Up is down--black is white--etc. etc.

President Bush continues to prove we are not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

He is convinced that much of white America—like young Mikey, when confronted by the bowl of cereal—will swallow anything if it comes from the mouth of the president. Sadly, for the future of this country, it seems to be an accurate assumption. How else can one explain the seemingly placid acceptance of his lies and deceptions?

In April of 2004 Bush said. "Now, by the way, ANYTIME, you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires—a wiretap REQUIRES A COURT ORDER. NOTHING HAS CHANGED, by the way. When WE’RE TALKING ABOUT CHASING DOWN TERRORISTS, we’re talking about GETTING A COURT ORDER BEFORE WE DO IT." At the time he made that statement Bush had already ordered domestic wiretapping without court orders.

In his State of the Union speech, Bush said two of the 9/11 suicide pilots were living in the U.S. and made phone calls to Al-Quaeda. Then he indicated that his warrantless domestic spying order could have been prevented 9/11. I guess he forgot that it was not the tools available to authorities that failed to stop the attack—it was incompetent use of those tools that failed.

The National Security Agency (NSA) intercepted two electronic messages on September 10, 2001 that warned of the attacks—but the agency failed to translate them until September 12. The Arabic messages said "The match is about to begin" and "Tomorrow is zero hour," intelligence official said.

While Bush says America is "addicted to oil", it is he and Vice President Cheney who are addicted to defending big oil profits and watering down pollution regulations. Then he has to gall to peddle the illusion that research on alternative sources of energy will cut our reliance on Middle East supplies by 75% by the year 2055.

As we all admired this pie-in-the-sky floater, I guess he forgot that the Energy Department, because of the Administration budget cuts, is in the process of laying off researchers in the very area of technologies he championed in his speech.

Now comes another confirmation of the cynical deceit that gives lie to the Bush version of the run-up to his invasion of Iraq. England’s most prestigious newspaper, The Guardian, obtained and quotes from a memo of a two hour meeting between Bush and Tony Blair–that Bush intended to invade Iraq whether or not there was a second U.N. resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a WMD program. Bush also suggested he might paint U.S. planes with UN insignias so that an attack by Saddam Hussein might prompt action in the United Nations.

Bush’s contempt for our form of government is firmly rooted in the secrecy that shrouds his administration. Bush thumbed his nose at the Senate Judiciary Committee and refused to furnish the documents that he says forms the legal basis for domestic, warrantless spying. He also refused to make public the studies of what went wrong with the response to hurricane Katrina–operating on the theory of what we don’t know can’t hurt him.

I strongly suggest it is time for some responsible politicians—if there are any left in Washington—to truly challenge our Imperial President and subpoena him to turn over those documents to the Judiciary Committee or be held in contempt. Remember Watergate?

Bill Sanders