The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Thirty-five years ago, Richard Milhous Nixon, who was crazy as a bullbat, and J. Edgar Hoover, who wore women's underwear, decided some Americans had unacceptable political opinions. So they set our government to spying on its own citizens, basically those who were deemed insufficiently like Crazy Richard Milhous.
For those of you who have forgotten just what a stonewall paranoid Nixon was, the poor man used to stalk around the White House demanding that his political enemies be killed. Many still believe there was a certain Richard III grandeur to Nixon's collapse because he was also a man of notable talents. There is neither grandeur nor tragedy in watching this president, the Testy Kid, violate his oath to uphold the laws and Constitution of our country.

If, back in 2001, anyone had told me that four years after bin Laden's attack our president would admit that he broke U.S. law against domestic spying and ignored the Constitution -- and then expect the American people to congratulate him for it -- I would have presumed the girders of our very Republic had crumbled.
Had anyone said our president would invade a country and kill 30,000 of its people claiming a threat that never, in fact, existed, then admit he would have invaded even if he had known there was no threat -- and expect America to be pleased by this -- I would have thought our nation's sensibilities and honor had been eviscerated.

...The U.S. has invested hundreds of billions of dollars in a totally criminal enterprise - one of the greatest cons in history. ...

For the Bush White House, the good news from Iraq just never stops. But the joy that President Bush has expressed over the country's latest election, though more restrained than his infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech, will similarly come back to haunt him.
Soon after Bush spoke of the Iraqi election as "a landmark day in the history of liberty," early returns representing 90 percent of the ballots cast in the Iraq election established that the clear winners were Shiite and Sunni religious parties not the least bit interested in Western-style democracy or individual freedom -- including such extremists as Muqtada al-Sadr, whose fanatical followers have fought pitched battles with U.S. troops.

The great increase in U.S. bombing in Iraq does not help the U.S. win their illegal war.
It does make many more Iraqi casualties and many more opponents of the U.S. occupation and war making. The U.S. then calls them "terrorists", thereby attempting to justify even more bombing.
......It is not a war on terrorism in Iraq. The U.S. makes terrorists where there were none before. It is a war on civilians.

The American media continues to ignore the increasingly devastating air war being waged in Iraq against an ever more belligerent Iraqi resistance -- and, as usual, Iraqi civilians continue to bear the largely unreported brunt of the bombing.
When the air war shows up at all in our press, it is never as a campaign, but as scattered bare-bones reports of individual attacks on specific targets, almost invariably based on military announcements.

Ernest Partridge's article shows how thoroughly U.S. Democracy has been hi-jacked by the Bush Administration and Republican Party. It implies that the Democratic Party has become a corrupt adjunct of Bush Republicans. Elected representatives of both Parties are joining in history's greatest conspiracy to defraud the American people of their Democracy, rob them and send them to die and be wounded in endless wars based on lies.

Every week I get dozens of solicitations from the Democratic National Committee, from the Democratic Senate and Congressional Campaign Committees, or from various Democratic candidates and office-holders, each of them asking for contributions. “You can help us achieve victory next November,” I am told.
If by “victory” is meant a majority vote cast at the polls, then the Democrats achieved “victory” in 2000, 2002 and 2004. And yet, the Republicans remain in control of the Congress and the White House.

El Baradei was praised by the Nobel chairman for resisting U.S. pressures to find the hard nuclear evidence against Iran
they could use in their plans to justify attack.
That may not be enough to stop the U.S. and Israel from attacking Iran.

The director-general, Mohamed ElBaradei, said a "good start" would be for the United States and other nuclear powers to cut nuclear weapons stockpiles sharply and redirect spending toward international development.

One of the strongest influences in the Bush Administration are the Neo-Conservatives. They fill many of the top positions in the Bush Administration. Their war plans for the U.S. in the Middle East have so far been implemented, such as their phoney war with Iraq. It was promoted before the 9/11 attack- the "Pearl Harbour" the Neocons claimed they needed to justify the war to the American people. Although the war was based on a number of lies - now well-known and publicised, both the Republicans and Democrats want victory over Iraq - nothing less. This and John Kerry and Hillary Clinton's silence about the war lie's is one of many indications that the Democrats have sold out to the Republicans and that the American system of Democracy has been corrupted by the military/industrial complex, other corporates, the oil interests and other special interests.

Steven P. Weisman wrote in The New York Times of Nov. 19 that the “biggest challenge” in President George W. Bush’s second term is “how to contain” Iran’s nuclear program. In fact, however, Iran constitutes no threat to the United States. Its “threat” is to Israel, according to “some” (read neocons) in the administration who believe that Iran supports violence against Israel and helps the resistance in Iraq.

...an ideal short piece to use to help convince people that they should care about the crimes committed in the name of Democracy and Western Civilisation. More and bigger crimes are being committed every day and far greater crimes may be planned - so long as enough people don't care enough to do anything about it. Darkness, dictatorship and the destruction of endless illegal and unjustified wars loom ahead with the Bush Regime.

"Was 9/11 more than just an attack? Could the Bush administration have had anything to gain from the attack? Two prominent European politicians, Michael Meacher and Andreas von Bülow, express their serious doubts about the official version of the 9/11 story."    Watch it online. Real video   http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11222.htm

....The general reaction, even among some war supporters, has been bitter derision: "Jeez, these bozos couldn't boil an egg without causing collateral damage."
But what if the truth is even more sinister? What if this murderous chaos is not the fruit of rank incompetence but instead the desired product of carefully crafted, efficiently managed White House policy?

Drefuss's article (follows) is the best I have read yet which reveals how the U.S. foments wars and makes enemies under cover of "spreading Democracy In The Middle East".
The U.S. is practising Machiavellian tactics (a hallmark of Bush's neoconservative administration) at home and abroad and using Orwellian techniques to befuddle, terrorise and ultimately sell it to the American public.

During his embattled summer vacation in Crawford, Texas, George Bush managed to launch a new promotional ditty for his war in Iraq: "As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down." Since then there has been much commentary from the administration, from military officials, and from the media on the question of how successfully the Iraqi military is actually "standing up."

Once again we have John Pilger at his best revealing how even the revered BBC is little more than a sophisticated propagandist for the UK State. The BBC endlessly repeats Tony Blair's and George Bush lies over their illegal and totally unjustified war on Iraq. It carefully avoids reporting damming key facts about that war, as Pilger so ably documents.
The mass media in other countries - the U.S., Australia and New Zealand is just as bad and very much the servant of Bush-Blair-Howard pro-war propaganda.

The Indian writer Vandana Shiva has called for an "insurrection of subjugated knowledge." The insurrection is well under way. In trying to make sense of a dangerous world, millions of people are turning away from the traditional sources of news and information and to the World Wide Web, convinced that mainstream journalism is the voice of rampant power.

....No one has yet offered any validated evidence that torture produces reliable intelligence.
....The president and vice president wish to chart a course of heretofore unacceptable savagery toward anyone even suspected of terrorism. If we are to become a nation where a president may torture anyone he wishes, it deserves a broad, sober, fact-based national debate.    Comments on "Why Torture Doesn't Work"

A reporter who covered Watergate says Bush has more power than Nixon's imperial presidency did in the early 1970s.
On July 31, 1973, while the Vietnam war was still being fought, Representative Robert Drinan, a Massachusetts Democrat, introduced the first impeachment resolution against President Richard Nixon. One of the grounds for indictment Drinan proposed was the secret bombing of Cambodia, ordered by the President. To Drinan, this was a crime at least as great as the domestic scandals which had already come to be known as "Watergate."
See also Worse than Watergate by Arianna Huffington  and  Excerpt from the Book "Worse Than Watergate" by John W. Dean

Americans have begun to 'smell a rat' - a very huge rat. They have finally begun to connect the dots.
I hope it's not too late and that they can act to stop him in time.

.....To repeat, despite Bush's arguments to the contrary, the "clash of civilizations" would consist of wars started by us. The killing of innocent people in these wars is likely to be massive, and the wars could at any time turn nuclear. If the people and the politicians of America allow these wars to take place, the stain on the morality of Americans will last for generations.

.....The next U.S. pre-emptive war could be against Iran, and/or Syria. Both have been mentioned as potential targets by Bush, as has North Korea if it dares to try and make nuclear weapons.
...... From the following record, and George Bush's actions and statements, we know what to expect.
Hopefully this should encourage people to work to keep New Zealand nuclear-free, and encourage other countries to adopt this step toward a nuclear weapons-free world.

U.S. military spending ($343 billion in the year 2000) is 69 percent greater than that of the next five highest nations combined. Russia, which has the second largest military budget, spends less than one-sixth what the United States does. Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Cuba, Sudan, Iran, and Syria spend $14.4 billion combined; Iran accounts for 52 percent of this total.

Here is a very brilliant paper by a Republican Member of Congress to the House on what he believes is the coming war with Syria. Now that the UN examination of Hariri's assassination in Lebanon reports links it to Syria the US is presented with a golden opportunity to launch another war for the planned regime changes in the middle east.

We have been warned. Prepare for a broader war in the Middle East, as plans are being laid for the next U.S.-led regime change – in Syria. A UN report on the death of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafig Hariri elicited this comment from a senior U.S. policy maker: “Out of tragedy comes an extraordinary strategic opportunity.” This statement reflects the continued neo-conservative, Machiavellian influence on our foreign policy. The “opportunity” refers to the long-held neo-conservative plan for regime change in Syria, similar to what was carried out in Iraq.
This plan for remaking the Middle East has been around for a long time. Just as 9/11 served the interests of those who longed for changes in Iraq, the sensationalism surrounding Hariri’s death is being used to advance plans to remove Assad.

Fascism Growing In America, Britain and Australia?
It is likely that the US brand of Fascism will become much more overt and repressive, especially if given a boost along that road by new 9/11 incidents. Bush will have to act soon to reverse his declining popularity and muster public support for US attacks on Syria and Iran. A new 9/11 would allow the Bush Administration to implement the next phase of the neo-conservative US global domination plan.

Never in the 229 years of United States history has this government "of, by and for the people" been in greater peril. Not during the Civil War, not during the great depression, and not during the Second World War or the Cold War which followed. Until today, gross incompetence, abuse of power, corruption, corporatocracy, and federal insolvency could be checked and reversed by balanced and separated governmental powers, and at the ballot box by a citizenry informed and provoked by an alert and independent media. Now all branches of government and the mainstream media are dominated by the wealthy elites in control of a single political party. Can you believe this? .....         bushwatch

.... - American military commanders testified before Congress about their already overtaxed troops and equipment in March 2002 - the path was clear for a war in Iraq to serve as the political Viagra Mr. Rove needed for the election year.
.....For Mr. Rove and Mr. Bush to get what they wanted most, slam-dunk midterm election victories, and for Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney to get what they wanted most, a war in Iraq for reasons predating 9/11, their real whys for going to war had to be replaced by fictional, more salable ones.
.....Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney were in the boiler room of the disinformation factory. The vice president's repetitive hyping of Saddam's nuclear ambitions in the summer and fall of 2002 as well as his persistence in advertising bogus Saddam-Qaeda ties were fed by the rogue intelligence operation set up in his own office.        bushwatch

Excellent Source Of Independent Journalists and News

A political and media onslaught is about to be unleashed with the indictments of a whole host of key White House officials (including you-know-who) caught up in the Plamegate coverup. The unraveling of this potentially treasonous scandal -- which began with the outing, for political reasons, of a covert CIA officer -- could well provide the tipping point that will allow the Democrats to retake the House in the next election, initiate Congressional investigations of Bush Administration crimes, and possibly even pass an impeachment resolution.

...Only by constantly inventing new enemies and justifying new wars, can Bush and his Republican allies satisfy the needs of a growing military/industrial complex. President Eisenhower warned Americans in 1960 about the growing power of "the military-industrial complex". Now this has become the military-industrial-political-scientific-academic complex, as so many Politicians, Scientists and Academics depend on this complex of interests.

"Never in the history of the world has so much been spent,
so quickly and recklessly on so much wanton destruction and evil by so few."

... U.S. strategy is to create the 'so-called ' terrorist threat' which can then be used to justify targeting any nation the U.S. selects in its endless war on terror (GWOT). By attacking various countries, which they justify by lies, as in Iraq, the Bush Administration makes an endless supply of enemies. Bush and his neocons then label them as 'terrorists'. They blame neighbouring nations for helping these 'terrorists' and proceed with the next phase in the U.S. PNAC expansionist plan.

Dick Cheney's "Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT)
Vice President Cheney in a recent speech to US military personnel has acknowledged that the war could go on for several decades. This statement, which reveals the Bush Administration's commitment to global warfare, was barely mentioned by the mainstream media.
We are dealing with a "military roadmap". Iraq and Afghanistan are at the outset of the Bush administration's military adventure.

General Smedley Butler's 1933 speech is a classic that applies to Bush and his wars today. General Butler's worst fears have come true - this time with much larger annihilation devices at the command of Bush and his neocons. He gives many examples of the greatly inflated profits enjoyed by the wide range of manufacturers who make materials used in war - from munitions to warships to uniforms. Bush promised an endless "war on terror" to defend Democracy". He is delivering on this promise while creating a record-breaking national debt and enormous profits for the myriad of people and company's engaged in the runaway US war machine.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.