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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (417322)	6/21/2003 1:45:46 PM
From: Skywatcher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Tell that to General CLARK...... He ain't buying the lies from the great Fake Warrior Bush either! Media Silent on Clark's 9/11 Comments Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting Friday 20 June 2003 Gen. says White House pushed Saddam link without evidence Sunday morning talk shows like ABC's This Week or Fox News Sunday often make news for days afterward. Since prominent government officials dominate the guest lists of the programs, it is not unusual for the Monday editions of major newspapers to report on interviews done by the Sunday chat shows. But the June 15 edition of NBC's Meet the Press was unusual for the buzz that it didn't generate. Former General Wesley Clark told anchor Tim Russert that Bush administration officials had engaged in a campaign to implicate Saddam Hussein in the September 11 attacks-- starting that very day. Clark said that he'd been called on September 11 and urged to link Baghdad to the terror attacks, but declined to do so because of a lack of evidence. Here is a transcript of the exchange: CLARK: "There was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001, starting immediately after 9/11, to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein." RUSSERT: "By who? Who did that?" CLARK: "Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.' I said, 'But--I'm willing to say it, but what's your evidence?' And I never got any evidence." Clark's assertion corroborates a little-noted CBS Evening News story that aired on September 4, 2002. As correspondent David Martin reported: "Barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, the secretary of defense was telling his aides to start thinking about striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks." According to CBS, a Pentagon aide's notes from that day quote Rumsfeld asking for the "best info fast" to "judge whether good enough to hit SH at the same time, not only UBL." (The initials SH and UBL stand for Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.) The notes then quote Rumsfeld as demanding, ominously, that the administration's response "go massive...sweep it all up, things related and not." Despite its implications, Martin's report was greeted largely with silence when it aired. Now, nine months later, media are covering damaging revelations about the Bush administration's intelligence on Iraq, yet still seem strangely reluctant to pursue stories suggesting that the flawed intelligence-- and therefore the war-- may have been a result of deliberate deception, rather than incompetence. The public deserves a fuller accounting of this story. CC

To: Neocon who wrote (417322)	6/21/2003 1:49:08 PM
From: Skywatcher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

Bush is a lying meglomaniac who, just like JACK, sees secrecy as the answer to everything, when in fact, SECRECY IS THE DESTRUCTION OF DEMOCRACY and has never worked for the benefit of anyone but those in power....just ask DICK THE CHENEY since his little ex group of biz people just got a secret $800 MILLION contract from OUR PUBLIC government without ANY BIDDING CC

To: Neocon who wrote (417322)	6/21/2003 1:49:55 PM
From: Skywatcher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Just the first in a series of leaders who are gonna fall....Blair Next....then W Finns in Shock as "Iraqgate" Topples Jaeaetteenmaeki Agence France-Presses Friday 20 June 2003 Finland was in a political vacuum after a Nordic version of Iraqgate brought down Anneli Jaeaetteenmaeki, the country's first-ever woman prime minister, after only 63 days in power. Fresh elections were seen as unlikely Thursday, and Jaeaetteenmaeki was expected to head an interim government before handing over to her successor, tipped to be current Defense Minister Matti Vanhanen, a veteran of her own Center Party. Jaeaetteenmaeki resigned suddenly late Wednesday amid claims she lied to parliament about her use of leaked secret government documents, becoming the first ever prime minister to resign amid a scandal. "If someone comes before parliament and lies straight to our faces, then we cannot trust a prime minister like this," said Greens leader Osmo Soininvaara. Transparency and openness are highly regarded in Finland, and the country consistently tops the list of least corrupt nations. "When the trust is gone, it's gone, and I've lost it," Jaeaettenmaeki acknowledged dryly after it was clear that her time as prime minister was up. The crisis erupted after a presidential aide, Martti Manninen, said the prime minister had misled parliament when she vowed she had not requested summaries of classified documents he sent to her ahead of the March elections. Many attributed her victory in those polls to the revelations in the documents. Just days earlier, Jaeaetteenmaeki cited confidential foreign ministry documents to support her claim that then-prime minister Paavo Lipponen was supporting the United States over Iraq, in clear defiance of Finland's official stand of neutrality. President Tarja Halonen accepted Jaeaetteenmaeki's resignation, but asked her and her team to stay on until a new administration is formed. On Thursday, the president's office also said that Manninen had been fired from his job. Jaeaetteenmaeki's centre-left government, inaugurated on April 17 and Finland's first to be led by a woman, lasted only 63 days. "The best solution would be to continue on the current basis and change only the prime minister," Markku Rajala, Centre Party spokesman, told AFP. "I think that our vice chairman, Matti Vanhanen, would be the best to take over," he said. Jaeaetteenmaeki had been due to attend a European Union summit in Greece on Thursday. Finland will now be represented by Finance Minister Antti Kalliomaeki and the president, officials said. The Finnish parliament was expected to debate next Tuesday whether to replace the entire government or only Jaeaetteenmaeki, and a decision was anticipated a couple of days after that, officials said. The Centre Party's main coalition partner, the Social Democrats, said they would be happy to continue in government with the current three-party coalition, which also consists of the Swedish People's Party. "The basis of the government is a valid one, and we have no problems with continuing on this basis," Reijo Paananen, spokesman for the Social Democratic Party, told AFP. According to legal experts, Jaeaetteenmaeki could be prosecuted and face a maximum penalty of two years in jail if it was proven that she did indeed solicit the secret material. On Wednesday, Jaeaetteenmaeki, who was questioned by police on the matter last week, told parliament she had only received excerpts of the documents from Manninen without requesting it. "I never asked for these and they came to me as a surprise," she said. Manninen immediately disputed this view, telling media that Jaeaetteenmaeki had asked him for the information and had even given him her secret fax number, and that telephone records would prove his version of the story. On Thursday many questioned her role as Center Party chairman, with some suggesting she should step down. "She can draw her own conclusions. We trust she knows what she should do, just like she proved she did as prime minister," said party official Jarmo Korhonen. CC

To: Neocon who wrote (417322)	6/21/2003 1:51:22 PM
From: Skywatcher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

More secrecy to HIDE the real truth about this supposed great rescue!....wonder why Lynch isn't being allowed to TALK.....aha....MORE SECRECY.... Saving Private Jessica By Nicholas D. Kristof The New York Times Friday 20 June 2003 ASIRIYA, Iraq I've been roaming Iraq, turning over rocks in my unstinting effort to help the Bush administration find those weapons of mass destruction. No luck yet. But I did find something related, here in the city where it seems (contrary to early Pentagon leaks) that Pfc. Jessica Lynch did not mow down Iraqis until her ammo ran out, was not shot and apparently was not plucked from behind enemy lines by U.S. commandos braving a firefight. It looks as if the first accounts of the rescue were embellished, like the imminent threat from W.M.D., and like wartime pronouncements about an uprising in Basra and imminent defections of generals. There's a pattern: we were misled. None of this is to put down Private Lynch, whom her Iraqi doctors described as courageous and funny in the face of unrelenting pain; they said that she told Abdul Hadi, a hospital worker who had befriended her, not to take risks for her because he was needed by his 17 children. Ms. Lynch is still a hero in my book, and it was unnecessary for officials to try to turn her into a Hollywood caricature. As a citizen, I deeply resent my government trying to spin me like a Ping-Pong ball. Staff members of Nasiriya's main hospital told me, as they have told other reporters, how surprised they were when military officers brought an American woman by ambulance. Private Lynch was unconscious, with broken legs, a head wound and other injuries, apparently sustained in a vehicle accident during a firefight. "She was nearly dead," recalled Saad Abdulrazak, the deputy hospital director, who received her. The Iraqi doctors were enchanted by this blonde warrior, who as she recovered spent her time alternately crying and joking. I don't know how much to credit the Iraqis' claims that they gave her the best room in the hospital, that they went to the market to buy orange juice for her with their own money, that they brought clothes so that she would have something to wear. But they didn't minimize Iraqi brutality. Indeed, they told of an execution of a handcuffed American male. (I've put a fuller account of this execution and of Ms. Lynch's saga at nytimes.com/kristofresponds.) The hospital staff also said that on the night of March 27, military officials prepared to kill Ms. Lynch by putting her in an ambulance and blowing it up with its occupants — blaming the atrocity on the Americans. The ambulance drivers balked at that idea. Eventually, the plan was changed so that a military officer would shoot Ms. Lynch and burn the ambulance. So Sabah Khazal, an ambulance driver, loaded her in the vehicle and drove off with a military officer assigned to execute her. "I asked him not to shoot Jessica," Mr. Khazal said, "and he was afraid of God and didn't kill her." Instead, the executioner ran away and deserted the army, and Mr. Khazal said that he then thought about delivering Ms. Lynch to an American checkpoint. But there were firefights on the streets, so he returned to the hospital. (Ms. Lynch apparently never knew how close she had come to execution.) By the morning of March 31, all of the Iraqi military at the hospital had fled. The hospital staff members said that they then told Ms. Lynch they would take her to the Americans the next day. That same night, the American special forces arrived. "I met the Americans at the hospital entrance," said Dr. Hussein Salih, adding that Mr. Abdulrazak then led the Americans to Private Lynch. The staff members all said that there was no resistance, and that they welcomed the Americans. Is this account the truth? I don't know, but every time I voiced skepticism, the doctors and staff all insisted: "Go ask Jessica! She'll tell you." The U.S. military has refused to make Private Lynch available, although that may be out of respect for her privacy; in any case, she is said to have no memory of her capture. My guess is that "Saving Private Lynch" was a complex tale vastly oversimplified by officials, partly because of genuine ambiguities and partly because they wanted a good story to build political support for the war — a repetition of the exaggerations over W.M.D. We weren't quite lied to, but facts were subordinated to politics, and truth was treated as an endlessly stretchable fabric. The Iraqis misused our prisoners for their propaganda purposes, and it hurts to find out that some American officials were misusing Private Lynch the same way. CC