Fact Check Disputes Bush Attack re Terrorism a Nuisance
Factcheck.org responded today to the misquotation of John Kerry's position on terrorism:
Terrorism a Nuisance?
A Republican party ad appeared this week inviting viewers to think Kerry considers terrorism a "nuisance" and suggests he's too "weak."
The image on screen shows a picture of Kerry with the words: "Terrorists are a nuisance. . . like gambling and prostitution."
But Kerry never said he considered terrorism to be a nuisance, he said Americans would feel safe once terrorism was reduced to a nuisance. (The announcer correctly paraphrases Kerry as saying "we have to get back" to such a condition, but the visual images in the ad will overpower the announcer's spoken words for many, and the announcer goes on as though Kerry actually had said terrorism isn't much of a threat at present.)
Kerry's words are taken from a New York Times Magazine interview published Oct. 10. When asked what it would take to make Americans feel safe again, Kerry actually said this:
Kerry: We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance. . . As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life.
That's actually not much different from what Bush himself said Aug. 30 on the NBC Today Show:
Q: Do you really think we can win this war of terror--on terror, for example, in the next four years?
Bush: I have never said we can win it in four years.
Q: No, I'm just saying, can we win it? Do you see that?
Bush: I don't--I don't think you can win it, but I think you can create conditions so that the--those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world, let's put it that way.
Both men were attacked by partisan opponents for expressing these sentiments, and have since grown less candid about the prospects for eradicating terrorism entirely. Both have hardened their words. Bush says he will "win" the war on terror. Kerry says he "will kill the terrorists."
posted by Ron Chusid at 1:42 PM
1 Comments:
Save America: Vote for Kerry/Edwards
I am sending this message to some of the many social and professional friends and acquaintances with whom I have been privileged to share thoughts in the past couple of years about the need to elect a new president. I send it to urge that you vote for Kerry and encourage your friends to do so.
I address this appeal primarily to my Republican friends and ask that they fairly consider the appeal. The proof and support for the opinions I list below are detailed and thoroughly documented in the Bibliography attached to this message. For each reason to vote for Kerry/Edwards, I refer first and foremost to what Republican authors have written about the failings of this administration. Also please note the most recent prominent Republican to announce his support for Kerry – President Eisnhower’s son, John Eisenhower. (See The Union Leader Sunday News, October 11, 2004.) John Kerry is a good and honest man, well-qualified and desperately needed, to deal with the numerous international and domestic crises we now face.
I have tried to limit the number of reasons to vote for Kerry and to limit the support for each reason, relying instead on the Bibliography as primary support.
Some Compelling Arguments for Kerry/Edwards
In my humble opinion, there are many reasons to vote for Kerry. I have chosen the following eight as among the most important.
1. “War on Terrorism:” All Americans share the view that we must find and eliminate those who attacked us on 9/11 and would attack us again. The American people deserved a thoughtful analysis of the problem and a plan to solve it. We would learn later from Bush’s Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill, that Bush disdains engaging in a process to define and solve problems and instead says that he relies on his “gut.” Therefore, instead of a thoughtful study of the problem, we got his “gut reaction.” He was right in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the other policies he has implemented to deal with the problem have not only been wrong but have made the problem much worse.
The problem is that Middle East Muslims do not want us on their sacred soil. That is not an unreasonable position. But our over-reliance on oil requires that we be there. If we are to continue a policy of greed of the oil industry and the undisciplined consumption of oil by the public, we will have to control the entire Middle East. Republican Clyde Prestowitz, author of Rogue Nation, summarized this point perfectly:
“ . . . (T)he U.S. trade deficit and the current value
of the dollar may not be sustainable under the pressure from
. . . oil import levels . . . forecast for 2012. All this of course
is not to mention the environmental consequences of burning
all that oil. So America faces a choice. To do nothing is to
choose higher trade deficits and . . . greater economic and
strategic dependence. To balance this, we will have to . . .
increase our military power . . . . Down this road lies further
entanglement in various jihads, confrontation with Islam,
and sticky involvement in the court politics of the Saudi
royal family.” (Page 106.)
Soon after 9/11, Rumsfeld complained that, in order to convince the American public that the Bush Administration was tough on terrorism, we needed targets more dramatic than were available in Afghanistan. So this Administration turned to Iraq for the dramatic targets – a nation we know hated us, but one which was relatively helpless and incapable of hurting us. The Iraq target policy allowed the Bush people both to make a point about our resolution and at the same time advance corporate fortunes and oil industry interests.
It is clear that Bush was wrong about Iraq. There was no connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. Iraq did not have any weapons of mass destruction or the ability to produce them. We have violated three hundred years of international law to attack a country which posed no immediate, imminent, or gathering threat to us. In doing so, we have turned most of the free world and probably the entire Muslim world against us. Bush’s Iraq policy has also created a thriving terrorist sanctuary which did not exist before. Recent news reports that there is now a growing chemical and biological threat from the insurgents which did not exist before this attack on Iraq, a threat which did not exist before but which Bush created (N.Y. Times, October 7 or 8, 2004.) Bush has diverted our attention from the real target (Al Quaeda) and has created a sinister environment which is a real threat where there was none before. (See Clarke, Against All Enemies, and Buchanan, Where the Right Went Wrong.”) Bush refuses to admit he was wrong and therefore refuses to adapt.
The most comprehensive support for these observations comes from lifetime Republican Clyde Prestowitz’s book, Rogue Nation, in which the author chronicles how Bush arrogantly offended our allies before 9/11, then rubbed it in afterward, all for the sake of oil. Republican Kevin Phillips’s American Dynasty exposes three generations of corruption and cronyism in the Bush family (Phillips’s words). Republican Woodward’s books, Bush at War (Afghanistan) and Plan of Attack (Iraq) are also compelling support for this conclusion. O’Neill’s Price of Loyalty shows that Bush was waiting for an excuse to invade Iraq. See also the commentary by John Eisenhower published October 11, 2004, in the New Hampshire Union Leader.
Perhaps most importantly among Republican critics, see Where the Right Went Wrong, by Pat Buchanan, a lifetime extremely conservative Republican. Specifically, at page 104, Buchanan writes:
(Having executed the 9/11 horror), “Bin Laden cannot be
such a fool as to believe America would not wield the ‘terrible
swift sword’ of retribution. His act of terror was designed
to provoke America into a blind rage, and his act of terror
may have succeeded beyond his wildest expectations –
in Iraq.” (Ital. added.)
(All of the Democrat authors who discuss Terrorism or Iraq support these Republican views. So did most of the knowledgeable military/personnel/experts who counseled against the invasion at least as it was planned. Perhaps the most consistent Democrat critic from the earliest time is Paul Krugman, whose editorials on this and other subjects are collected in Unraveling of America. Unger’s House of Bush/House of Saud is the best single source for the fact that all this madness has been driven by oil interests and the personal fortunes of the Bush family.)
2. Isolationism: Even before 9/11, soon after he took office, Bush began to withdraw the United States from many of the most important international treaties and conventions. These treaties and conventions all dealt with the health and safety of people throughout the world. Rejecting the Kyoto protocol and the ABM treaty got the most publicity. However, he also withdrew from treaties to control the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons, because, he said, the treaty would interfere with the American pharmaceutical industry. According to Prestowitz, he also took us out of Conventions to prevent torture of prisoners, to prevent all forms of discrimination against women, and to protect children’s rights. He also refused to allow US participation in and support for the International Criminal Court. Republican Clyde Prestowitz develops a compelling argument that such isolation is not in the best interests of our country.
After 9/11, the isolation became even more extreme when the Administration refused to negotiate with the UN or our most powerful traditional European allies, like France and Germany. At the time of the Gulf War in 1991, Bush’s father organized a strong coalition including virtually all major world powers and many from the Muslim world. By contrast, the invasion of Iraq was undertaken with Britain, Poland, and a handful of small nations. The result has been that we are paying for 90% or more of the fiscal cost and, more importantly, 90% or more of the human cost of this war.
3. The destruction of the economy: The simple and irrefutable point is that Bush took over a huge surplus which had painstakingly been recovered following twelve years of Reagan and George H. W. Bush and turned it into an enormous deficit. (On the occasion of the second tax cut, Cheney said: “Deficits do not matter.” (Washington Post) The suggestion that Bush inherited a recession is simply false. The Congressional Budget Office documented that the recession did not start until March, 2001.
The extremely important Republican support for this conclusion on the economy is in the Price of Loyalty, by Suskind, writing for Paul O’Neill, Bush’s Treasury Secretary. Kevin Phillips is a lifetime Republican historian and economist. He supports this conclusion in Wealth and Democracy, and indeed exposes the really insidious design of the Bush administration to re-distribute the wealth of the nation toward a two class society – the extremely rich, and the rest of us! Once again, no less a lifetime Republican than Buchanan agrees with the view expressed in this message (See Chapter Seven of Where the Right Went Wrong.) See also John Eisenhower’s commentary published in the New Hampshire Union Leader on October 11, 2004.
All the Democrat authors who address the issue of the economy also support this conclusion. Krugman is again among the most articulate.
4. Health care: Health care during the Bush Administration has also gotten much worse. He has overseen millions of people lose their health care coverage. For those of us who have it, costs have increased by 64%. Bush did push through a prescription drug bill which will not go into effect until 2006. The true cost of this bill was concealed by the Administration from the Congress by many billions. News reports said that many fiscally responsible Republicans were outraged. In the article “Health Care’s Big Choice,” in The American Prospect, October 2004, the author reviews the Kerry plan and concludesthat it can, because it will be funded by the roll back of the tax cut to the wealthy.
5. Jobs: Globalization has challenged us with how the American working class, the heart and soul of America, the ones who pay the taxes, are to survive. There are two strong reasons here to replace Bush with Kerry: (a) Bush is repeating entirely false statements about the jobs outlook, such as not acknowledging nearly one million jobs which have been lost during his Administration. Bush cannot deny this. Instead he points out the new jobs which have been created over the last thirteen months. However, he does not acknowledge that the rate of this job growth does not even keep up with population growth, much less reverse the unprecedented job loss. Also, these “new” jobs also pay an average of $9,000 less per year than the ones that have been lost, with the result that the nationwide median income is declining. (b) Second, Bush has no solution except the failed “trickle down theory,” which did not work with Hoover, has never worked since, and is not working now. Kerry has a good and workable plan which Bush does not effectively refute. Kerry’s plan includes closing loopholes which allow American businesses to ship their jobs overseas and avoid taxes. Correcting this singular problem benefits us in two important related ways: It brings in tax revenue which should be paid; and it creates jobs for the jobless (who, incidentally, can then pay taxes).
Primary Republican verification for this Bush failure on jobs includes Buchanan, O’Neill, and Phillips. Remarkably, although Prestowitz addresses mainly international relations, he also defines the economic problem accurately. All of the Democrat authors who address the issue agree with these Republican authors, but Krugman is again the most consistent, insightful, and detailed Democrat, speaking consistently over a long period of time.
6. The Environment: This is perhaps the biggest tragedy of all. The Nixon administration with near unanimous bipartisan support initiated comprehensive plans and laws to preserve the environment. Reagan advocated against regulation of polluters, but even he backed off after Watts was gone and seemed to respect the irrefutable fact that rampant pollution directly causes serious human illness and death.
From nearly the first day of his Administration, Bush has presided over deliberate and relentless dismantling of almost every conceivable environmental protection. He rewards his donors who argue they cannot compete and do business without polluting the air, water, and land. The administration is almost always sneaky about it, issuing deadly regulations late on Friday afternoons before the weekends. Sometimes they are brazen about it – for example pulling out of Kyoto, denying the science of the last thirty years proving the inexorable damage to the planet from global warming. Sometimes their policies are juvenile and spiteful: If Clinton supported it, Bush will reject it automatically. The Administration’s stated desire to drill in the Arctic Wildlife Reserve is particularly offensive since it is well known there is not enough oil there to accomplish anything anywhere near approaching oil independence.
I have not found a current Republican author on the environment. However, life- time republican Russell Train, author of Politics, Pollution, and Pandas, was the original EPA administrator under Nixon. He laments the undermining of environmental regulations he was instrumental in developing. He sends a powerful and respected message from the Republicans that we are on a path to ruin the environment. Part of that message is that “voluntary” efforts by industry will not work. Bush should know he is right: Voluntary efforts did not work in Texas, and they are not working nationally. Once again, Prestowitzr notes the adverse impact on the environment of a national policy encouraging unrestricted oil consumption and discouraging conservation.
From the Democrats, RFK Jr’s Crimes Against Nature is a powerful and no-holds-barred summary of some of the worst of the destruction. See also September 2004 issue of the Sierra Club Magazine in which it enumerates the relentless, destructive executive orders and regulatory practices that Bush has initiated and pursued. I am unaware of any respected or qualified person who has even tried to excuse this criminal assault on the environment. I would appreciate anyone advising me if there is someone out there purporting to do so.
7. Judicial appointments: The power to appoint a Supreme Court Justice is an awesome power with enormous long term consequences. The next President will likely appoint at least two and perhaps as many as four new Justices who could profoundly change our way of life. Bush’s record of lower court nominations and his announced intention about the kind of Justice he would appoint are cause for major concern. Three appointments would be “enough (for Bush) to forge a new majority” that would mark a sea change in the law of the land. (“Imagining America if George Bush Chose the Supreme Court,” Adam Cohen, NY Times October 18, 2004.)
There are two appointments Bush has made at the Circuit Court level who have demonstrated a willingness to follow extreme policy. He nominated Jay Bybee, author of a Justice Department memo justifying the use of torture as an interrogation technique, and Bybee was approved and now sits as a Circuit Court judge. Similarly, he nominated J. Leon Holmes, a federal judge in Arkansas, who has written that wives must be subordinate to their husbands and has compared abortion rights activists to Nazis. ( “John Kerry for President,” NY Times October 17, 2004.)
As for future appointments, Bush has made clear the kind of Justice he has in mind. In the last campaign, he identified Scalia and Thomas as his favorite Justices. Two more like these two Justices would create a majority who would impose the Scalia-Thomas world view into the law of the land for decades. Scalia and Thomas have consistently made their views known: They have urged the reversal of Roe v. Wade, with the result that 30 states, home to more than 70 million women, would outlaw abortions within a year. They dissented from Supreme Court rulings upholding the University of Michigan’s affirmative-action program; striking down Texas’s “Homosexual Conduct” law; finding a constitutional right to appeal the termination of parental rights regardless of ability to pay the appellate court fee; and holding that Tennessee violated the ADA by not providing an accessible courtroom to a wheelchair bound man who refused to crawl or be carried to a second-floor court appearance. (See Cohen editorial cited above.)
8. Characteristics of Bush’s leadership style: John Kerry presents an appealing and contrasting choice to Bush when it comes to Bush’s detached, ideological leadership style. Kerry has proven himself to be a qualified and honorable public servant, with years of principled and ethical conduct as his record. Please contrast with the Bush record, alphabetically, in no particular order of priority, but each amounting to impeachable misconduct. There is some necessary overlap here.
a. Corrupt: There is no other word for the Halliburton giveaway. How do you feel about paying taxes and having the money go directly to Halliburton on a no-bid contract for billions? This is worse than Harding’s Teapot Dome scandal. Primary supporting authority for this point is the daily news. See also RFK’s Crimes Against Nature which details the giving away of America to the energy industry. See also Cheney’s Energy Report, if you can find one. (Interestingly, I have a copy we printed off the internet within a few days of its publication. A few weeks later, I began efforts to get a hard copy. We have not been able to get one.) This President is following in family footsteps of “cronyism.” (Phillips’s word. See Phillips’s American Dynasty.)
b. Irresponsible: Bush in his own words admits that “When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible.” He has lived a life of irresponsibility for his continuous mistakes. He broke the law in the Harkin oil deal and was excused because of the political power of his family. He abused the law of eminent domain and built the Texas Rangers stadium with public money. He purported to endorse the Vietnam War but pulled strings to get an assignment designed to ensure he would not serve; then he failed to qualify for the Air National Guard but was accepted anyway through favoritism; then he failed to serve and cheated to get out of the Guard; and he has lied about it and covered it up ever since. Then he attacks Kerry? We all need to re-read Orwell’s 1984.
c. Megalomaniacal: Bush likes being “the President” because he can do whatever he wants to do and does not have to answer to anyone. See Woodward, Bush at War, pages 145-6. (As president, I do not have to answer to anyone!) He has actually said that “It would be easier being in a dictatorship, as long as I was dictator.” Why should he not just do whatever he wants, regardless of the rules? It has always worked for him – at Harkin, with the Texas Rangers, with avoiding Vietnam combat, and now with the presidency. In the second debate, it was most revealing that he disregarded even the rules of the debate – once again with no accountability. The way to bring him to account is to return a Kerry landslide on November 2, 2004. (See “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush”, by Ron Suskind, New York Times Magazine, October 17, 2004, in which the author warns us of much worse to come.)
d. Messianic: As scary as the other problems with his character are, this is a really dangerous one. He is eroding the separation of church and state. He views himself as chosen by Jesus to fight the war he purports to perceive against “the evil-doers.” There is much documentation even in the Bush-supporting mainstream media concerning his governance as a Christian. See also Prestowitz and Woodward’s Bush at War. See also Molly Ivins, Bushwhacked, at Chapter 13, in which she exposes the failures of “Faith Based” charities in Texas. How do you like paying taxes so that Bush can give the money to “Faith Based” charities. How confident do you feel that this Supreme Court will stand up for the separation of Church and State? (Much worse to come if Bush is elected. Suskind’s article.)
e. Mendacious: The misstatements are so numerous and blatant it boggles the mind to try to keep track. Here I refer the readers to Republican Brock, who confesses to participating in the lies (Blinded by the Right) and describes the process in Republican Noise Machine and to the numerous Democrat authors on the Bibliography. Note that Brock and the Democrats detail and document a massive pattern of lying about virtually everything, and they support their conclusions with solid research. I am not aware of any respectable defense of this point. Please let me know if I have missed a sober and intellectually honest attempt to defend the lying. So how can we elect someone we know constantly misstates and distorts?
He was supported in all his policies by the Fox news organization, which uncritically disseminated and continues to disseminate the Administration’s representations about what is going on and its toxic defamation of those who have dared to disagree with him. The legitimate “fourth estate” also accepted and continues to accept what the Administration claims on various issues. The failure of traditional main stream media to engage in any critical cross-examination of the Bush Administration has been a mystery to me. On Sunday October 17, 2004, Frank Rich of the NY Times writes that the problem may well be intimidation by the Bush Administration. (See “Will We Need a New ‘All the President’s Men’?, Frank Rich, NY Times, Arts & Leisure, October 17, 2004. Mister Rich points out that Sinclair Broadcasting is a major contributor to Bush with lots to gain from a second Bush term. Sinclair has decided to pre-empt regular programming and broadcast as “news” a special which “trashes Mr. Kerry along the lines of the Swift Boat Veterans . . . .”) Thank for the courage of Frank Rich, and of the Republican authors whose books are listed in the bibliography who have courageously told their stories.
f. Secretive: This Administration is unique in its pattern of secrecy, concealment, and misrepresentation: Cheney’s planned giveaway of our natural resources o the energy industry donors who contributed the most; concealing the true cost of the Medicare legislation; concealing the destruction of the environment, sometimes with Orwellian language (Clear Air Act and Healthy Forests Initiative); and much more. The single most authoritative source on this is Republican counsel to Nixon, John Dean’s Worse than Watergate. His central theme is that Bush and company conceal multiple matters of material importance which the public has a clear right to know.
h. Unstable: Of all the materials collected in the Bibliography, none is more frightening than Bush on the Couch, which appears to be the work of a respected psychiatrist who makes a strong case that we may well have a major instability problem with the most powerful person in the world.
i. Vindictive: On top of all the foregoing, it turns out that this Administration is vindictive. Bush on the Couch explains why. There are many examples, but perhaps the most important example is still playing out – feloniously endangering the life of Valerie Plame – because her husband had the audacity in this democracy to expose a major lie Bush personally told the nation about Iraq’s alleged attempt to acquire yellow cake. See Wilson, Politics of Truth.
Conclusion
I thank my friends and acquaintances, especially my Republican friends and acquaintances, for considering these points. To the extent some of you may want to independently assess some of the authorities upon which I rely, I recommend Republican John Dean’s Worse than Watergate; Republican Prestowitz’s Rogue Nation; Democrat RFK’s Crimes Against America; and Democrat Robert Byrd’s Losing America. Krugman is always informative on a wide range of issues. His book is organized by subject matter.
I hope that those of you who agree with me will send this message and the Bibliography on to everyone you know, especially anyone you know in the battleground states. Adopt it as your own if you want to. Also, please encourage a Kerry vote especially from women and young people who ought to be especially concerned at the prospect of a bankrupt economy and a war without end.
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