess exactly when the next national crisis will begin? As White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card let slip in 2002, “from a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.” I’d say that we’re on schedule to be on the road to war with someone, likely Syria or Iran, by September of next year. Remember, we have an administration that has taken the stand that it would be profitable for GOP members to “focus on war” in order to win elections–this coming from Karl Rove’s own records, as he told a January 2002 meeting of Republicans that by playing up terrorism and the war in Iraq, they could win more political power.

And it worked for them. Are we so naive as to think they won’t do it again in 2004, when even more is on the line?

According to this CBS News story (dated August 6th, 2003–go figure), the president has been declared in good health and “fit for duty.” So, naturally, Bush is off for another month-long vacation.

Yes, our fearless leader is yet again going on vacation at his Crawford ranch. By the end of this particular vacation, Bush will have spent about 20% of his term in office on vacation at his ranch–and he has spent even more time at Camp David, plus a little time off at Kennebunkport. That’s far more vacation time in less than three years than Clinton spent in eight years, and Clinton was criticized for taking too much time off. It’s even more time than Reagan spent during his eight years.

At least this time the reporters seem to have the guts to ask hard questions, but Bush is still reading the names from a carefully chosen list, and he is not allowing follow-ups–he even shut down a reporter a few minutes ago, telling him, “you’re finished!”

And Bush’s answers are still as lame, if not more so. One he just answered was on the rather embarrassing fact that despite two major tax cuts and a third coming through now, the economy is still in the basement and deficits are soaring. He started out by saying that the economy started to turn in March 2000–then paused, with a smirk, expressing the smug, unspoken thought that it was all Clinton’s fault–then went on to list things that depressed the economy, including corporate scandals, and ending with an accusation of the news networks for broadcasting, “road to war, road to war,” which brought the whole store down.

Of course, let us not forget that Bush himself talked down the economy a great deal for a year before he took office (to help him win the election), and for some time after that (to help him sell his tax cut), during which time, he stressed that the economy was in trouble and we were entering a recession–hardly conducive to bringing the economy up. The corporate scandals were to a great degree due to his own party’s policies on corporate self-regulation, not to mention the biggest crooks (still not under arrest) were Bush’s biggest backers. And the “road to war” chant was being pushed by no one more than Bush himself. For him to use these points to excuse himself is ludicrous.

All of that aside from the point that Bush did not answer the question–why his tax cuts were not working. Most have taken place after the events he said were causing the economy to dip–indeed, some were reasons he used to sell the tax cuts–but nonetheless, his tax cuts were supposed to power us out of and above these issues.

Another reporter asked about the “16 words,” and if he took responsibility for it. Bush, clearly prepared for this question, replied that he takes “personal responsibility” for all the statements he made. Which I suppose is why he blames the CIA and George Tenet, why he blamed the British, and why he blamed Stephen Hadley–anyone but himself. So if he is personally responsible, and everyone else had profusely apologized, then where is Bush’s apology? He says he is taking responsibility, but like so much else he says and does for the cameras, it is only for show. It means nothing and carries no weight; such “personal responsibility” is empty.

At least twice in the conference, when defending the Iraq war and the lack of any evidence Bush pushed the war with, he cited the 12 resolutions from the U.N. against Iraq, as if he greatly respected the U.N. and considered them experts on what to do about Iraq. Then he trotted out, for the umpteenth time, the stale rationale that Saddam gassed his own people, saying this time that it was proof that Hussein did have a weapons program. But that was 15 years ago, when Saddam was still our pal. Bush knows full well that the point is whether or not Hussein had a program this year, when Bush claimed he had massive stockpiles.

(By the way, check out this rather interesting article by a former CIA senior analyst on Iraq, which not only clarifies that the villagers were killed in the crossfire between Iraq and Iran, and were not simply murdered by Hussein as Bush asserts, but that it may well have been Iran, and not Iraq, who gassed them. Of course, I would fully expect Bush to shamelessly take advantage of this, and, ignoring the hypocrisy, use it as an excuse to invade Iran.)

So much more–his answer to the question on homosexuality, starting his answer by saying “we’re all sinners,” clearly stating that he believes just being gay a moral crime, followed by his expected stance that homosexual couples must be barred from marrying. As if a gay couple taking the vows will harm the sanctity of marriage, while apparently heterosexual abuse of marriage, such as sky-high divorce rates, spousal and child abuse, and marriages of convenience are of no consequence and need no special action.

The whole process was sickening, right up to his final whimper of an answer at the end about the California recall vote being funded by a right-winger who wanted to take the governorship for himself; among other things, Bush was thankful that Texas had no recall vote, tried to claim that the recall was because of the people’s choice, then said he had no comment.

Like I said, at least there were some hard questions here, but it was still less than a real press conference–and Bush’s replies predictably vacillated between dishonest and lame, too much to comment on fully in one go. Which means, of course, that the press should announce it to be a complete success.

Well, George is out stumping for black votes. Hard to tell why, it’s kind of like Lieberman appealing to KKK voters. After all, Bush got only 9% of the black vote in 2000, and that’s not including the fact that a disproportionate number of black ballots were thrown out. Bush’s allies had tens of thousands of upstanding black voters indiscriminately trashed from voting lists in Florida, identifying them as felons, and many more felt they were intimidated by police on election day. 650,000 black Americans have lost their jobs in the U.S. since Bush took office, the black unemployment rate is now nearly double the national rate (it was only about 30% higher when Bush took office), and Bush has refused to speak to the NAACP in his 2 1/2 years in office, instead trying to reach out to other black political groups which are less critical of him. Bush touted his AIDS package to Africa, though that is far slower in coming than previously indicated, is being loaded up with an extremist conservative agenda (such as pushing for abstinence over condom use), and, in the end, doesn’t really help African-Americans in the U.S. And it hardly shows that Bush is concerned about African issues, seeing as how he is wimping out of Liberia, causing untold thousands to die there who could easily have been saved had he acted when Kofi Annan asked him to.

Bush’s pitch for overcoming these problems? He “stressed his initiatives to increase minority home ownership, to create re-employment aid accounts and to provide federal support for religious charities.” Oooooo. Sweeeet. That oughta do it. And if it doesn’t, he can have another photo op with Condi and Colin. They’re some of his best friends, after all.

News story from the Associated Press:

“An increasing number of Americans believe that Islam is more likely than other religions to promote violence among its followers, according to a new survey….”

From a month ago:

“God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East.” — George W. Bush (actual quote)

Media adoration heaped on Bush is still paying off, apparently. Despite the strong, non-partisan outcry against the recent FCC move to allow fewer rich and powerful people to control more of the media, Bush has promised to veto an important appropriations bill if it threatens to overrule the FCC.

As more and more American service people and Iraqi civilians are gunned down and blown to pieces in the “liberated” Iraq, where the war is supposedly “over” according to Bush, death is being delivered on an even more accelerated level in Liberia, thus underlining yet another foreign policy debacle of the Bush administration.

Had Bush (currently on yet another vacation in Crawford, Texas after a trip to raise more millions for his re-election) sent in troops when the “ineffective” U.N.’s Secretary General Kofi Annan pleaded with him to do, peace could have been achieved far more bloodlessly. But here we see exemplified the fact that liberation and humanitarian assistance are far from important in the Bush agenda, despite the fact that Bush & Co. now claim that was their goal all along in Iraq. Liberia, after all, has no oil, so as far as Bush is concerned, they can go rot.

Seeing how his inaction has led to such carnage, Bush, in his now well-established fashion, has found someone else to blame: ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States), which he claims he has been “waiting on,” though there is no real reason why that should have stopped the humanitarian action from being enacted weeks ago. Alternately, he is blaming it on Liberian dictator Charles Taylor (who has business dealings with Bush ally and evangelist Pat Robertson in the form of gold mine exploitation in that country), claiming that U.S. troops moving in depends upon Taylor first leaving the country, another rather idiotic condition–Taylor, after all, is the prime reason the peacekeepers are needed in the first place.

It’s a sorry mess, compounded by a growing morass of conservative extremist agenda pouring into the promised African AIDS relief; not a good month on the continent.

After trying to dismiss it as trivial, and then trying unsuccessfully to pin it on George Tenet, the new White House angle on trying to weasel out of the fact that George W. Bush knowingly presented false evidence to prosecute the Iraq war is quite interesting: Bush, they now claim, did not read “the most authoritative prewar assessment of U.S. intelligence on Iraq.” In other words, like his dad as vice president, he was somehow out of the loop.

In what appears to be the best attempt the Bush administration can make to clear themselves of an obvious lie to the people, it declassified excerpts from an intelligence report that presented the opinion that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear weapons program. However, the 90-page report also expressed doubts about the veracity of that same information, calling the claims it made “dubious.” The White House spin? Neither Bush nor Condoleezza Rice read the whole report; “They did not read footnotes” of the document, an anonymous WH official said. They were, however, briefed on the document. Now, maybe I’m naive, but I would think that if the report contained serious doubts about its own truthfulness, that this would at least be involved in a brief.

What this appears to be: Bush and Co. knew that eventually this report would become public, so they are engaging in preventative damage control. Instead of waiting for the document to leak in a far more damaging way, they are releasing it on their own. Instead of allowing the impression to get out that Bush knew the evidence was questionable, and therefore lied to the American people, they can come out first with the story that some aide somewhere forgot to brief Bush and Rice.

This would be a very good move on their part–releasing damaging evidence in a controlled way–but nevertheless, it is still damaging. The president decides to go to war and is never told of serious objections in a report he had in his possession? Sorry, no aides can be blamed here. It was Bush’s and Rice’s job to know that information. And if they want to blame everyone else around them, let us then not forget Bush’s proclamation during the elections, when his intelligence and ability to do the job were being questioned: the president, he and his people said, does not have to be knowledgeable. All he has to do is surround himself with smart and knowledgeable people, and then make the important decisions based on what they give him.

He sold his presidency not just based on his own abilities, but also on the reliability of those around him. Therefore, the abilities of those around him are, essentially, an extension of his judgment and, therefore, his responsibility. Either way, Bush was responsible.

Not, of course, that I buy even for a second the idea that Bush really didn’t know he was selling a con job. I mean, please.

Bush, answering a few questions during a photo-op with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan on July 14th, said the following:

“The larger point is, and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region.”

Talk about science fiction… (a), Hussein apparently did not have a weapons program when we came into Iraq, as evidenced by the complete lack of evidence, which should have been uncovered long before now; (b), he did in fact let inspectors in, and although there was some lack of cooperation, the inspectors said that they were making more headway than ever before; Bush, on the other hand, chomping at the bit to invade no matter what the inspectors found (his original call for the inspectors to go in was little more than a political sham), repeatedly dismissed the inspectors’ findings and sent troops in anyway; and (c), well, everything else he said, really–“reasonable request”? “…a threat to the United States”? Hasn’t Bush been paying attention? Or does he think that most Americans haven’t?

Sadly, if the latter is the case, then Bush may be right.

“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”   –George W. Bush, 2003 State of the Union Address

Ever since the beginning, it has been clear to a great many people that George W. Bush was not just stretching the truth in his campaign to the American people for a war with Iraq; we knew that he was lying outright. The problem was that there was no “smoking gun,” and Bush could squirm out of whatever wasn’t smoking.

Now, far too late to do much good, we have the smoking gun, in the form of the now-famous “16 Words” Bush spoke in his State of the Union address before the Iraq war. Naturally, the Bush administration is trying to play down the matter, trying to claim that the matter is settled, that the claim was “technically correct,” that it “has been blown out of proportion,” and that it “in no way has any effect on the president’s larger case.”

This strategy, blowing off the story, acting like it’s no big deal, then waiting for the press to play along and move on to the next story, isn’t working this time. It seems like the Bush administration was so used to being able to dismiss anything they wanted, now they’re genuinely puzzled as to why this particular thing is not going away. But it will not; you can feel it in the air, the press has already invested too much time on it, and the smoking gun has too much weight behind it.

The central argument of the administration is that the 16 Words were the fault of the CIA, and that Bush was an unwitting victim, but this has already been proven untrue. Yes, British Intelligence did indeed report that Hussein was trying to buy uranium from Niger, but that makes no difference: the CIA, with Joseph Wilson‘s testimony, had told the administration that the Niger claims were false. So even if CIA chief George Tenet failed to object strongly enough to the administration’s choice to include the faulty British intelligence in the State of the Union, it does not change the fact that the Bush administration, against CIA advice and knowing full well that the evidence was false, nonetheless actively decided to include the “16 Words” in the speech, and thus knowingly deceived the American people.

In her many efforts to kill the story, Condi Rice tried to say that it was irrelevant because it didn’t change the larger argument. Even if we go along with her and ignore the fact that the president knowingly lied to America about the Niger story, does that end the whole matter? The answer, of course, is no–because it was not just Niger that he lied about.

A way to understand this can be found in Chaos Theory. There is a concept in Chaos Theory called “Self-Similarity.” It says that patterns, similarities, can be found at various levels of magnitude; the same patterns that can be observed at small size appear again at larger sizes. Take a snowflake, for example: if you look at the snowflake as a whole and then look at a tiny part of the snowflake, one sees the same patterns emerge, the same basic shapes reasserting themselves.

This same recursive pattern can be found in the Bush administration’s push for the Iraq war. The Niger lie is significant not just because of the 16 Words, but because those 16 Words represent a pattern of deception at a number of levels, from the small details to the whole argument. The Niger lie epitomizes the entire campaign, and gives life and body to what was always clear but never came to the point of proving it beyond any doubt–the usual leeway politicians are granted.

The Niger lie was the Bush administration’s stepping over the line. Bush had been dancing, cavorting, thumbing his nose at us, and we accepted it because he stayed behind the Line of the Smoking Gun. But with Niger, he stepped over the line, and now all the other lies come flooding through the breach, carrying the story onward, past the objections of Rice, Rumsfeld, and others. That’s why Rice might say it seems “out of proportion” and believe it, because she’s just talking about the 16 Words.

But it’s more than that, and woe to the Bush administration if it fails to recognize the fact.