NOTE to Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Delta): In the post-SBVT campaign, there are four big ideas that the US Electorate must hear from the Kerry-Edwards campaign: 1) BUSH LOST the 2000 election; 2) BUSH BLEW the US Federal budget surplus on two huge ill-timed. reckless tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the wealthiest Americans and plunged the nation into hundreds of billions of dollars of budget deficit, and made us weak; 3) BUSH KNEW enough about the coming Al Qaeda attacks to make a difference but he did nothing; 4) BUSH LIED about the existence of WMDs in Iraq and mis-led us into a war we did not have to fight, and now at least 979 (probably over 1,000 already) US soldiers are dead, the US isolated and mired in a Mega-Mogadishu and the Western Alliance is fractured...Bob Graham's book, one we have been waiting for, will be released on the day after Labor Day. It provides a beautiful opening...The Bush abomination's pre-9/11 negligence and post-9/11 incompetence must be raised in this campaign. The LNS suggests that you hold a press conference with Sen. Graham to call, again, for the release of the 27 pages of the congressional 9/11 inquiry that the Bush abomination blocked. Even the Saudis said the 27 pages should be released. The LNS also suggests that Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) and Gen. Wesley Clark (D-NATO) start pulling out the 9/11 Commission's Final Report on the stump, and turning their dogged-eared, marked-up copies to page after page that document the blunders and cover-ups of the Bush abomination's national insecurity team. Of course, Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fraudida)just has to go on his book tour to raise the spectre of their blunders, complicity and cover up wherever he goes. SECURITY is the central issue of this national referendum on the increasingly unhinged and incredibly shrinking _resident: National Security, Economic Security and Environmental Security...On September 2, the Boston Globe gave us some insight into the Bush cabal's approach:
White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card said yesterday
that President Bush views America as a ''10-year-old
child" in need of the sort of protection provided by a
parent.
Card's remark, criticized later by Democrat John F.
Kerry's campaign as ''condescending," came in a speech
to Republican delegates from Maine and Massachusetts
that was threaded with references to Bush's role as
protector of the country. Republicans have sounded
that theme repeatedly at the GOP convention as they
discuss the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the
war in Iraq.
''It struck me as I was speaking to people in Bangor,
Maine, that this president sees America as we think
about a 10-year-old child," Card said. ''I know as a
parent I would sacrifice all for my children."
The comment underscored an argument put forth some by
political pundits, such as MSNBC talk-show host Chris
Matthews, that the Republican Party has cast itself as
the ''daddy party."
A Kerry spokesman, seizing on Card's characterization
of Bush as a parental figure for the nation, contended
that the president had failed.
''Any parent that ran a household the way George W.
Bush runs the country would find themselves in
bankruptcy court on the way to family court," said
Phil Singer, a Kerry spokesman. ''Just over the last
year, 1.3 million people have fallen into poverty,
including 700,000 children, and 1.4 million people
have lost their health insurance while family incomes
have declined three years in a row. America can do
better."
Well, turning his weird and disturbing analogy against
him on 9/11, Iraq and the botched, bungled "war on
terror," you can show that the increasingly unhinged
and incredibly shrinking _resident is not only "unfit
for command," he is an "unfit parent."
Finish him, John. The American people know
these four painful truths already...They are waiting to hear it from you...If they do not from you, they could doubt themselves...and succumb to the madmen and to the "US regimestream news media."
Frank Davies, Miami Herald: Two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship, Sen. Bob Graham wrote in a book to be released Tuesday.
The discovery of the financial backing of the two
hijackers ''would draw a direct line between the
terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia, and
trigger an attempted coverup by the Bush
administration,'' the Florida Democrat wrote...
Graham also revealed that Gen. Tommy Franks told him
on Feb. 19, 2002, just four months after the invasion
of Afghanistan, that many important resources --
including the Predator drone aircraft crucial to the
search for Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda leaders --
were being shifted to prepare for a war against Iraq.
Graham recalled this conversation at MacDill Air Force
Base in Tampa with Franks, then head of Central
Command, who was ``looking troubled'':
``Senator, we are not engaged in a war in
Afghanistan.''
''Excuse me?'' I asked.
''Military and intelligence personnel are being
redeployed to prepare for an action in Iraq,'' he
continued...
He reserves his harshest criticism for Bush.
Graham found the president had ''an unforgivable level
of intellectual -- and even common sense --
indifference'' toward analyzing the comparative
threats posed by Iraq and al Qaeda and other terrorist
groups.
When the weapons were not found, one year after the
invasion of Iraq, Bush attended a black-tie dinner in
Washington, Graham recalled. Bush gave a humorous
speech with slides, showing him looking under White
House furniture and joking, ``Nope, no WMDs there.''
Graham wrote: ``It was one of the most offensive
things I have witnessed. Having recently attended the
funeral of an American soldier killed in Iraq, who
left behind a young wife and two preschool-age
children, I found nothing funny about a deceitful
justification for war.''
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004 (Defeat Bush again!)
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/9584265.htm
Posted on Sun, Sep. 05, 2004
Graham book: Inquiry into 9/11, Saudi ties blocked
By FRANK DAVIES
fdavies@herald.com
WASHINGTON - Two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had
a support network in the United States that included
agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush
administration and FBI blocked a congressional
investigation into that relationship, Sen. Bob Graham
wrote in a book to be released Tuesday.
The discovery of the financial backing of the two
hijackers ''would draw a direct line between the
terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia, and
trigger an attempted coverup by the Bush
administration,'' the Florida Democrat wrote.
And in Graham's book, Intelligence Matters, obtained
by The Herald Saturday, he makes clear that some
details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia
were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's
final report that were blocked from release by the
administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both
parties on the House and Senate intelligence
committees.
Graham also revealed that Gen. Tommy Franks told him
on Feb. 19, 2002, just four months after the invasion
of Afghanistan, that many important resources --
including the Predator drone aircraft crucial to the
search for Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda leaders --
were being shifted to prepare for a war against Iraq.
Graham recalled this conversation at MacDill Air Force
Base in Tampa with Franks, then head of Central
Command, who was ``looking troubled'':
``Senator, we are not engaged in a war in
Afghanistan.''
''Excuse me?'' I asked.
''Military and intelligence personnel are being
redeployed to prepare for an action in Iraq,'' he
continued.
Graham concluded: 'Gen. Franks' mission -- which, as a
good soldier, he was loyally carrying out -- was being
downgraded from a war to a manhunt.''
Graham, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee from June 2001 through the buildup to the
Iraq war, voted against the war resolution in October
2002 because he saw Iraq as a diversion that would
hinder the fight against al Qaeda terrorism.
He oversaw the Sept. 11 investigation on Capitol Hill
with Rep. Porter Goss, nominated last month to be the
next CIA director. According to Graham, the FBI and
the White House blocked efforts to investigate the
extent of official Saudi connections to two hijackers.
Graham wrote that the staff of the congressional
inquiry concluded that two Saudis in the San Diego
area, Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassan, who gave
significant financial support to two hijackers, were
working for the Saudi government.
Al-Bayoumi received a monthly allowance from a
contractor for Saudi Civil Aviation that jumped from
$465 to $3,700 in March 2000, after he helped Nawaf
al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhdar -- two of the Sept. 11
hijackers -- find apartments and make contacts in San
Diego, just before they began pilot training.
When the staff tried to conduct interviews in that
investigation, and with an FBI informant, Abdussattar
Shaikh, who also helped the eventual hijackers, they
were blocked by the FBI and the administration, Graham
wrote.
The administration and CIA also insisted that the
details about the Saudi support network that benefited
two hijackers be left out of the final congressional
report, Graham complained.
Bush had concluded that ''a nation-state that had
aided the terrorists should not be held publicly to
account,'' Graham wrote. ``It was as if the
president's loyalty lay more with Saudi Arabia than
with America's safety.''
Saudi officials have vociferously denied any ties to
the hijackers or al Qaeda plots to attack the United
States.
Graham ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic
presidential nomination and then decided not to seek
reelection to the Senate this year. He has said he
hopes his book will illuminate FBI and CIA failures in
the war on terrorism and he also offers
recommendations on ways to reform the intelligence
community.
On Iraq, Graham said the administration and CIA
consistently overplayed its estimates of Saddam
Hussein's threat in its public statements and
declassified reports, while its secret reports
contained warnings that the intelligence on weapons of
mass destruction was not conclusive.
In October 2002, Tenet told Graham that ''there were
550 sites where weapons of mass destruction were
either produced or stored'' in Iraq.
''It was, in short, a vivid and terrifying case for
war. The problem was it did not accurately represent
the classified estimate we had received just days
earlier,'' Graham wrote. ``It was two different
messages, directed at two different audiences. I was
outraged.''
In his book, Graham is especially critical of the FBI
for its inability to track al Qaeda operatives in the
United States and blasts the CIA for ``politicizing
intelligence.''
He reserves his harshest criticism for Bush.
Graham found the president had ''an unforgivable level
of intellectual -- and even common sense --
indifference'' toward analyzing the comparative
threats posed by Iraq and al Qaeda and other terrorist
groups.
When the weapons were not found, one year after the
invasion of Iraq, Bush attended a black-tie dinner in
Washington, Graham recalled. Bush gave a humorous
speech with slides, showing him looking under White
House furniture and joking, ``Nope, no WMDs there.''
Graham wrote: ``It was one of the most offensive
things I have witnessed. Having recently attended the
funeral of an American soldier killed in Iraq, who
left behind a young wife and two preschool-age
children, I found nothing funny about a deceitful
justification for war.''