Friday, June 11, 2004
THINGS YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN ORDER TO BE A REPUBLICAN
* Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you’re a conservative radio host. Then it’s an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.
* The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iraq.
* Government should relax regulation of Big Business and Big Money but crack down on individuals who use marijuana to relieve the pain of illness.
* “Standing Tall for America” means firing your workers and moving their jobs to India.
* A woman can’t be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multi-national corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.
* Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.
* The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches while slashing veterans’ benefits and combat pay.
* Group sex and drug use are degenerate sins unless you someday run for governor of California as a Republican.
* If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won’t have sex.
* A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our long-time allies, then demand their cooperation and money.
* HMOs and insurance companies have the interest of the public at heart.
* Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism.
* Global warming and tobacco’s link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.
* Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush’s daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a “we can’t find Bin Laden” diversion.
* A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense. A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.
* Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.
* The public has a right to know about Hillary’s cattle trades, but George Bush’s driving record is
none of our business.
* You support states’ rights, which means Attorney General John Ashcroft can tell states what local voter initiatives they have a right to adopt.
* What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the ’80s is irrelevant.
* Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.Thursday, June 10, 2004
REAL TEACHER TELLS IT LIKE IT IS
The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher
by John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year, 1991
Call me Mr. Gatto, please. Twenty-six years ago, having nothing better to do, I tried my hand at schoolteaching. My license certifies me as an instructor of English language and literature, but that isn't what I do at all. What I teach is school, and I win awards doing it.
Teaching means many different things, but six lessons are common to schoolteaching from Harlem to Hollywood. You pay for these lessons in more ways than you can imagine, so you might as well know what they are:
The first lesson I teach is: "Stay in the class where you belong." I don't know who decides that my kids belong there but that's not my business. The children are numbered so that if any get away they can be returned to the right class. Over the years the variety of ways children are numbered has increased dramatically, until it is hard to see the human being under the burden of the numbers each carries. Numbering children is a big and very profitable business, though what the business is designed to accomplish is elusive.
In any case, again, that's not my business. My job is to make the kids like it -- being locked in together, I mean -- or at the minimum, endure it. If things go well, the kids can't imagine themselves anywhere else; they envy and fear the better classes and have contempt for the dumber classes. So the class mostly keeps itself in good marching order. That's the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.
Nevertheless, in spite of the overall blueprint, I make an effort to urge children to higher levels of test success, promising eventual transfer from the lower-level class as a reward. I insinuate that the day will come when an employer will hire them on the basis of test scores, even though my own experience is that employers are (rightly) indifferent to such things. I never lie outright, but I've come to see that truth and [school]teaching are incompatible.
The lesson of numbered classes is that there is no way out of your class except by magic. Until that happens you must stay where you are put.
The second lesson I teach kids is to turn on and off like a light switch. I demand that they become totally involved in my lessons, jumping up and down in their seats with anticipation, competing vigorously with each other for my favor. But when the bell rings I insist that they drop the work at once and proceed quickly to the next work station. Nothing important is ever finished in my class, nor in any other class I know of.
The lesson of bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? Bells are the secret logic of schooltime; their argument is inexorable; bells destroy past and future, converting every interval into a sameness, as an abstract map makes every living mountain and river the same even though they are not. Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference.
The third lesson I teach you is to surrender your will to a predestined chain of command. Rights may be granted or withheld, by authority, without appeal. As a schoolteacher I intervene in many personal decisions, issuing a Pass for those I deem legitimate, or initiating a disciplinary confrontation for behavior that threatens my control. My judgments come thick and fast, because individuality is trying constantly to assert itself in my classroom. Individuality is a curse to all systems of classification, a contradiction of class theory.
Here are some common ways it shows up: children sneak away for a private moment in the toilet on the pretext of moving their bowels; they trick me out of a private instant in the hallway on the grounds that they need water. Sometimes free will appears right in front of me in children angry, depressed or exhilarated by things outside my ken. Rights in such things cannot exist for schoolteachers; only privileges, which can be withdrawn, exist.
The fourth lesson I teach is that only I determine what curriculum you will study. (Rather, I enforce decisions transmitted by the people who pay me). This power lets me separate good kids from bad kids instantly. Good kids do the tasks I appoint with a minimum of conflict and a decent show of enthusiasm. Of the millions of things of value to learn, I decide what few we have time for. The choices are mine. Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity.
Bad kids fight against this, of course, trying openly or covertly to make decisions for themselves about what they will learn. How can we allow that and survive as schoolteachers? Fortunately there are procedures to break the will of those who resist.
This is another way I teach the lesson of dependency. Good people wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. This is the most important lesson of all, that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives. It is no exaggeration to say that our entire economy depends upon this lesson being learned. Think of what would fall apart if kids weren't trained in the dependency lesson: The social-service businesses could hardly survive, including the fast-growing counseling industry; commercial entertainment of all sorts, along with television, would wither if people remembered how to make their own fun; the food services, restaurants and prepared-food warehouses would shrink if people returned to making their own meals rather than depending on strangers to cook for them. Much of modern law, medicine, and engineering would go too -- the clothing business as well -- unless a guaranteed supply of helpless people poured out of our schools each year. We've built a way of life that depends on people doing what they are told because they don't know any other way. For God's sake, let's not rock that boat!
In lesson five I teach that your self-respect should depend on an observer's measure of your worth. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged. A monthly report, impressive in its precision, is sent into students' homes to spread approval or to mark exactly -- down to a single percentage point -- how dissatisfied with their children parents should be. Although some people might be surprised how little time or reflection goes into making up these records, the cumulative weight of the objective- seeming documents establishes a profile of defect which compels a child to arrive at a certain decisions about himself and his future based on the casual judgment of strangers.
Self-evaluation -- the staple of every major philosophical system that ever appeared on the planet -- is never a factor in these things. The lesson of report cards, grades, and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents, but must rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth.
In lesson six I teach children that they are being watched. I keep each student under constant surveillance and so do my colleagues. There are no private spaces for children; there is no private time. Class change lasts 300 seconds to keep promiscuous fraternization at low levels. Students are encouraged to tattle on each other, even to tattle on their parents. Of course I encourage parents to file their own child's waywardness, too.
I assign "homework" so that this surveillance extends into the household, where students might otherwise use the time to learn something unauthorized, perhaps from a father or mother, or by apprenticing to some wiser person in the neighborhood.
The lesson of constant surveillance is that no one can be trusted, that privacy is not legitimate. Surveillance is an ancient urgency among certain influential thinkers; it was a central prescription set down by Calvin in the Institutes, by Plato in the Republic, by Hobbes, by Comte, by Francis Bacon. All these childless men discovered the same thing: Children must be closely watched if you want to keep a society under central control.
It is the great triumph of schooling that among even the best of my fellow teachers, and among even the best parents, there is only a small number who can imagine a different way to do things. Yet only a very few lifetimes ago things were different in the United States: originality and variety were common currency; our freedom from regimentation made us the miracle of the world; social class boundaries were relatively easy to cross; our citizenry was marvelously confident, inventive, and able to do many things independently, to think for themselves. We were something, all by ourselves, as individuals.
It only takes about 50 contact hours to transmit basic literacy and math skills well enough that kids can be self-teachers from then on. The cry for "basic skills" practice is a smokescreen behind which schools pre-empt the time of children for twelve years and teach them the six lessons I've just taught you.
We've had a society increasingly under central control in the United States since just before the Civil War: the lives we lead, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, and the green highway signs we drive by from coast to coast are the products of this central control. So, too, I think, are the epidemics of drugs, suicide, divorce, violence, cruelty, and the hardening of class into caste in the U.S., products of the dehumanization of our lives, the lessening of individual and family importance that central control imposes.
Without a fully active role in community life you cannot develop into a complete human being. Aristotle taught that. Surely he was right; look around you or look in the mirror: that is the demonstration.
"School" is an essential support system for a vision of social engineering that condemns most people to be subordinate stones in a pyramid that narrows to a control point as it ascends. "School" is an artifice which makes such a pyramidal social order seem inevitable (although such a premise is a fundamental betrayal of the American Revolution). In colonial days and through the period of the early Republic we had no schools to speak of. And yet the promise of democracy was beginning to be realized. We turned our backs on this promise by bringing to life the ancient dream of Egypt: compulsory training in subordination for everybody. Compulsory schooling was the secret Plato reluctantly transmitted in the Republic when he laid down the plans for total state control of human life.
The current debate about whether we should have a national curriculum is phony; we already have one, locked up in the six lessons I've told you about and a few more I've spared you. This curriculum produces moral and intellectual paralysis, and no curriculum of content will be sufficient to reverse its bad effects. What is under discussion is a great irrelevancy.
None of this is inevitable, you know. None of it is impregnable to change. We do have a choice in how we bring up young people; there is no right way. There is no "international competition" that compels our existence, difficult as it is to even think about in the face of a constant media barrage of myth to the contrary. In every important material respect our nation is self-sufficient. If we gained a non-material philosophy that found meaning where it is genuinely located -- in families, friends, the passage of seasons, in nature, in simple ceremonies and rituals, in curiosity, generosity, compassion, and service to others, in a decent independence and privacy -- then we would be truly self-sufficient.
How did these awful places, these "schools", come about? As we know them, they are a product of the two "Red Scares" of 1848 and 1919, when powerful interests feared a revolution among our industrial poor, and partly they are the result of the revulsion with which old-line families regarded the waves of Celtic, Slavic, and Latin immigration -- and the Catholic religion -- after 1845. And certainly a third contributing cause can be found in the revulsion with which these same families regarded the free movement of Africans through the society after the Civil War.
Look again at the six lessons of school. This is training for permanent underclasses, people who are to be deprived forever of finding the center of their own special genius. And it is training shaken loose from its original logic: to regulate the poor. Since the 1920s the growth of the well-articulated school bureaucracy, and the less visible growth of a horde of industries that profit from schooling exactly as it is, have enlarged schooling's original grasp to seize the sons and daughters of the middle class.
Is it any wonder Socrates was outraged at the accusation that he took money to teach? Even then, philosophers saw clearly the inevitable direction the professionalization of teaching would take, pre-empting the teaching function that belongs to all in a healthy community; belongs, indeed, most clearly to yourself, since nobody else cares as much about your destiny. Professional teaching tends to another serious error. It makes things that are inherently easy to learn, like reading, writing, and arithmetic, difficult -- by insisting they be taught by pedagogical procedures.
With lessons like the ones I teach day after day, is it any wonder we have the national crisis we face today? Young people indifferent to the adult world and to the future; indifferent to almost everything except the diversion of toys and violence? Rich or poor, schoolchildren cannot concentrate on anything for very long. They have a poor sense of time past and to come; they are mistrustful of intimacy (like the children of divorce they really are); they hate solitude, are cruel, materialistic, dependent, passive, violent, timid in the face of the unexpected, addicted to distraction.
All the peripheral tendencies of childhood are magnified to a grotesque extent by schooling, whose hidden curriculum prevents effective personality development. Indeed, without exploiting the fearfulness, selfishness, and inexperience of children our schools could not survive at all, nor could I as a certified schoolteacher.
"Critical thinking" is a term we hear frequently these days as a form of training which will herald a new day in mass schooling. It certainly will, if it ever happens. No common school that actually dared teach the use of dialectic, heuristic, and other tools of free minds could last a year without being torn to pieces.
Institutional schoolteachers are destructive to children's development. Nobody survives the Six-Lesson Curriculum unscathed, not even the instructors. The method is deeply and profoundly anti-educational. No tinkering will fix it. In one of the great ironies of human affairs, the massive rethinking that schools require would cost so much less than we are spending now that it is not likely to happen. First and foremost, the business I am in is a jobs project and a contract-letting agency. We cannot afford to save money, not even to help children.
At the pass we've come to historically, and after 26 years of teaching, I must conclude that one of the only alternatives on the horizon for most families is to teach their own children at home. Small, de- institutionalized schools are another. Some form of free-market system for public schooling is the likeliest place to look for answers. But the near impossibility of these things for the shattered families of the poor, and for too many on the fringes of the economic middle class, foretell that the disaster of Six-Lesson Schools is likely to continue.
After an adult lifetime spent in teaching school I believe the method of schooling is the only real content it has. Don't be fooled into thinking that good curricula or good equipment or good teachers are the critical determinants of your son and daughter's schooltime. All the pathologies we've considered come about in large measure because the lessons of school prevent children from keeping important appointments with themselves and their families, to learn lessons in self-motivation, perseverance, self-reliance, courage, dignity and love -- and, of course, lessons in service to others, which are among the key lessons of home life.
Thirty years ago these things could still be learned in the time left after school. But television has eaten most of that time, and a combination of television and the stresses peculiar to two-income or single-parent families have swallowed up most of what used to be family time. Our kids have no time left to grow up fully human, and only thin-soil wastelands to do it in.
A future is rushing down upon our culture which will insist that all of us learn the wisdom of non-material experience; this future will demand, as the price of survival, that we follow a pace of natural life economical in material cost. These lessons cannot be learned in schools as they are. School is like starting life with a 12-year jail sentence in which bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I should know.
Thursday, June 10, 2004
IT'S ONLY REAL IF IT HURTS IN THE WALLET
RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU'RE INSURED
Insurance Industry Wants Action on Climate Change
While the oil industry may be willfully blind to the dangers of fossil-fuel use and climate change, the insurance industry certainly is not. A new report from the Association of British Insurers warns that insurance costs are likely to climb in coming years as insurance companies are hit with increasing numbers of damage claims resulting from aberrant weather -- in essence, resulting from global warming. Claims for flood and storm damage in Britain doubled in the period 1999-2003 compared to the previous five years, said the report, and claims could triple in the next few decades if action isn't taken to manage climate change. The report also suggests that auto insurance prices could increase as bad weather leads to more accidents on the road, and that liability insurance could rise because directors of some companies could be held responsible for climate change.
straight to the source: BBC News, 08 Jun 2004
straight to the source: The Guardian, Rupert Jones, 08 Jun 2004Wednesday, June 09, 2004
LOOK MA - REVISIONIST HISTORY ON THE FLY!
WASHINGTON — The State Department is scrambling to revise its annual report on global terrorism to acknowledge that it understated the number of deadly attacks in 2003, amid charges that the document is inaccurate and was politically manipulated by the Bush administration.
When the most recent "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report was issued April 29, senior Bush administration officials immediately hailed it as objective proof that they were winning the war on terrorism. The report is considered the authoritative yardstick of the prevalence of terrorist activity around the world.
Indeed, you will find in these pages clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight" against global terrorism, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said during a celebratory rollout of the report.
But on Tuesday, State Department officials said they underreported the number of terrorist attacks in the tally for 2003, and added that they expected to release an updated version soon.
Several U.S. officials and terrorism experts familiar with that revision effort said the new report will show that the number of significant terrorist incidents increased last year, perhaps to its highest level in 20 years.
"It will change the numbers," said one State Department official who declined to comment further or be identified by name. "The incidents will go up, but I don't know by how many."
Among the original report's highlights: The annual number of terrorist attacks had dropped to its lowest level in 34 years, declining by 45% since 2001. Overall, fewer people were being killed, injured and kidnapped, and the U.S.-led global coalition had taken the fight to Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations with great success.
Minor terrorism events — typically those in which nobody dies — had almost disappeared, declining by more than 90% from 231 incidents in 2001 to 21 in 2003, the report said.
The annual reports were first ordered up by Congress two decades ago as the U.S. government's reference tool on terrorist activity, trends and groups.
Since then, administration officials and Congress have come to rely heavily on the "Patterns" report in formulating counter-terrorism policies and strategies.
In recent years, the report has been translated into five languages so that U.S. allies around the world can scrutinize the hundreds of pages of data, which are based on U.S. and allied intelligence information.
On Tuesday, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) applauded the State Department for deciding to reissue the report, a step he requested in a letter to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell three weeks ago. But Waxman said the Bush administration so far had refused to address his allegation that it manipulated the terrorism data to claim victory in the U.S.-declared war on terrorism.
"This manipulation may serve the Administration's political interests," Waxman wrote in his May 17 letter to Powell, "but it calls into serious doubt the integrity of the report."
Several State Department officials vehemently denied their report was swayed by politics. "That's not the way we do things here," said one senior official.
Another senior official characterized the errors as clerical, and blamed them mostly on the fact responsibility for the report recently shifted from the CIA to the administration's new Terrorist Threat Integration Center.
Waxman, the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, told Powell that the number of significant terrorist attacks since 2001 hasn't declined as the department claimed, but risen by more than 35%. And he cited an analysis by two independent experts who used figures provided by the State Department report in concluding that significant attacks actually had reached a 20-year high in 2003.
For example, the State Department report listed 190 terrorist attacks in 2003, including 169 "significant" ones. But Waxman said a review showed the report stopped counting terrorist incidents on Nov. 11, leaving out several major attacks, including bombings of two synagogues, a bank and the British Consulate in Turkey that killed 62 and injured more than 700.
Waxman said a State Department official blamed the Nov. 11 cutoff on a printing deadline.
Waxman said the steep overall decline in terrorism claimed by the State Department was based mostly on a 90% drop in "nonsignificant" attacks in two years, without providing any detail as to how or why such a decrease occurred.
Waxman asked Powell to provide by June 1 details on international terrorist attacks dating back to 1995, an explanation of procedures used in defining terrorist acts and information on whether political appointees played a role in writing or editing the report. He said he hadn't heard back.
Internationally, he added, "it feeds into the notion that the U.S. is just not a credible voice on important issues of terrorism."
A just-issued Congressional Research Service report has concluded that the statistical errors are just the latest in a series of problems that the "Patterns" report has faced in recent years.
The congressional study said that the State Department report — despite the perception of its objectivity — was unduly influenced by political and economic considerations.
Also, it said the department had failed to take into account the shift from state sponsorship of terrorism to Al Qaeda's use of a far-flung network of affiliates and cells. Though some might question the findings, the congressional report noted that the State Department appeared to be using outdated criteria to determine what constituted a terrorist incident.
For instance, the many deadly attacks on coalition forces in Iraq were not included in the "Patterns" report because they did not meet the State Department's long-standing criteria of targeting civilians or soldiers not on duty.
Potentially dozens of other terrorist strikes were left out because they were not "international" in scope, including attacks by local Al Qaeda affiliates against targets within their own countries.
Taken together, such problems warrant a wholesale reassessment of the report and its mission, preferably by an independent government agency such as the National Academy of Sciences, according to the congressional study's author, Raphael Perl.
"Arguably, the report has been on autopilot and has not kept up with the times," Perl said in a telephone interview.Tuesday, June 08, 2004
THE MASTERS OF ILLUSION
The Houdini Protocol to Elect George W. Bush
George Bush has not been packaged; he has – in fact - been invented
Contributing editor - tvnewslies.com
THE REALITY
I’m really trying to understand it. How in the world can almost half the voting public still believe that George W. Bush belongs in the White House? How in the world can any American, other than the most closed minded member of the extreme right, believe that the man who has taken us into the jaws of hell deserves another term of office? How in the world, indeed…..
Somewhere in the American psyche there has to be receptor cell that absorbs and processes effective propaganda. I’m reminded of the toothpaste that sells across the nation because it promises that whiter teeth can lead to everlasting love. It’s not that Americans are unintelligent or naïve, it’s just that we’re so extraordinarily hopeful. I’m truly convinced that the people of this country want to believe that good things can happen, because that makes life far more livable. And that, in a strange way, may explain how in the world tens of millions of people have been taken in by Karl Rove.
Harry Houdini was the best. He could make people believe what they knew was not so, and swear to it. He was the grand master of illusion that defied one’s senses and betrayed one’s reason. Luckily, Houdini was a performer and an entertainer. Had he been a political strategist, he might have had a serious competitor in Karl Rove.
THE ILLUSION
The presidency is often packaged for public consumption. Standard operating procedure puts the candidate’s best foot forward and disguises or hides his flaws. But George Bush has not been packaged; he has – in fact - been invented. It is Rove’s ability to create a man who does not exist that sets him apart as the master magician. It is his uncanny skill at selling voters an imaginary product that has to be exposed. It is vital that the American voter be startled back into reality and realizes what in the world has happened.
1.
GEORGE BUSH THE LEADER was born on September 11th, 2001. With the help of a staff of really good speech writers, the bumbling, poorly spoken American president was transformed almost overnight. What Americans saw and heard was a very ordinary man reading extraordinary words written for him in response to a tragic attack on the nation. What they believed they saw was a strong leader who knew what was going on, and who knew what he was doing. He did not. No matter, - the image was planted.
2.
GEORGE BUSH THE STRONG MAN was sculpted bit by bit as the Karl Rove terror trap was set to ensnare the nation. Cleverly phrased speeches delivered by the President and his cadre of sycophants convinced the public that an attack in Afghanistan would eliminate the Al Qaeda threat against the US and the world. It did not. No matter, - the image was taking root.
3.
GEORGE BUSH THE STATESMAN emerged when the man who had referred to Africa as a country was placed before the Congress and the United Nations to promote the neocon dream of global domination. It became more and more difficult for many Americans to detect the deception. No matter that most of the international world saw through the straw man, - the image was taking on a life of its own.
4.
GEORGE BUSH THE SELF-RELIANT was a distortion of George Bush the defiant. To hell with the UN, with world opinion, and with diplomacy, - George Bush would go it alone. He would assemble a meaningless coalition of minor nations in need of postwar contracts. He would create the illusion that other nations were contributing significant numbers of troops and a fair amount of financial support to his war. No matter that the people marched throughout the world in opposition to his policy, and that he had no clue as to where he was going – the image was flexing muscles.
5.
GEORGE BUSH THE LIBERATOR lied to the people. He then lied and lied and lied some more. But with Houdini skill, the illusion became the reality, and the lies became the truth, invasion became liberation, and a horrific war became a noble endeavor. The rationale for war was changed over and over, as the lies were revealed and denied. The war to save America from imminent annihilation by Saddam Hussein became a war to liberate the Iraqi people. No matter that thousands died, and that there was no reason to kill and be killed – the image actually began to believe in itself.
6.
GEORGE BUSH THE WARRIOR believing he was GI Joe, was dressed in a flak suit and flown onto an aircraft carrier one lovely day in May. The message was loud and clear, thanks to the Karl Rove banner department: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! George Bush had been molded from the AWOL National Guardsmen he was into a stalwart war president. No matter that the bloodshed and chaos were just beginning and that no exit plan had been made, - the image would look so very good in campaign ads to come.
7.
GEORGE BUSH THE BELIEVER was given God as his co-pilot. He was presented to the deeply pious as the messenger of his God, and to the less pious as the savior of the downtrodden. George Bush was molded into a president who cared about education without funding it, and who cared about seniors whom he scammed with a bogus drug bill. Never mind that George Bush was champion of the wealthy and protector of corporations, - the image would embrace the working class and pretend to care.
8.
GEORGE BUSH THE STRAIGHT-SHOOTER was the best trick of all. Karl Rove, hand in hand with the media, did wonders with the lies, the illegalities and the secrets of the real George Bush and company. The man who will not be held accountable for any of his misdeeds and mistakes and misrepresentations has been miraculously transformed into an honest, above board and trustworthy leader. No matter that so many questions remain about the secret energy meetings, about 9/11, about the lies that led to war, about the Plame affair, about getting our troops home, and about the prisoner abuse scandal, - the image has become frighteningly solidified and has taken on flesh and bone.
THE FINALE
Of late, there have been a few telltale cracks in the George Bush image. The damage is not serious enough to reveal the Houdini Protocol of Karl Rove, nor does it seriously expose the illusion that still passes for the President of the United States of America. Still, one has to believe that the fabric of fantasy may have worn a bit thin and might not last into November. Could be, could not.
The final curtain will come down on Election Day, 2004. There is enough time for the master to repair what has frayed and complete the illusory effects so that the people will believe what they see. But there also time for the people to look beyond the smoke and mirrors to see for themselves what is real and what is not. The glorified image of George Bush has been craftily molded, but the best of illusions is in the end, still trickery
Recently, Condoleezza Rice suggested that George W. Bush will be remembered in history in the same light as Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Now, that’s pushing it for sure, - but those who have invented this president are priming American voters to actually believe that. Sadly there are those who will.
Hopefully there are far many more who will refuse be stage-managed and manipulated. Hopefully, there are far many more who will wonder how in the world they, or anyone else, ever believed the image in the first place.Sunday, June 06, 2004
BUSH'S BAGGAGE
Washington is agog over George Tenet’s resignation, the Plame CIA case and fresh criticism of Dick Cheney’s Halliburton contacts. Are the wheels coming off the administration?
By Eleanor Clift, Newsweek
June 4 - The timing is odd. About to embark on a foreign trip, on his way to his helicopter, President George W. Bush stops to announce his CIA director has resigned. Bush’s words are halting and his body language hesitant, as though the news has taken him off stride.
If George Tenet’s departure was carefully choreographed by the White House, it looks like somebody may have forgotten to tell Bush. The purpose of forcing the resignation of a high-level official is to make the boss look good, and the president looked shell-shocked. He said he was sorry the intelligence chief was leaving, and he praised Tenet’s tenure in government.
Bush’s remarks had the feel of a negotiated settlement, as in "I won’t rat on you if you don’t rat on me."
When the CIA director bails out this close to the election and in the midst of tense times at home and abroad, voters may wonder if the wheels are coming off the Bush administration. The way Tenet’s resignation was tendered leads to the conclusion this was not coordinated and that Tenet decided on his own it was a good time to get out. His resume is circulating on Wall Street with at least two major corporations, and he’d like to nail something down before his reputation gets further damaged.
Bush did not try to persuade Tenet to remain at his post. The 9/11 commission report is due in July, and the harshest criticism, according to Hill sources, is directed at the CIA under Tenet. A Senate committee report reached the same conclusion. If Tenet hadn’t chosen to take an early exit, his head would be on the chopping block once these reports become public. Tenet is a skilled bureaucrat, but he became the butt of jokes when Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward revealed in his book “Plan of Attack” that Tenet assured Bush it was “a slam dunk” that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
Bush is falling further behind among women—and it could cost him come election time
The next big shoe to drop in Washington is the independent counsel’s investigation into who leaked the identity of a CIA operative to conservative columnist Robert Novak, ending her covert career and compromising national security. The White House confirmed this week that Bush has consulted a private lawyer with the expectation that he will be called to offer testimony in the Valerie Plame case. To refresh, Plame is the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who at the request of the CIA traveled to Africa in 2002 to research the claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger. He reported back to the administration that the claim was bogus, and when it still showed up in Bush’s State of the Union speech the following year, Wilson went public with what he knew.
The administration retaliated by discrediting Wilson and suggesting that the trip to Niger was a boondoggle made possible by his wife, who worked at the CIA. Plame had been an undercover CIA operative posing as an energy consultant. In his recently published book, “The Politics of Truth,” Wilson says Vice President Dick Cheney’s office ordered a “work-up” on him, and he repeats speculation in Washington that the leak may have emanated from somebody in Cheney’s office. “The real buzz is the veep’s office getting lawyered up,” says a top aide to a prominent Senate Republican.
Cheney has gone underground again, hoping to bury all his baggage with him. But an internal Pentagon e-mail saying Halliburton contracts were “coordinated” with the vice president’s office provided fresh material for Cheney’s critics on Capitol Hill. Asked about the e-mail, Chellie Pingree, who heads the reform group, Common Cause, made a face and groaned in disgust. “Much of the world thinks we went to war over oil, and to boost the profits of the big corporations. This just gives validation to the terrorists.” Pingree points out that Cheney, when he was secretary of Defense in the first Bush administration, commissioned a $9 million study from Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, on privatizing the military. When he left government, he went to work for Halliburton and built it into a huge conglomerate that takes advantage of the privatization of services he put in place.
A fifth of the personnel on the ground in Iraq are private contractors without the accountability of the U.S. military. “Cheney is the godfather of this policy,” says Pingree, adding that the vice president collects more than $100,000 a year from Halliburton in stock options while serving in the White House. “He says it’s not that much. To the average American who has a son over there, that’s more money than most people earn, and it’s a side benefit for him.” Pingree predicted last summer that Halliburton would be Cheney’s downfall.
It would be no less of a shocker if, in August on the eve of the GOP convention, Bush stopped on his way to the helicopter and announced his vice president is stepping down.