Bush legacy 

After Christmas Reminder 

With appologies to Grant Wood 

Freedom Medals and Truth In Packaging

When President Bush handed out Freedom Medals to George Tenent, Paul Bremer and General Tommy Franks, it was a golden opportunity for some interesting repartee that never took place.

For example, when giving a medal to Tenent he might have said, "For your contribution to intelligence failures, bad intelligence and misleading guidance that caused me to invade and occupy Iraq-- with the blessings of a belly-up Congress-- to the tune of eighty-something billion dollars." That is exactly what the President and Congress told us.

Of course anyone who has not lived under a rock knows that Bush and his neo-con handlers vetted and cherry-picked the intelligence to justify their pax-Americana grand strategy by launching the Iraq invasion as a model.

With Paul Bremer, Bush could have cited his ability to put together an interim governing group heavy with Iraq exiles who readily said "how high" when Bremer said "jump".

About General Franks, Bush said "One of the highest distinctions of history is to be called a liberator and Tommy Franks will always carry that title." He might have added that an estimated 50,000 Iraqis and 1,300 Americans have been "liberated" from this mortal coil we call earth---and that the General "liberated" Bush's intent to start a war by flat out lying when asked by the media--- prior to the invasion--- if any troop staging and movement was underway. But, then, reality has never been an intregal component of Bush's thinking where Iraq is concerned.

huckster still at work 

Merry Christmas and lots of luck! 

Rumsfeld meets the troops

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's "town hall" meeeting with our troops in Kuwait was most revealing.

According to the news service one soldier said:" A lot of us are getting ready to move north (to Iraq) relatively soon. Our vehicles are not armored. We're digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that's already been shot up, dropped, busted---picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat." The report went on to point out that "The Military audience cheered."

Rumsfeld replied that "it isn't a matter of money"or "desire", that it was a matter of "physics ". Baloney! The root cause of the chaos costing so many American and Iraqi lives is a small group of men who's hubris has driven us to an unnecessary war and who's incompetent planning and ignorance of regional political, social and religious undercurrents continue to divert us from the real battle against terrorists.

What is really flabbergasting is Rumsfeld's response that "you can have all the armor in the world" and an "up-armored Humvee"...can "be blown up." In other words, since there is no ultimate protection in a war, lets not make a major case out of not having the best possible protection.

This from an administration that proclaims critics of the Iraq invasion are unpatriotic!

Bill Sanders

Doing something