posted 02-28-2003 12:11 PM            

In deference to our missing buddy BJM;
I'll make his argument for him.

How has George W Bush restored dignity to the White House, after his daddy & most other Presidents (of both parties) lied, lied, lied constantly:

>By Steve Forbes
6. He has restored honor and dignity to the White House. The man wears a suit and tie in the Oval Office. Always. Enough said.<

source the 'unbiased' National Conservative Weekly/ Human Events http://www.humaneventsonline.com/articles/12-17-01/forbes.html

Oddly and inexplicably, the same exact words appear on many dozens of other websites.

Had My-Man-Slick kept his coat on tie on while dropping his pants..there would have been no complaint from Steve Forbes and other Republicans? wierd!

Oh well the NWO advocates must have predicted that the media would all independently suddenly all come to think the same, and use the same words (including punctuation) independently.

Me:
Both sides; all sides, are corrupted, it's only a matter of scale.

The rare person like Paul Wellstone who stands up againts the NWO is ....well.....dead.

http://www.welchreport.com/comment2.cfm?rank_cho=216

posted 02-28-2003 01:30 PM            

BUT I DIGRESS
by SB

EXCERPT FROM DUBYA'S DIARY:

NATIONS WE MUST CONQUER AFTER AXIS OF EVIL

France/Germany/Belgium:
Trying to stop us from pushing around the U.N. and the world. Dangerous. Hostile. Don't agree with us and our way of life. Serious threat. Haughty and prent . .ent . . ious, too (note to self: gotta ask Cheney if that's how pretentious is spelled). Doesn't matter if they're part of NATO and E.U.—if they're against us they're not with us (or is it other way around— talk to Condie). If we don't stop them now they'll surely want us to consult the U.N. before we attack Iran and North Korea, too. Never liked strudels anyway. Belgium? They're the size of Delaware. Rumsfeld could cough and we'll wipe 'em out. Terror threat: Critical.

Saudi Arabia:
Daddy saved their ass in '91 and now they can't help us? That's cold. Real cold. Hostile. Their trying to stop our way of life. Trying to stop democracy from blossoming (whatever happened to "Blossom", kinda liked that show) around the world. Besides, wasn't Osama from there? Man. And several of the 9-11 hijackers, too. Oh, man. I see a connection here. Ripe for change anyway. Also a monarchy—never trusted those systems where the offspring take over from their parents.
Terror Threat: Critical.
(Note to self: tell Ridge you prefer green as 'critical' color than red.)

China:
Annoying. Contrarian by nature. Last major communist country. Gotta finish what Daddy and his boys started in the sixties. Cold War lives! Got over one trillion people—wait, is it million? Either way, too many people. Lots of people we can use to continue making our cheap goods. Maybe use some of them as cheap drillers for our planned Alaskan oil drilling. Should help the economy. Once called us a big bully, too—those are fighting words. They're dangerous. Hostile.
Terror threat: Partially Critical.

U.N.:
Always got guys with funny names running this thing: Kofi, Boutros, Trygve. Can't trust them. Where they finding these people anyway? Sneaky, too: can't ever figure out where they're located—one minute they're here, next they're in Brussels. Gotta get some good ole red-blooded Americans in there. We can't be the superpower of the world if they're the world's conscience. Remember League of Their Own (League of Nations?)—say goodbye. (Note to self: check with Condie to see if we already own the U.N. If we do, must have a board meeting and a CEO change.)
Terror threat: Very High.

The whole Middle East:
Romania, Serbia, South Africa, Indonesia— too many countries no one'll ever want to go to anyway. Just better if we take 'em all over and bring in democracy. Always something or another going on over there. Too many headaches with them. Give 'em democracy and all will be fine. Should end Israel's little Palestinian problem, too. Sharon'll owe me for that one. Ha ha. Terror threat: Very High.

India:
Didn't like the food when I was there. Laura got bad gas. No running water in some parts. Monsoons. Taking over our technology infrastructure. Dangerous. Very dangerous. If they wanted to they could single-handedly bring down our economy (note to self: ask Cheney how that's going, by the way. Maybe we need another tax-cut-for-the-rich-stimulus package).
Terror threat: High.

That place where Al Jeezera is broadcast from:
Why is it they keep getting Osama's tapes and we don't? I'll tell you why—they're in bed with him. If they play his tapes that must mean they agree with him and if they agree with him that must mean they're against us and our way of life and if they're against us and our way of life then they're hostile towards us and if they're hostile towards us that means they're in bed with Iraq… whoah… that's deep. Gotta get rid of them. If we wipe 'em out Osama won't be able to stick his tongue out at us on TV no more.
Terror threat: Worrisome.

Canada:
Sure they're our neighbors and they've supported us in the past. But they're dangerous. Lots of al Qaeda came into U.S. from there. They got that guy who called me an idiot, too. Can't have that. Direct threat to our way of life (side note to self: if we take them over we could expand oil drilling, thus, create more jobs and help our economy—yeah!).
Terror threat: Nagging.

Japan:
Can't get those images of Daddy getting sick there out of my mind. Made him look like a fool. Besides, Rumsfeld's got a hunch they're up to something. Good enough for me.
Terror threat: Aggravating.
Feb 12 2003

Read more:
BUT I DIGRESS
by SB
The sunny side of things.

Showdown Iraq:
The Reality Show To End All Reality

THE INTERNET LIBRARY OR BIG BROTHER?:
THE EYE IN THE SKY IS GETTING BIGGER: http://www.fictionfunhouse.com/butidigress/butidigress.htm

FICTION FUNHOUSE
HOME PAGE: http://www.fictionfunhouse.com/index.html

posted 03-10-2003 06:32 PM            

Also has anyone read this; United Nations Exposed ? Wondering if it was any good. Here's a blurb about it...

Below the surface of public attention, internationalists have been working for decades to build the United Nations into an all-powerful world government. In this carefully documented study, William F. Jasper shows that, with the United Nations, the American people are being offered what amounts to poison disguised as candy. (2001, 338pp, pb)

In 1992, veteran reporter and UN expert William F. Jasper unmasked the real intentions of the United Nations with his authoritative volume on the world body, Global Tyranny … Step by Step. Since then, the program for world domination through the UN has continued apace, making an update to that now classic treatise imperative. With his new book, The United Nations Exposed, Jasper has done just that. The new work, though, is far more than just an update of the earlier book. Taking a different approach than that used in Global Tyranny, Jasper has provided new and shocking insights into how a transnational elite is using the United Nations as a mechanism to bring into being a despotic "new world order."

Since the publication of Jasper’s earlier book, and especially over the past three years, the UN has been circulating several bold proposals to consolidate additional powers and create what can only be called a working world government. Some of these proposals include: the 1998 International Criminal Court treaty to be able to bring any person in the world to trial; reinvigorated pressure for global taxing power; and a 1999 proposal to outlaw private firearms ownership globally.

The final thrust is perhaps the most frightening, given the history of the United Nations with personal disarmament. Commenting on the UN’s record in Rwanda, Jasper notes that "Lt.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire, the former commander of Canada’s UN ‘peace-keeping’ mission to Rwanda in 1994, revealed that he had sent a fax to Annan’s office warning that Rwandan security officials had been ordered to ‘register’ the (predominantly Christian) Tutsis as an obvious prelude to mass liquidation. Annan’s office ordered Dallaire to ‘assist in the recovery of all weapons distributed to or illegally acquired by civilians,’ which, in effect, meant disarming the intended victims!" The result of the disarmament is another dismal chapter in history. The Rwandan government waged a massive genocidal campaign against the Tutsis while the UN looked on and washed its hands of responsibility in the matter. Now the UN wants to supervise personal disarmament on a global scale — a truly chilling development.

New Push for Empowerment

Years ago, UN proposals to empower itself got little more than smirks from most Americans. But the United Nations is currently lobbying in dynamic new ways to obtain these additional powers. The rise in influence of the Non-Governmental Organization (NGOs) at the UN, as well as a new UN partnership with business organizations, has led to greater domestic and international pressure for adoption of agreements to strengthen the UN. And Americans have only seen the opening salvos of these new arrangements.

In one sense, Global Tyranny could be said to be more valuable today than when it was published in 1992. Many of the events forecast by Jasper then are now international agreements in the process of ratification today. In that book, Jasper writes of UN threats to our Second Amendment and takes notice of the dangers posed by a strengthened world court mechanism and multiplying environmental agreements. "The deluge of treaties now in various stages of readiness and preparation — regarding the ‘environment,’ ‘children’s rights,’ ‘peace and disarmament,’ and a host of other issues — has the capability of utterly destroying our Republic if they are approved," he wrote.

Jasper may appear to be some sort of a prophet for his projections in Global Tyranny. But with The United Nations Exposed, Jasper proves that he is no prophet. Why? Because in his new book he lets out the secrets of his prophecy, revealing the agendas, programs, and organizing principles behind the UN and its new proposals. With The United Nations Exposed, every reader can become a prophet.

Specifically, Jasper lays out for the reader the organizational pattern for United Nations empowerment, a pattern that the perceptive reader will easily be able to recognize wherever and whenever it pops up. Despite the substantial new information and additional research provided in The United Nations Exposed, this is perhaps the greatest improvement over Global Tyranny. Although Jasper did cover some of this material in his earlier book — he did, for instance, cover the role of NGOs at the 1992 summit in Rio de Janeiro (which he attended on behalf of THE NEW AMERICAN) — the methods and tactics of UN organizing are laid out in far more detail and with several additional examples in The United Nations Exposed.

Strategy for Victory

The general pattern the UN employs to build its powers is a public relations pincer strategy involving pressure from street demonstrators "below" and diplomats from "above." Pressure from below is created by UN-friendly NGOs who "clamor for ‘world governance,’ and their orchestrated clamor is portrayed as the collective voice of the peoples of the world expressing a global consensus." Meanwhile, pressure from above is created by "political and corporate leaders [who] then ‘respond’ to the ‘will of civil society.’" These organized lobbying efforts by the UN are increasingly effective. "Politicians who might normally do battle are completely outgunned and overwhelmed; there is no way they can match, by themselves, the intellectual firepower of the assembled think tanks and universities that have been preparing their positions for months — or even years. And when their congressional offices are besieged with an orchestrated campaign of telephone calls, e-mails, faxes, and letters; while CNN, C-Span, and the other networks are all spewing forth the same story — even the stalwart begin to crumble before such an onslaught."

Jasper notes that the UN’s alliance with foundation-funded NGOs means that they now have "incredible resources at their disposal for [assaulting American sovereignty], including the support of now more than 1,000 NGOs lobbying for the UN agenda. We cannot expect to obtain the resources to defend against all of those attacks. Moreover, such a purely defensive strategy is doomed to defeat. The only sensible strategy is to put the globalists’ gains up for grabs by going after the foundation for their assaults — the United Nations itself."

This last statement by Jasper is one example of why The United Nations Exposed provides genuine leadership for patriotic Americans interested in maintaining their liberties and independence. Ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu once wrote that "if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle." Jasper’s new volume helps Americans realize both the nature of the enemy they face and the resources available to patriots. He notes that the danger has never been that "UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan — or one of his predecessors or successors — would impose a UN dictatorship upon a strong and resistant United States. That is not going to happen." "The danger is very real," Jasper nevertheless concludes, because this danger "emanates not so much from Kofi Annan, the UN itself, or any foreign, external source as it does from those within our own government who seek to impose a ‘new world order’ upon us."

Who are these people who seek to impose a global tyranny? In the prologue to his new effort, Jasper writes that "this cabal of one-world Insiders has gradually gained control of the levers of power in the federal government, the Democratic and Republican Parties, and many major corporations, universities, think tanks, and tax-exempt foundations. Operating through respectable-appearing front groups — principally the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Trilateral Commission (TC), the Bilderberg Group (BG), and the Committee for Economic Development (CED) — these one-worlders have hijacked our country. While systematically destroying our constitutional republic and gradually converting it into a socialist dictatorship, they also have been busily fomenting wars and revolutions, toppling free governments that were friendly to America, and repeatedly aiding ruthless Communist dictators and Third World thugs who are America’s enemies. The blood of millions of victims is on their hands."

That American politicians and other leaders would work toward the subversion of America’s national sovereignty and Bill of Rights would shock many patriots, and some might even dismiss such an allegation. But Jasper supports his statements with a deluge of unassailable facts. Yet despite the enormous threat posed by UN empowerment, Jasper persuasively refutes pessimism. "Both of these attitudes — blind, senseless optimism and hopeless defeatism — should be equally repugnant to free peoples." As to defeatism, Americans can take heart in the fact that the UN must still use subterfuge to get its agenda adopted. "If the fight were already over, as the defeatists claim, our enemies would not be going to such lengths to deceive; they would be flying their colors openly. But they cannot promote their agenda openly."

Jasper notes that America’s situation is at least as hopeful as that of the Founding Fathers, who faced a "world order" in their day that was at least as potent as the global order Americans face today. "In the summer of 1775, these courageous souls faced a situation not dissimilar to our own." The sun did not set on the British Empire, and its military and naval might were unequaled in the world. Jasper notes that many counseled in 1775 that "it would be futile and foolish to dare to challenge the British military might." Yet those American patriots prevailed against the world order of their day.

Americans today can defeat the UN would-be world order without a clash of arms, and Jasper recommends an educational approach. "Building sufficient understanding in time will require organization under extremely tough, responsible, and knowledgeable leadership," Jasper notes. He points out that only the John Birch Society has such a track record, especially with respect to the United Nations. "For more than four decades, members of The John Birch Society have been educating their fellow citizens concerning the dangers of the United Nations. Their work has been largely responsible for the disfavor that befell the UN for so many years."

posted 03-10-2003 08:31 PM               

You have no money, you own nothing, your life is one big debt to an invisible debtor who you will never get to ask any questions of.
Think you are solvent?
Think you own your house?
Think again, you are but a slave to the IMF.

Now, get back to work so you can pay your bills so you can get back to work!

posted 03-10-2003 09:19 PM            

or bankruptcy ?

just curious ears....do you even own a house ?

posted 03-10-2003 11:55 PM            

Check your local library . . . . . .

Cash? You're joking of course.

posted 03-11-2003 01:09 AM            

credit cards finance companies high interest debt is a bad thing they should not be able to charge more than 6% over prime...debt of this type IS creating a larger segment of "working poor" than ever...and caused in whole by the educational system of the U.S...people are not taught money and the rule of 72 anymore...a financial dependency class is a very nice deal for group based party systems...(communist,socialist)

posted 03-11-2003 06:38 AM            

Houses? You mean the ones where having a mortgage is the only legal tax shelter left??? Yeah, I got a couple of those.

I agree with you on what I think part of your point is. That being that so many folks live beyond their means, to achieve status symbols that the think they "need".

If you own your house free and clear, you still don't own it. Read up on some of the land grabs going on. A google search on the sawgrass rebellion, or The Wildlands Project or FEMA's Emergency Power's Act should yield much. I'm sure those nice folks at FEMA will just give you back you land when the perceived crisis is over.

Here's a worldnet daily article to get you started.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28722

Posted: August 24, 2002
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com

Nearly four years ago, a group of freedom-loving organizations met in Washington, D.C., to organize the Freedom 21 Campaign. The purpose of the campaign is to "Advance the principles of freedom in the 21st century."

At its first national conference, leaders from dozens of grassroots organizations adopted the Principles of Freedom, based on the founding documents of the United States.

At its second national conference, the grassroots leaders launched an initiative to develop a more comprehensive document which sets forth very specific policy recommendations to advance the principles of freedom in the 21st century, as an alternative to the U.N.'s "Agenda 21."

Dr. Michael Coffman, CEO of Sovereignty International, and David Rothbard, president of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, are leading a delegation to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, to share this document with the delegates.

They will not be allowed to officially present these ideas to the assembly, since the U.N. controls the agenda with an iron fist. They will, however, be able to unofficially share the document with delegates between sessions and in private conversations, and direct them to the website where the document is available to the world.

At the third national conference of the Freedom 21 Campaign, leaders of more than 50 grassroots organizations from 34 states adopted the Sawgrass Rebellion as a high-priority project to demonstrate how the principles of freedom should be applied to the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan to prevent further expansion of the Wildlands Project which has the effect of expanding wilderness, by flooding private landowners off their land.

The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan is a classic example of how the machinery of sustainable development works to drive people off the land through policies that are developed by non-government organizations and government agencies, with little or no input from the people who are most affected by those policies.

The Nature Conservancy, the National Wildlife Federation, the Audubon Society, and the World Wildlife Fund all maintain paid staff who sit on advisory and "stakeholder" councils, who attend every meeting of every agency to lobby for their vision of wilderness utopia. Land owners, on the other hand, work for a living. Their organizations do not receive multi-million-dollar grants from the government, and are run by volunteers, who donate time after work.

Consequently, the "restoration" plan is devised, and well on its way toward implementation before many of the affected people even become aware that the plan will displace them. The same procedure is followed in communities across the country. Small volunteer groups of land owners and resource users are unable to compete with the sophisticated tactics, and well-funded full-time staffs of the professional environmentalists.

Few people realize that these same environmental organizations actually participated in the development of the international policies that are now being implemented in Florida, and across the country. The Nature Conservancy and the Audubon Society funded Dr. Reed Noss' writing of the "Wildlands Project." All of the organizations listed above are members of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature – the International NGO that drafted the Convention on Biological Diversity, as well as most of the other international environmental treaties.

All of these organizations will be well represented in Johannesburg at the WSSD, lobbying the delegates to take more dramatic action to "save the world" from exploitation by humans.

All of these organizations are well represented in South Florida, and in virtually every community where the Wildlands Project and Smart Growth are exploiting the private property rights of free Americans. All of these organizations draw heavily from the U.S. taxpayers who unwittingly fund their operations through federal and state government grants, in addition to voluntary contributions and membership dues.

The American people are growing weary of the relentless pressure applied by these organizations, and their friends within government agencies. People are beginning to recognize that the land-control measures in their community are only a part of a national, and indeed, an international effort to transform the world into a global village controlled by the environmentally enlightened elite, through the agencies of global, national, state and local governments.

As Americans discover what is happening, they are saying no! No way! They are saying that it is time to rediscover the principles of freedom on which this nation was founded. They are saying "we've had enough" of this environmental extremism that burns our forests, denies water to Klamath farmers in favor of a sucker fish, while flooding Florida farmers into oblivion to save a sparrow that no one has ever seen.

In numbers that grow every day, Americans are rejecting "Agenda 21" in favor of Freedom 21 – and are willing to stand up and be counted – especially on election day.

posted 03-14-2003 05:02 PM            

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030314/ap_on_en_mu/people_dixie_chicks

NASHVILLE, Tennessee - The Dixie Chicks are drawing harsh words from country music fans for remarks singer Natalie Maines made about President George W. Bush during a recent performance in London.

Maines told the audience earlier this week, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."

Angry phone calls flooded Nashville radio station WKDF-FM on Thursday, some calling for a boycott of the Texas trio's music.

The group released a statement Thursday saying they have been overseas for several weeks and "the anti-American sentiment that has unfolded here is astounding. While we support our troops, there is nothing more frightening than the notion of going to war with Iraq and the prospect of all the innocent lives that will be lost."

In a separate statement Thursday, Maines said, "I feel the president is ignoring the opinion of many in the U.S. and alienating the rest of the world. My comments were made in frustration, and one of the privileges of being an American is you are free to voice your own point of view."

The Dixie Chicks will kick off a U.S. tour in support of their multi-platinum album "Home" on May 1 in Greenville, South Carolina. The group's hits include "Wide Open Spaces," "Ready to Run" and "Landslide."

posted 03-17-2003 09:53 AM            

Ex-Clinton aide reveals Bill lost the nuclear codes

posted 09-02-2003 01:45 PM            

President Bush, along with first lady, Laura Bush, and members of the Waco Midway Little League Softball World Series championship team, react as Bush accidentally drops his dog, Barney, Saturday, Aug. 30, 2003. Bush quickly scooped up the dog who was not injured.

posted 09-03-2003 08:59 PM            

That is the latest info I have, to answer your question...

Jeb wrote a letter to the "right to die" or in this case murder attorney. (only after he was bombarded with 27,000 emails.

posted 09-04-2003 08:35 PM            

Dear Big Brother, I Mean, John Poindexter
by DARREN GRANT

Thank you.

I knew you got my email because I have become a concern at your Office of Information Awareness, since I went to cash a check at BofA this morning, and they said they could not cash it because of the "test e-mail to Mr. Poindexter," and to contact Mr. Poindexter at some 800 number to see if I could get the "hold lifted."

Can you PLEASE, with sugar on top, lift that hold, so I can eat?

Then I went to the grocery store to purchase my mango antioxidant drink, and the clerk said I must swipe either my VON'S CLUB CARD or a valid photo ID, and so I did, and code 99332 came up, and she said that I was violating the Patriot Act and must contact a new office set up by Ashcroft because my antioxidant drink could be used by terrorists in a harmful manner.

Mr. Ashcroft, if you are getting c.c.'d Mr. Poindexter's e-mail copies, thus reading this, could you P L E A S E, with woman on top, could you please lift my restrictions with the merchants?

I don't want Rumsfeld at my door!

Mr. Rumsfeld, if you are also on the c.c. list, could you PLEASE stand down.

I'm not a homeland security threat, just one more little guy in America that works every day and pays taxes, so you can hand out your Pentagon contracts, get paid, and order the biggest and juiciest steak possible at Ruth Chris or Morton's.

Then, get this, I get a cell phone call from an IRS agent, "collection
enforcement," where he says that I just tried to pay cash for an antioxidant Mango fruity drink, and they wanted to know where that cash was "earned from."

I said "don't know" and he said "could it be the cash-gratuity you
earned driving that limo last night?" at which point I said "how did you know?" and he said "we were passed intelligence on you from the Office of Information Awareness, after all, Mr. Grant, in this 'war on terrorism' we cannot be too safe, can we?

We now share data between military, intelligence, treasury, and domestic law enforcement...so hand over the cash Mr. Darren!"

Then I ask how? and he says to just deposit it at the nearest ATM and punch the buttons that say "direct deposit to IRS."

I ask how he got my cell phone number and he says "let me transfer you to Verizon" at which point a lady comes on and says "under the new homeland security laws, Mr. Grant, we've been sharing all our customer records with the government because you know, we cannot be too safe, Osama used a satellite phone, Felix the drug lord used cell phones in Bogotá, and just think, Saddam may right now as we speak, be attempting to open a cell phone account in Paris under the name of George W., not good Mr. Grant, so yes, we gave the IRS your number."

Then I get a tip from my neighbor, who is now a proud member of TIPPS, or that program turning very bored nosey neighbors, politically adventurous peers at work, and Wal-Mart senior greeters, into snoops for the government.

My TIPP neighbor says there is a tank parked across my home,
she said "looks like the same one from Waco!" and I go to inquire and it says on the side "multi-jurisdictional police task force" and I'm
immediately told to raise my hands and kneel on the ground, close my eyes, hold my breath, because I'm a "domestic dissenter."

Although the above is my fictional account, it could be an accurate futurist's forecast. Who knows.

Who'd ever think that a deadbeat dad would be arrested in a Mad Mother's DUI checkpoint, not for drunk driving, but for owing back payments on child support?

Oh, better make sure you don't have a cracked windshield, are uninsured, or any number of other things that trigger the
officers to run you through the NCIC (National Crime Information Computer) making sure you too are not wanted by Homeland Security for SOMETHING.

Before, we called all of this obtrusive and a threat, if not breach, to our Constitution.

Today, everyone in unison repeating after Tom, Dan and Peter, seems to say "we gotta do this because of the war on terrorism."

And then I reminded people before, and especially after 9/11, who it is who is being criminalized in this police-military state America is being converted to, while the very masses under this growing government, cheer it, and wave their flags in agreement.

That is the scary part!

We are closer to the edge, than the mirror reflects.

* Darren Grant can be contacted at avintel@netzero.com

http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=104&contentid=699&page=2

posted 10-22-2003 05:01 PM            

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,100917,00.html

TO: Gen. Dick Myers, Paul Wolfowitz, Gen. Pete Pace, Doug Feith

FROM: Donald Rumsfeld

SUBJECT: Global War on Terrorism

The questions I posed to combatant commanders this week were: Are we winning or losing the Global War on Terror? Is DoD changing fast enough to deal with the new 21st century security environment? Can a big institution change fast enough? Is the USG changing fast enough?

DoD has been organized, trained and equipped to fight big armies, navies and air forces. It is not possible to change DoD fast enough to successfully fight the global war on terror; an alternative might be to try to fashion a new institution, either within DoD or elsewhere - one that seamlessly focuses the capabilities of several departments and agencies on this key problem.

With respect to global terrorism, the record since Septermber 11th seems to be: We are having mixed results with Al Qaeda, although we have put considerable pressure on them - nonetheless, a great many remain at large.

USG has made reasonable progress in capturing or killing the top 55 Iraqis. USG has made somewhat slower progress tracking down the Taliban - Omar, Hekmatyar, etc. With respect to the Ansar Al-Islam, we are just getting started. Have we fashioned the right mix of rewards, amnesty, protection and confidence in the U.S.? Does DoD need to think through new ways to organize, train, equip and focus to deal with the global war on terror? Are the changes we have and are making too modest and incremental?

My impression is that we have not yet made truly bold moves, although we have have made many sensible, logical moves in the right direction, but are they enough?

Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us? Does the U.S. need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists?

The U.S. is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' costs of millions. Do we need a new organization? How do we stop those who are financing the radical madrassa schools? Is our current situation such that "the harder we work, the behinder we get"?

It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog. Does CIA need a new finding? Should we create a private foundation to entice radical madradssas to a more moderate course? What else should we be considering?

posted 10-22-2003 07:29 PM            

And they have an Ann Coulter doll and two Bush dolls and a Bush Senior! $29.95! And they talk!

OMG!

bc

posted 10-22-2003 09:05 PM            

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5049.htm

Twilight's Last Gleaming

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be..."

By Dom Stasi
ResponDS1@aol.com

10/22/03: (ICH) With those words Thomas Jefferson cautioned a newly independent United States of America against the perils of, well… ignorance. Jefferson knew that for any people to govern themselves successfully, they must first become and then remain wise enough to do so. That's a very grown up responsibility. It requires a willingness to acknowledge transgressions among those in whom we've placed sacred trust. It requires accepting that our leaders, whether chosen or presumed, might harbor and respond to political and ideological motivations of a kind we'd perhaps prefer to ignore or otherwise rationalize. But failing or refusing to recognize official deceit is to abdicate ones intellectual liberty and swear blind obedience to authority. That is not very grown up behavior. Neither is it behavior worthy of those who would be free.

Yet such is the present. Rather than the enlightened germ of human equality he envisioned, Jefferson's land of the free would today appear to a him a nightmare utopia, a place whose destiny is being sealed by that same blissfully ignorant, blindly obedient segment of the populace his words so eloquently disdained. The home of the brave he loved with such passion is at once a frightened and frightening behemoth crowding out a world made small by the behemoth's influence and reach. Democracy's birthplace has grown to belie the very thing it spawned.

But not even Jefferson's fecund imagination could have dreamed that, in the end, the high office his genius helped create would degenerate into the instrument of exploitation and peril against which he had warned over two centuries ago. Never would Jefferson's worst nightmares have foretold that his republic of the people, by the people and for the people would meet what might well be its end at the hands of a simple-minded, impossibly inadequate, arrogantly corrupt successor to the very office his own tenure so brilliantly served: that of the President of the United States.1

Yet so it is. The America of our founders was a nation of but two-million, but from their numbers came Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Tom Paine, Betsy Ross, Nathan Hale, and Benjamin Franklin, to name but a few. Today, that nation is become a land divided against both itself and the world, and driven there by the divisive manifestation of its now 280 million people's dissonance, George W. Bush. Today, to our national shame, we find ourselves enduring the confused leadership of a single wholly unremarkable American fool, who stands before a multitude of American fools, as they gaze dumbly - one upon the other - mutually unaware that the precipice onto which they've stumbled, has already cracked beneath their weight. Or worse: aware but in childlike denial of the impending collapse their respective actions and inactions - one toward the other - have assured. It is a collapse whose inevitability the rest of the world - a world of 1.3 billion outraged Muslims and ten-trillion eurodollars - awaits.1,3

That an entire peoples, a society that so fondly considers itself enlightened, would so closely and warmly identify with a president whose abject stupidity, professed irrationality, and legacy of failure-compounding-felonious-failure, stands as a bold and damning testimony of our nation's susceptibility to exploitation.1 America's instant mutation from a great and noble society-of-man, into a panic-stricken primeval predator has precedent in the modern world by the likes of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and their own subsequent and dramatic collapses. Today, this once greatest of all nations, this land of the still free, but home of the no-longer-brave, is become more notably home of the advertising agency, the gas guzzler, the Pet Rock, astrology, mystic crystals, faith healers, personal auras, guardian angels, acupuncture, weapons of mass destruction, duct tape, gas masks, militias, armchair warriors, chickenhawks, Nostradamus cults, UFOs, Bible codes, breast enhancing cream, bee sting therapy, snake handlers, missile defense delusions, exploding shoes, TV economists, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, CNN, dangling chads, spiritualism, and bottled water. America - dysfunctional, post-traumatic America - has withdrawn into the somnambulance of self-deception more completely than ever. And since September 11, 2001, more blindly irresponsibly and pointlessly than ever as well, leaving little hope or possibility that anything but grief and remorse will greet our ultimate, and inevitable awakening with the dawn's early light.2 This country, the Bankrupt States of America, in two short years has endured a self-inflicted collapse of rationality equaled only by the concurrent supernovael collapse of her economy. While we were alternately shaking our fists and cowering in terror, the American economy has been allowed to freefall $600 billion from the most prosperous period in its spectacularly prosperous history to the status of a banana republic economy characterized by a national debt of $6 trillion and a cancerous deficit of $400 billion with neither a single thing to show for it, nor so much as the germ of a plan for recovery. This society of the ostensibly enlightened that casually gives its president another $87 billion it does not have (on top of the $600 billion), adding yet again to the $79 billion it's already squandered in Iraq alone so that he may further destroy a sovereign country and its institutions, only to presume its reconstruction through corporations his assistants, owners, and family control, is this time perhaps deservedly beyond saving.3,4 America is rushing toward self-destruction. It is being driven there by that which its brilliant founders anticipated, forestalled, and called the Tyranny of the Majority. Every penny in taxes you and I have ever earned and contributed to this country over our entire lives, has been squandered before the alter of misguided ideology. Our dollars, the billions upon billions we've contributed as a peoples, are used daily to murder innocents in the name of profit. 5 How, I ask you, how do we not see it? How very much have we never learned from our immigrant ancestors?

The shame of it, the stupidity of it, the avoidability of it, each contribute to making America's fall from the heights it had so recently achieved all the more painful. For after standing as a beacon of hope for four centuries, the brash human experiment that became the American nation entered this new century shining brighter than ever and illuminating a world of never-before possibilities for all its people. America's successes were to a great degree seen as humanity's successes. We'd built a big rep for a mongrel society, hell, for any society. A fledgling nation became an unprecedented superpower, a secular, scientific societal model based on human equality for the world to emulate. And make no mistake, it was those successes, piled one upon another through our history, those successes and an open challenge to the world to partake of them, that ended the Cold War, not the unbridled and idiotic military spending of the Reagan years.

Look back to understand what we are (or were and can be again), at what we've done and what we've challenged the world to match. The Mayflower Compact. The Declaration of Independence. The Federalist Papers. The Constitution. The Bill Of Rights. The Emancipation Proclamation. The Marshal Plan. The Voting Rights Act. The Wage Hour Laws. The Civil Rights Act. Each of these declarations was a promise made to ourselves. Each was a world-altering, yet humane act of reformation. Each was a correct and considered response to self-inflicted injustice. Each followed the cognitive recognition of that injustice. Each acknowledged and denounced an affront to humankind before the world. Each was a triumph of the human spirit, and slowly - ever-so-slowly - came to be seen by all of rational humanity as such. Our actions demonstrated to the world that America was before all else, humanitarian.

When viewed on balance, of course it's not been all good. How could it have? Many of America's mistakes rank among humankind's most vile atrocities: Manifest Destiny, Native Genocide, The Trail of Tears, Slavery, Child Labor, Japanese Interment, Racial Segregation. Let's face it, America was - and is - just a young country. It had been abused by its parents, rebelled, broke away from home, grew to gigantic stature and strength and promise all before learning quite how to behave on its own. Americans have always been left to learn their humanity with little frame of reference save the abuses heaped upon them by the overlords they'd left behind. But unlike us, our forbears learned from their transgressions. Each segregated immigrant brought his or her unique experience to America. Many attempted to impose the same injustices they'd come here to escape. Some succeeded. But America alone has both admitted, and corrected the mistakes of its people and its government more willingly than any society before, and we've done so on the world stage. We did not hide our transgressions, or deny them, or even lament them very much. We learned of them, and we corrected them. America's failings were not European, or African, or Asian failings. Neither were they native failings. They were human failings. American triumphs, too, should be shared in credit by all of its people, whatever their shade of pale.

So here we stand at the start of a new age, a country founded and populated far, far more by the descendants of atrocity's victims than by those of its perpetrators. One more time, in what Jefferson called the course of human events our republic is remaking itself. One more time we await the cognitive recognition of an American mistake by the majority of her people. And it's been but a mere instant since that glorious age the world named The American Century.

Here we stand, the work, dreams, and prospects born of our ancestors' sacrifices having been betrayed. Everything they'd learned, everything they'd fought against, everything they'd fought for, everything they left us at the cost of their lives or their time on this earth in the hope that better lives would be created for their children and ours, being squandered before our closed eyes. How did we fall so far in so short a time?

There are those who would say that we did not fall, but were pushed. Either way, we allowed it to happen. We';ve been neither vigilant, responsible, skeptical, courageous, or adult. We've allowed the treasures of liberty, security, and promise, the sacred trust bequeathed us by our immigrant ancestors to be stolen from us right-by-precious-right and from our children by the very tyrants our fathers tried to teach us to distrust. We learned but little. I would submit, however, that it's not to late. Not yet. We are living another of America's mistakes. Nothing more, nothing less. Some of us have achieved cognitive recognition. Many more of us have not. But it is clearly now our turn to sacrifice if we hope to leave our children a nation of value. The question then becomes, do we have the stuff of our fathers and mothers and their fathers and mothers, and theirs? Will our tranquilized, therapied, I'm okay, you're okay generation be able to face and overcome what we've wrought in but two years? Will we have the courage to retake what we've allowed to be taken from us, from our parents, from their parents, and theirs? Do we have what it takes to correct this latest American mistake? Only our children will know the answer. It will be revealed to them with the dawn's early light. To shamelessly paraphrase, Will our flag be still theirs? Or will our failure be their American legacy?

Because the simple truth is this. With the American Century's end, came the perhaps unexpected (perhaps not),6 unnecessary, and hopefully temporary end of so many things American: the year 2000 saw the end of our functional democracy; 2001 the end of our perceived security; 2002 the end of our rationality; 2003 the end of our global fraternity; 2004 will see the end of our privacy; and unless we find that strength buried in our genes, 2005 will see the end of our intellectual liberty; 2006 the end of our prosperity; 2007…

The possibilities arrayed before us on the Millennial threshold were many. We had, as President Clinton said, "..an opportunity to lead the world." We grabbed, instead, an opportunity to run it.

Contrary to popular opinion, America's myriad possibilities were not co-opted by the horrors of nine-eleven, but were in fact multiplied by them, multiplied exponentially. Because, for the first time in its history, America found the entire world standing with her. Despite the vigilante-like inferences and Ox Bow Incident approach to vindication characteristic of our cowpoke-from-New England president, neither Iraq nor any nation was responsible for the horror. Neither was any nation spared its grief. To a greater degree than ever before humanity transcended politics on a global scale. Even in America herself, the people united behind their then-foundering president. For the first time in memory, a misguided act intending to isolate and punish a specific people, was instead seen as an act of unfathomable hatred committed by idiots against all people. No atrocity, wherever or whenever it might have occurred, had so galvanized the squabbling world the way nine-eleven galvanized all of rational humanity. Every people saw and felt their own kind crushed beneath the towers' terrible weight. Every shade of flesh was as easily ripped by the mangling iron. Every color save blood red faded in the mud of Ground Zero.

Yet somehow, from the ashes and tears, the America born of her founders' experiment in liberty and human dignity emerged valid, stronger than ever before, more unified and whole, and all at the moment of our greatest prosperity. For a very short time - but a time unique in all of time - the entire world felt one people's shock, awe, grief, anger...

"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad" … Euripides

But then, in a flash all the rational pursuit of innocence and guilt and right and wrong and mercy and vengeance and justice was gone. All of the proselytizing over punishment for the guilty turned to an exploitative witch hunt intent on punishing those superficially similar to the guilty, while the guilty themselves run free, aided in their flight by the very government whose people they'd violated.8

The decimated towers themselves, whose own similarity their immigrant architect proclaimed "A living symbol of mankind's dedication to peace in the world" were turned instead to a symbol of a different kind.7 They were mutated by an at-once frightened and exploitative political establishment into a symbol of hatred, invoked and invoked again to instigate renewed polarization and rage and anything but peace in the world.

If that rage happened to be turned against anyone unfortunate enough to culturally or physically or geographically identify with the murderers, so be it. Jefferson's admonitions have been made manifest, mutated into a vulgar self-fulfilled prophecy by the abject stupidity of his impossible successor and those who would blindly follow him. And, blinded by that very rage, we allowed him to steal our children's' future. We allow it still. Were we not forewarned?

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be..."

Of course it's heresy to compare Thomas Jefferson with George W. Bush in any context, contrast included, but I doubt that any president since Jefferson has better represented the bleak future Jefferson's words portended. Because simply put, never has an American administration more thoroughly capitalized on its countrymen's ignorance than has this one. Never has a president had so powerful a tiller as today's mass media, or so fertile a field of public credulity in which to sow the seeds of exploitation. Neither has any gaggle of fanatical advisors ever had a landscape so completely cleared of the obstacles of preconception, so empty a tract into which they in turn can sow their personal ideologies as is the wholly commonplace mind of George W. Bush. Nowhere in this president's head is one likely to find the cluttered forest of ideas which characterize the great leaders. No. To a man, America's great presidents have been men of their own ideas. The great ones have been men who turned to their advisors seeking refinement of those ideas, but not for the ideas themselves, not for direction, not this completely.

So while we indulge ourselves in speculation on how few Americans actually voted for George W. Bush or his snarling understudy, I submit that no Americans voted for Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, Ken Lay, William Bennett, Condoleezza Rice, Richard Perle, Billy Graham, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, John Ashcroft, or Don Quixote Rumsfeld. Yet it is this gaggle of ideologues whose ideas are leading our country. Our president is but their ventriloquist's dummy. And while I doubt that George W. Bush has ever considered or even encountered Thomas Jefferson's words of warning - nor would he much comprehend them if someday he should - his cadre of handlers most certainly has, and they comprehend them just fine.

They regale us with references to the "Bush Doctrine" and its plan for a new American century. Who among you believes that this sneering martinet - a man incapable of speaking in sentences on those rare occasions when the words are his own - is smart enough to have intuited a doctrine?! How supremely insulting such a presumption is to the genius and principles of our nation's founders, if apparently not to most of its people.

If there is a doctrine to be found amid the rudderless lunacy of this presidency, it is a doctrine of deceit.9 Were we not forewarned?

"You can fool some of the people all the time, and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all the time." …Abraham Lincoln.

Whether Honest Abe actually penned those words or not (there is conjecture), he would today agree that the observation stands incomplete. For today we have nationwide polls. They show to an accuracy of plus-or-minus 3% just who can and cannot be fooled at any given time.

And that knowledge is being expertly used and abused to mislead a credulous and childlike American majorty.10 For example, this very month, Bush launched a publicly funded public relations campaign. Meanwhile, papers around the world were reporting things such as the almost indescribably dismal failure of the Middle East "Road Map" for peace, the undenied reports of high treason from the White House in the Valerie Plame affair, the return of Afghanistan to the Taliban, its renewed stature as the world's leading producer of heroin, the failure to find of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (other than our own), proof that our 317 American soldiers have died and a like number were maimed for Bush's outright lies, verification that Colin Powell lied before the U. N. General Assembly on Bush administration orders, verified reports that the Bush administration flew Osama bin Laden's relatives out of the US on September 11th,, the failure to find either Osama bin Laden, or Saddam Hussein, the highest unemployment among American workers since his father was president, and a poll released by Time magazine Europe showing that 86% of Europeans consider George W. Bush the most serious threat to world peace of any man alive. Despite that the rest of the world was being made aware of all this, despite further that Mr. Bush finds $166 billion ($79B + $87B) of our American tax money to spend on Iraq, yet still has paid not one penny of the remaining $13 billion he promised New York City at his emotional September 2001 Ground Zero lie fest, despite all this real news, the TV talking heads and newspapers in the US chose to lead with a report that Bush's public relations campaign had resulted in an 8% jump in his popularity. That's right. This was the most domestically reported political story on the worst day of American casualties in the middle east in three months and the deepest federal deficit in American history, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, ad infinitum. Incredibly, this sweeping and instantaneous influence over American public opinion in the face of such extreme adversity and failure, cost the Bush reelection organization nothing, nada, not one red cent of their own money.

Disturbing? Certainly. Impressive? Undeniably. But does not such an incomprehensible level of public credulity, coupled with this radical administration's disregard for truth beg a far more troubling question for thinking Americans. Simply stated, if he gets an 8% jump in the polls for free, what sort of public popularity will be purchased with the $300 million Bush and his Rightist legions are putting behind his 2004 campaign?

I think against hope that the answer to that question is clear by now. For these polls reveal far, far more than that which is immediately apparent in their dry statistics. These polls reveal a permutation not considered even by the cynical likes of ol' Honest Abe when he wrote his now-famous words about which of the people can and can't be fooled. What these polls show - and why they are held in an almost religious reverence by the likes of Bush and his dubious political advisor Karl Rove - is that you can also fool most of the people most of the time. And today, beneath the rubble of Jefferson's democracy, that's apparently all it takes to disgrace and sack America.

For those willing to face it, there's an irony in all this. That irony, that supreme irony, is this: our first unelected president has invoked the Tyranny of the Majority11 and done so to stunning and disastrous effect. Will history reveal that therein lay the true and only Bush Doctrine?

- END -

Footnotes & References:
1. http://www.bigeye.com/uncurious_george.htm
2. http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/101803I.shtml
3. http://thomasmc.com/1006a.htm
4. http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/index.mhtml?bid=1&pid=1010
5. http://www.weeklydig.com/dig/content/2621.aspx
6. http://asia.news.yahoo.com/031016/3/1625q.html
7. http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/World_Trade_Center.html
8. http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/16/1559208
9. http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/101903I.shtml
10. http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/17/1526207
11. Definition : A phenomenon characterised by a homogenity of public opinion, caused by the peculiar psychological dynamics of public democratic politics, and resulting in little tolerance for difference of opinion. Public opinion is seen as authentic rather than ascribed, and therefore has a great deal more moral force.