“George W. Bush is … the kind of politician who would cut down a tree and then climb on its stump to give a speech about conservation.”
— John Kerry

A letter I sent to the Atlanta Urinal-Constipation. Let’s see if it gets printed…

Dear Editors,

Even aside from Richard Clarke’s damaging charges against the Bush administration, even aside from Condi Rice’s fear of testifying under oath, I find one pertinent fact that troubles me a great deal.

Everyone agrees that the summer of 2001 saw a level of terrorist “chatter” of unprecedented levels, strongly indicating that a catastrophic attack was in the making. Indeed, President Bush himself received a page-and-a-half briefing on August 6, 2001, “advising him that Osama bin Laden was capable of a major strike against the US, and that the plot could include the hijacking of an American airplane.”

So what was Bush’s response? He went on vacation. He took August off. He took the longest presidential vacation in HISTORY.

This is the man who now claims to have been at battle stations like Clinton had been during the (foiled) Millenium attacks? This is the “war president” who claims he took the terrorist threat seriously?

Bush has been on vacation a long time. A vacation from reason and responsibility.

From Salon:

The president’s ballyhooed surprise trip to Baghdad on Thanksgiving, widely admired as a cunning political move at the time, just gets more disturbing the more you know about it. A U.S. soldier back from Iraq gave an interview to Intervention Magazine about what went on the day before the president came to town:”Stationed in the area of the Baghdad Airport at the time of President Bush’s Thanksgiving 2003 visit to the troops there, [the soldier] recounts that on the day before the president’s visit, the troops were given a questionnaire that asked them whether they ‘supported the president.’ Those who did not declare their support with sufficient enthusiasm were not permitted to take part in the Thanksgiving meal, and had to make do with MREs (meals ready to eat, referred to by the soldiers as ‘meals refused by Ethiopians’) in their quarters.”

The “pre-screening” of U.S. soldiers was also reported in Stars and Stripes, although the military paper said the soldiers were screened for security reasons. This is also the same dinner, recall, in which Bush proudly raised a too-good-to-be-true “trophy turkey” for his photo-op.

From: Eli Pariser, MoveOn PAC
Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2004
Subject: Urgent: Kerry Needs Our Support

It’s now clear that John Kerry will be our Democratic nominee. That’s why today marks one of the most important points in the race to defeat George Bush.

Tomorrow, President Bush will begin airing the first of his campaign ads. He’s amassed a campaign fund of more than $100 million to use for this purpose. Now that the nominee’s known, the Bush campaign and allied groups will “go nuclear,” saturating the air waves in swing states with ads intended to frame the contest early.

Senator Kerry is coming off a long and hard primary fight during which much of his money has been spent. But as the media focus on him and he steps into the role of the Democratic nominee, he also has an opportunity to frame the choice before voters. The big question is whether Kerry will have the resources in this key moment to powerfully respond to the Republican attacks and present his positive vision for our country.

Together, we can answer this question. If you’ve been holding off on contributing to a Presidential campaign, now’s the time to jump in. We have a Democratic nominee, and he needs our support today. Please join us in contributing $5, $50, or $500 today to the Kerry campaign at:
https://contribute.johnkerry.com/contribute.html

This couldn’t be more important, folks. Gov. Bush adds more than half a million bucks a day to his war chest, and Kerry was at -5 million as of Super Tuesday. His donations have naturally picked up since it became clear he’s the nominee, but there’s no way in hell he’s going to catch up with Bush, so every little bit counts.

Bush can raise money like that because he’s the candidate of the rich and corporate. Kerry is our candidate, you know, us Americans who aren’t making billions off Iraq. So we need to buff up the meager strength in the political process we get from our votes, and the most immediate way to do that is to send cash.

At this point, $5 to Kerry is a better investment in your kids’ future than $5 in a savings account for them, for a world full of reasons.

The more the better. I’m broke, but I’m gonna donate. You do the same.

If Kerry can keep this up, he’s definitely the man for the job:

“We cannot let the strongest armed forces in the world be weakened. America’s greatest military strength has always been the courageous, talented men and women whose love of country and devotion to service lead them to attempt and achieve the impossible everyday. We must resolve that America’s leaders will never let them down.

“Yet we hear reports that – in dangerous parts of Iraq – our helicopters are flying missions without the best available anti-missile systems.

“At the same time, un-armored Humvees are falling victim to road-side bombs and small-arms fire.  The Bush Administration waited through month after month of ambushes and only acted to start manufacturing armored door kits three months ago.

“The Army’s 428th Transportation Company, headquartered in Jefferson City, Missouri, shipped out to Iraq two weeks ago.  They had to ask local businesses to donate the steel to armor their vehicles. When the Bush Administration heard about this, their response wasn’t `never again.’ It was `good idea’ – they emailed instructions to other units letting them know how they could use homemade armor to protect their own Humvees from attacks. I believe our soldiers deserve better.

“Even more shocking, tens of thousands of other troops arrived in Iraq to find that – with danger around every corner – there wasn’t enough body armor to protect them. Many of their families on the homefront – mothers and fathers, husbands and wives and children – were forced to raise the money to buy it for them.  They went to their neighbors for donations – and dipped into their savings to give their sons and daughters the equipment to save their lives – which the Army should be providing. Last month, a young newlywed in Virginia even gave her husband body armor for Valentine’s Day as he prepared to ship out to Iraq.

“Families should be sending pictures and care packages to Iraq – and the Department of Defense should be sending the body armor. Today, I call on President Bush to support a law now in Congress to reimburse each and every family who had to buy the body armor this Administration failed to provide. This month, I will also be introducing a Military Family Bill of Rights to prevent anything like this from ever happening again.

“What we face isn’t a question of the budget; it’s a question of priorities and values. This Administration has given billions to Halliburton and requested 82 million dollars to protect Iraq’s 36 miles of coast line. But they call this basic body armor a `non-priority’ item.

This is the full text of an open letter to Gov. George W. Bush from A.R. Torres. a 9/11 widow:

March 5, 2004

Dear President Bush:

My husband, Luis Eduardo Torres, was at his second day of work at Cantor Fitzgerald when he was killed on Sept. 11. He jumped from the 105th floor of the North Tower. Most of his upper body was recovered, identifiable only through dental records. I was seven months pregnant at the time.

It is with him in mind that I’m writing to you, to question your disturbing reelection ad campaign. Yesterday I saw the three ads you’re now running all over the country, specifically on cable stations in the “swing states,” where you feel you need to come out fighting strong. It was the “Safer, Stronger” ad that shocked me the most. At the commercial’s midpoint, the words, “Then … a day of tragedy” dramatically appear on the somber black screen. And the centerpiece: an image of ground zero, the hulking remains of a tower, alongside a human corpse, carried out by several firefighters. Both the tower and the human are draped in American flags.

The flags were intended to honor ground zero and the remains of the dead, but here they are merely props, used to add a powerful patriotic punch to your message. The tower and the corpse are two hideously broken and disfigured things behind and under the flag, and your image — with your red tie, white shirt, and blue suit, standing in front of thick strong white columns — serves as another, symbolic, flag.

That image of ground zero, and the body shrouded with the flag, reminded me of the sulfur from the few pathetic remnants of my husband’s last day: his Cantor ID, Debitchek Meal Card and subway Metrocard.

I thought I’d finished dealing with the gruesome aspects of his dead body, but it came back to me during your commercial. I had a thought I’d never had before: Was every corpse draped in an American flag as it emerged from ground zero, or was it just an honor bestowed upon the uniformed workers? What if that was my husband’s body, now serving as a “spokesman” for your campaign?

I canceled my toddler’s afternoon activities so I could do research. I could hear my voice quake as I called the medical examiner and the mayor’s office. Initially, uniformed personnel were the only ones wrapped in the flag, I learned — but it became standard practice to cover all the dead in that way.

In effect, then, Mr. Bush, you’ve paraded all our 9/11 dead out as the official mascots of your reelection campaign. You use them to show our nation that you can protect us against what we should all fear the most — being an anonymous corpse in another attack.

But these sleights of image and crafty juxtapositions are the only true demonstrations of your leadership abilities. I have no doubt that you need to use this because that’s all you really have to show. After all, on that tragic day you didn’t actually lead the nation: according to the work of the “Jersey girls” — the four 9/11 widows who fought to have an independent commission investigate the tragedy — your first reaction to the plane hitting the North Tower was to blame the pilot. And you continued your activities — reading stories to a group of young schoolchildren. And as you try to impress our nation with your role during and after 9/11 in these ads, you refuse to talk meaningfully to the independent commission about the specifics of your role prior to 9/11 and how much you knew about a potential large-scale al-Qaida plot.

I didn’t think that co-opting 9/11 with such disregard for those of us who have been affected by this tragedy would anger me so much. No doubt John Kerry will use 9/11 to help make strong his own candidacy — and that, too, is of concern. But so many 9/11 families are sick at your use of our sadness … I can’t imagine it being any worse than where you have already led us.

Tom Tomorrow’s thoughts on Nader really hit the target:

Nader’s critique is, essentially, that there is a cancer on the body politic–and he’s right about that. The problem in the year 2004 is that the body politic is also suffering from multiple wounds and blunt force trauma, we’re in the emergency room and it’s a damn mess and there’s blood everywhere and the doctors are working furiously but it’s anybody’s guess how things are gonna turn out. We are in triage, and we have to deal with the immediate problems, or the long-term ones won’t matter anyway.

From Salon:

Students writing term papers or journalists doing Google-reporting have learned by now not to believe everything they read on the Internet. Just like good old hard copy reference materials, it’s best to check the source. One would hope for credibility from sites administered by the U.S. government. But not when it comes to an official bio of the president found on the State Department Web site, it turns out.

The Boston Globe points out that the State Department has, since 2001, featured an embellished account of Bush’s National Guard service on the Internet. The site “credits him with almost six years in the F-102’s cockpit — two years on active duty flying the plane and nearly four more years of part-time service as an F-102 pilot. The websites of at least five American embassies — those in Germany, Italy, Pakistan, Vietnam, and South Korea — use the identical language, even though Bush spent barely two years flying the airplane.”

The Globe quotes Dan Bartlett, White House communications director, admitting the bio is wrong: “It does not reflect the facts of his service. It will be corrected.”