A Blog from a Zen Buddhist with a technical background
At the top of my personal hit parade of Bush Distortions is a statement the president has made over and over, notably during his speech at the Republican National Convention. "If you say the heart and soul of America is found in Hollywood," Bush said to loud cheers, "I'm afraid you are not the candidate of conservative values." ...
What Kerry actually said, after a fundraiser in which a group of stars performed on his behalf (and, yes, during which some of them said distasteful things about Bush), was this: "Every performer tonight, in their own way, either verbally or through their music, through their lyrics, have conveyed to you the heart and soul of our country."
Kerry gave a tough speech attacking Bush's policies there. Bush fired back, as he had every right to do, and denounced what Kerry said.
"Incredibly," Bush said of his opponent, "he now believes our national security would be stronger with Saddam Hussein in power, not in prison." Then Bush quoted Kerry. "Today he said, and I quote, 'We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.' He's saying he prefers the stability of a dictatorship to the hope and security of democracy."
Now, to have a Democratic nominee preferring dictatorship to democracy would be big news indeed. But here is a full rendition of the passage from Kerry's speech that Bush partially quoted: "Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell. But that was not, that was not in and of itself, a reason to go to war. The satisfaction that we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure."
On May 26, 1972, Bush asked in writing for reassignment to an Air Reserve squadron in Alabama so he could work on the U.S. Senate campaign of Republican Winton “Red” Blount, a close friend of his influential father. That was rejected because Bush was obligated to serve as a Ready Reservist until May 26, 1974, and was ineligible for assignment to the Air Reserve. About three months later, on Sept. 5, Bush asked to perform “equivalent duty” with the Alabama unit from September to November. Killian approved the request a day later. The orders went through on Sept. 15, and while Bush had missed the Sept. 9-10 unit training assembly, the document noted he could make the next two. Bush’s Officer Military Record shows an Oct. 1, 1973, discharge from the Texas Air National Guard and transfer to the Alabama unit..
Another White House-released document shows a total of 56 points Bush apparently earned during this 12-month period, but it’s awarded in one lump sum rather than credited for each training period. But this document also contains an error, listing Bush’s status as “PLT On-Fly” — meaning he was on flight status — when he had not been for a year. This, said retired Army Lt. Col. Gerald A. Lechliter, who has done an in-depth analysis of Bush’s pay records (www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/opinion/lechliter.pdf), makes the form’s authenticity suspect.
There’s also the record of a Jan. 6, 1973, dental exam performed on Bush at Dannelly Air National Guard Base, Ala. There’s nothing that documents why Bush, who reportedly returned to Texas after the election, didn’t get this work done closer to home.
Bush’s attendance and participation in weekend drills had been meticulously recorded up through May 1972. But other than the points record and the dental exam record, the year following Bush’s request for reassignment to Alabama is a blank.
In a fitness report supplement released by the White House this year, an administrative officer wrote, “Not rated for the period 1 May 72 through 30 Apr 73. Report for this period not available for administrative reasons.”
In the remarks section, Killian wrote that Bush “has not been observed at this unit during the period of report. … He cleared this base on 15 May 1972 and has been performing equivalent training in a non flying status” with the Alabama unit. Bush, however, was only authorized to be gone from September to November
A Muslim chaplain imprisoned for 76 days in solitary confinement and then cleared in an espionage investigation will receive an honorable discharge, his lawyer said Wednesday.
The Army approved the request from Capt. James J. Yee on Monday, a year and three days after Yee was arrested at Guantanamo Bay, carrying what authorities alleged were classified documents.
"It's amazing to think just over a year ago, he was behind bars ... and being vilified throughout the country," attorney Eugene R. Fidell said. "On a certain level, justice has triumphed."
Yee has declined to comment on the case, but in his letter of resignation to the Army last month he expressed resentment.
"Those unfounded allegations -- which were leaked to the media -- irreparably injured my personal and professional reputation and destroyed my prospects for a career in the United States Army," Yee said.
Republican National Convention protesters told a City Council hearing on Wednesday that the police department engaged in a series of abuses, including using unnecessary force against them, refusing to allow them medical attention and arresting people who weren't taking part in demonstrations.
The New York Civil Liberties Union said hundreds of the 1,800 arrests made during the four-day convention were unjustified.
Twenty percent of the people who were arrested were not demonstrators, they were bystanders," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU....
Several people told the committee they had been unfairly arrested and mistreated.
Father Johnathan Harris, a member of the War Resisters League, a pacifist group, said he and others were arrested during a protest for no apparent reason. He said he asked a police officer whether he was being detained and on what charge.
"The officer said, `I don't know what the heck's going on,"' Harris said.
Simone Levine, a representative from the National Lawyers Guild, which monitored many of the demonstrations, said 15 of her group's legal observers were arrested during protests, including one who was hit by a police club and another who was thrown to the ground.
Civil rights attorney Norman Siegel said one man who'd just bought a pastrami sandwich at a delicatessen stepped outside, was arrested and was held for 27 hours. Other arrestees, including a man who had his jaw broken, a pregnant woman and a man who suffered a collapsed intestine were denied medical attention, he said.
"This needs to be discussed instead of being denied and minimized," he said.
The NYCLU also questioned the widespread use of police videotaping of protesters, which it said might be a violation of city law, and the detainment of some demonstrators for nearly three days at a pier building they claimed was contaminated.
Lawyers for the protesters alleged during the convention that people were detained to keep them off the streets the night of President Bush's acceptance speech. The police department denied that accusation, but a judge ordered the city to release hundreds of detainees within hours.
Retired Gen. William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, told me: "Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse -- he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It's lost." He added: "Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving [Osama] bin Laden's ends."
Retired Gen. Joseph Hoare, the former Marine commandant and head of the U.S. Central Command, told me: "The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong."
"I see no ray of light on the horizon at all," said Jeffrey Record, professor of strategy at the Air War College. "The worst case has become true. There's no analogy whatsoever between the situation in Iraq and the advantages we had after World War II in Germany and Japan."
"I don't think that you can kill the insurgency," said W. Andrew Terrill, professor at the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute, the top expert on Iraq there. According to Terrill, the anti-U.S. insurgency, centered in the Sunni triangle, and holding several key cities and towns, including Fallujah, is expanding and becoming more capable as a direct consequence of U.S. policy. "We have a growing, maturing insurgency group," he told me. "We see larger and more coordinated military attacks. They are getting better and they can self-regenerate. The idea there are X number of insurgents and when they're all dead we can get out is wrong. The insurgency has shown an ability to regenerate itself because there are people willing to fill the ranks of those who are killed. The political culture is more hostile to the U.S. presence. The longer we stay, the more they are confirmed in that view."
After the killing of four U.S. contractors in Fallujah, the U.S. Marines besieged the city for three weeks in April -- the watershed event for the insurgency. "I think the president ordered the attack on Fallujah," said Gen. Hoare. "I asked a three-star Marine general who gave the order to go to Fallujah and he wouldn't tell me. I came to the conclusion that the order came directly from the White House." Then, just as suddenly, the order was rescinded, and Islamist radicals gained control, using the city as a base, al-Qaida ("base" in Arabic) indeed.
"If you are a Muslim and the community is under occupation by a non-Islamic power, it becomes a religious requirement to resist that occupation," Terrill explained. "Most Iraqis consider us occupiers, not liberators." He describes the religious imagery common now in Fallujah and the Sunni triangle: "There's talk of angels and the prophet Mohammed coming down from heaven to lead the fighting, talk of martyrs whose bodies are glowing and emanating wonderful scents."
"I see no exit," said Record. "We've been down that road before. It's called Vietnamization. The idea we're going to have an Iraqi force trained to defeat an enemy we can't defeat stretches the imagination. They will be tainted by their very association with the foreign occupier. In fact, we had more time and money in state building in Vietnam than in Iraq."
"This is far graver than Vietnam," said Gen. Odom. "There wasn't as much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went ahead with a war that was not constructive for U.S. aims. But now we're in a region far more volatile and we're in much worse shape with our allies."
Before 9/11, as we know from Bush's former top anti-terrorism advisor, Richard Clarke, the Bush administration cavalierly downplayed the terrorist threat. Prisoners of its own "pre-9/11 mind-set," it focused on extremely expensive and technically unproven Cold War programs such as ballistic missile defense, utterly irrelevant to the war on terror, and exhibited only lukewarm interest in ongoing programs to limit WMD proliferation. ...
A reasonable answer requires a reasonable question. The question should not be: Would the world be better off if Saddam Hussein were still in power? The politically responsible question, instead, is: Has the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq made the world and the U.S. safer than before? The answer to this question, obfuscated by Bush electioneering, is most certainly no, and that means, as perverse as it may seem, that the world is not better off with Hussein removed from power in this way, at this cost, with these consequences. The invasion and occupation of Iraq has weakened American national security because Bush's unimaginably clumsy management of postwar Iraq has swollen the ranks of young, enraged and lethally armed anti-American jihadists; has irritated and alienated potential partners around the world; and has tied down scarce national-security assets that we desperately need to confront much more dangerous and imminent threats.
Over the last three years, the group of 9/11 widows turned activists dubbed the "Jersey Girls" have become a fixture on the Washington political scene. Some of them are Republicans, others Democrats or independents. But they are all determined to hold official Washington accountable for the attacks that killed their husbands and nearly 3,000 others. They have held news conferences, lobbied members of Congress, pored over documents, and forced the White House to accept an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Along the way, the women have learned about coverups, obfuscation, political cowardice, deceptions and the dangers of eschewing international alliances for a go-it-alone foreign policy.
And their conclusion: For the sake of the country's future, John Kerry must replace George W. Bush.
"Mr. president, Colin Powell told you about this war that 'if you break it, you own it.' And now you're going around talking about an 'ownership society.' Well, Mr. President, let me tell you what you own. A million jobs lost. You own that. A thousand soldiers lost. You own that. 1.4 million new people living below the poverty line. You own that. 1.2 million less people covered by health insurance. You own that. A seventeen percent medicare increase. You own that. Health care costs skyrocketing. You own that. The tax burden increasing amongst the middle class. You own that. Mr. President, if you want to talk about an ownership society, let's talk about what you own."
"9/11: For the Record" addresses a critical question that continues to haunt America's national psyche: how could the most powerful nation on earth have been so utterly unprepared to protect its homeland? On the eve of the third anniversary of 9/11, NOW analyzes the commission report and connects the dots of what happened that day and the warning signs leading up to it. Bill Moyers once again teams up with a long-time colleague, the award-winning producer Sherry Jones, to take a look at what the 9/11 Commission found. Jones, whose credits include, "Watergate Plus 30: Shadow of History," highlights the agonizing close calls, missteps, and outright failures of two administrations and America's intelligence and security agencies in the months and years leading up to 9/11.
It's the same pattern of dishonesty, this time involving personal matters that the public can easily understand, that some of us have long seen on policy issues, from global warming to the war in Iraq. On budget matters, which is where I came in, serious analysts now take administration dishonesty for granted...
For example, back in February the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities accused the Bush administration of, in effect, playing three-card monte with budget forecasts. It pointed out that the administration's deficit forecast was far above those of independent analysts, and suggested that this exaggeration was deliberate.
"Overstating the 2004 deficit," the center wrote, "could allow the president to announce significant 'progress' on the deficit in late October - shortly before Election Day - when the Treasury Department announces the final figures."
Was this a wild accusation from a liberal think tank? No, it's conventional wisdom among experts. Two months ago Stanley Collender, a respected nonpartisan analyst, warned: "At some point over the next few weeks, the Office of Management and Budget will release the administration's midsession budget review and try to convince everyone the federal deficit is falling. Don't believe them."
He went on to echo the center's analysis. The administration's standard procedure, he said, is to initially issue an unrealistically high deficit forecast, which is "politically motivated or just plain bad." Then, when the actual number comes in below the forecast, officials declare that the deficit is falling, even though it's higher than the previous year's deficit.
Goldman Sachs says the same. Last month one of its analysts wrote that "the Office of Management and Budget has perfected the art of underpromising and overperforming in terms of its near-term budget deficit forecasts. This creates the impression that the deficit is narrowing when, in fact, it will be up sharply."
"People who are high in hardiness enjoy ongoing changes and difficulties," said Dr. Salvatore R. Maddi, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of a forthcoming book, "Resilience at Work." "They find themselves more involved in their work when it gets tougher and more complicated. They tend to think of stress as a normal part of life, rather than as something that's unfair.''
Chronic stress has been linked to an array of illnesses, including heart disease and depression. But people who cope successfully, studies have found, punch in at work with normal levels of stress hormones that climb during the day and drop sharply at night. Their coworkers who complain of being too stressed have consistently higher levels of hormones that rarely dip very far, trapping them in a constant state of anxiety.
At the same time, resilient people seem to avoid stress-related health and psychological problems, even as colleagues are falling to pieces, say researchers who have studied strenuous work environments.
"Some of it is genetic, some of it is how you were raised, and some it is just your personality," Dr. Bruce McEwen, director of the neuroendocrinology laboratory at Rockefeller University, said.
The Selectric II had a Dual Pitch option to allow it to be switched (with a lever at the top left of the "carriage") between 10 and 12 characters per inch, whereas the Selectric I had one fixed "pitch".
The Selectric II had a lever (at the top left of the "carriage") that allowed characters to be shifted up to a half space to the left (for inserting a word one character longer or shorter in place of a deleted mistake), whereas the Selectric I did not.
If John Kerry was elected president, Mr. Cheney warned the crowd, "the danger is that we'll get hit again." In a long, rather rambling statement, he said the United States might then fall back into a "pre-9/11 mind-set" that "these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts."
At the very best, Mr. Cheney was speaking loosely and carelessly about the area in this campaign that deserves the most careful and serious discussion. It sounds to us more likely that he stepped across a line that the Bush campaign team had flirted with throughout its convention, telling his audience that re-electing the president would be the only way to stay safe from another attack.
There is a danger that we'll be hit again no matter who is elected president this November, as President Bush himself has said on many occasions. The danger might be a bit less if the current administration had chosen to spend less on tax cuts for the wealthy and more on protecting our ports, securing nuclear materials in Russia and establishing an enforceable immigration policy that would keep better track of people who enter the country from abroad.
The release of the documents came as a new Democratic group, Texas for Truth, said it would start running a television commercial this week questioning Mr. Bush's National Guard attendance. The commercial features Bob Mintz, a lieutenant colonel in the Alabama Air National Guard, who served at a Montgomery, Ala., base and says that he never saw Mr. Bush there, even though he was actively looking for him.
On Tuesday night, the White House put the blame on the Pentagon for the belated release of the newly unearthed documents.
The latest National Guard records do not place Mr. Bush in Alabama during the time in dispute. But they do show that Mr. Bush ranked 22nd out of class of 53 pilots when he finished his flight training at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia in 1969.
The Associated Press reported that the records also show that Mr. Bush's last flight was in April 1972, which would be consistent with previously released pay records showing that Mr. Bush had a lapse of Guard duty between April and October of that year.
...Bush claims that in the fall of 1972, he fulfilled his Air National Guard duties at a base in Alabama. But Bob Mintz was there - and he is sure Mr. Bush wasn't...
Mr. Bush signed up in May 1968 for a six-year commitment, justifying the $1 million investment in training him as a pilot. But after less than two years, Mr. Bush abruptly stopped flying, didn't show up for his physical and asked to transfer to Alabama. He never again flew a military plane.
Mr. Bush insists that after moving to Alabama in 1972, he served out his obligation at Dannelly Air National Guard Base in Montgomery (although he says he doesn't remember what he did there). The only officer there who recalls Mr. Bush was produced by the White House - he remembers Mr. Bush vividly, but at times when even Mr. Bush acknowledges he wasn't there.
In contrast, Mr. Mintz is a compelling witness. Describing himself as "a very strong military man," he served in the military from 1959 to 1984. A commercial pilot, he is now a Democrat but was a Republican for most of his life, and he is not a Bush-hater. When I asked him whether the National Guard controversy raises questions about Mr. Bush's credibility, Mr. Mintz said only, "That's up to the American people to decide."
As American military deaths in Iraq operations surpassed the 1,000 mark, top Pentagon officials said Tuesday that insurgents controlled important parts of central Iraq and that it was unclear when American and Iraqi forces would be able to secure those areas. ...Their comments, which came after a two-day spike in violence in Iraq led to a surge in American military deaths, represented an acknowledgment that the Americans had failed to end an increasingly sophisticated insurgency in important Sunni-dominated areas and in certain Shiite enclaves. Fighting raged on Tuesday in Sadr City, in Baghdad, as Shiite militiamen loyal to Moktada al-Sadr ended a self-declared cease-fire. [Page A14.]
The officials' assessment also underscored the difficulty of pacifying Iraq in time for elections scheduled for January. The cities of greatest rebel control are Ramadi, Falluja, Baquba and Samarra, in the so-called Sunni triangle, west and north of Baghdad, where Saddam Hussein remains popular and many forces loyal to him have gathered strength.
There is increasing concern in the administration over plans for the election, with some officials saying that if significant parts of the Sunni areas cannot be secured by January, it may be impossible to hold a nationwide balloting that would be seen as legitimate. Putting off the elections, though, would infuriate Iraq's Shiite majority. The elections are for an assembly that is to write a new constitution next year. Mr. Rumsfeld warned that the violence would intensify as elections approached.
Mr. Rumsfeld said that Prime Minister Ayad Allawi recognized that his government could not continue to allow rebel control in crucial areas of the country, but that it would take time for him to determine how to proceed.
FBI counterintelligence investigators have in recent weeks questioned current and former U.S. officials about whether a small group of Iran specialists at the Pentagon and in Vice President Cheney's office may have been involved in passing classified information to an Iraqi politician or a U.S. lobbying group allied with Israel, according to sources familiar with or involved in the case...
The investigators have asked questions about personnel in the office of Pentagon Undersecretary for Policy Douglas J. Feith as well as members of the influential Defense Policy Board, an advisory panel for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, according to former U.S. officials who have been questioned and others familiar with the case.
Investigators have specifically asked about a group of neoconservatives involved in defense issues, including Feith, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, Iraq and Iran specialist Harold Rhode and others at the Pentagon. FBI agents also have asked current and former officials about Richard Perle of the defense board and David Wurmser, an Iran specialist and principal deputy assistant for national security affairs in Cheney's office, according to sources familiar with or involved in the case...
The officials whose names came up during questioning have strong ties to Israel. They also share a long-standing position on Iran and other radical regimes. Wurmser, Feith and Perle were co-authors of a 1996 policy paper for then-Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu titled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." It called for removing Hussein from power in Iraq as part of a broad strategy to transform the region and remove radical regimes.
"After almost three years of recovery, our job market is still too weak to broadly distribute the benefits of the growing economy. Unemployment is essentially unchanged, job growth has stalled, and real wages have started to fall behind inflation. Today's picture is a stark contrast to the full employment period before the recession, when the tight labor market ensured that the benefits of growth were broadly shared.
"Prolonged weakness in the labor market has left the nation with over a million fewer jobs than when the recession began. This is a worse position, in terms of recouping lost jobs, than any business cycle since the 1930's."
What is happening is nothing less than a deterioration in the standard of living in the United States. Despite the statistical growth in the economy, the continued slack in the labor market has resulted in declining real wages for anxious American workers and a marked deterioration in job quality.
From 2000 through 2003 the median household income fell by $1,500 (in 2003 dollars) - a significant 3.4 percent decrease. That information becomes startling when you consider that during the same period there was a strong 12 percent increase in productivity among U.S. workers. Economists will tell you that productivity increases go hand-in-hand with increases in the standard of living. But not this time. Here we have a 3.4 percent loss in real income juxtaposed with a big jump in productivity.
The Justice Department has asked an appellate court to keep its arguments secret for a case in which privacy advocate John Gilmore is challenging federal requirements to show identification before boarding an airplane.
A federal statute and other regulations "prohibit the disclosure of sensitive security information, and that is precisely what is alleged to be at issue here," the government said in court papers filed Friday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. Disclosing the restricted information "would be detrimental to the security of transportation," the government wrote.
Attorneys for Gilmore, a San Franciscan who co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the civil liberties group does not accept the government's argument and that its latest request raises more questions.
"We're dealing with the government's review of a secret law that now they want a secret judicial review for," one of Gilmore's attorneys, James Harrison, said in a telephone interview Sunday. "This administration's use of a secret law is more dangerous to the security of the nation than any external threat."
Gilmore first sued the government and several airlines in July 2002 after airline agents refused to let him board planes in San Francisco and Oakland without first showing an ID or submitting to a more intense search. He claimed in his lawsuit the ID requirement was vague and ineffective and violated his constitutional protections against illegal searches and seizures.
"Let me tell you in no uncertain terms what makes someone unfit for office and unfit for duty," Mr. Kerry said, turning to Mr. Bush. "Misleading our nation into war in Iraq makes you unfit to lead our country. Doing nothing while this nation loses millions of jobs makes you unfit to lead this country. Letting 45 million Americans go without health care for four years makes you unfit to lead this country.
"Letting the Saudi royal family control the price of oil for Americans makes you unfit to lead this country. Handing out billions of dollars in government contracts without a bid to Halliburton while you're still on the payroll makes you unfit lead this country.
"That, my friends, is the record of George Bush and Dick Cheney - and that only begins to scratch the surface."
A Bush campaign spokesman, Steve Schmidt, called the remarks "another example of John Kerry's trying to divide America over the past."
"The demonstrators, she added, need to show respect for the democratic process "because once they lose that respect and they create chaos, then we have problems with our elections and it's very disruptive."
Bai Macfarlane says she and her husband had a legally binding agreement to seek help before they ended their marriage.
When Catholic couples get married, they make a verbal agreement to follow the laws of the church before getting a divorce. When Macfarlane's husband left, she said, he broke that agreement....
"It resulted in this defense that essentially there's a de facto prenuptial agreement when two people marry within the church," said Macfarlane's friend, Judy Parejko, a marriage advocate.
Macfarlane is asking the judge to remand the case to the Catholic Church for counseling. In the process, she's hoping to make it harder for any couple to divorce, according to her attorney, Robert Lynch.
"In theory, it applies to every marriage where you promise," Lynch said. "A promise is a promise."
"For it has been said so truthfully," said Miller, "that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest."
The main falsehood, we have gone over before (click here for the details), but it keeps getting repeated, so here we go again: It is the claim that John Kerry, during his 20 years in the Senate, voted to kill the M-1 tank, the Apache helicopter; the F-14, F-16, and F-18 jet fighters; and just about every other weapon system that has kept our nation free and strong.
Here, one more time, is the truth of the matter: Kerry did not vote to kill these weapons, in part because none of these weapons ever came up for a vote, either on the Senate floor or in any of Kerry's committees.
This myth took hold last February in a press release put out by the RNC. Those who bothered to look up the fine-print footnotes discovered that they referred to votes on two defense appropriations bills, one in 1990, the other in 1995. Kerry voted against both bills, as did 15 other senators, including five Republicans. The RNC took those bills, cherry-picked some of the weapons systems contained therein, and implied that Kerry voted against those weapons. By the same logic, they could have claimed that Kerry voted to disband the entire U.S. armed forces; but that would have raised suspicions and thus compelled more reporters to read the document more closely.
What makes this dishonesty not merely a lie, but a damned lie, is that back when Kerry cast these votes, Dick Cheney—who was the secretary of defense for George W. Bush's father—was truly slashing the military budget. Here was Secretary Cheney, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 31, 1992:
Overall, since I've been Secretary, we will have taken the five-year defense program down by well over $300 billion. That's the peace dividend. … And now we're adding to that another $50 billion … of so-called peace dividend.
Cheney then lit into the Democratic-controlled Congress for not cutting weapons systems enough:
Congress has let me cancel a few programs. But you've squabbled and sometimes bickered and horse-traded and ended up forcing me to spend money on weapons that don't fill a vital need in these times of tight budgets and new requirements. … You've directed me to buy more M1s, F14s, and F16s—all great systems … but we have enough of them.
"He talks about leading a more sensitive war on terror, as though Al Qaeda will be impressed with our softer side,'' Mr. Cheney said of Mr. Kerry, speaking in a somber tone to a crowd that interrupted him with shouts of "U.S.A." as he recalled the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
"He declared at the Democratic Convention that he will forcefully defend America -- after we have been attacked,'' Mr. Cheney continued.
"At the same time young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of a Democrat's manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief,'' Mr. Miller said, staring sternly across the hall. "What has happened to the party I've spent my life working in?"
Mr. Kerry, breaking from a tradition in which opposing candidates strike a low profile during nominating conventions, flew from his vacation home in Nantucket to Nashville to tell veterans that "extremism has gained momentum" across the globe under Mr. Bush's policies.
Out of nowhere, he began to attack my movie, Fahrenheit 9/11, calling me a "disingenuous filmmaker." The problem is, he hasn't seen the movie, a fact he later admitted to Chris Matthews on MSNBC....
He claimed that I portrayed Saddam's Iraq as an "oasis of peace."
Some of the 20 million who have seen the film must have wondered, "Did I miss that scene? I knew I shouldn't have gone out for those Goobers." All I can imagine McCain was referring to was a brief cutaway just as President Bush announces the commencement of the bombing of Baghdad on March 19, 2003.
Human-rights groups say thousands of civilians were killed because of our bombing. I thought it would be worthwhile to show some of the faces of Iraqi people who might
Maybe I'll call up McCain and treat him to a movie down the block, one I know he will enjoy, considering he agreed that I was right when Chris Matthews said a main point of my movie is that "war is often fought by people without power."
