Newsweek: Patriot Games (Bush was AWOL)

posted by admin on Sunday February 01, @08:56PM

UPDATE: ELDER STATESMEN OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY CALL ON AMERICANS TO VOTE BUSH OUT OF OFFICE IN NOVEMBER

Bush strategists may feel tempted to attack John Kerry’s opposition to Vietnam. Why it’s a battle they can’t win

The voters don't want to refight the Vietnam war, but with John Kerry looking like the likely nominee, Vietnam returns to the front pages. Kerry is accompanied on the campaign trail by the men he served with in the Mekong Delta. "I know a little something about aircraft carriers for real," he says, in an allusion to President George W. Bush's premature "Mission Accomplished" landing last spring on the USS Abraham Lincoln.

...

Retired general Wesley Clark was widely criticized for not objecting when left-wing activist Michael Moore called Bush a "deserter" in his presence. As a military man, Clark knows that deserting is a capital offense, reserved for those who have been court-martialed and found guilty. The charge against Bush is that he was AWOL for a year of his service in the National Guard. Once the pundits finished critiquing the impact on Clark of the presumed gaffe, the next logical question is to ask where Bush was during that year, how he got away with his absenteeism, and does it matter?

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4114162

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FTW: IN YOUR FACE (Peak-Oil)

posted by admin on Sunday February 01, @08:18PM

- Connections between Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force, 9/11 and Peak Oil “On the Table”

- July '04 Supreme Court Ruling on Secrecy, Task Force Documents Obtained through FOIA Suit on Collision Course as Cheney “Duck Hunts” with Scalia

- The Reason Why Activists of All Stripes are Ineffective

by

Michael C. Ruppert

“The Cheney report is very guarded about the amount of foreign oil that will be required. The only clue provided by the [public] report is a chart of net US oil consumption and production over time. According to this illustration, domestic oil field production will decline from about 8.5 million barrels per day (mbd) in 2002 to 7.0 mbd in 2020, while consumption will jump from 19.5 mbd to 25.5 mbd. That suggests imports or other sources of petroleum… will have to rise from 11 mbd to 18.5 mbd. Most of the recommendations of the NEP [National Energy Policy, May 2001] are aimed at procuring this 7.5 mbd increment, equivalent to the total oil consumed by China and India .

  -- Professor Michael Klare
“Bush-Cheney Energy Strategy: Procuring the Rest of the World's Oil”
Foreign Policy in Focus, January 2004

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War: Bush to Announce Iraq Intelligence Probe This Week

posted by admin on Sunday February 01, @02:18PM

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a reversal of his position, President Bush (news - web sites) will announce this week the establishment of a bipartisan, independent commission to investigate apparent flaws in intelligence used to justify the Iraq war, senior administration officials said on Sunday.

Bush, who had earlier opposed such a commission, was under strong pressure from Republicans and Democrats in Congress to support an independent probe into intelligence that said Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons when in fact none have been found.

Assertions that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction was the main reason cited by Bush for the war, in which more than 500 U.S. troops have died.

"The president wants a broad, bipartisan and independent review of our intelligence, particularly relating to weapons of mass destruction and counter-proliferation efforts," said a senior Bush administration official, who asked to remain unidentified.

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