There are only 27 days to go until the national referendum on the CHARACTER, CREDIBILITY and COMPTENCE of the _resident, the VICE _resident abd the US regimestream news media..Last night, in their *coverage* (pre- and post-) of the debate between Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) and the VICE _resident, the craven propapunditgandists and besotted anchormen of the USregimestream DESPERATELY tried to skew the debate's utcome to conceal the DEVASTATING impact of the Bush abomination's double-barrel blunders in National Security and Economic Security, BUT it did not take...There is an Electoral Uprising coming...The US regimestream news media has already started talking about the unpredictable element of the unprecendented surge in voter registration on Bardoground States like Ohio to cover its own ass if the fix unravels completely. The Bush Cabal will not be able to steal it this time. Last time, Supreme Injustice had to get it done. Maybe next time Black Box Voting will be pervasive enough to get it done. BUT this time, they cannot steal it. In their geopolitical soft porn coda, PNAC, the neo-con wet dreamers waxed aloud for "another Pearl Harbor." They got their wish due, in large part, to the Bush national insecurity team's pre-9/11 neglect. It is a bitter irony that the post-9/11 incompetence of the Bush national insecurity team (intact to this day)has been so extraordinary that they now must find themselves *wishing* for yet another...Until now, the US regimestream news media has been a full partner in a Triad of shared special interest (e.g., oil, weapons, media, pharmaceuticals, tobocco, etc.) with the Bush Cabal itself and its wholly-owned-subsidiary-formerly-known-as-the-Republican-Party. It is unlikely that they will break from their partners, BUT if Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mekong Della) bests the _resident again on Friday night, even those craven propapunditgandists and besotted anchormen may, with a nod and a wink from their Corporatist overlords, start stepping back from the table and leaving the Bush abomination and its wholly-owned-subsidiary-formerly-known-as-the-Republican-Party to take the fall alone. If they do not back away from the table they will lose more than a cozy relationship at the FCC. Meanwhile, remember that the US regimestream news media does not want to inform you about this election, it wants to DISinform you about this election...Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) remarked last night that the light of America was flickering.
Here are FIVE important pieces. Please read them and share them with others. Please vote and encourage others to vote. Otherwise, the flickering light will be snuffed out by viscious men like Dick Cheney and Dennis Miller...
Dick Meyer: John Edwards earned his place on the Democratic ticket tonight.
In a testy debate, the untested Edwards clearly held his own against the ultimate elder statesman. However marginal in the big picture, this was a pretty good night for the Democrats.
My gut seems to be confirmed, if fleetingly, by a CBS News poll of uncommitted voters who watched the debate. It found that 41 percent said Edwards won, 28 percent said Cheney won. Thirty-one percent said it was a tie.
Last week, Kerry won the battle of the instant polls and then kept the momentum and the winner's crown through the week and into the big national polls. This is more than Al Gore was able to do after he won the quickie polls after the first debate in 2000. Edwards' job was to keep that momentum going and perhaps add a few points. He certainly didn't hurt the cause and he didn't allow Cheney to clearly turn the debate tide.
William Rivers Pitt, www.truthout.org: On Thursday night in Florida, Bush exposed himself as unprepared, easily ruffled, angry, excitable and muddled. As one wag put it, he came to a 90 minute debate with 10 minutes of material. On Tuesday night in Ohio, Cheney showed the American people who is really running things at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He was controlled, calm, every inch the CEO in charge.
Cheney was also every inch the snarling, hunch-shouldered golem that has made him one of the least popular politicians in recent memory. He seldom looked up at moderator Gwen Ifill, or at the cameras facing him, choosing instead to speak into his own chest for the entire night. Cheney appeared, overall, to cut quite the frightening figure, the dark night to Edwards' optimistic day.
The other problem for Cheney, of course, was the way he lied with nearly every word that passed his curled lips. It was a virtuoso performance of prevarication, obfuscation and outright balderdash. On Thursday night, George W. Bush played the part of a man who couldn't possibly defend his record. On Tuesday night, Cheney acted as though that record did not exist.
Jim Rutenberg, New York Times: Senator John Kerry and the Democratic Party introduced two new advertisements this weekend that criticize President Bush's administration as giving the family "special favors" and as having an overreliance on Saudi Arabia for oil.
And the Media Fund, a Democratic group, said yesterday that it would spend $6.5 million to run advertisements hitting the Saudi theme still harder in Ohio, Florida and Wisconsin during the next couple of weeks.
Officials with the Media Fund said they decided to do so after a test run in St. Louis late last month produced what they said were unexpectedly good results with voters.
The line of attack is reminiscent of "Fahrenheit 9/11," the anti-Bush documentary by Michael Moore that highlights what it call Mr. Bush's ties to the Saudi royal family.
Mr. Kerry's new advertisements imply that ties between the president and the Saudis have caused Mr. Bush to take a slack line against the Saudis on oil prices - a message Kerry aides say they hope will resonate particularly well in the days before Mr. Kerry's Friday debate on domestic issues with Mr. Bush.
"The Saudi royal family gets special favors, while our gas prices skyrocket," an announcer says in one spot as the screen flashes a picture of Crown Prince Abdullah. In another, Mr. Kerry says, "I want an America that relies on its own ingenuity and innovation, not the Saudi royal family."
David Hackworth, www.sftt.org: Recently, when John Kerry brought up the possibility of a return to the draft, SecDef Donald Rumsfeld was quick to respond that Kerry was full of it.
But my take is that Kerry is right on the mark. Not only because Rummy has been flat wrong on every major military call regarding Iraq, but because this is a war that won’t be won by smart weapons or the sledgehammer firepower we see every night on the tube.
Right now – with both our regular and Reserve soldiers stretched beyond the breaking point – our all-volunteer force is tapping out. If our overseas troop commitments continue at the present rate or climb higher, there won’t be enough Army and Marine grunts to do the job. And thin, overworked units, from Special Forces teams to infantry battalions, lose fights.
Clearly, this war against worldwide, hardcore Islamic believers will be a massive military marathon, the longest and most far-flung in our country’s history. By Christmas, more troops could be needed not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but wherever the radical Islamic movement is growing stronger, from the Horn of Africa to Morocco, Kenya, Somalia, Yemen and across Europe – remember Spain?! – to Asia.
MATT KELLEY, Associated Press: More than a week after a court-imposed deadline to turn over all records of President Bush (news - web sites)'s military service, the Texas Air National Guard belatedly produced two documents Tuesday that include Bush's orders for his last day of active duty in 1973.
The orders show Bush was on "no-fly" status for his last days of duty because he had been grounded almost a year earlier for skipping an annual medical exam.
The files, released to The Associated Press under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, are orders for Bush to appear for two stints of active-duty training: a 1971 exercise in Canada and eight days of duty in July 1973.
The records released Tuesday are the fifth set of documents related to Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service to be released in response to the AP lawsuit. The federal judge overseeing that case ordered the Pentagon (news - web sites) to disclose all of Bush's records by Sept. 24. Tuesday's four pages of records were the second set of files released after that deadline.
The Texas Air National Guard did not explain the delay in releasing the records.
Support Our Troops, Save the US Constitution,
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Restore Fiscal Responsibility in the White House,
Thwart the Theft of a Second Presidential Election,
Save the Environment, Break the Corporatist
Stranglehold on the US Mainstream News Media, Rescue
the US Supreme Court from Right-Wing Radicals, Cleanse
the White House of the Chicken Hawk Coup and Its
War-Profiteering Cronies, Show Up for Democracy in
2004: Defeat the Triad, Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100704Y.shtml
Edwards Shoots And Scores
By Dick Meyer
CBS News
Tuesday 05 October 2004
Like the first Bush-Kerry debate, this one was free of mega-gaffes and meltdowns. It was certainly civil, not exactly uplifting and antagonistic enough to be quite riveting. It certainly was not the collegial civics lesson that Lieberman and Cheney staged four years ago, but a fast-paced, aggressive, well-informed argument.
As always, Cheney was cucumber calm and serious in statesman-like way; but for much of the debate he appeared grumpy, petulant and tangled up. He didn't make Edwards look like a rookie. In short, Cheney blew the gravitas gap.
As they got deeper into the thicket, and into the domestic issues that should have been his strength, Edwards seemed to lose his way. Storng start, weak finish.
But the Democrats, I sense, got the basic image they wanted implanted in a few undecided minds. If it wasn't exactly Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader, there were moments that were pretty gosh darn close to George Bailey vs. Mr. Potter in "It's A Wonderful Life.".
Edwards had more bite than George Bailey, though, and came out swinging.
In his first answer, Cheney gave a broad defense of the administration's terror policy. Edwards pounced: "Mr. Vice President, you are still not being straight with the American people."
Cheney responded with a meandering litany of the progress made in Iraq and didn't land a clear counter-punch until later, when he used the flip-flop material: "You're not credible on Iraq because of the enormous inconsistencies that John Kerry and you have cited time after time after time during the course of the campaign. Whatever the political pressures of the moment requires, that's where you're at."
Edwards was hyper-articulate, animated, crisp - every bit the courtroom maestro that he was reputed to be. Cheney seemed to get bogged down in corrections and though he was clear, he was rarely in a persuasive mode -- his perma-snear didn't help.
Cheney did throw the big punches, but they didn't hit hard often. "Your facts are just wrong, Senator," he said in an exchange about the costs and casualties of the Iraq War, without much backup. He said there is "no indication" that Kerry has the "conviction" to lead the war on terror. He called Edwards' Senate record "undistinguished."
Cheney got a bit hotter when he said that since Kerry and Edwards couldn't stand up to Howard Dean and stick to their votes to authorize war, how could they stand up to al Qaeda? Other pundits have already declared this the "killer quote." But it didn't really shiver my timbers.
Cheney said Edwards missed so many votes and was such a lightweight that he never even met him until they walked on to the stage in Cleveland. Democrats said that isn't actually true; if they're right, it's a bad thing to lie about.
When Edwards flatly declared that the administration was "for outsourcing," Cheney gave him a pass on a specious charge. Twice Edwards declared that a "long resume" didn't make for good judgment and twice it went unanswered. Similarly, he had no good response when Edwards performed a surgical strike on Cheney's votes against Head Start and a Martin Luther King holiday when he was in the House.
Edwards had some missteps. He botched two squishy softball questions at the end about his qualifications for office and his differences with Cheney. His closing argument was an overwrought dose of economic pessimism that see off the mark on a night dominated by national security.
Edwards had to defend himself against charges of flip-flopping, missing votes and not being distinguished. Cheney had to defend himself against charges of lying about about a war that his administration mismanaged. Cheney's job was harder. Big time.
Cheney made one admission that startled me. Toward the end, he expressed his "disappointment" that the administration had not been able to have the kind of bipartisan success Bush had as governor of Texas. Cheney said Washington used to be able to work together more. An honest admission; a serious failure.
And Edwards clobbered him: "The president said that he would unite this country, that he was a uniter, not a divider. Have you ever seen America more divided? Have you ever seen Washington more divided? The reality is it is not an accident. It's the direct result of the choices they've made and their efforts that have created division in America."
The Bush-Cheney forces tried hard to pre-spin Edwards' debate skills. During the pre-game show, Bush campaign strategist Mathew Dowd said of Edwards, "He's not a politician who debates; he's a debater that then became a politician. He's very good, very smooth." He was indeed.
But contrary to Republican wishes, I don't think Edwards came off as a slicky-boy or a mere performer. And I don't think Cheney came off, as Republicans had hoped, as a great and wise man by the contrast.
It's too bad we can't see these two go at each other a few more times.
-------
Dick Meyer, a veteran political and investigative producer for CBS News, is the Editorial Director of CBSNews.com, based in Washington.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/100704Z.shtml
Author's Note | I spent Tuesday evening watching the debate, and then writing about it. When I was done, I went to the website Dick Cheney told Americans to visit in order to get the truth about Kerry's record. Cheney said we should view 'FactCheck.com,' but as a seasoned internet scrambler, I knew immediately he meant 'FactCheck.org'. Not much difference between a .com and a .org, right?
Wrong. FactCheck.com is a website owned by George Soros. The banner headline across the top of the page reads 'WHY WE MUST NOT RE-ELECT PRESIDENT BUSH.' You can assume what the content to follow has to say, or you can go visit the site yourself. I'd love to see what Soros' hit counts look like on Wednesday morning. This is a fairly solid allegory for Dick Cheney's night at the desk. - wrp
Cheney's Avalanche of Lies
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday 06 October 2004
"The vice president, I'm surprised to hear him talk about records. When he was one of 435 members of the United States House, he was one of 10 to vote against Head Start, one of four to vote against banning plastic weapons that can pass through metal detectors. He voted against the Department of Education. He voted against funding for Meals on Wheels for seniors. He voted against a holiday for Martin Luther King. He voted against a resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. It's amazing to hear him criticize either my record or John Kerry's."
- Senator John Edwards, 10/05/04
Cheney and Edwards at the National Prayer Breakfast, 02/01/01
Clearly, Dick Cheney is no George W. Bush.
On Thursday night in Florida, Bush exposed himself as unprepared, easily ruffled, angry, excitable and muddled. As one wag put it, he came to a 90 minute debate with 10 minutes of material. On Tuesday night in Ohio, Cheney showed the American people who is really running things at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He was controlled, calm, every inch the CEO in charge.
Cheney was also every inch the snarling, hunch-shouldered golem that has made him one of the least popular politicians in recent memory. He seldom looked up at moderator Gwen Ifill, or at the cameras facing him, choosing instead to speak into his own chest for the entire night. Cheney appeared, overall, to cut quite the frightening figure, the dark night to Edwards' optimistic day.
The other problem for Cheney, of course, was the way he lied with nearly every word that passed his curled lips. It was a virtuoso performance of prevarication, obfuscation and outright balderdash. On Thursday night, George W. Bush played the part of a man who couldn't possibly defend his record. On Tuesday night, Cheney acted as though that record did not exist.
Cheney was behind the eight-ball before he even entered the hall, tasked to defend his administration's rationale for invading and occupying Iraq. Unfortunately for him, journalists record statements made by important people. In 1992, then-Defense Secretary Cheney spoke to the Discovery Institute in Seattle, WA. Recall that the United States was flush from the trouncing of Iraq in the first Gulf War. Cheney was asked why coalition forces didn't roll tanks on Baghdad and depose Saddam Hussein. Cheney's response, given 14 years ago, could well describe the mess we currently find ourselves in.
"I would guess if we had gone in there," said Cheney in 1992, "I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home. And the final point that I think needs to be made is this question of casualties. I don't think you could have done all of that without significant additional U.S. casualties. And while everybody was tremendously impressed with the low cost of the conflict, for the 146 Americans who were killed in action and for their families, it wasn't a cheap war."
For the record, 1,064 American soldiers have died in this second round of war in Iraq. An additional 138 soldiers from the 'coalition' Bush and Cheney assembled have also died, bringing the total to 1,202. Edwards made the point several times that the United States was bearing "90% of the coalition causalities" in Iraq, and that the American people are bearing "90% of the costs of the effort in Iraq." Cheney tried to say this wasn't true, but the body count numbers don't lie, and never mind the burden being carried by the Iraqi people, more than 20,000 of whom have perished since the invasion began.
"And the question in my mind," continued Cheney in 1992, "is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq."
Cheney's answer to this glaring contradiction, of course, is "September 11," i.e. the terrorist attacks changed everything. It doesn't change the facts of a disastrous occupation, or the overwhelming financial burden being placed on American taxpayers because of Bush administration failures, and it certainly doesn't explain 1,064 folded American flags handed to American families who thought their sons, daughters, husbands, wives, mothers and fathers were going to Iraq to destroy weapons of mass destruction and protect the United States.
Page 01 of the Washington Post for Wednesday 06 October carries an article titled 'Report Discounts Iraq Arms Threat,' which reads in paragraph one: "The government's most definitive account of Iraq's arms programs, to be released today, will show that Saddam Hussein posed a diminishing threat at the time the United States invaded and did not possess, or have concrete plans to develop, nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, U.S. officials said yesterday."
Yes, the lies were thick before Cheney took his seat at the desk on Tuesday night. They got thicker. Edwards, in a theme repeated throughout the night, stated that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the attacks of September 11, and that the Bush administration had erred grievously by diverting attention from Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda and into Iraq. Several times, Edwards accused Cheney of rhetorically combining Iraq and 9/11.
"I have not," replied Cheney, "suggested there is a connection between Iraq and 9/11."
Hm.
"His regime has had high-level contacts with al Qaeda going back a decade and has provided training to al Qaeda terrorists." - Cheney, 12/2/02
"His regime aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda. He could decide secretly to provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists for use against us." - Cheney, 1/30/03
"I think there's overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government." - Cheney, 1/22/04
"There's been enormous confusion over the Iraq and al-Qaeda connection, Gloria. First of all, on the question of - of whether or not there was any kind of a relationship, there was a relationship. It's been testified to. The evidence is overwhelming. It goes back to the early '90s...There's clearly been a relationship." - Cheney, 6/17/04
One could argue, perhaps, the definition of "is" on this matter. Cheney did not state specifically in any of the above quotes that Iraq was involved with 9/11. But the repeated claim that Iraq was connected to al Qaeda, a claim that has been shot to pieces dozens of times over, establishes enough of an Iraq-9/11 connection to satisfy a man who appears to believe that a frightened populace is a happy populace.
George W. Bush doesn't even believe Cheney on this point. An article by Reuters from September 18, 2003, had Bush telling reporters, "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in September 11." Bush was forced into this scramble because his Vice President had, again, made this discredited connection between Iraq and 9/11 on 'Meet the Press' the previous Sunday by claiming, "more and more" evidence was being found to justify the connection. It wasn't true then, and it isn't true now.
Cheney's unruffled, monotone demeanor became demonstrably agitated only a few times on Tuesday, but those times were telling. They came when John Edwards mentioned Halliburton. Edwards accused Halliburton, essentially, of war profiteering, and went so far as to describe how the company, while run by Cheney, was trading with nations now considered to be enemies of America.
"While he was CEO of Halliburton," said Edwards, "they paid millions of dollars in fines for providing false information on their company, just like Enron and Ken Lay. They did business with Libya and Iran, two sworn enemies of the United States. They're now under investigation for having bribed foreign officials during that period of time. Not only that, they've gotten a $7.5 billion no-bid contract in Iraq, and instead of part of their money being withheld, which is the way it's normally done, because they're under investigation, they've continued to get their money."
Cheney was allotted 30 seconds to reply to this explosive charge. His response: "The reason they keep mentioning Halliburton is because they're trying to throw up a smokescreen. They know the charges are false."
Edwards' reply to this in-depth rejoinder: "These are the facts. The facts are the vice president's company that he was CEO of, that did business with sworn enemies of the United States, paid millions of dollars in fines for providing false financial information, it's under investigation for bribing foreign officials. The same company that got a $7.5 billion no-bid contract, the rule is that part of their money is supposed to be withheld when they're under investigation, as they are now, for having overcharged the American taxpayer, but they're getting every dime of their money."
A few more facts: According to the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Houston Chronicle, the New York Times, the Petroleum Economist and scores of other reporters and media outlets, Halliburton in the time of Dick Cheney dealt with both Iraq, Iran and Libya through a variety of subsidiaries and in defiance of scores of international sanctions. Cheney did not like the sanctions against these countries, and went out of his way to make sure Halliburton could get around them and turn a tidy profit.
On June 13, 2000, one month before joining the Republican presidential ticket, the Los Angeles Times reported Cheney's claim that, "We're kept out of (Iran) primarily by our own government, which has made a decision that U.S. firms should not be allowed to invest significantly in Iran, and I think that's a mistake." When speaking to the Cato Institute on June 23, 1998, Cheney stated, "Unfortunately, Iran is sitting right in the middle of the (Caspian Sea) area and the United States has declared unilateral economic sanctions against that country. As a result, American firms are prohibited from dealing with Iran and find themselves cut out of the action."
Cut out of the action?
It went on like this for 90 minutes, and got quite silly at one point. Cheney tried to paint Edwards as an absentee Senator by claiming he'd not met Edwards until that night. CNN and the other networks, a couple of hours later, began showing video of the two of them sitting together for several hours during the National Prayer Breakfast in February of 2001. It seems a silly thing to lie about, what with all the chaos and dead people we're all dealing with, but the media appeared happy to seize upon it. So it goes.
Cheney looked for all the world as if the whole thing bored him. One can hardly blame him. When your entire professional and political career is a tapestry of untruths, telling them again for the umpteenth time could indeed be quite dull.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and international bestseller of two books - 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' and 'The Greatest Sedition is Silence.'
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/05/politics/campaign/05ads.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=
October 5, 2004
ADVERTISING
Kerry Ads Draw on Saudis for New Attack on Bushes
By JIM RUTENBERG
In the final month of the campaign, Democrats are increasingly tying the White House to the Saudi Arabian royal family, a line of attack that they say is highly effective, but it has stirred concern among Saudi officials.
Senator John Kerry and the Democratic Party introduced two new advertisements this weekend that criticize President Bush's administration as giving the family "special favors" and as having an overreliance on Saudi Arabia for oil.
And the Media Fund, a Democratic group, said yesterday that it would spend $6.5 million to run advertisements hitting the Saudi theme still harder in Ohio, Florida and Wisconsin during the next couple of weeks.
Officials with the Media Fund said they decided to do so after a test run in St. Louis late last month produced what they said were unexpectedly good results with voters.
The line of attack is reminiscent of "Fahrenheit 9/11," the anti-Bush documentary by Michael Moore that highlights what it call Mr. Bush's ties to the Saudi royal family.
Mr. Kerry's new advertisements imply that ties between the president and the Saudis have caused Mr. Bush to take a slack line against the Saudis on oil prices - a message Kerry aides say they hope will resonate particularly well in the days before Mr. Kerry's Friday debate on domestic issues with Mr. Bush.
"The Saudi royal family gets special favors, while our gas prices skyrocket," an announcer says in one spot as the screen flashes a picture of Crown Prince Abdullah. In another, Mr. Kerry says, "I want an America that relies on its own ingenuity and innovation, not the Saudi royal family."
Tad Devine, a senior strategist for Mr. Kerry, said in an interview: "The heart of their policy is to benefit the powerful and the privileged. Bush is beholden to powerful interests and not the American people."
Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for Mr. Bush, said: "It's the mainstreaming of Michael Moore. What's unusual is that conspiracies would be adopted as mainstream messages by John Kerry, who's running for president of the United States."
Nail al-Jubeir, a spokesman for the Saudi embassy in Washington, said yesterday that the assertion in the ads was unfair and inaccurate. "Saudi bashing is not an energy policy," he said, denying the nation has won any "special favors." "Unfortunately, it's a cheap shot."
Mr. Jubeir had harsher words for the Media Fund advertisements, one of which calls the Saudi royal family "close Bush family friends" who are "corrupt." It goes on to note "even though 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, top Bush adviser James Baker's law firm is defending Saudi Arabia against the victims' families." The spot includes images of President Bush holding hands with Crown Prince Abdullah and mug shots of the Sept. 11 hijackers superimposed above a shot of rubble from the attacks.
Mr. Jubeir said yesterday, "There is nothing but fear mongering and hate mongering in some of these ads."
Erik Smith, executive director of the Media Fund, echoed Mr. Devine that Mr. Bush was "putting other people's interests ahead of the interests of the American people."
He said that the Media Fund decided to put $6.5 million behind the ads because in St. Louis they seemed to have had a huge influence. An internal poll the Media Fund shared showed Mr. Kerry trailing Mr. Bush in St. Louis by one percentage point before the ads ran and jumping to a 7-point lead afterward. "It leverages existing perceptions and it's powerful because it's deeply troubling," said Steve McMahon, whose firm produced the spots.
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http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=Hacks%20Target%20Homepage.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=86&rnd=672.997896581235
10-04-2004
Hack's Target
Uncle Sam Will Soon Want Your Kids
By David H. Hackworth
Recently, when John Kerry brought up the possibility of a return to the draft, SecDef Donald Rumsfeld was quick to respond that Kerry was full of it.
But my take is that Kerry is right on the mark. Not only because Rummy has been flat wrong on every major military call regarding Iraq, but because this is a war that won’t be won by smart weapons or the sledgehammer firepower we see every night on the tube.
Right now – with both our regular and Reserve soldiers stretched beyond the breaking point – our all-volunteer force is tapping out. If our overseas troop commitments continue at the present rate or climb higher, there won’t be enough Army and Marine grunts to do the job. And thin, overworked units, from Special Forces teams to infantry battalions, lose fights.
Clearly, this war against worldwide, hardcore Islamic believers will be a massive military marathon, the longest and most far-flung in our country’s history. By Christmas, more troops could be needed not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but wherever the radical Islamic movement is growing stronger, from the Horn of Africa to Morocco, Kenya, Somalia, Yemen and across Europe – remember Spain?! – to Asia.
Accordingly, we need to bring our ground-fighting and support units to about the strength they were before the Soviet Union imploded, especially since the proper ratio of counterinsurgent-to-insurgent in places like the Middle East should be around 15 to 1. You don’t have to be a Ph.D. in military personnel to conclude we need more boots on the ground.
Most of our warriors – who are mainly from blue-collar families from Small Town, USA – have few political connections and few conduits though which they can effectively sound off. So when they get screwed over by a desperate Pentagon’s makeshift policies – such as the “Stop Loss” program that’s holding over large numbers of our servicemen and -women well beyond their contractually agreed-upon terms of enlistment, or the widespread calling up of out-of-shape, ill-trained citizen soldiers from the Individual Ready Reserve – these “volunteers” salute, suck it up and lay their lives on the line.
But like elephants, they won’t forget that they are “backdoor draftees,” as Kerry and John McCain call them. Which means that when their hitches are up, they won’t be rushing to re-enlist. And they’re also warning their younger brothers, sisters and pals to stay away from recruiting stations.
Although Pentagon puff artists insist they’re making quota, recruiters are already saying it would be easier to find $100 bills on the sidewalk outside a homeless shelter than fill their enlistment quotas, even with the huge bonuses now being paid.
So the draft – which will include both boys and girls this time around – is a no-brainer in ‘05 and ‘06.
Oh sure, the Pentagon suits will fight it. Volunteers tend to go with the flow and seldom blow the whistle on military stupidity, flawed tactics and self-serving leadership. And draftees don’t hesitate to make waves and tell the truth. Not to mention influential citizens with draft-age kids who’ll soon be demanding an answer to the same type of hard question their moms and dads shouted during the Vietnam War: “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”
Rumsfeld, in fact, has already kicked off the anti-draft campaign by denigrating the draftees who fought in Vietnam. The SecDef, who prefers sycophants who don’t ask questions, recently stated that Vietnam-era draftees added “No value, no advantage, really, to the United States armed services ... because ... it took an enormous amount of effort in terms of training, and then they were gone.”
Wrong once again. I led draftees for almost four years in Vietnam and for several years during the Korean War. If well-led, there are no finer soldiers. Ask the Nazis, the Japanese and the Reds in Korea and in Vietnam, where “no value” draftees cleaned their clocks in fight after fight.
Israel, a country that has lived under the barrel of the Islamic terrorist gun for decades, has the most combat-experienced counterinsurgent force in the world – and boy and girl draftees are its major resource.
Count on it. We will follow their lead.
--Eilhys England contributed to this column.
Col. David H. Hackworth (USA Ret.) is SFTT.org co-founder and Senior Military Columnist for DefenseWatch magazine. For information on his many books, go to his home page at Hackworth.com, where you can sign in for his free weekly Defending America. Send mail to P.O. Box 11179, Greenwich, CT 06831. His newest book is “Steel My Soldiers’ Hearts.” © 2004 David H. Hackworth. Please send Feedback responses to dwfeedback@yahoo.com.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041006/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_guard_5
National Guard Hands Over More Bush Papers
Tue Oct 5,11:11 PM ET White House - AP
By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - More than a week after a court-imposed deadline to turn over all records of President Bush (news - web sites)'s military service, the Texas Air National Guard belatedly produced two documents Tuesday that include Bush's orders for his last day of active duty in 1973.
AP Photo
The orders show Bush was on "no-fly" status for his last days of duty because he had been grounded almost a year earlier for skipping an annual medical exam.
The files, released to The Associated Press under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, are orders for Bush to appear for two stints of active-duty training: a 1971 exercise in Canada and eight days of duty in July 1973.
The records released Tuesday are the fifth set of documents related to Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service to be released in response to the AP lawsuit. The federal judge overseeing that case ordered the Pentagon (news - web sites) to disclose all of Bush's records by Sept. 24. Tuesday's four pages of records were the second set of files released after that deadline.
The Texas Air National Guard did not explain the delay in releasing the records.
The 1973 orders come from the most controversial period in Bush's years in the Texas Air National Guard. After May 1972, Bush skipped training for six months, failed to appear for the required physical examination, got permission to train at an Alabama unit whose commanders say he never showed up and put in a flurry of training in 1973 in an effort to meet minimum requirements before leaving for Harvard Business School.
Bush has insisted he fulfilled all of his Air National Guard duties and says he is proud of his service. Democrats have criticized Bush's Guard performance, saying he shirked his duties in his final years in the service.
By July 1973, Bush was finishing a four-month stretch that included 40 days of active-duty service and drills. The orders released Tuesday direct Bush to report for equivalent active-duty training for eight days in July 1973.
The equivalent-training notation means Bush was making up for active-duty training he either had already missed or would be unavailable for in the future. The orders do not say what Bush would be doing since he could not participate in the job code listed on the orders — F-102A fighter pilot.
The last day of the orders is July 30, 1973, Bush' final day in the Texas Air National Guard. Previously released documents include a form Bush signed that day stating he had been counseled on his plans to leave his Texas unit because he was moving out of the area.
Bush started Harvard Business School in September 1973 and the Texas Air National Guard honorably discharged Bush into the Air Force Reserves, effective Oct. 1 of that year. The Air Force discharged Bush in November 1974.
The records released Tuesday also include orders for an August 1971 training mission in Canada, where Bush impressed his commanders. An evaluation written nine months later said Bush's "skills as an interceptor pilot enabled him to complete all his ADC (Air Defense Command) intercept missions during the Canadian deployment with ease."