How many lies will it take for the people, our nation to see whats happening, how many must die, how many of our libertys must be stached away. Has anyone even noticed how when he gets caught with his pants down the media and the GOP seem to rally round, wave the flag and point there fingers at eveything and eveyyone but him and his cronies. What nerer fails to just make me mad as hell is the fact that these same clowns jumped up and down on the sopeboxs, spent 50 millon tax payer dollars to get a man for getting some on the side, and here's an a**hold who has cost countless lifes to be loss while lying out his a** the hold time. He was not elected the first time around, and on the second round his buddys made sure he would not lose ( you know the guys that own the machines ), so people I say this we elected people to go to DC to watch out for ( WE THE PEOPLE ) and I think it's time they ( DO THE JOB THEY WERE HIRED TO DO ).


Coast Guard Sounded Alarms Over Dubai Ports Deal

At today’s White House press briefing, Scott McClellan sought to assure the American public that the UAE’s ties to terrorism had been addressed prior to the ports deal:
This was a transaction that was closely scrutinized by national security experts who are involved in these decisions and by our intelligence community. The intelligence community provided an assessment. The Department of Homeland Security also worked to make sure any national security concerns were addressed, by entering into an agreement with the company and requiring some additional security assurances before it moved forward. But this was a consensus of all the relevant departments and agencies — there are some 12 altogether — that are part of that Committee on Foreign Investment.
But Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) today released an unclassified version of a document showing that the U.S. Coast Guard — located in the Department of Homeland Security — “cautioned the Bush administration that it was unable to determine whether a United Arab Emirates-owned company might support terrorist operations.” From the document:
There are many intelligence gaps, concerning the potential for DPW or P&O assets to support terrorist operations, that precludes an overall threat assessment of the potential merger. … The breadth of the intelligence gaps also infer potential unknown threats against a large number of potential vulnerabilities.
The Bush administration’s defense of the deal continues to unravel.
UPDATE: Here is the Coast Guard memo.
UPDATE: VIDEO
Watch it:



March 2, 2006
Video Shows Bush Warned Before Katrina Hit
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:30 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- On the eve of Hurricane Katrina's fateful landfall, President Bush was confident. His homeland security chief appeared relaxed. And warnings of the coming destruction -- breached or overrun levees, deaths at the New Orleans Superdome and overwhelming needs for post-storm rescues -- were delivered in dramatic terms to all involved. All of it was captured on videotape.
The Associated Press obtained the confidential government video and made it public Wednesday, offering Americans their own inside glimpse into the government's fateful final Katrina preparations after months of fingerpointing and political recriminations.
''My gut tells me ... this is a bad one and a big one,'' then-federal disaster chief Michael Brown told the final government-wide briefing the day before Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29.
The president didn't ask a single question during the briefing but assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: ''We are fully prepared.''
The footage -- along with seven days of transcripts of briefings obtained by AP -- show in excruciating detail that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, they were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster.
A top hurricane expert voiced ''grave concerns'' about the levees and Brown, then the Federal Emergency Management Agency chief, told the president and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that he feared there weren't enough disaster teams to help evacuees at the Superdome.
''I'm concerned about ... their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe,'' Brown told his bosses the afternoon before Katrina made landfall.
The White House and Homeland Security Department urged the public Wednesday not to read too much into the footage.
''I hope people don't draw conclusions from the president getting a single briefing,'' Bush spokesman Trent Duffy said, citing a variety of orders and disaster declarations Bush signed before the storm made landfall. ''He received multiple briefings from multiple officials, and he was completely engaged at all times.''
Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said his department would not release the full set of videotaped briefings, saying most transcripts -- though not the videotapes -- from the sessions were provided to congressional investigators months ago.
''There's nothing new or insightful on these tapes,'' Knocke said. ''We actively participated in the lessons-learned review and we continue to participate in the Senate's review and are working with them on their recommendation.''
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, a critic of the administration's Katrina response, had a different take after watching the footage from an AP reporter's camera.
''I have kind a sinking feeling in my gut right now,'' Nagin said. ''I was listening to what people were saying -- they didn't know, so therefore it was an issue of a learning curve. You know, from this tape it looks like everybody was fully aware.''
Some of the footage and transcripts from briefings Aug. 25-31 conflicts with the defenses that federal, state and local officials have made in trying to deflect blame and minimize the political fallout from the failed Katrina response:
-- Homeland Security officials have said the ''fog of war'' blinded them early on to the magnitude of the disaster. But the video and transcripts show federal and local officials discussed threats clearly, reviewed long-made plans and understood Katrina would wreak devastation of historic proportions. ''I'm sure it will be the top 10 or 15 when all is said and done,'' National Hurricane Center's Max Mayfield warned the day Katrina lashed the Gulf Coast.
''I don't buy the `fog of war' defense,'' Brown told the AP in an interview Wednesday. ''It was a fog of bureaucracy.''
-- Bush declared four days after the storm, ''I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees'' that gushed deadly flood waters into New Orleans. He later clarified, saying officials believed, wrongly, after the storm passed that the levees had survived. But the transcripts and video show there was plenty of talk about that possibility even before the storm -- and Bush was worried too.
White House deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Brown discussed fears of a levee breach the day the storm hit.
''I talked to the president twice today, once in Crawford and then again on Air Force One,'' Brown said. ''He's obviously watching the television a lot, and he had some questions about the Dome, he's asking questions about reports of breaches.''
-- Louisiana officials angrily blamed the federal government for not being prepared but the transcripts shows they were still praising FEMA as the storm roared toward the Gulf Coast and even two days afterward. ''I think a lot of the planning FEMA has done with us the past year has really paid off,'' Col. Jeff Smith, Louisiana's emergency preparedness deputy director, said during the Aug. 28 briefing.
It wasn't long before Smith and other state officials sounded overwhelmed.
''We appreciate everything that you all are doing for us, and all I would ask is that you realize that what's going on and the sense of urgency needs to be ratcheted up,'' Smith said Aug. 30.
Mississippi begged for more attention in that same briefing.
''We know that there are tens or hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana that need to be rescued, but we would just ask you, we desperately need to get our share of assets because we'll have people dying -- not because of water coming up, but because we can't get them medical treatment in our affected counties,'' said a Mississippi state official whose name was not mentioned on the tape.
Video footage of the Aug. 28 briefing, the final one before Katrina struck, showed an intense Brown voicing concerns from the government's disaster operation center and imploring colleagues to do whatever was necessary to help victims.
''Go ahead and do it,'' Brown said. ''I'll figure out some way to justify it. ... Just let them yell at me.''
Bush appeared from a narrow, windowless room at his vacation ranch in Texas, with his elbows on a table. Hagin was sitting alongside him.
''I want to assure the folks at the state level that we are fully prepared to not only help you during the storm, but we will move in whatever resources and assets we have at our disposal after the storm,'' the president said.
A relaxed Chertoff, sporting a polo shirt, weighed in from Washington at Homeland Security's operations center. He would later fly to Atlanta, outside of Katrina's reach, for a bird flu event. Officials say he was frequently updated on the road about Katrina.
One snippet captures a missed opportunity on Aug. 28 for the government to have dispatched active-duty military troops to the region to augment the National Guard.
Chertoff: ''Are there any DOD assets that might be available? Have we reached out to them?''
Brown: ''We have DOD assets over here at EOC (emergency operations center). They are fully engaged. And we are having those discussions with them now.''
Chertoff: ''Good job.''
In fact, active duty troops weren't dispatched until days after the storm. And many states' National Guards had yet to be deployed to the region despite offers of assistance, and it took days before the Pentagon deployed active-duty personnel to help overwhelmed Guardsmen.
The National Hurricane Center's Mayfield told the final briefing before Katrina struck that storm models predicted minimal flooding inside New Orleans during the hurricane but he expressed concerns that counterclockwise winds and storm surges afterward could cause the levees at Lake Pontchartrain to be overrun.
''I don't think any model can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not but that is obviously a very, very grave concern,'' Mayfield told the briefing.
Other officials expressed concerns about the large number of New Orleans residents who had not evacuated.
''They're not taking patients out of hospitals, taking prisoners out of prisons and they're leaving hotels open in downtown New Orleans. So I'm very concerned about that,'' Brown said.
Despite the concerns, it ultimately took days for search and rescue teams to reach some hospitals and nursing homes.
Brown also told colleagues one of his top concerns was whether evacuees who went to the New Orleans Superdome -- which became a symbol of the failed Katrina response -- would be safe and have adequate medical care.
''The Superdome is about 12 feet below sea level.... I don't know whether the roof is designed to stand, withstand a Category Five hurricane,'' he said.
Brown also wanted to know whether there were enough federal medical teams in place to treat evacuees and the dead in the Superdome.
''Not to be (missing) kind of gross here,'' Brown interjected, ''but I'm concerned'' about the medical and mortuary resources ''and their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe.''


Tuesday, February 28, 2006 Bush is still lying about Katrina
by John in DC - 2/28/2006 06:50:00 PM
Bush tells ABC News, in an interview to be broadcast on World News Tonight, Nightline and Good Morning America, that the problem with Hurricane Katrina was that the White House didn't have enough "situational awareness" of what was happening on the ground in New Orleans:
BUSH: Listen, here's the problem that happened in Katrina. There was no situational awareness, and that means that we weren't getting good, solid information from people who were on the ground, and we need to do a better job. One reason we weren't is because communications systems got wiped out, and in many cases we were relying upon the media, who happened to have better situational awareness than the government.That's a lie. The White House new the levies were breaking and did nothing about it. We now know that for a fact. In addition, Bush was on vacation and didn't get any substantial updates about the situation on the ground until Thursday and Friday of the week (the hurricane hit Monday morning). Bush CHOSE not to get updates about Katrina, he was ON VACATION and chose to STAY on vacation.And he wonders why he's at 34% in the polls. Because he's a liar who refuses to ever take responsibility for anything.Then we get this little tidbit about 9/11:
I thought, for example, the reaction to the 9/11 attack was a remarkable reaction, positively. When the terrorists attacked and destroy two buildings, there were rescue teams rushing in to save lives. There was a response by the city that was a coordinated response.Yes, the response from the city of New York was incredible, especially since you were in hiding the entire day up until 6:15PM that evening when you finally returned to the White House. And New York City's brave and effective response is a reflection on you how?More about Katrina. The big problem, according to Bush, is that the government didn't "comfort people." Comfort people? What, you mean like give em a hug?
VARGAS: When you look back on those days immediately following when Katrina struck, what moment do you think was the moment that you realized that the government was failing, especially the people of New Orleans?BUSH: When I saw TV reporters interviewing people who were screaming for help. It looked Â? the scenes looked chaotic and desperate. And I realized that our government was Â? could have done a better job of comforting people. The people of New Orleans didn't need comfort. They needed a helicopter to get them out of trapped buildings that had no food and water. Comfort them?Then Bush starts lying about Iraq:
And as you know, we've reduced troop levels this year, and that's because our commanders on the ground have said that the security situation in Iraq is improving because the Iraqis are more capable of taking the fight.That's another outright lie. US troops levels just went down to the levels they were at right before the elections two months ago, when we sent in additional troops to help keep the peace. We didn't reduce troop levels because things are going better, we simply withdrew the troops associated with the election.


Who's Counting Bush's Mistakes?
By Stephen Pizzo, News for Real. Posted February 20, 2006.

Given how ambitious and wide-ranging the incompetence of this administration has been, it's high time we started keeping track of its many failures.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best, "The louder he spoke of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons." And no administration in U.S. history has spoken louder, or as often, of its honor.
So let us count our spoons.
Emergency Management: They completely failed to manage the first large-scale emergency since 9/11. Despite all their big talk and hundreds of billions of dollars spent on homeland security over the past four years, this administration proved itself stunningly incompetent when faced with an actual emergency. (Katrina Relief Funds Squandered)
Fiscal Management: America is broke. No wait, we're worse than broke. In less than five years these borrow and spend-thrifts have nearly doubled our national debt, to a stunning $8.2 trillion. These are not your father's Republicans who treated public dollars as though they were an endangered species. These Republicans waste money in ways and in quantities that make those old tax and spend liberals of yore look like tight-fisted Scots.
This administration is so incompetent that you can just throw a dart at the front page of your morning paper and whatever story of importance it hits will prove my point.
Katrina relief: Eleven thousand spanking new mobile homes sinking into the Arkansas mud. Seems no one in the administration knew there were federal and state laws prohibiting trailers in flood zones. Oops. That little mistake cost you $850 million -- and counting.
Medicare Drug Program: This $50 billion white elephant debuted by trampling many of those it was supposed to save. The mess forced states to step in and try to save its own citizens from being killed by the administration's poorly planned and executed attempt to privatize huge hunks of the federal health safety net.
Afghanistan: Good managers know that in order to pocket the gains of a project, you have to finish it. This administration started out fine in Afghanistan. They had the Taliban and al Queda on the run and Osama bin Laden trapped in a box canyon. Then they were distracted by a nearby shiney object -- Iraq. We are now $75 billion out of pocket in Afghanistan and its sitting president still rules only within the confines of the nation's capital. Tribal warlords, the growing remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda call the shots in the rest of the county.
Iraq: This ill-begotten war was supposed to only cost us $65 billion. It has now cost us over $300 billion and continues to suck $6 billion a month out of our children's futures. Meanwhile the three warring tribes Bush "liberated" are using our money and soldiers' lives to partition the country. The Shiites and Kurds are carving out the prime cuts while treating the once-dominant Sunnis the same way the Israelis treat the Palestinians, forcing them onto Iraq's version of Death Valley. Meanwhile Iran is increasingly calling the shots in the Shiite region as mullahs loyal to Iran take charge. Iran: The administration not only jinxed its Afghanistan operations by attacking Iraq, but also provided Iran both the rationale for and time to move toward nuclear weapons. The Bush administration's neocons' threats to attack Syria next only provided more support for religious conservatives within Iran who argued U.S. intentions in the Middle East were clear, and that only the deterrent that comes with nuclear weapons could protect them.
North Korea: Ditto. Also add to all the above the example North Korea set for Iran. Clearly once a country possesses nukes, the U.S. drops the veiled threats and wants to talk.
Social Programs: It's easier to get affordable -- even free -- American-style medical care, paid for with American dollars, if you are injured in Iraq, Afghanistan or are victims of a Pakistani earthquake, than if you live and pay taxes in the good old U.S.A. Nearly 50 million Americans can't afford medical insurance. Nevertheless the administration has proposed a budget that will cut $40 billion from domestic social programs, including health care for the working poor. The administration is quick to say that those services will be replaced by its "faith-based" programs. Not so fast...
"Despite the Bush administration's rhetorical support for religious charities, the amount of direct federal grants to faith-based organizations declined from 2002 to 2004, according to a major new study released yesterday....The study released yesterday "is confirmation of the suspicion I've had all along, that what the faith-based initiative is really all about is de-funding social programs and dumping responsibility for the poor on the charitable sector," said Kay Guinane, director of the nonprofit advocacy program at OMB Watch.." The Military: Overused and over-deployed.
Former Defense Secretary William Perry and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright warned in a 15-page report that the Army and Marine Corps cannot sustain the current operational tempo without "doing real damage to their forces." ... Speaking at a news conference to release the study, Albright said she is "very troubled" the military will not be able to meet demands abroad. Perry warned that the strain, "if not relieved, can have highly corrosive and long-term effects on the military. With military budgets gutted by the spiraling costs of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the administration has requested funding for fewer National Guard troops in fiscal 2007 -- 17,000 fewer. Which boggles the sane mind since, if it weren't for reserve/National Guard, the administration would not have had enough troops to rotate forces in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Nearly 40 percent of the troops sent to those two countries were from the reserve and National Guard.
The Environment: Here's a little pop quiz: What happens if all the coral in the world's oceans dies? Answer: Coral is the first rung on the food-chain ladder; so when it goes, everything else in the ocean dies. And if the oceans die, we die.
The coral in the world's oceans are dying (called "bleaching") at an alarming and accelerating rate. Global warming is the culprit. Nevertheless, this administration continues as the world's leading global warming denier. Why? Because they seem to feel it's more cost effective to be dead than to force reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. How stupid is that? And time is running out.
Trade: We are approaching a $1 trillion annual trade deficit, most of it with Asia, $220 billion with just China -- just last year.
Energy: Record high energy prices. Record energy company profits. Dick Cheney's energy task force meetings remain secret. Need I say more?
Consumers: Americans finally did it last year -- they achieved a negative savings rate. (Folks in China save 10 percent, for contrast.) If the government can spend more than it makes and just say "charge it" when it runs out, so can we. The average American now owes $9,000 to credit card companies. Imagine that.
Human Rights: America now runs secret prisons and a secret judicial system that would give Kafka fits. And the U.S. has joined the list of nations that tortures prisioners of war. (Shut up George! We have pictures!)
I could go on for another 1,000 words listing the stunning incompetence of the Bush administration and its GOP sycophants in Congress. But what's the use? No seems to give a fig. The sun continues to shine in this fool's paradise. House starts were up in January. The stock market is finally back over 11,000.
But don't bother George W. Bush with any of this. While seldom right, he is never in doubt. Doubt is Bush's enemy. Worry? How can he worry when he has no doubts?
Me? Well, I worry about all the above, all the time. But in particular, I worry about coral.
Stephen Pizzo is the author of numerous books, including "Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans," which was nominated for a Pulitzer.


Bush's War on History
By Robert ParryMarch 1, 2006

“History will be on the ballot,” I wrote two days before Election 2000, though I didn’t comprehend how much the nation’s ability to know its recent past was weighing in the balance.
Indeed, declassification of records was not even a blip on the campaign’s radar screen, certainly nothing compared to the news media’s interest in Vice President Al Gore’s “earth-tone” clothing or Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s pledge to restore “honor and decency” to the White House.
But it’s now clear that government secrecy – covering both current events and historical ones – should have registered as a far more important election issue. Gore and Bush represented very different approaches toward the public’s right to know.
Toward the end of the Clinton-Gore administration, there had been a surge in the declassification of records that exposed the dark underbelly of the U.S. “victory” in the Cold War, records showing American knowledge and complicity in murder, torture and other crimes in places such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chile and Argentina.
A continuation of these historical disclosures under Gore might have given the American people a more balanced awareness of what had been done in their name in the four-decade-long struggle with the Soviet Union.
Under a newly applicable presidential records law, those documents would have included papers from Ronald Reagan’s presidency, documents that could have implicated Bush’s father, Vice President George H.W. Bush, in misjudgments and wrongdoing.
So, my story, “History on the Ballot” dated Nov. 5, 2000, predicted that a victory by George W. Bush and his running mate, Dick Cheney, would mean that the flow of records “could slow to a trickle or be stopped outright.”
Little did I know, however, that the reality would be even worse, that Bush would not only block the release of those documents but move aggressively to reclassify papers already released – and let the heirs of presidents and vice presidents continue the withholding of historic records long after the principals had died.
New Secrecy
One of Bush’s first acts after being inaugurated President on Jan. 20, 2001, was to stop the scheduled release of documents from the Reagan-Bush administration. Supposedly, the delay was to permit a fuller review of the papers, but that review was strung out through Bush’s first several months in office.
Then, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Bush began considering how to lock those records away from the public indefinitely. On Nov. 1, 2001, Bush issued Executive Order 13233, which effectively negated the 1978 Presidential Records Act by allowing presidents, vice presidents and their heirs the power to prevent many document releases.
The Watergate-era public-records law had declared that the records of presidents and vice presidents who took office after Jan. 20, 1981, would belong to the American people and would be released 12 years after a President left office, except for still sensitive papers, such as those needing protection because of national security or personal privacy.
Because of those time frames, a large volume of Reagan-Bush records were due for release to the public on Jan. 20, 2001.
Eight years earlier, the senior George Bush had tried to undercut the Presidential Records Act before leaving office. On Jan. 19, 1993, the day before Bill Clinton’s Inauguration, George H.W. Bush struck a deal with then-U.S. Archivist Don W. Wilson, granting Bush control over computerized records from his presidency, including the power to destroy computer tapes and hard drives.
Wilson then landed a job as director of the George Bush Center in Texas in what looked like a payoff for ceding control of the computerized records. In 1995, a federal judge struck down the Bush-Wilson agreement, in effect, resuming the countdown toward the first implementation of the Presidential Records Act in 2001.
Facing that deadline while taking the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2001, George W. Bush had his White House counsel Alberto Gonzales draft up paperwork that first suspended and then gutted the law. Bush’s Nov. 1, 2001, executive order granted former national executives – and their families – the right to control the documents indefinitely.
Bush’s order amounted to a grant of hereditary power over the nation’s history. Because of his father’s 12 years as Vice President and President and his own possible eight years as President, Bush’s order could mean that control over 20 years of American history might someday be invested in the hands of the Bush Twins, Jenna and Barbara.
[For more on Executive Order 13233, see Bruce P. Montgomery’s “Their Records, Our History” or Christopher Dreher’s “Hobbling History.”]
Bush Family Secrets
Though it’s not entirely clear what the Reagan-Bush records would have revealed if they had been released in 2001, the Bush Family had a lot to worry about. The Bush legacy could have suffered greatly from anything approaching full disclosure of the Cold War history.
In particular, the documentation might have added to an already troubling history about the senior George Bush and thus could have undercut the younger George Bush’s claim that he carried with him his father’s “good name,” arguably his strongest asset when he sought and claimed the presidency.
The records might have revealed attempts to frustrate investigations and protect secrets relating to earlier abuses. For instance, light might have been shed on what role Vice President George Bush played in the 1980s limiting investigations into the 1976 terrorist car-bombing of former Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and an American co-worker, Ronni Moffitt.
The elder George Bush had been CIA director at the time of the murders, which were carried out in Washington, D.C., by agents of the right-wing military dictatorship of his friend, Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Bush appeared guilty, at minimum, of gross negligence for not stopping the bombing and then obstructing the murder probe.
What was already known about the elder George Bush’s handling of the Letelier-Moffitt murders was disturbing. As CIA director, he had received a warning from a U.S. ambassador about a suspicious mission being carried out in the United States by Chilean intelligence then headed by a paid CIA asset, Col. Manuel Contreras.
But Bush’s CIA took no known action to stop the assassination. After the fatal car-bombing on Sept. 21, 1976, Bush’s CIA consulted with Contreras and planted false stories in the U.S. news media to divert suspicion away from the killers. The CIA also withheld evidence from the FBI. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “George H.W. Bush & a Case of State Terrorism” or Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]
Though several of the Letelier assassins were tracked down during Jimmy Carter’s administration, the investigation of the Chilean higher-ups languished through the Reagan-Bush years. The probe was then revived by Clinton’s Justice Department (before fading away again after the younger George Bush became President).
Arms Deals
The Reagan-Bush documents also might have revealed the senior George Bush’s role in a number of national security scandals from the 1980s – both his direct involvement and his efforts to thwart official investigations.
Those scandals included secret arms sales to Iran (dating back to the illicit “October Surprise” deal allegedly struck in 1980 behind President Carter’s back); a covert pipeline of war materiel to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein (purportedly including chemical weapons); and clandestine dealings with Nicaraguan contra rebels (some implicated in cocaine trafficking).
At Consortiumnews.com, we have tried to compile as much of this history as we could. [For instance, regarding the early arms deals with Iran, see “The Imperium’s Quarter Century.”] But the throttling of the document releases has proved devastating.
George W. Bush has even moved aggressively to reclassify documents that had previously been released. A study by the privately funded National Security Archive at George Washington University found that more than 55,000 pages of records have been taken off the shelves of publicly available documents.
In my Nov. 5, 2000, article “History on the Ballot,” I noted that “while the Clinton-Gore record on openness has been mixed, the (Clinton-Gore) administration has given Americans back important chapters of their recent history. The record of a second Bush administration could be quite different.
“George W. Bush could be faced with choices early in his administration about releasing additional CIA records that could implicate his father in activities surrounding a double homicide (the Letelier-Moffitt case).
“The potential for other new disclosures about crimes – from the 1980 October Surprise operations to contra-drug trafficking to Iraqgate – seem unlikely, too, since they would cast a negative light on the Bush Family legacy.
“The inclusion of Cheney on the Bush ticket further suggests that continuation of Cold War cover-ups will be a hallmark of a Bush II administration. Cheney proved his mettle with the Bush Family by protecting the elder George Bush during the Iran-Contra troubles (when Cheney was a top Republican on the congressional Iran-Contra committee.) …
“Given the Bush Family’s success in containing unpleasant secrets from the past quarter century, it also might be easier to understand why George W. Bush has taken chances hiding his own personal indiscretions, as the recent disclosure of a driving-under-the-influence arrest has shown.
“Far more often than not, the Bushes have prevailed in keeping their secrets – and keeping a truthful historical record – from the American people.”
It turned out that those pessimistic predictions, made more than five years ago, have proven correct – in spades.



Did 308,000 cancelled Ohio voter registrations put Bush back in the White House?
by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey WassermanFebruary 28, 2006

While life goes on during the Bush2 nightmare, so does the research on what really happened here in 2004 to give George W. Bush a second term. Pundits throughout the state and nation---many of them alleged Democrats---continue to tell those of us who question Bush's second coming that we should "get over it," that the election is old news. But things get curiouser and curiouser. In our 2005 compendium HOW THE GOP STOLE OHIO'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008 (www.freepress.org), we list more than a hundred different ways the Republican Party denied the democratic process in the Buckeye State. For a book of documents to be published September 11 by the New Press entitled WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO?, we are continuing to dig. It turns out, we missed more than a few of the dirty tricks Karl Rove, Ken Blackwell and their GOP used to get themselves four more years. In an election won with death by a thousand cuts, some that are still hidden go very deep. Over the next few weeks we will list them as they are verified. One of them has just surfaced to the staggering tune of 175,000 purged voters in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), the traditional stronghold of the Ohio Democratic Party. An additional 10,000 that registered to vote there for the 2004 election were lost due to "clerical error." As we reported more than a year ago, some 133,000 voters were purged from the registration rolls in Hamilton County (Cincinnati) and Lucas County (Toledo) between 2000 and 2004. The 105,000 from Cincinnati and 28,000 from Toledo exceeded Bush's official alleged margin of victory---just under 119,000 votes out of some 5.6 million the Republican Secretary of State. J. Kenneth Blackwell, deemed worth counting. Exit polls flashed worldwide on CNN at 12:20 am Wednesday morning, November 3, showed John Kerry winning Ohio by 4.2% of the popular vote, probably about 250,000 votes. We believe this is an accurate reflection of what really happened here. But by morning Bush was being handed the presidency, claiming a 2.5% Buckeye victory, as certified by Blackwell. In conjunction with other exit polling, the lead switch from Kerry to Bush is a virtual statistical impossibility. Yet John Kerry conceded with more than 250,000 ballots still uncounted, though Bush at the time was allegedly ahead only by 138,000, a margin that later slipped to less than 119,000 in the official vote count. At the time, very few people knew about those first 133,000 voters that had been eliminated from the registration rolls in Cincinnati and Toledo. County election boards purged the voting registration lists. Though all Ohio election boards are allegedly bi-partisan, in fact they are all controlled by the Republican Party. Each has four seats, filled by law with two Democrats and two Republicans. But all tie votes are decided by the Secretary of State, in this case Blackwell, the extreme right-wing Republican now running for Governor. Blackwell served in 2004 not only as the man in charge of the state's vote count, but also a co-chair of the Ohio Bush-Cheney campaign. Many independent observers have deemed this to be a conflict of interest. On election day, Blackwell met personally with Bush, Karl Rove and Matt Damschroder, chair of the Franklin County (Columbus) Board of Elections, formerly the chair of the county's Republican Party. The Board of Elections in Toledo was chaired by Bernadette Noe, wife of Tom Noe, northwestern Ohio's "Mr. Republican." A close personal confidante of the Bush family, Noe raised more than $100,000 for the GOP presidential campaign in 2004. He is currently under indictment for three felony violations of federal election law, and 53 counts of fraud, theft and other felonies in the "disappearance" of more than $13 million in state funds. Noe was entrusted with investing those funds by Republican Gov. Robert Taft, who recently pled guilty to four misdemeanor charges, making him the only convicted criminal ever to serve as governor of Ohio. The rationale given by Noe and by the Republican-controlled BOE in Lucas and Hamilton Counties was that the voters should be eliminated from the rolls because they had allegedly not voted in the previous two federal elections. There is no law that requires such voters be eliminated. And there is no public verification that has been offered to confirm that these people had not, in fact, voted in those elections. Nonetheless, tens of thousands of voters turned up in mostly Democratic wards in Cincinnati and Toledo, only to find they had been mysteriously removed from the voter rolls. In many cases, sworn testimony and affidavits given at hearings after the election confirmed that many of these citizens had in fact voted in the previous two federal elections and had not moved from where they were registered. In some cases, their stability at those addresses stretched back for decades. The problem was partially confirmed by a doubling of provisional ballots cast during the 2004 election, as opposed to the number cast in 2000. Provisional ballots have been traditionally used in Ohio as a stopgap for people whose voting procedures are somehow compromised at the polls, but who are nonetheless valid registrants. Prior to the 2004 election, Blackwell made a range of unilateral pronouncements that threw the provisional balloting process into chaos. Among other things, he demanded voters casting provisional ballots provide their birth dates, a requirement that was often not mentioned by poll workers. Eyewitnesses testify that many provisional ballots were merely tossed in the trash at Ohio polling stations. To this day, more than 16,000 provisional ballots (along with more than 90,000 machine-spoiled ballots) cast in Ohio remain uncounted. The Secretary of State refuses to explain why. A third attempt by the Green and Libertarian Parties to obtain a meaningful recount of the Ohio presidential vote has again been denied by the courts, though the parties are appealing. Soon after the 2004 election, Damschroder announced that Franklin County would eliminate another 170,000 citizens from the voter rolls in Columbus. Furthermore, House Bill 3, recently passed by the GOP-dominated legislature, has imposed a series of restrictions that will make it much harder for citizens to restore themselves to the voter rolls, or to register in the first place. All this, however, pales before a new revelation just released by the Board of Elections in Cuyahoga County, the heavily Democratic county surrounding Cleveland. Robert J. Bennett, the Republican chair of the Cuyahoga Board of Elections, and the Chair of the Ohio Republican Party, has confirmed that prior to the 2004 election, his BOE eliminated---with no public notice---a staggering 175,414 voters from the Cleveland-area registration rolls. He has not explained why the revelation of this massive registration purge has been kept secret for so long. Virtually no Ohio or national media has bothered to report on this story. Many of the affected precincts in Cuyahoga County went 90% and more for John Kerry. The county overall went more than 60% for Kerry. The eliminations have been given credence by repeated sworn testimony and affidavits from long-time Cleveland voters that they came to their usual polling stations only to be told that they were not registered. When they could get them, many were forced to cast provisional ballots which were highly likely to be pitched in the trash, or which remain uncounted. Ohio election history would indicate that the elimination of 175,000 voters in heavily Democratic Cleveland must almost certainly spell doom for any state-wide Democratic campaign. These 175,000 pre-2004 election eliminations must now be added to the 105,000 from Cincinnati and the 28,000 from Toledo. Therefore, to put it simply: at least 308,000 voters, most of them likely Democrats, were eliminated from the registration rolls prior to an election allegedly won by less than 119,000 votes, where more than 106,000 votes still remain uncounted, and where the GOP Secretary of State continues to successfully fight off a meaningful recount. There are more than 80 other Ohio counties where additional pre-November, 2004 mass eliminations by GOP-controlled boards of elections may have occurred. Further "anomalies" in the Ohio 2004 vote count continue to surface. In addition, it seems evident that the Democratic Party will now enter Ohio's 2006 gubernatorial and US Senate races, and its 2008 presidential contest, with close to a half-million voters having been eliminated from the registration rolls, the vast majority of them from traditional Democratic strongholds, and with serious legislative barriers having been erected against new voter registration drives.
Stay tuned.

--Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, available via www.freepress.org. They are co-editors, with Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO?, coming in September from The New Press. Important research for this piece has been conducted by Dr. Richard Hayes Philips, Dr. Norm Robbins and Dr. Victoria Lovegren.