NOTE: The USA's 2006 mid-term elections are of profound and global importance. So I know my many friends and colleagues throughout the world, who read Words of Power for its focus on global risk and security issues, will indulge me as I focus on this do-or-die showdown for one more day.
Hard Rain Journal 11-07-06: Whatever Happens in the US 2006 Mid-Term Elections, Do Not Forget These Last Few Weeks.
By Richard Power
History will be determined in a matter of hours—will George W. Bush get a rubber-stamp Congress for the final two years of his presidency or not. Get involved with MoveOn's Call for Change. Nearly 6 million calls have already been made! A real-time call counter is located at www.moveon.org.
Whatever happens in the US 2006 mid-term elections, remember, it is the US Constitution that must be fought for, and if necessary died for, not the flag. The flag in itself means nothing. It is the US Constitution that defines who we are as citizens of the USA.
If there is a Democratic takeover of at least the House of Representatives, and perhaps the Senate as well, then there will be hope for the Republic -- because there will be a rallying point, a place to make a stand.
If not, then Noam Chomsky’s analysis will have much more relevance than Bill Clinton’s and the strategies and tactics of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. will take on much more significance than those of any political consultant.
If you experience, as many already have, something disturbing when you go to vote, please follow Bobby Kennedy Jr.’s advice and call 1-866-OUR-VOTE.
Rely on Brad Blog and Mark Crispin Miller's Notes From The Underground for reliable, real-time updates and insights on election security issues.
Whatever happens in the US 2006 mid-term elections, do not forget this last few weeks. Since Labor Day, an incredible onslaught of revelations concerning the hypocrisy, corruption, dysfunction and predatory nature of the Bush-Cheney cabal and its enablers in the Republican Party has burst forth.
For the sake of continuity and context, here are eleven amazing news items from the last several weeks, aggregated in chronological order:
The National Intelligence Estimate — “the most authoritative document that the intelligence community produces” — was delivered to President Bush and Vice President Cheney in April 2006. It was declassified today. Here’s a key excerpt:
The Iraq conflict has become the ’cause celebre’ for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement. Declassified NIE Shows Cheney and Bush Misled Americans, Think Progress, 9-26-06
A House Government Reform Committee report establishes — based on e-mail messages and other records subpoenaed from criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s lobbying firm — that at least 485 contacts occurred between Abramoff’s lobbying team and White House officials between 2001 to 2004.
The Committee documents 13 instances of Abramoff personally meeting with White House staff. Abramoff billed his clients for 32.3 hours for time spent with White House staff. White House Falsely Claimed Abramoff Had ‘Very Few’ Meetings With Staff, Think Progress, 9-29-06
On Friday, Sept. 29, 2006, Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) resigned from Congress after ABC News published inappropriate emails and sexually explicit instant messages that Foley sent to underage boys.
Subsequently, it’s become clear that Congressional leadership “knew for months about e-mail traffic between Representative Mark Foley and a former teenage page, but kept the matter secret and allowed Mr. Foley to remain head of a Congressional caucus on children’s issues.” The Foley Coverup Timeline, Think Progress, 9-30-06
Juan Gonzalez: In his new book, State of Denial, Bob Woodward reveals that on July 10, 2001, then CIA Director George Tenet called President Bush's National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to hold an emergency meeting to review the latest on Osama Bin Laden...According to Woodward, Tenet and his counterterrorism chief Coffer Black told Rice that Al Qaeda was going to attack American interests, possibly in the United States itself. They also said they needed to immediately take covert or military action to thwart Bin Laden....
Rand Beers: ….What Dr. Rice appears to have done is a classic Washington "push-off," which is to say, "Go brief somebody else." She did not do, as National Security Advisor, what previous National Security Advisors had done with this kind of a meeting, which was to herself call a meeting of senior levels within the government to discuss the serious information that was available. And so, as I have said before, the issue here is what she did about it, and what she did about it is basically nothing. "Classic Washington Pushoff" - Fmr. Counterrorism Advisor Rand Beers on Rice's Reported Dismissal of Pre-9/11 CIA Warnings, Democracy Now!, 10-4-06
David Kuo is an evangelical Christian and card-carrying member of the religious right, who got a job in the White House in the president’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives….But Kuo says the so-called compassion agenda has fallen short of its promise and he blames President Bush for that in his new book….In his book, Kuo wrote that White House staffers would roll their eyes at evangelicals, calling them "nuts" and "goofy." ….Specifically, Kuo says people in the White House political affairs office referred to Pat Robertson as "insane," Jerry Falwell as "ridiculous," and that James Dobson "had to be controllhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifed." And President Bush, he writes, talked about his compassion agenda, but never really fought for it. A Loss Of Faith, Former White House Insider Tells Lesley Stahl Staffers Called Evangelicals "Nuts" And "Goofy", CBS News, 10-14-06
Richard Viguerie, widely recognized as one of the founding fathers of the modern conservative movement, has a different message for conservatives.
While he isn't advocating a Republican defeat in November, in interviews, in a new book and in an essay in a liberal monthly publication, Viguerie has been making the argument that defeat could be better for the conservative movement in the long term. He recently told progressive radio talk show host Laura Flanders that he has "lived long enough" so that he "no longer fear[s] defeat." In fact, Viguerie added, "Many times, if not most of the times, our best success has come after defeat." Bill Berkowitz: Viguerie To GOP – Fuhgedaboutit, Working for Change, 10-16-06
Last week the esteemed medical journal The Lancet released an epidemiological study concluding that 655,000 Iraqis died from war-related injury and disease from March 2003 to July 2006. This shockingly high figure has drawn attacks from the Bush administration and right-wing pundits.
Speaking as a medical doctor, I wish to set the record straight. The Lancet study is sound science. The study followed a strict, widely accepted methodology to arrive at its sobering conclusion. The study is being attacked not on scientific grounds but for ideological reasons.
People may not realize that The Lancet is the world’s most prestigious medical journal. Prior to publication, the Iraq study was subjected to a thorough peer review by specialists in the field of epidemiology….
The investigators followed the same methodology in Iraq that had been used in estimating death and disease in conflicts such as Darfur and Congo—where the Bush administration uncritically accepted their results. Curren Warf, 655,000 Iraq War Deaths, Truthdig, 10-17-06
So now we know: Ted Haggard, evangelical overlord and leader of upwards of 30 million happy homophobes and nervous Bush supporters, a man who says he calls Dubya once a week to, presumably, talk about God and gays and sin and cattle and sex and milkshakes and who knows what the hell else, we now know Pastor Ted most definitely did not probably well OK maybe I mean obviously we all know he did but he's denying it anyway even though it couldn't be more obvious, Ted did not have lots and lots of gay sex with a big handsome burly gay prostitute for three years, and oh yes also got massages and snorted lots of meth and by the way he had quite a deliciously good time of it, too. This is what absolutely did not happen, OK? Even though you know it did. Shhh. Ted Haggard, The Root of All Evil (Pt. II), S.F. Chronicle, 11-3-06
As Iraq slips further into chaos, the war's neo-conservative boosters have turned sharply on the Bush administration, charging that their grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence. In a series of exclusive interviews, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, and others play the blame game with shocking frankness. Target No. 1: the president himself….Perle goes so far as to say that, if he had his time over, he would not have advocated an invasion of Iraq: "I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?,' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.' ... I don't say that because I no longer believe that Saddam had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction, or that he was not in contact with terrorists. I believe those two premises were both correct. Could we have managed that threat by means other than a direct military intervention? Well, maybe we could have."...Kenneth Adelman, a lifelong neocon activist and Pentagon insider who served on the Defense Policy Board until 2005, wrote a famous op-ed article in The Washington Post in February 2002, arguing: "I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk." Now he says, "I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional." David Rose, Neo Culpa, Vanity Fair, 11-3-06
Just four days before southeastern Ohio voters pick his successor and three months before he is sentenced to prison, Rep. Bob Ney yesterday resigned the congressional seat he has held since 1995…Ney’s decision to resign on the eve of the election infuriated Ohio Republicans who have urged him for months to step down. Ney, R-Heath, who pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges last month, was facing certain expulsion when the House returned next week.
By waiting as long as possible to resign, Ney collected his regular congressional salary through yesterday....Jack Torry and James Nash, Ney quits, ‘seven weeks too late’: Convicted congressman infuriates Ohio Republicans, COLUMBUS DISPATCH, 11-4-06
One rosy reassurance after another has been handed down by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: “mission accomplished,” the insurgency is “in its last throes,” and “back off,” we know what we’re doing, are a few choice examples.,,,Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised. And although the blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be the troops who bear its brunt. This is not about the midterm elections. Regardless of which party wins Nov. 7, the time has come, Mr. President, to face the hard bruising truth:
Donald Rumsfeld must go. Editorial: Time for Rumsfeld to go, Military Times, 11-6-06
SOME RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 11-05-06: "Don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity"
GS(3) Thunderbolt 11-4-06: Unlike the US Mainstream News Media, the Military Times Knows What Time It Is...
Words of Power # 30: Will the Republic Survive Beyond This Mid-Term Election?
Hard Rain Journal 9-27-06: The Republic Strikes Back!
Words of Power #28: On 9/11/06, Ask Yourself "Is This My Country?"
Hard Rain Journal Weekend Edition (9/9-9/10): Five Years into the Era of the National Insecurity State, Some Context & Continuity
Hard Rain Journal 9-7-06: While ABC Catapults the Propaganda, Bush’s “Key Ally” Makes Peace with Al Qaeda
Hard Rain Journal 9-3-06: Remember, Remember the First Week of September
Hard Rain Journal 8-22-06: The Central Theme of Future Historians will be Betrayal, Just Ask Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, Spike Lee & Valerie Plame Wilson
Hard Rain Journal 7-25-06: As the Next Bait & Switch Get Pulled, Remember Osama Bin Laden & the Child Brides of Afghanistan
Hard Rain Journal 7-5-06: Al Qaeda Endorsed Bush-Cheney in 2004, But US Mainstream News Media Chose to Ignore It
Hard Rain Journal 6-19-06: Coulter, Beck and The Death of The News
Hard Rain Journal 6-15-06: Foreign Affairs survey of 100 US policy leaders grades Bush-Cheney "failed" at 1.8 out of 10
Hard Rain Journal 6-14-06: Wrongly Premised “War on Terrorism” has Increased Danger from Terrorism, and Ignored Greater Risks
Words of Power #23: A Reality Check, What A Real World War on Terrorism Would Look Like, and a US Mid-Term Election Strategy
Words of Power #21: Judith Miller, Ken Lay, Florida, 9/11 and The Return of The Forbidden Truths?
Words of Power #15: Bring Me the Head of Osama, Nero Fiddles while the Planet Burns, Religion as the Crystal Meth of the People, & The Democrats' Plan
Words of Power #13: What You Need To Know About The Port Security Scandal
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net
Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman,
David Kuo,Ted Haggert,Richard Viguerie, Bob Woodward, Lancet, Military Times,Mark Foley,Iraq, Jack Abramoff, Bush, Cheney, Bob Ney,Elections, Voting, Election Fraud,Richard Power, Words of Power
