Lies and deceptions

Bush is embarked on a week long trip apparently to assure the American public that "spying is necessary" in time of "war." First, we are not at "war." War has never been announced except by Bush himself. Bush's "war" on Iraq is no more meaningful than the "war on drugs," the "war on poverty," or the "war on bedbugs" (if you haven't noticed, bedbugs have become a serious problem under the Bush administration along with everything else). The fact is, no one disputes that spying is necessary in time of war. And even now, although we are not at war, spying is no doubt necessary when confronting terrorism. That is not an issue. The issue is, is ILLEGAL spying necessary? The answer is clearly no. There are procedures for spying that apply which have been totally ignored by Bush, who seems to believe that as "Commander in Chief" he has the authority to ignore any laws he wishes. In short, during times of war, he is a dictator. I doubt very much that this is going to fly. It might, as I gather the Democrats have yet to understand the problem, let alone deal with it.

And ho-hum, the White House is lying again. Bush doesn't remember knowing Abramoff, and yes, Abramoff may have been in the White House for Christmas parties or something, and yes, he may have had his picture taken with Bush, but Bush has had his picture taken with hundreds, maybe thousands of people, and he doesn't really know him, and blah, blah, blah. But how many people has Bush commented about both of them having twins? And, oh, yes, Abramoff was a Bush "pioneer," raising tons of mony for someone he never met? Especially when he arranged meetings between Bush and American Indians at $25,000 each? Bush didn't know Ken Lay either (see below).

Craig Murray, the ex British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, is a participant in the second Commission on the War Crimes of the Bush Administration (I'm not sure that is exactly what it is called) in New York. During his presentation, among other things, he displayed a letter to George W. Bush, Governor of Texas, written by no other than Ken Lay. The Governor of Texas was lined out and above was written simply, "George." I did not see exactly what the letter said but I know it began something like, "You will be receiving a visit from a delegation from Uzbekistan. We (Enron) have recently opened an office in Tashkent and are negotiating a two billion dollar oil deal." This revealing letter would seem to indicate that a man who Bush claimed supported his rival for the Governorship of Texas (a blatant lie), and who he claimed not to know (another blatant lie), addressed him as "George" and asked (or, it appears, rather directed him) to deal with the Uzbekistans. Perhaps this gives a clue as to how it is the CIA is involved with the Uzbekisan secret police in torturing people to get the information they want about opponents of the Dictatorial regime and about members of al-Qaeda. Murray reports than when he objected to the torturing he was told the official policy was, "if we did not do the torturing, and if we did not order the torturing, there is no reason we should not accept the information." I guess the fact that such information was most probably useless didn't bother anyone (this, of course, completely ignores the terrible moral and ethical implications involved).

The U.S. has apparently spent at least two million trying to influence the Palestian elections. We wish to guarantee a democratic election - except, of course, if Hamas wins, which we have announced we will not recognize. Ah, democracy. We also want to promote democracy in South America, unless, of course, Chavez wins two elections by democratic landslides and we try to engineer a coup to overturn them. Ah, democracy. Then there is the ongoing case of Haiti where we overturned a democratically elected President and are now trying to engineer a new government of our choosing. Ah, democracy. But never forget: we are good, they are bad. If you are not with us you are against us. Black is white. Up is down. Bad is good. We are always right and everyone else on earth is wrong.