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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (1395)	2/10/2004 12:20:57 PM
From: James Calladine	Respond to of 173976

Trust fades as war cry rings too hollow February 10, 2004 BY MARY MITCHELL SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST suntimes.com President Bush's appearance on "Meet the Press" on Sunday was the last straw. For months, I've been hoping that the cache of weapons would actually turn up. For months, I've suffered cruel jokes about me trusting a Bush. And for months, I've watched the rationale for the war on Iraq shift from one that I could digest to one that makes me want to throw up. Now I feel betrayed. Not because I am a Republican. I am not. Not even because I couldn't join those who danced around their TV sets Sunday shouting: "I told you so." I feel betrayed because I am an American who wants to believe that America is not the big-footed bully that so many people outside of the United States claim it is. I still believe that when confronted with right and wrong, moral leaders choose to do the right thing. The capture of Saddam Hussein gave me a sliver of hope. Surely, if we could find one man hiding in a hole, we could find a stockpile of biological and chemical weapons. But that hope faded on Sunday. While President Bush reiterated that he "expected there to be stockpiles of weapons," he also tweaked his language about the threat, and ended up looking more like a man covering his behind than the leader of a superpower. "If I might remind you, that in my language I called it 'a grave and gathering threat,'" Bush told Tim Russert. "There was no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a danger to America. No doubt." War cry unmasked It is that kind of wishy-washy talk that belies the reality of Bush's war cry. The Bush administration consistently argued that America had to go to war because Iraq posed a threat on two fronts: The Iraqi government was supporting al-Qaida terrorists, and Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in defiance of the United Nations' order banning it from manufacturing such weapons. When you strip away all the other rhetoric -- including Bush's passionate words after 9/11 when he vowed to launch a war on terrorism; put aside the Iraqi dictator's abuse of his own people, and the ongoing battles in the Middle East; it is fair to boil down the war we are engaged in to the weapons argument. It was the fear that Iraqi terrorists were waiting to use these weapons on Americans that netted Bush support for this war. That is why so many mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, buried their anti-war sentiments, said their prayers and sacrificed their sons and daughters to a just war. I have no doubt that the Bush administration's fear-mongering made many of us reluctant warriors. Now we are hearing a different story from the Bush camp. Saddam Hussein was a danger -- not because he actually had weapons of mass destruction -- but because he had the capacity to have a weapon. "We thought he had weapons. The international community thought he had weapons. But he had the capacity to make a weapon, and then let that weapon fall into the hands of a shadowy terrorist network," Bush said on Sunday. When raids go bad I won't pretend to know anything about the CIA other than what we have all read or heard in the news. But without the weapons, how can the president justify killing the sons of a sovereign leader and chasing that leader into a hole based on expectations? I listened to Bush on Sunday and thought about Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, the Black Panther leaders who were gunned down in their West Side apartments during a police raid in 1969. At the time, the armed Black Panther Party was considered by police authorities as posing the most dangerous threat to Americans. In fact, then-FBI director J. Edgar Hoover called the group "the most dangerous and violence-prone of all extremist groups." Police officers had gone to the apartment looking for weapons, under the direction of then-Cook County State's Attorney Edward V. Hanrahan. The police fired nearly 100 shots into the apartment, compared to a single shot fired by Clark. But the overwhelming police firepower wasn't initially admitted. Instead, Hanrahan insisted police officers were engaged in a violent confrontation with the Panthers. He went so far as to have the raid re-enacted for a WBBM-Channel 2 newscast. A Chicago Sun-Times reporter showed that the bullet holes allegedly made by the Black Panthers were actually heads of nails, which further fueled the controversy. An FBI investigation later proved that it was the police -- not the Black Panthers -- who did almost all of the shooting, and Hanrahan and several of the police officers involved in the raid were indicted for obstructing justice. Although the men were acquitted, the deadly raid gave rise to an enduring distrust of police by many of the city's citizens. That's what I'm feeling right now -- distrust and real fear. Because a war that is based on wrong is a war that can't be won.

To: American Spirit who wrote (1395)	2/10/2004 12:26:33 PM
From: James Calladine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 173976

9/11 Panel Threatens to Issue Subpoena for Bush's Briefings By PHILIP SHENON WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — Members of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks warned the White House on Monday that it could face a politically damaging subpoena this week if it refused to turn over information from the highly classified Oval Office intelligence reports given to President Bush before 9/11. The panel's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a Republican and the former governor of New Jersey, said through a spokesman that he was hopeful an agreement would be worked out before the commission's next meeting, on Tuesday. Commission officials said that negotiations continued throughout the day on Monday and into the evening with the office of Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel. But other members of the commission said that without an immediate resolution, they would call for a vote on Tuesday on issuing a subpoena to the White House for access to information in the documents. The papers are known as the President's Daily Brief, the intelligence summary prepared each morning for Mr. Bush by the Central Intelligence Agency. Responding to earlier threats of a subpoena, the White House agreed last year to allow three members of the 10-member commission and the panel's Republican staff director to review portions of the daily briefings from before the Sept. 11 attacks that referred to intelligence warnings about Al Qaeda and its plans for terrorist attacks. The commission has described the briefings as vital since they would show whether the White House had warnings of a catastrophic terrorist attack. The White House has acknowledged that one briefing Mr. Bush saw in August 2001 referred to the possibility of a Qaeda strike with commercial airplanes. In recent weeks, however, the White House has refused to give permission for the four members of the delegation to share their handwritten and computerized notes — which have been retained by the White House under the agreement — with the full commission. That has outraged Democrats and Republicans on the panel and prompted the renewed threat of a subpoena. "I'm determined to resolve this with a subpoena vote," said one of the Democrats, Timothy J. Roemer, a former congressman from Indiana. "We need to get access to the notes. There needs to be full information to all 10 commissioners. So far, the White House has vetoed that." Another Democrat on the panel, Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor, said he would be prepared to support the subpoena. "This thing has dragged on for months," Mr. Ben-Veniste said Monday, adding that he was not convinced by repeated statements from the White House that it intended to cooperate fully with the commission. "Saying that they have cooperated just doesn't get them over the finish line," he said. The delegation that has reviewed the briefing reports is made up of Mr. Kean; Lee H. Hamilton, another former Democratic congressman from Indiana and the commission's vice chairman; Jamie S. Gorelick, deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration; and Philip D. Zelikow, the executive director. The panel, known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, was created by Congress over the initial objections of Mr. Bush. It has made use of its subpoena authority three times: against the Defense Department, the Federal Aviation Administration and the City of New York. A subpoena to the White House could be politically damaging to Mr. Bush, because it would allow his Democratic opponents to suggest he was stonewalling the panel, and because it would raise the prospect of an extended election-year court fight between the commission and the White House. A spokesman for the commission, Al Felzenberg, said that Mr. Kean was involved Monday in the negotiations and that there had been "some positive action." "It's fair to say that the governor is hopeful that things are going to move in a good direction," Mr. Felzenberg added, "that we will have access to everything we need." The subpoena threat comes a week after the White House reversed itself and agreed to support the commission's request to Congress for an additional two months to complete its work, extending the deadline for a final report until July. That is subject to approval by Congress, and spokesmen for the two crucial Senate authors of the bill creating the commission — John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut — said on Monday they were negotiating with the commission and victims' families over how much extra time the commission should get. nytimes.com