Re-runs

The big story - "a striking decline in his sentence-by-sentence speaking skills." The reason? One doctor says "presenile dementia" a catch-all term for earlier-than-normal cognitive declines (probably "dry-drunk syndrome"). This video intercuts footage from 10 years ago with recent footage - the difference is dramatic and disturbing. And obvious.

See it yourself at

http://home.comcast.net/~blogitics/BushTenYrs4MB.mov

Show it to your friends who think George Bush is okay. He's not.

Pity Charlie Gibson. What did he do to earn the rage of George W. Bush? There he was, moderator of the second presidential "debate", and all he was attempting to do was, well, moderate, going beyond the stilted question-asking automatons that were Jim "Eyes Courtesy of My Taxidermist" Lehrer and Gwen "No Question Too Insipid" Ifill. Instead of merely allowing the candidates to blather on for an additional minute, Gibson tried, desperately at times, to get the two men to answer a direct fuckin' question. Kerry responded to Gibson, engaging him and mostly expanding on the question. However, George W. Bush chose instead to either ignore or bulldoze Gibson. It was the Old West: no tinhorn reporter's gonna ask George W. Bush a follow-up.

Early on, Bush turned on Gibson twice, viciously smacking the TV morning show host to the ground and standing on his large ass, braying like the loudest howler monkey in the desiccated rainforest, "You tell Tony Blair we're going alone," our president at that moment showing he was tough enough to pound the Good Morning, America guy, motherfuckers, now bring him the head of Katie Couric.


The latest Zogby-Reuters poll gives Kerry a 3-point lead over Bush. This is a tracking poll taken from Friday through Sunday, which seems to me shows that Bush didn't help himself in the Friday debate.

If You Had Seen What I Have Seen
By Scott Ritter
The Independent U.K.
Sunday 10 October 2004
The inspection process was rigged to create uncertainty over WMD to bolster the US and UK's case for war.
It appears that the last vestiges of perceived legitimacy regarding the decision of President George Bush and Tony Blair to invade Iraq have been eliminated with the release this week of the Iraq Survey Group's final report on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The report's author, Charles Duelfer, underscored the finality of what the world had come to accept in the 18 months since the invasion of Iraq - that there were no stockpiles of WMD, or programmes to produce WMD. Despite public statements made before the war by Bush, Blair and officials and pundits on both sides of the Atlantic to the contrary, the ISG report concludes that all of Iraq's WMD stockpiles had been destroyed in 1991, and WMD programmes and facilities dismantled by 1996.
Duelfer's report does speak of Saddam Hussein's "intent" to acquire WMD once economic sanctions were lifted and UN inspections ended (although this conclusion is acknowledged to be derived from fragmentary and speculative sources). This judgement has been seized by Bush and Blair as they scramble to re-justify their respective decisions to wage war. "The Duelfer report showed that Saddam was systematically gaming the system, using the UN oil-for-food programme to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to undermine sanctions," Bush said. "He was doing so with the intent of restarting his weapons programme once the world looked away." Blair, for his part, has apologised for relying on faulty intelligence, but not for his decision to go to war. The mantra from both camps remains that the world is a safer place with Saddam behind bars.
But is it? When one examines the reality of the situation on the ground in Iraq today, it seems hard to draw any conclusion that postulates a scenario built around the notion of an improved environment of stability and security. Indeed, many Iraqis hold that life under Saddam was a better option than the life they are facing under an increasingly violent and destabilising US-led occupation. The ultimate condemnation of the failure and futility of the US-UK effort in Iraq is that if Saddam were released from his prison cell and participated in the elections scheduled for next January, there is a good chance he would emerge as the popular choice. But while democratic freedom of expression was a desired outcome of the decision to remove Saddam from power, the crux of the pre-war arguments and the ones being reconfigured by those in favour of the invasion centre on the need to improve international peace and security. Has Saddam's removal accomplished this?



'He can run but he can't hide'
What a goon. Rethugs were licking their brown-flecked lips when Bunnypants pulled that quote out of his ass Friday night to describe John Kerry. Like everything else Bush does, it was stupid.

1. Bush hid from the Vietnam war by hiding in the Air National Guard, where he hid so well he was unaccounted for and possibly AWOL during an 18 month period.

2. Bush hid from his Nat Guard-required physical.

3. On September 11, 2001, he ran and hid in bunkers across the country until he thought it was safe to return to Washington.

4. He hid his records, and his dad's.

5. He hides from protestors

6. Hides from press conferences

7. Hides from anyone who hasn't taken a loyalty oath

8. Hides from taking the blame

And speaking of somebody who "can run but can't hide," what the hell ever happened to Osama bin Laden, anyway?

Idiot.

10/11/2004 02:13:52 PM



Intelligence failure
"As a massive piece in the New York Times revealed, it was cooked, abused or lied about by the most senior figures in the administration."
In one of the most egregious abuses of intelligence in US history, the Bush administration falsely claimed that expert opinion supported a near-ludicrous theory that aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq were suitable for use in developing nuclear weapons. In fact, that theory's principal backer was a low-level CIA analyst who was almost laughed out of an international conference when he presented his theory.

"Everybody was embarrassed when he came and made this presentation, embarrassed and disgusted," the Times quoted one expert who attended as saying. "We were going insane, thinking, 'Where is he coming from?'"

The American people should be clearly told and retold that it was the Bush administration itself, and its lap dog CIA head George Tenet, who were responsible for the bogus intelligence that it used to sell the case for war.

So why isn't Kerry pointing this out? Why didn’t he respond Friday night by telling Bush, "Yes, I saw the same intelligence as you, Mr. pResident – after your administration cooked it."
10/11/2004 03:00:59 PM



Good News

What the hell has happened to our country we actually have occasion to rejoice because Congress passed an anti-torture Bill.

I mean, sometimes you just step back and go what the fuck has happend to this place?
-Atrios 3:39 PM


See any parallels between then and now? Discuss with specific examples.

[These are from articles and posts I clipped back on October 11, 2004. I have links but they're a pain to transfer from my old documents. If anyone wants a specific link, ask in the comments and I'll provide it.]

--the BB